i'm at the mckinnon's home this weekend because we all went to a play last night. i'm in the kitchen and trina and i are on dueling computers. (i'm on my laptop.) we're going to see who can finish 1st. also, blame me if the recipe sucks, the 1 trina's sharing tonight. it's mine and we'll be eating it shortly - another reason we are having speed drills on our blogging tonight.
be sure to check out cedric's 'Harry Belafonte's Calypso' - calypso is 1 of my favorites. please read elaine's "The first principle of non-violent action is that of non-cooperation" as well as this and this by c.i. about the way the right wing echo chamber doesn't act alone.
democracy now noted this on friday:
Carroll Criticized For Saying Captors Treated Her Well
Meanwhile, Jill Carroll is already coming under attack for saying that she was treated well by her captors. Writing for the National Review, John Podhoretz wrote: "It's wonderful that she’s free, but after watching someone who was a hostage for three months say on television she was well-treated because she wasn’t beaten or killed -- while being dressed in the garb of a modest Muslim woman rather than the non-Muslim woman she actually is -- I expect there will be some Stockholm Syndrome talk in the coming days."
that explains how the right got ramped up, it does not explain why mainstream media organizations like the new york times and the associated press put forward the same talking points.
and trina's announcing that she's already posting so let me post as well. soup's almost ready anyway.
4/01/2006
posting this for cedric so he can use it as cedric's big mix. if you don't know this cd, you should. it's 1 of the all time bestsellers: harry belafonte's calypso
3/30/2006
jill carroll freed, iraqis still under bully boy & flashpoints
be sure to check out betty's 'Thomas Friedman's Frostings and Facials' and cedric's 'Afghanistan the forgotten "liberation".' mike and i both delayed blogging tonight to make sure that when we did, we'd be able to note the latest from them. and kat's posted yesterday with 'Etta James and Bonnie Faulkner' and tonight with 'The downward spiral of democracy under the Bully Boy' so check out those as well. and if you're a music lover, be sure to check out 'Kat's Korner: Etta James Takes It All The Way.' i really love etta james' all the way. read kat's review and see if you're not interested in getting the cd too.
since mike and i were on the phone, i told him i'd grab headlines with him the way elaine normally does (she's off thursdays because she has to do group sessions). so these items are from democracy now.
Kidnapped Reporter Jill Carroll Freed in Iraq
After nearly three months in captivity, kidnapped U.S. reporter Jill Carroll has been released. Carroll is a freelance reporter working for the Christian Science Monitor in Iraq. She was seized in January outside the offices of a prominent Sunni politician in Baghdad. In a brief television interview in Baghdad, Carroll said she is in good condition and had been treated well by her captors. Her captors freed her by leaving her in a street near the offices of the Iraqi Islamic Party. She walked inside, and people there called US officials. Although her captors threatened twice in videotapes to kill her, Carroll said they never hit her or threatened to do so. Carroll said she was kept in a room with a window and a shower, but she did not know where she was. She went on to say: "I'm just happy to be free. I want to be with my family." On Wednesday, Jill Carroll’s sister, Katie Carroll, had read a statement on Arab television pleading for her sister's safe release. There had been no word from Carroll's captors in nearly two months. They had demanded the release of all women detainees in Iraqi prisons. Five out of an estimated nine women prisoners were released in January.
i didn't think we'd see her alive. when i was writing last night about the liars who didn't tell you what it was like and didn't do anything but hang around the green zone while others did all the work, i was thinking of what i would write about her when the bad news came? i'm so glad that it didn't come. jill carroll showed more some common sense and more bravery then the entire bylined staff of the new york times stationed in iraq. after she's had time to process what she's been through, i hope she starts talking about what she saw in iraq. i don't think many people over there now could tell you a thing about the iraqis themselves because it's hard to get to know the people waiting on you at the hotel. if she doesn't go on the lecture circuit, i hope she'll give a series of interviews.
Iraqi PM Criticizes US Over Resignation Pressure
In news from Iraq, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari has lashed out at growing US pressure to block him from serving a second term as prime minister. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has asked Iraqi Shiite politicians to seek the withdrawal of al-Jaafari's nomination for a second term. In an interview with the New York Times, al-Jaafari said: "[There's] concern among the Iraqi people that the democratic process is being threatened."
we want a "democratic" Iraq - as long as the iraqis don't think they can decide for themselves. don't they know that bully boy is the 'death force' and, like many mythical gods, requires human sacrifices? the iraqis just had the election that the administration tried to sell as 'freedom's on the march.' but when the march doesn't take the route we had scheduled, we want to pull the permit. it's all so very mayor bloomerg.
i was talking to ruth this week to see what show i could grab from pacifica radio that she's not able to cover. one such show is flashpoints which comes on when she's eating dinner and can't catch all the remarks. i'm not going to do flashpoints every day. (i fear committment!) but i will notice it at least once a week. flashpoints airs on kpfa monday through friday and is hosted by
dennis bernstein. it's an hourly broadcast.
what stood out yesterday was the interview with the father of a young teenager who was taking part in the protests against the legislation to turn immigrants into felons and to criminalize any 1 who attempted to provide any to aid to some 1 in need without demanding 'let me see your papers.' (seriously, we've become south africa at the height of apartheid.)he was an intelligent man and very proud of his daughter. (now watch, it will turn out it was a son. if so, write me and i will correct it.) he spoke of how the police, in california, were around the school fences to prevent any 1 from walking out to protest.
he sounded like a caring parent. and that's the main thing that stood out to me on wednesday.
on tuesday, there was a show that you should really listen to. you had patrick cockburn reporting the realities on the ground in iraq and if operation happy talk had any life left in it, it died in the ears of every 1 who heard his report.
you also got to hear jeremy scahill (who i know from democracy now) and dahr jamail giving speeches. what stood out about dahr's speech was his end question about what are you prepared to do to stop the war? jeremy schaill spoke of the illegal invasion in terms of the history of it. for those who wonder why hillary won't speak out against the war, listen to his speech. bill clinton had a hand in setting up this war.
jeremy pointed out that it's easy to protest an illegal war when it's overseen by some 1 as hated as the bully boy but where was the huge protest when bill clinton was playing war monger? hillary, jeremy didn't speak of her that i remember, won't speak out because her husband's so tied up in this. and she probabl is as well. the congressional authorization for regime change came under bill clinton, it set the stage for today.
jeremy also spoke of what c.i. has, the 'protest pens' in boston at the dnc convention. i didn't go to the convention. i heard about them from c.i. who found them disgusting. (c.i.'s noted that at the common ills many times and also disgust over the fact that the democrats had medea benjamin pulled from the floor for unfurling her anti-war banner.) (any 1 else ever wonder if that's not what the leadership would like to do to the grassroots of the party? by the way, i'll be writing about evan blah tomorrow night.)
jeremy was very outspoken about how disgusting that was and how disgusting the use of the military to 'maintain order' was.
it was a very powerful speech.
if this is new to you, the democratic party supported protest at their convention. as long as you were willing to step into a little pen to do it. now you might think, free speech being a constitutional right, that protests could happen anywhere. you would be wrong. if i'm remembering correctly what c.i. told me when the convention was going on, the pen wasn't even near a place where most people would see it. it was off to the side and i want to see near 1 of the back entrances/exits where most people would never pass. (just to clarify, c.i. didn't get into the protest pen.)
jeremy talked about the tone of the speeches and noted john kerry and john edwards. kerry just looked silly, to me, saying 'reporting for duty.' john edwards, and maybe it was because he never served in the military, came off like the bully boy.
now this week, elaine's written about home fries, kat's written about guns and butter and i've written about flashpoints. don't ask ruth to cover those in her report because they've been covered. there are hours and hours and hours of programming each week, each day, and there's only so much 1 person can even try to cover. if it ever looks like i'm going a week without covering flashpoints, drop me an e-mail to remind me. there was a feature with some 1 (i think his name was kyle) that i really enjoyed but i'm learning the regulars' names still so, until i do learn their names, i'll probably just focus on the guests.
since mike and i were on the phone, i told him i'd grab headlines with him the way elaine normally does (she's off thursdays because she has to do group sessions). so these items are from democracy now.
Kidnapped Reporter Jill Carroll Freed in Iraq
After nearly three months in captivity, kidnapped U.S. reporter Jill Carroll has been released. Carroll is a freelance reporter working for the Christian Science Monitor in Iraq. She was seized in January outside the offices of a prominent Sunni politician in Baghdad. In a brief television interview in Baghdad, Carroll said she is in good condition and had been treated well by her captors. Her captors freed her by leaving her in a street near the offices of the Iraqi Islamic Party. She walked inside, and people there called US officials. Although her captors threatened twice in videotapes to kill her, Carroll said they never hit her or threatened to do so. Carroll said she was kept in a room with a window and a shower, but she did not know where she was. She went on to say: "I'm just happy to be free. I want to be with my family." On Wednesday, Jill Carroll’s sister, Katie Carroll, had read a statement on Arab television pleading for her sister's safe release. There had been no word from Carroll's captors in nearly two months. They had demanded the release of all women detainees in Iraqi prisons. Five out of an estimated nine women prisoners were released in January.
i didn't think we'd see her alive. when i was writing last night about the liars who didn't tell you what it was like and didn't do anything but hang around the green zone while others did all the work, i was thinking of what i would write about her when the bad news came? i'm so glad that it didn't come. jill carroll showed more some common sense and more bravery then the entire bylined staff of the new york times stationed in iraq. after she's had time to process what she's been through, i hope she starts talking about what she saw in iraq. i don't think many people over there now could tell you a thing about the iraqis themselves because it's hard to get to know the people waiting on you at the hotel. if she doesn't go on the lecture circuit, i hope she'll give a series of interviews.
Iraqi PM Criticizes US Over Resignation Pressure
In news from Iraq, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari has lashed out at growing US pressure to block him from serving a second term as prime minister. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has asked Iraqi Shiite politicians to seek the withdrawal of al-Jaafari's nomination for a second term. In an interview with the New York Times, al-Jaafari said: "[There's] concern among the Iraqi people that the democratic process is being threatened."
we want a "democratic" Iraq - as long as the iraqis don't think they can decide for themselves. don't they know that bully boy is the 'death force' and, like many mythical gods, requires human sacrifices? the iraqis just had the election that the administration tried to sell as 'freedom's on the march.' but when the march doesn't take the route we had scheduled, we want to pull the permit. it's all so very mayor bloomerg.
i was talking to ruth this week to see what show i could grab from pacifica radio that she's not able to cover. one such show is flashpoints which comes on when she's eating dinner and can't catch all the remarks. i'm not going to do flashpoints every day. (i fear committment!) but i will notice it at least once a week. flashpoints airs on kpfa monday through friday and is hosted by
dennis bernstein. it's an hourly broadcast.
what stood out yesterday was the interview with the father of a young teenager who was taking part in the protests against the legislation to turn immigrants into felons and to criminalize any 1 who attempted to provide any to aid to some 1 in need without demanding 'let me see your papers.' (seriously, we've become south africa at the height of apartheid.)he was an intelligent man and very proud of his daughter. (now watch, it will turn out it was a son. if so, write me and i will correct it.) he spoke of how the police, in california, were around the school fences to prevent any 1 from walking out to protest.
he sounded like a caring parent. and that's the main thing that stood out to me on wednesday.
on tuesday, there was a show that you should really listen to. you had patrick cockburn reporting the realities on the ground in iraq and if operation happy talk had any life left in it, it died in the ears of every 1 who heard his report.
you also got to hear jeremy scahill (who i know from democracy now) and dahr jamail giving speeches. what stood out about dahr's speech was his end question about what are you prepared to do to stop the war? jeremy schaill spoke of the illegal invasion in terms of the history of it. for those who wonder why hillary won't speak out against the war, listen to his speech. bill clinton had a hand in setting up this war.
jeremy pointed out that it's easy to protest an illegal war when it's overseen by some 1 as hated as the bully boy but where was the huge protest when bill clinton was playing war monger? hillary, jeremy didn't speak of her that i remember, won't speak out because her husband's so tied up in this. and she probabl is as well. the congressional authorization for regime change came under bill clinton, it set the stage for today.
jeremy also spoke of what c.i. has, the 'protest pens' in boston at the dnc convention. i didn't go to the convention. i heard about them from c.i. who found them disgusting. (c.i.'s noted that at the common ills many times and also disgust over the fact that the democrats had medea benjamin pulled from the floor for unfurling her anti-war banner.) (any 1 else ever wonder if that's not what the leadership would like to do to the grassroots of the party? by the way, i'll be writing about evan blah tomorrow night.)
jeremy was very outspoken about how disgusting that was and how disgusting the use of the military to 'maintain order' was.
it was a very powerful speech.
if this is new to you, the democratic party supported protest at their convention. as long as you were willing to step into a little pen to do it. now you might think, free speech being a constitutional right, that protests could happen anywhere. you would be wrong. if i'm remembering correctly what c.i. told me when the convention was going on, the pen wasn't even near a place where most people would see it. it was off to the side and i want to see near 1 of the back entrances/exits where most people would never pass. (just to clarify, c.i. didn't get into the protest pen.)
jeremy talked about the tone of the speeches and noted john kerry and john edwards. kerry just looked silly, to me, saying 'reporting for duty.' john edwards, and maybe it was because he never served in the military, came off like the bully boy.
now this week, elaine's written about home fries, kat's written about guns and butter and i've written about flashpoints. don't ask ruth to cover those in her report because they've been covered. there are hours and hours and hours of programming each week, each day, and there's only so much 1 person can even try to cover. if it ever looks like i'm going a week without covering flashpoints, drop me an e-mail to remind me. there was a feature with some 1 (i think his name was kyle) that i really enjoyed but i'm learning the regulars' names still so, until i do learn their names, i'll probably just focus on the guests.
3/29/2006
iraq in crisis and chaos - the us continuing the occupation will destroy the country
25,000 Iraqis Displaced Since Mosque Bombing
In Iraq, a relief agency says more than 25,000 Iraqis have fled their homes since last month's bombing of a holy Shiite shrine in Sammara. The International Organization for Migration says scores of shelters and tent cities are housing increasing numbers of displaced Sunni and Shiite families. Aid officials say the internal migration is only continuing.
do you think bully boy frets or worries about that. (it's from democracy now, by the way.)
i don't think so. not when he's blaming the chaos, the chaos he created, on saddam hussein.
are people aware of what happened in fallujah? either time but especially in november of 2004 when the second wave of destruction (including white phosophorus) hit the city? where do people think the victims of that massacre live? not the 1s slaughtered but the 1s who managed to get out. what do people think they had to return to? houses were leveled. the city was in ruins. dexy filkins was getting a chubby just watching it all go blow to the heavens but the reality (always in short supply when filkins 'reports') is that what happened was a tragedy and a war crime and dexy filkins is as much a war criminal as the administration because he sold it as entertainment. he should be ashamed of himself.
and so should any 1 else who's still holding on to the idea that we're somehow 'liberating' any 1. we aren't doing any such thing. we are contributing to the violence with our presence.
i want to call attention to c.i.'s post from nov. 21, 2004 (when dexy's 'award winning' war porn ran):
The rah-rah piece carries the dateline "Nov. 18" in this story published in the November 21st edition. Allowing for the time needed to put together a Sunday edition, I'm still questioning that. The story was filed on the 18th (Thursday) and pops up on the 21st (Sunday). And there's the added detail, not provided in Dexter Filkins story, that Lance Cpl. William Miller died November 15th (http://icasualties.org/oif/prdDetails.aspx?hndRef=11-2004).
Perhaps we're all supposed to count the "eight days after the Americans entered the city on foot?"
If so The Guardian places that as November 8th (http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1346721,00.html) and eight days later would be the sixteenth -- well Times reporters aren't necessarily noted for their math.The point here is that the story on today's front page (November 21, 2004) begins with a battle from November 15th without ever alerting the reader to this fact. An occurence six days prior is their front page Iraq story. (Which makes one think of Chris Hedges' comments on the nature of war correspondence.)
Was the story "cleared" -- is that the reason for the long delay in the Times reporting on events from the 15th?
Is anyone else bothered by the rah-rah nature of this report that reads like the plot to a video game? After reading the article is anyone else feeling like Filkins is a lot like Bob Dylan's "Mr. Jones" -- "Something is happening, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Filkins?"
before the 'award winning' dexy became award winning with his war porn, c.i. was questioning him and his reporting in real time.
i'm still bothered by the poll on aol last week. we're supposed to either believe the media is too liberal or else belive they're doing a great job, based upon the way that poll was set up. there are more choices than that. that's not reality and you and i know that.
i'm also real tired of hearing corporate reporters defend themselves and speak of danger that they've been under. you know what? you should have written about it. instead of pretending like everything was wonderful in iraq, you should have written that you couldn't leave the green zone. and this nonsense about even though you didn't leave the green zone, your articles were strong because a stringer or 2 gave you the information? you didn't do the reporting. they did the reporting. you put your anglo name on it and you took the credit.
did you write 'i am a prisoner of the green zone, unable to leave and this report is me writing information that stringers are giving me because it's not safe for me to leave the green zone'?
no. so you lied.
you lied to the readers. you let them think that you had mobility and could go anywhere. while iraq was falling to pieces, you lied.
now you want our sympathies? oh how awful it is for you. because YOU are the story, right? not the iraqis you are supposed to be reporting on. not the iraqis who live in danger every day the illegal occupation continues.
and you want to snap things like 'you weren't there!' guess what, you weren't there either. you were in a hotel or villa, heavily guarded. don't lecture critics on what you know when you didn't bother to report the very little that you knew.
robert fisk did. robert fisk also spoke about it.
but the american embeds stayed silent on reality and acted like things were hunky dorky in terms of their travel. the inability to travel didn't happen last month or the month before. this has been a long process and only now are they beginning to speak about it publicly.
i have no sympathy. i have sympathy for jill carrol and others who tried to get reality out of ira. dahr jamail, to name 1. patrick cockburn and robert fisk. i have sympathy for them and admiration for them.
but the rest? the 1s who stayed silent about reality the same way they stayed silent on the attacks on al jazeera?
i don't care that maybe it was real hard ordering room service and sitting around the green zone.
you wanted to report from a war zone, you knew the problems. you went there and you refused to report on reality. don't come back to the united states and expect a lot of sympathy when your lies allowed the occupation to continue and the american people who only follow corporate media to think things were much better than they were.
that's my gripe tonight.
a 'jim' wrote in. i'm not really sure why. it appears to be a pick up e-mail (offering relationship or just e-mails). jim, i'm involved with my ex-husband currently. you sound like a wonderful man with your likes and dislikes list. but i'm in a relationship right now, so thank you all the same.
i also got e-mails wondering if c.i. 'ripped you a new 1'? that's in ref to what i wrote last night. 1st, c.i. was yelling on the phone. but that was due to the fact that c.i. was at a rally and using a cell phone. c.i. didn't 'rip' into me. c.i. wanted to know why i hadn't linked to some 1 who was linking to me. after that was addressed, c.i. wanted to talk about what kind of support we're giving to the community.
c.i. had hard questions for me and hard self-questions as well. because we're long term friends, there is no need to pussy foot around the issue. this wasn't griping (and c.i. was far tougher on self than on me). c.i. noted that i do a great job of noting cedric, for instance.
c.i.'s concern was whether we were all doing our part to promote 1 another? due to the way the common ills is set up, c.i.'s not always noting every 1. (also due to time issues.) elaine and i can be noted very easily there because we're always calling c.i. about something. (we have always spoken to 1 another a great deal but once the invasion started we started speaking much more often. it probably went from twice a week most weeks to 5 to 7 times a week or more.) so if 1 of us says something on the phone, it's very easy for c.i., in the middle of an entry, to say 'rebecca pointed out' or whatever. but are we promoting trina enough? (trina's got a great recipe for mexican rice. even i was able to cook it without any problems.) or any of the other sites?
you all are wonderful readers and share great e-mails. i know you're smart and dedicated. and i'm thankful for you and know i'm lucky to be 2nd to the common ills in most read. but as the top 2 most read online (if you count their print edition, the third estate sunday review, they're probably ahead of me), are we doing our part to promote the ocmmunity enough?
that's a valid question. and we discussed it. it wasn't about 'rebecca, i'm going to scream at you.' i'm sorry if my word choice gave that impression. what i meant by mike getting it easier was that c.i. wouldn't address mike in the same way. it wouldn't be, 'mike, are we doing enough?' it would be 'mike, could you spotlight cedric [or whomever] a little more?'
c.i. and i are both older than mike and we've known each other for years. what i was trying to express is that we don't have to be 'if i could, please, just maybe make a point, if that's okay' with each other.
now, does gail collins of the new york times grate on your last nerve? if so go read mike on gail collins the self-amused. want a breakdown on england and to find out what's coming up in the gina & krista round-robin and polly's newsletter? go read elaine's post from this evening.
want to read about the marathon edition that seemed like it would never end sunday? read cedric's comments on it.
that's the sort of thing c.i. was talking about. (i've already linked to wally earlier in this post.) what we were talking about, trying to figure out, was how to be sure we were noting the newer site and being sure that people knew what was going on at them.
i'll close by uring every 1 to check out c.i.'s "NYT: Eric Lichtblau covers the hearing on NSA spying by focusing on Robertson's letter" even though c.i. wasn't talking about highlights for the common ills.
In Iraq, a relief agency says more than 25,000 Iraqis have fled their homes since last month's bombing of a holy Shiite shrine in Sammara. The International Organization for Migration says scores of shelters and tent cities are housing increasing numbers of displaced Sunni and Shiite families. Aid officials say the internal migration is only continuing.
do you think bully boy frets or worries about that. (it's from democracy now, by the way.)
i don't think so. not when he's blaming the chaos, the chaos he created, on saddam hussein.
are people aware of what happened in fallujah? either time but especially in november of 2004 when the second wave of destruction (including white phosophorus) hit the city? where do people think the victims of that massacre live? not the 1s slaughtered but the 1s who managed to get out. what do people think they had to return to? houses were leveled. the city was in ruins. dexy filkins was getting a chubby just watching it all go blow to the heavens but the reality (always in short supply when filkins 'reports') is that what happened was a tragedy and a war crime and dexy filkins is as much a war criminal as the administration because he sold it as entertainment. he should be ashamed of himself.
and so should any 1 else who's still holding on to the idea that we're somehow 'liberating' any 1. we aren't doing any such thing. we are contributing to the violence with our presence.
i want to call attention to c.i.'s post from nov. 21, 2004 (when dexy's 'award winning' war porn ran):
The rah-rah piece carries the dateline "Nov. 18" in this story published in the November 21st edition. Allowing for the time needed to put together a Sunday edition, I'm still questioning that. The story was filed on the 18th (Thursday) and pops up on the 21st (Sunday). And there's the added detail, not provided in Dexter Filkins story, that Lance Cpl. William Miller died November 15th (http://icasualties.org/oif/prdDetails.aspx?hndRef=11-2004).
Perhaps we're all supposed to count the "eight days after the Americans entered the city on foot?"
If so The Guardian places that as November 8th (http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1346721,00.html) and eight days later would be the sixteenth -- well Times reporters aren't necessarily noted for their math.The point here is that the story on today's front page (November 21, 2004) begins with a battle from November 15th without ever alerting the reader to this fact. An occurence six days prior is their front page Iraq story. (Which makes one think of Chris Hedges' comments on the nature of war correspondence.)
Was the story "cleared" -- is that the reason for the long delay in the Times reporting on events from the 15th?
Is anyone else bothered by the rah-rah nature of this report that reads like the plot to a video game? After reading the article is anyone else feeling like Filkins is a lot like Bob Dylan's "Mr. Jones" -- "Something is happening, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Filkins?"
before the 'award winning' dexy became award winning with his war porn, c.i. was questioning him and his reporting in real time.
i'm still bothered by the poll on aol last week. we're supposed to either believe the media is too liberal or else belive they're doing a great job, based upon the way that poll was set up. there are more choices than that. that's not reality and you and i know that.
i'm also real tired of hearing corporate reporters defend themselves and speak of danger that they've been under. you know what? you should have written about it. instead of pretending like everything was wonderful in iraq, you should have written that you couldn't leave the green zone. and this nonsense about even though you didn't leave the green zone, your articles were strong because a stringer or 2 gave you the information? you didn't do the reporting. they did the reporting. you put your anglo name on it and you took the credit.
did you write 'i am a prisoner of the green zone, unable to leave and this report is me writing information that stringers are giving me because it's not safe for me to leave the green zone'?
no. so you lied.
you lied to the readers. you let them think that you had mobility and could go anywhere. while iraq was falling to pieces, you lied.
now you want our sympathies? oh how awful it is for you. because YOU are the story, right? not the iraqis you are supposed to be reporting on. not the iraqis who live in danger every day the illegal occupation continues.
and you want to snap things like 'you weren't there!' guess what, you weren't there either. you were in a hotel or villa, heavily guarded. don't lecture critics on what you know when you didn't bother to report the very little that you knew.
robert fisk did. robert fisk also spoke about it.
but the american embeds stayed silent on reality and acted like things were hunky dorky in terms of their travel. the inability to travel didn't happen last month or the month before. this has been a long process and only now are they beginning to speak about it publicly.
i have no sympathy. i have sympathy for jill carrol and others who tried to get reality out of ira. dahr jamail, to name 1. patrick cockburn and robert fisk. i have sympathy for them and admiration for them.
but the rest? the 1s who stayed silent about reality the same way they stayed silent on the attacks on al jazeera?
i don't care that maybe it was real hard ordering room service and sitting around the green zone.
you wanted to report from a war zone, you knew the problems. you went there and you refused to report on reality. don't come back to the united states and expect a lot of sympathy when your lies allowed the occupation to continue and the american people who only follow corporate media to think things were much better than they were.
that's my gripe tonight.
a 'jim' wrote in. i'm not really sure why. it appears to be a pick up e-mail (offering relationship or just e-mails). jim, i'm involved with my ex-husband currently. you sound like a wonderful man with your likes and dislikes list. but i'm in a relationship right now, so thank you all the same.
i also got e-mails wondering if c.i. 'ripped you a new 1'? that's in ref to what i wrote last night. 1st, c.i. was yelling on the phone. but that was due to the fact that c.i. was at a rally and using a cell phone. c.i. didn't 'rip' into me. c.i. wanted to know why i hadn't linked to some 1 who was linking to me. after that was addressed, c.i. wanted to talk about what kind of support we're giving to the community.
c.i. had hard questions for me and hard self-questions as well. because we're long term friends, there is no need to pussy foot around the issue. this wasn't griping (and c.i. was far tougher on self than on me). c.i. noted that i do a great job of noting cedric, for instance.
c.i.'s concern was whether we were all doing our part to promote 1 another? due to the way the common ills is set up, c.i.'s not always noting every 1. (also due to time issues.) elaine and i can be noted very easily there because we're always calling c.i. about something. (we have always spoken to 1 another a great deal but once the invasion started we started speaking much more often. it probably went from twice a week most weeks to 5 to 7 times a week or more.) so if 1 of us says something on the phone, it's very easy for c.i., in the middle of an entry, to say 'rebecca pointed out' or whatever. but are we promoting trina enough? (trina's got a great recipe for mexican rice. even i was able to cook it without any problems.) or any of the other sites?
you all are wonderful readers and share great e-mails. i know you're smart and dedicated. and i'm thankful for you and know i'm lucky to be 2nd to the common ills in most read. but as the top 2 most read online (if you count their print edition, the third estate sunday review, they're probably ahead of me), are we doing our part to promote the ocmmunity enough?
that's a valid question. and we discussed it. it wasn't about 'rebecca, i'm going to scream at you.' i'm sorry if my word choice gave that impression. what i meant by mike getting it easier was that c.i. wouldn't address mike in the same way. it wouldn't be, 'mike, are we doing enough?' it would be 'mike, could you spotlight cedric [or whomever] a little more?'
c.i. and i are both older than mike and we've known each other for years. what i was trying to express is that we don't have to be 'if i could, please, just maybe make a point, if that's okay' with each other.
now, does gail collins of the new york times grate on your last nerve? if so go read mike on gail collins the self-amused. want a breakdown on england and to find out what's coming up in the gina & krista round-robin and polly's newsletter? go read elaine's post from this evening.
want to read about the marathon edition that seemed like it would never end sunday? read cedric's comments on it.
that's the sort of thing c.i. was talking about. (i've already linked to wally earlier in this post.) what we were talking about, trying to figure out, was how to be sure we were noting the newer site and being sure that people knew what was going on at them.
i'll close by uring every 1 to check out c.i.'s "NYT: Eric Lichtblau covers the hearing on NSA spying by focusing on Robertson's letter" even though c.i. wasn't talking about highlights for the common ills.
3/28/2006
flashback to 1979, 3 mile island and the right wing echo chamber
Three Mile Island: 27th Anniversary of Nuclear Accident
And today is the 27th anniversary of the meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It was the most severe nuclear accident in U.S. history. In the pre-dawn hours of March 28, 1979, the cooling system of the plant’s reactor malfunctioned, causing temperatures inside to skyrocket sparking a meltdown that resulted in the release of radioactivity.
that's from democracy now and today is the 27 anniversary. let me round that out by talking about some stuff going on at that time. jimmy carter was president. karen silkwood had been murdered years prior. (others think she died in an accident. i say murder.)
karen silkwood was a whistleblower on the nuclear industry and 1 night, while she was going to expose the industry (with documents), she died in a car accident and no documents were in the car.
jane fonda wanted to make a film about the life of karen silkwood but there were problems with the legal rights at that time. (years later, meryl streep would star as karen silkwood in the film silkwood.) what was going on was a film michael douglas and jack lemmon were involved with and jane fonda (and her film partner then, bruce gilbert) teamed up. they filmed it and it took a lot of pressure to get the studio to go along with the desired title: "china syndrome."
it was thought that the film would be a hard sell with the best title and the studio (columbia) didn't think that was the best title. (the title refers to the effect during a meltdown).
the film comes out and, i know this hard to believe, the right wing slams it. george will stops twirling his bow tie long enough to slam the film as did others. never could happen. if it ever happened, the nuclear industry wouldn't try to deceive the public.
there was a cooridnated effort to bury the film which came out on march 16, 1979. then three miles island happend. the george will's weren't shut up (they never are, kids), but reality did take hold with the public.
trivia note, edward teller who is known as the father of the h-bomb (a title he wrongly took pride in) had a heart attack in 1979 and publicly blamed it on jane fonda.
poor mad scientist. a heart attack? i'm sure only a heart attack would have been seen as mercy to the people the bomb was dropped on in hiroshima.
so that's a bit of flashback history for you.
all the usual right-wing, echo chamber cranks lined up to destroy a film (and fonda, you know they always love to try to destroy her) and, as usual, they were talking out of their ass.
this time the truth was told on them quick.
now an apology. no, not about roberta flack. she wasn't on wbai's home fries last night because something came up, that's how it goes in live radio and it was a great program. elaine and i were on the phone listening to it together. and if she, some 1 who loves roberta flack (i think that may be her favorite female singer) could still enjoy the program than nobody has a right to have a huffy fit. it was a wonderful program and the host was a substitute host, joyce jones, who did a wonderful job.
so here's my apology. i had no idea rory o'connor was linking to me. or that he was linking to mike. c.i. heard about it yesterday and we both heard about it late last night. mike got the easy treatment because c.i. looks at him like a kid. (no offense to mike.) i explained to c.i. that i truly had no idea that i was being linked to.
that was very nice of rory o'connor to link to mike and to link to me. mike and i are both adding him to our links tonight. (we have noted his writing in our posts.) while i was in the template, i also added a link to pacifica radio because it is important that we support indymedia. and for ruth, i linked to her favorite program Law and Disorder.
it's also important to support the community. i usually tell every 1 that they don't have to highlight me. that's because i do pretty well on my own and there are so many new sites since i started. i need to note wally more. he does daily entries monday through friday and he's some 1 i consider a friend. he's a community member, of course, but he was always a big supporter of my writing. "THIS JUST IN! BULLY BOY PULLS BOLTEN SWITCH!" is his most recent and it's a humorous look at joshua bolton replacing andrew card as the white house chief of staff. wally takes a humorous look at the news and does a great job.
c.i. and i were talking about that on the phone too. with mike and elaine, they've got links to each other because they pick out the 2 items from democracy now that they're both going to spotlight together. so if you go to either site, you're aware of the other. but is wally getting enough support from the community sites?
that was c.i.'s question. c.i. usually only spotlights if a member brings it up. and c.i. also wants to be sure that no 1 ever feels like 'i write a lot and never get noted.'
that's why i always tell every 1 that they don't have to note me. there are a lot of sites that are out there (sites in the community). we all note c.i. (despite being asked not to). and that's because c.i. writes more than any of us. (and because c.i. writes so well and on so many things.)
me, i post 5 times a week. compare that to the common ills which has a minimum of 23 or so entries a week.
so let me say that if you haven't checked out wally, you should. he's a great guy and very funny.
And today is the 27th anniversary of the meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It was the most severe nuclear accident in U.S. history. In the pre-dawn hours of March 28, 1979, the cooling system of the plant’s reactor malfunctioned, causing temperatures inside to skyrocket sparking a meltdown that resulted in the release of radioactivity.
that's from democracy now and today is the 27 anniversary. let me round that out by talking about some stuff going on at that time. jimmy carter was president. karen silkwood had been murdered years prior. (others think she died in an accident. i say murder.)
karen silkwood was a whistleblower on the nuclear industry and 1 night, while she was going to expose the industry (with documents), she died in a car accident and no documents were in the car.
jane fonda wanted to make a film about the life of karen silkwood but there were problems with the legal rights at that time. (years later, meryl streep would star as karen silkwood in the film silkwood.) what was going on was a film michael douglas and jack lemmon were involved with and jane fonda (and her film partner then, bruce gilbert) teamed up. they filmed it and it took a lot of pressure to get the studio to go along with the desired title: "china syndrome."
it was thought that the film would be a hard sell with the best title and the studio (columbia) didn't think that was the best title. (the title refers to the effect during a meltdown).
the film comes out and, i know this hard to believe, the right wing slams it. george will stops twirling his bow tie long enough to slam the film as did others. never could happen. if it ever happened, the nuclear industry wouldn't try to deceive the public.
there was a cooridnated effort to bury the film which came out on march 16, 1979. then three miles island happend. the george will's weren't shut up (they never are, kids), but reality did take hold with the public.
trivia note, edward teller who is known as the father of the h-bomb (a title he wrongly took pride in) had a heart attack in 1979 and publicly blamed it on jane fonda.
poor mad scientist. a heart attack? i'm sure only a heart attack would have been seen as mercy to the people the bomb was dropped on in hiroshima.
so that's a bit of flashback history for you.
all the usual right-wing, echo chamber cranks lined up to destroy a film (and fonda, you know they always love to try to destroy her) and, as usual, they were talking out of their ass.
this time the truth was told on them quick.
now an apology. no, not about roberta flack. she wasn't on wbai's home fries last night because something came up, that's how it goes in live radio and it was a great program. elaine and i were on the phone listening to it together. and if she, some 1 who loves roberta flack (i think that may be her favorite female singer) could still enjoy the program than nobody has a right to have a huffy fit. it was a wonderful program and the host was a substitute host, joyce jones, who did a wonderful job.
so here's my apology. i had no idea rory o'connor was linking to me. or that he was linking to mike. c.i. heard about it yesterday and we both heard about it late last night. mike got the easy treatment because c.i. looks at him like a kid. (no offense to mike.) i explained to c.i. that i truly had no idea that i was being linked to.
that was very nice of rory o'connor to link to mike and to link to me. mike and i are both adding him to our links tonight. (we have noted his writing in our posts.) while i was in the template, i also added a link to pacifica radio because it is important that we support indymedia. and for ruth, i linked to her favorite program Law and Disorder.
it's also important to support the community. i usually tell every 1 that they don't have to highlight me. that's because i do pretty well on my own and there are so many new sites since i started. i need to note wally more. he does daily entries monday through friday and he's some 1 i consider a friend. he's a community member, of course, but he was always a big supporter of my writing. "THIS JUST IN! BULLY BOY PULLS BOLTEN SWITCH!" is his most recent and it's a humorous look at joshua bolton replacing andrew card as the white house chief of staff. wally takes a humorous look at the news and does a great job.
c.i. and i were talking about that on the phone too. with mike and elaine, they've got links to each other because they pick out the 2 items from democracy now that they're both going to spotlight together. so if you go to either site, you're aware of the other. but is wally getting enough support from the community sites?
that was c.i.'s question. c.i. usually only spotlights if a member brings it up. and c.i. also wants to be sure that no 1 ever feels like 'i write a lot and never get noted.'
that's why i always tell every 1 that they don't have to note me. there are a lot of sites that are out there (sites in the community). we all note c.i. (despite being asked not to). and that's because c.i. writes more than any of us. (and because c.i. writes so well and on so many things.)
me, i post 5 times a week. compare that to the common ills which has a minimum of 23 or so entries a week.
so let me say that if you haven't checked out wally, you should. he's a great guy and very funny.
3/27/2006
will the helen thomas attackers apologize?
this is from c.i.:
Now Roberta Flack. Micah e-mailed that he wasn't sure of the WBAI program but Ruth says it's Home Fries which airs from nine to ten p.m. (Eastern Standard Time). Joyce Jones will be filling in as host and she will be speaking with Roberta Flack, fresh from the Apollo. So that's Roberta Flack on WBAI tonight (and you can listen online, remember) and that's Danny Schechter giving a presentation, a free presentation, in NYC Wednesday night.
elaine asked me to note it because she's a huge fan of roberta flack. i like roberta's vocals as well. 'the first time ever i saw your face' is probably my favorite song or maybe it's the duet of 'the closer i get to you' with donnie hathaway?
but she has many wonderful songs and it should be an interesting interview.
this is from media matters:
After the contentious exchange between Hearst Newspapers columnist Helen Thomas, a veteran White House reporter, and President Bush during Bush's March 21 press conference, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly and several other conservative commentators rushed to attack Thomas for asking Bush, since "[e]very reason given, publicly at least," to justify invading Iraq, "has turned out not to be true ... why did you really want to go to war?" In the days following the press conference, O'Reilly has repeatedly attacked Thomas for the question on both his nationally syndicated radio program and his Fox News television program, calling Thomas's question "absurd" and "out of bounds," accusing Thomas of "hat[ing] Bush and try[ing] to undermine everything he does," and even suggesting that if he were Bush, he "would have laid her out." Several other conservative media figures -- including Jonah Goldberg, Fred Barnes, Glenn Beck, and Tucker Carlson -- have followed suit, sometimes with highly personal attacks.
Thomas sparked the contentious exchange with the president by asking Bush, "[W]hy did you really want to go to war?"
so they were happy to pile on helen thomas for asking bully boy why he invaded iraq? will they apologize to her now? will they ask bully why he invaded?
if you missed it, read c.i.'s "NYT: Bully Boy did want to go to war (despite lying to Helen Thomas last week)" which is about how bully boy and tony blair were finally the illegal war on iraq on january 31, 2003. we invaded iraq on march 19, 2003. why did we invade? bully boy knew there were no wmd. so every 1 who mocked helen thomas needs to be the 1st to ask bully boy why we invaded iraq.
i'm stopping here because roberta flack comes on in less than a half hour. but all the ones who tried to dog pile on helen thomas, who asked a question none of them would dare, need to apologize to her now. publicly since they attacker her pubicly.
oh! almost forgot. another senate judiciary committee hearing on the illegal spying of americas tomorrow. here's ruth:
Programming notes for next week. First, Larry Bensky and KPFA will be covering Tuesday's **NSA Hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee** I assume that other Pacficia stations will carry this or some coverage of it as well but I have only heard it noted on KPFA. [Dallas note: Houston's KPFT will air the coverage beginning at 8:30 a.m. Central Time.]
make a point to listen.
Now Roberta Flack. Micah e-mailed that he wasn't sure of the WBAI program but Ruth says it's Home Fries which airs from nine to ten p.m. (Eastern Standard Time). Joyce Jones will be filling in as host and she will be speaking with Roberta Flack, fresh from the Apollo. So that's Roberta Flack on WBAI tonight (and you can listen online, remember) and that's Danny Schechter giving a presentation, a free presentation, in NYC Wednesday night.
elaine asked me to note it because she's a huge fan of roberta flack. i like roberta's vocals as well. 'the first time ever i saw your face' is probably my favorite song or maybe it's the duet of 'the closer i get to you' with donnie hathaway?
but she has many wonderful songs and it should be an interesting interview.
this is from media matters:
After the contentious exchange between Hearst Newspapers columnist Helen Thomas, a veteran White House reporter, and President Bush during Bush's March 21 press conference, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly and several other conservative commentators rushed to attack Thomas for asking Bush, since "[e]very reason given, publicly at least," to justify invading Iraq, "has turned out not to be true ... why did you really want to go to war?" In the days following the press conference, O'Reilly has repeatedly attacked Thomas for the question on both his nationally syndicated radio program and his Fox News television program, calling Thomas's question "absurd" and "out of bounds," accusing Thomas of "hat[ing] Bush and try[ing] to undermine everything he does," and even suggesting that if he were Bush, he "would have laid her out." Several other conservative media figures -- including Jonah Goldberg, Fred Barnes, Glenn Beck, and Tucker Carlson -- have followed suit, sometimes with highly personal attacks.
Thomas sparked the contentious exchange with the president by asking Bush, "[W]hy did you really want to go to war?"
so they were happy to pile on helen thomas for asking bully boy why he invaded iraq? will they apologize to her now? will they ask bully why he invaded?
if you missed it, read c.i.'s "NYT: Bully Boy did want to go to war (despite lying to Helen Thomas last week)" which is about how bully boy and tony blair were finally the illegal war on iraq on january 31, 2003. we invaded iraq on march 19, 2003. why did we invade? bully boy knew there were no wmd. so every 1 who mocked helen thomas needs to be the 1st to ask bully boy why we invaded iraq.
i'm stopping here because roberta flack comes on in less than a half hour. but all the ones who tried to dog pile on helen thomas, who asked a question none of them would dare, need to apologize to her now. publicly since they attacker her pubicly.
oh! almost forgot. another senate judiciary committee hearing on the illegal spying of americas tomorrow. here's ruth:
Programming notes for next week. First, Larry Bensky and KPFA will be covering Tuesday's **NSA Hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee** I assume that other Pacficia stations will carry this or some coverage of it as well but I have only heard it noted on KPFA. [Dallas note: Houston's KPFT will air the coverage beginning at 8:30 a.m. Central Time.]
make a point to listen.
3/25/2006
appreciating ruth
first off, i am writing saturday. i didn't say i'd write early and c.i. didn't say i would when it was noted that i was blogging on saturday.
fly boy and i went to see play last night. (i didn't care for it and it was obvious the cast was trying very hard so i'll avoid knocking it. plays get so little attention that if it just doesn't work, i have no need to weigh in. if it's offensive, that's another story.)
no, ruth, thank you.
ruth thanks me for listening to her report. (i heard three versions of it.) it was a pleasure. i asked her the 1st time, 'did c.i. ask you to cut it for length?' she said no but she felt like her reports were getting too long. i don't think that's true. no 1's ever said that to me in person or in an e-mail. but she feels like she goes on too long.
i think that has to do with the fact that she's trying to cover so much. i teased her by saying that i'd grab Law and Disorder for her. teased her because that's 1 of her favorite programs. she said, 'oh you should cover it too. we can both cover it. mike's been mentioning it.'
i won't grab Law and Disorder because i know she loves that program but i will try to listen to and cover something. i think kat's going to start grabbing Guns and Butter. ruth's got a lot to cover and i can grab at least 1 show. i may try to grab something that she never gets to but always means to cover.
this report, she has a wonderful feminist critique of the attitude of a guest on CounterSpin which is a program i listen to now thanks to ruth. i'm sure i'd heard about it before from c.i. but it was ruth's highlighting it each week that made me say, 'okay, i'm going to listen.' i heard the woman being interviewed by janine jackson so when ruth wanted to read her take on it to me, i did know what she was getting at and she didn't have to explain the interview to me.
ruth's kinder than i am. i heard it and didn't think, 'oh she doesn't know about all the work women have done before.' i heard it and thought, 'oh she doesn't care about the battles women have fought and that's partly because of where she writes.' i don't mind an opinion journal, i don't mind a news magazine, but i have no use for a party organ and let's not kid.
i hunted down the article online, the 1 the woman had written, because ruth said she was going to write about it. when i found it, i read it and was prepared when ruth called back with the next section of her report. she is correct, the woman does suggest that women, who are elected and pro-life, should be given space. i'm sorry that's crap.
the issue the writer has tried to focus on is the fact that the new york times shuts out pro-choice voices and instead runs anti-choice male voices. adding anti-choice female voices helps no 1. i really don't buy into the 'i'm a feminist but i'm pro-life' if you're a woman working to defeat other women's rights. you don't want to have 1, for whatever reason, don't. but you're not a feminist if you're working to take away the legal choice from other women.
i don't see that as a gray area.
and to offer that lame 'well .... uh, the new york times depends on officials .... on the academy ... on government officials' nonsense is not feminism. (and that's not a quote from the woman, that's my impression of her statements on the broadcast.) feminism is about valuing women's right to speak and write about their own experience. the new york times is not about feminism.
that's why they have their 'i was a happy working woman but decided i'd be happier at home' stories every 6 months or so. trophy wives are all over that paper, women of achievement barely.
gatekeepers set up the rules so as not to include women unless they were queen bees working to hold other women back. women have had to storm the gates to get the little bit of public space they have. to turn around and accept the premise of gatekeeping goes against feminism.
so read ruth's latest public radio report. she's not playing 'cautious' and she's not going to go 'uh ... uh ...' women of ruth's generation don't play. they don't mess around with abortion, they don't bother with nonsense. they fought this battle.
women who came after, and that includes me, owe them a huge debt and we need to quit playing nonsense games with our times. nonsense includes acting like we have to preface a defense of a medical right with some sort of 'oh abortion is wrong, i know' nonsense.
never heard a man say of a kidney stone operation: 'oh i know it's wrong but i had the procedure. i know it's not in the bible. i know god put the kidney stones in me and i am disowning his will by taking them out, but i did it.'
i don't have time for nonsense and roe v. wade doesn't either. it's under attack.
as ruth pointed out, great number crunching by the woman, lousy commentary. (ruth was kinder.)
on ruth's report, max blumenthal is the writer at the nation who slammed joan mellen. i have no idea why he felt the need for his rebuttal. in the same issue, people objecting to katha pollitt had their say and katha didn't have the need to reply. but blumenthal's got to have the last word.
mellen wrote a great book and you should all read it. A Farewell to Justice is the name of the book. if you're 1 of my younger readers, read it especially. you'll be alive when papers start coming out about the jfk assassination. you'll be able to look at all the blumenthals who have covered up and denied for years. when those papers start coming out, do me a favor and write the nation. write them and tell them that max blumenthal was a lousy man who attacked people trying to find out the truth. tell them that he was a judith miller. he was being fed info by the cia.
this actually wasn't what i planned to write about. i'll do what i planned on monday. but i am just so blown away by ruth every week. if you're a community member of the common ills and you think 'i should share more' i want you to take a look at ruth. she was a member who didn't think any 1 would care what she had to say. when c.i. wrote about how npr gets a pass for all their distortions, despite having a larger audience than fox, msnbc and cnn combined, ruth thought, 'okay, i know this topic, i can write about this.' and that's how she carved out her space.
members love her. (i love her. she blows me away!) i think it was around this time last year that she started contributing to the common ills. her voice is a valued 1 and it is also 1 that we all love. i want more yiddish from ruth! that's my only gripe. i loved reading her using a yiddish phrase and trying to figure it out and then, later, calling her up and asking her how to say it.
she's 1 of a kind. she really should have her own site. c.i.'s told her that too. but she thinks the report is really all she can handle right now. (during work hours, she's the primary caretaker for her youngest grandson monday through friday.) we're lucky to have her voice.
by the way, there was a playwright on RadioNation with Laura Flanders tonight. see, she appreciates the arts in all their forms. tomorrow esther kaplan's going to be on so make a point to listen.
fly boy and i went to see play last night. (i didn't care for it and it was obvious the cast was trying very hard so i'll avoid knocking it. plays get so little attention that if it just doesn't work, i have no need to weigh in. if it's offensive, that's another story.)
no, ruth, thank you.
ruth thanks me for listening to her report. (i heard three versions of it.) it was a pleasure. i asked her the 1st time, 'did c.i. ask you to cut it for length?' she said no but she felt like her reports were getting too long. i don't think that's true. no 1's ever said that to me in person or in an e-mail. but she feels like she goes on too long.
i think that has to do with the fact that she's trying to cover so much. i teased her by saying that i'd grab Law and Disorder for her. teased her because that's 1 of her favorite programs. she said, 'oh you should cover it too. we can both cover it. mike's been mentioning it.'
i won't grab Law and Disorder because i know she loves that program but i will try to listen to and cover something. i think kat's going to start grabbing Guns and Butter. ruth's got a lot to cover and i can grab at least 1 show. i may try to grab something that she never gets to but always means to cover.
this report, she has a wonderful feminist critique of the attitude of a guest on CounterSpin which is a program i listen to now thanks to ruth. i'm sure i'd heard about it before from c.i. but it was ruth's highlighting it each week that made me say, 'okay, i'm going to listen.' i heard the woman being interviewed by janine jackson so when ruth wanted to read her take on it to me, i did know what she was getting at and she didn't have to explain the interview to me.
ruth's kinder than i am. i heard it and didn't think, 'oh she doesn't know about all the work women have done before.' i heard it and thought, 'oh she doesn't care about the battles women have fought and that's partly because of where she writes.' i don't mind an opinion journal, i don't mind a news magazine, but i have no use for a party organ and let's not kid.
i hunted down the article online, the 1 the woman had written, because ruth said she was going to write about it. when i found it, i read it and was prepared when ruth called back with the next section of her report. she is correct, the woman does suggest that women, who are elected and pro-life, should be given space. i'm sorry that's crap.
the issue the writer has tried to focus on is the fact that the new york times shuts out pro-choice voices and instead runs anti-choice male voices. adding anti-choice female voices helps no 1. i really don't buy into the 'i'm a feminist but i'm pro-life' if you're a woman working to defeat other women's rights. you don't want to have 1, for whatever reason, don't. but you're not a feminist if you're working to take away the legal choice from other women.
i don't see that as a gray area.
and to offer that lame 'well .... uh, the new york times depends on officials .... on the academy ... on government officials' nonsense is not feminism. (and that's not a quote from the woman, that's my impression of her statements on the broadcast.) feminism is about valuing women's right to speak and write about their own experience. the new york times is not about feminism.
that's why they have their 'i was a happy working woman but decided i'd be happier at home' stories every 6 months or so. trophy wives are all over that paper, women of achievement barely.
gatekeepers set up the rules so as not to include women unless they were queen bees working to hold other women back. women have had to storm the gates to get the little bit of public space they have. to turn around and accept the premise of gatekeeping goes against feminism.
so read ruth's latest public radio report. she's not playing 'cautious' and she's not going to go 'uh ... uh ...' women of ruth's generation don't play. they don't mess around with abortion, they don't bother with nonsense. they fought this battle.
women who came after, and that includes me, owe them a huge debt and we need to quit playing nonsense games with our times. nonsense includes acting like we have to preface a defense of a medical right with some sort of 'oh abortion is wrong, i know' nonsense.
never heard a man say of a kidney stone operation: 'oh i know it's wrong but i had the procedure. i know it's not in the bible. i know god put the kidney stones in me and i am disowning his will by taking them out, but i did it.'
i don't have time for nonsense and roe v. wade doesn't either. it's under attack.
as ruth pointed out, great number crunching by the woman, lousy commentary. (ruth was kinder.)
on ruth's report, max blumenthal is the writer at the nation who slammed joan mellen. i have no idea why he felt the need for his rebuttal. in the same issue, people objecting to katha pollitt had their say and katha didn't have the need to reply. but blumenthal's got to have the last word.
mellen wrote a great book and you should all read it. A Farewell to Justice is the name of the book. if you're 1 of my younger readers, read it especially. you'll be alive when papers start coming out about the jfk assassination. you'll be able to look at all the blumenthals who have covered up and denied for years. when those papers start coming out, do me a favor and write the nation. write them and tell them that max blumenthal was a lousy man who attacked people trying to find out the truth. tell them that he was a judith miller. he was being fed info by the cia.
this actually wasn't what i planned to write about. i'll do what i planned on monday. but i am just so blown away by ruth every week. if you're a community member of the common ills and you think 'i should share more' i want you to take a look at ruth. she was a member who didn't think any 1 would care what she had to say. when c.i. wrote about how npr gets a pass for all their distortions, despite having a larger audience than fox, msnbc and cnn combined, ruth thought, 'okay, i know this topic, i can write about this.' and that's how she carved out her space.
members love her. (i love her. she blows me away!) i think it was around this time last year that she started contributing to the common ills. her voice is a valued 1 and it is also 1 that we all love. i want more yiddish from ruth! that's my only gripe. i loved reading her using a yiddish phrase and trying to figure it out and then, later, calling her up and asking her how to say it.
she's 1 of a kind. she really should have her own site. c.i.'s told her that too. but she thinks the report is really all she can handle right now. (during work hours, she's the primary caretaker for her youngest grandson monday through friday.) we're lucky to have her voice.
by the way, there was a playwright on RadioNation with Laura Flanders tonight. see, she appreciates the arts in all their forms. tomorrow esther kaplan's going to be on so make a point to listen.
3/23/2006
news roundup and grace (will & grace) socks it to the repubes
first off, ava's written a post called 'Ava's entry' at the common ills mirror site so don't miss that. she's running down the history of the third estate sunday review and she's also sharing her own opinions about the process that goes into each marathon session that turns out an edition. jim phoned me to give me a heads up to it. (he loves it.)
now funniest and most true lines of dialogue on tv this week? will & grace had them. (c.i. phoned me to remind me to watch for it.) grace hired a middle eastern woman. the woman was worse than karen when it came to working and grace didn't feel like she could fire her because the woman was middle eastern. however, grace found out that the woman was jewish and was thrilled because that meant that she, grace - who is jewish, could fire her. which she did.
with karen after, grace pinned her reluctance (before learning that the woman was jewish) on 'liberal guilt.' that's all the set up to grace's lines.
here it is:
sometimes i wish i were a republican. then i wouldn't have to worry about anyone's feelings; i'd just have to worry about being indicted.
by the way, i was asked what i thought about monday's peace concert that's gotten some raves and some crappy reviews. i think it was a good cause and have to wonder about the people crapping on the concert. (yes, new york times, i mean you.)
okay, let's do the news. rumsfeld won't make predictions regarding iraq according to the associated press. a policy that he should have implemented prior to the invasion when he was so gosh-it's-going-to-be-a-cakewalk-with-roses-strewn-in-our-path.
who spreads the rumors of 'liberal media'? it's not just the right wing. this was noted repeatedly at the third estate sunday review - how cjr daily (it has a new name now) would go over newsweek, time, and then drop in the national review as though that was balance (in their magazine reports). maybe they thought it was - they thought the new republican was 'left.'
kylie asked me what i thought of aol's 'rate the media' on iraq. i hadn't seen it (so thanks for the link.) through a series of 6 questions, you're asked to weigh in on the media and bully boy. which do you believe? nonsense like that.
if you're a conservative, you've got plenty of room to sound off in their six close-ended questions.
if you're liberal?
How would you rate the media's pre-war coverage?
Poor
36%
Fair
27%
Good
26%
Excellent
11%
Total Votes: 160,271
How do you rate the media's coverage of the war?
Poor
63%
Good
13%
Fair
13%
Excellent
11%
Total Votes: 162,173
now if i think the media does a poor job because they cover it and minimize (as many on the left believe), i'm giving props to bully boy's latest talking point that the media just won't report the good news. the whole poll's like that, see for yourself.
so, in the poll, you're either with the bully boy or the corporate press.
next 2 questions.
How would you rate the information you got from Bush before the war?
Good
35%
Poor
34%
Excellent
16%
Fair
15%
Total Votes: 105,855
How do you rate the information you get from Bush during the war?
Poor
35%
Good
33%
Excellent
18%
Fair
14%
Total Votes: 106,952
shocking that 35% are such dedicated kool-aid drinkers that they believe bully boy gave them good info in the lead up. note also that at least a thousand people who voted in question 4 chose to skip evaluating bully boy's info before the war.
last 2 questions:
How much does the media influence your opinion of the war?
Not at all
67%
A little
24%
A lot
10%
Total Votes: 104,261
How much does the Bush administration influence your opinion of the war?
Not at all
36%
A lot
36%
A little
29%
Total Votes: 105,206
see, it's set up as a battle between bully boy and the press. if you're a right winger, vote for bully boy. where is the left supposed to go? this is the sort of implied message the corporate media sends out all the time.
i don't think it's by accident. just like i don't think it's an accident that bean counters like james carville are presented on tv like they're lefties. (when they aren't.)
henry kissinger is back in the news. he's like the whore they've all slept with. but he's in the news over his time in the nixon white house. he was for building ties with iraq. the ambassador to iran wasn't for it: richard helms, later in charge of the cia and a liar to congress.
chalmers johnson on richard helms:
Richard Helms, the director of the CIA back in 1977, was convicted of a felony for lying to Congress. He said, no, we had nothing to do with the overthrow of [Chilean President] Salvador Allende when we had everything to do with it. He gets a suspended sentence, pays a small fine, walks into the CIA building at Langley, Virginia, and is met by a cheering crowd. Our hero! He's proudly maintained the principles of the secret intelligence service, which is the private army of the president and we have no idea what he's doing with it. Everything they do is secret. Every item in their budget is secret.
note this from the ap:
Faced with hundreds of claims by detainees at Guantanamo Bay, a federal appeals court pressed the Bush administration on Wednesday to say how much power judges will have to determine the legality of the detentions.
The three-judge panel is being asked to decide whether the Detainee Treatment Act, signed by
President Bush on Dec. 30, retroactively voids hundreds of lawsuits by abolishing a right to challenge detentions that has been part of U.S. legal principles since the nation's founding.
Judges David B. Sentelle and A. Raymond Randolph seemed willing to accept the administration's view that the act forces dismissal of more than 200 lawsuits filed in U.S. District Court here on behalf of over 300 detainees.
of course the hideous sentelle was willing to accept the administration's view - as long as it's republican, he'll walk around with a daisy up his crack if they ask him to. if you're not familiar with the hideous sentelle, read this by robert parry.
and note this by the center for constitutional rights:
On March 22 in New York a three-judge panel heard arguments from attorneys representing Guantánamo detainees in the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals (Al Odah v. United States of America and Boumediene v. Bush). They asked the panel to reject the Government's effort to have the cases dismissed. CCR won the Supreme Court case establishing the detainees' right to challenge their detention in U.S. court (Rasul v. Bush), and currently oversees more than 500 pro-bono attorneys representing the detainees.
Barbara Olshansky, CCR Deputy Legal Director who attended oral arguments today stated:
"Despite the government's effort to the contrary, I feel that the Court understood the great importance of preserving the writ of habeas corpus. Their questions about ensuring the Court's ability to consider factual evidence of innocence made clear that justice is their true concern."
Olshansky expects a ruling from the Court in the next few weeks. According to recent estimates, the government is currently detaining about 490 prisoners at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp. CCR is working around the clock to achieve their release to freedom or a fair trial.
now go check out cedric's 'Will Interview With The Vampire become the new Catcher in the Rye?'
now funniest and most true lines of dialogue on tv this week? will & grace had them. (c.i. phoned me to remind me to watch for it.) grace hired a middle eastern woman. the woman was worse than karen when it came to working and grace didn't feel like she could fire her because the woman was middle eastern. however, grace found out that the woman was jewish and was thrilled because that meant that she, grace - who is jewish, could fire her. which she did.
with karen after, grace pinned her reluctance (before learning that the woman was jewish) on 'liberal guilt.' that's all the set up to grace's lines.
here it is:
sometimes i wish i were a republican. then i wouldn't have to worry about anyone's feelings; i'd just have to worry about being indicted.
by the way, i was asked what i thought about monday's peace concert that's gotten some raves and some crappy reviews. i think it was a good cause and have to wonder about the people crapping on the concert. (yes, new york times, i mean you.)
okay, let's do the news. rumsfeld won't make predictions regarding iraq according to the associated press. a policy that he should have implemented prior to the invasion when he was so gosh-it's-going-to-be-a-cakewalk-with-roses-strewn-in-our-path.
who spreads the rumors of 'liberal media'? it's not just the right wing. this was noted repeatedly at the third estate sunday review - how cjr daily (it has a new name now) would go over newsweek, time, and then drop in the national review as though that was balance (in their magazine reports). maybe they thought it was - they thought the new republican was 'left.'
kylie asked me what i thought of aol's 'rate the media' on iraq. i hadn't seen it (so thanks for the link.) through a series of 6 questions, you're asked to weigh in on the media and bully boy. which do you believe? nonsense like that.
if you're a conservative, you've got plenty of room to sound off in their six close-ended questions.
if you're liberal?
How would you rate the media's pre-war coverage?
Poor
36%
Fair
27%
Good
26%
Excellent
11%
Total Votes: 160,271
How do you rate the media's coverage of the war?
Poor
63%
Good
13%
Fair
13%
Excellent
11%
Total Votes: 162,173
now if i think the media does a poor job because they cover it and minimize (as many on the left believe), i'm giving props to bully boy's latest talking point that the media just won't report the good news. the whole poll's like that, see for yourself.
so, in the poll, you're either with the bully boy or the corporate press.
next 2 questions.
How would you rate the information you got from Bush before the war?
Good
35%
Poor
34%
Excellent
16%
Fair
15%
Total Votes: 105,855
How do you rate the information you get from Bush during the war?
Poor
35%
Good
33%
Excellent
18%
Fair
14%
Total Votes: 106,952
shocking that 35% are such dedicated kool-aid drinkers that they believe bully boy gave them good info in the lead up. note also that at least a thousand people who voted in question 4 chose to skip evaluating bully boy's info before the war.
last 2 questions:
How much does the media influence your opinion of the war?
Not at all
67%
A little
24%
A lot
10%
Total Votes: 104,261
How much does the Bush administration influence your opinion of the war?
Not at all
36%
A lot
36%
A little
29%
Total Votes: 105,206
see, it's set up as a battle between bully boy and the press. if you're a right winger, vote for bully boy. where is the left supposed to go? this is the sort of implied message the corporate media sends out all the time.
i don't think it's by accident. just like i don't think it's an accident that bean counters like james carville are presented on tv like they're lefties. (when they aren't.)
henry kissinger is back in the news. he's like the whore they've all slept with. but he's in the news over his time in the nixon white house. he was for building ties with iraq. the ambassador to iran wasn't for it: richard helms, later in charge of the cia and a liar to congress.
chalmers johnson on richard helms:
Richard Helms, the director of the CIA back in 1977, was convicted of a felony for lying to Congress. He said, no, we had nothing to do with the overthrow of [Chilean President] Salvador Allende when we had everything to do with it. He gets a suspended sentence, pays a small fine, walks into the CIA building at Langley, Virginia, and is met by a cheering crowd. Our hero! He's proudly maintained the principles of the secret intelligence service, which is the private army of the president and we have no idea what he's doing with it. Everything they do is secret. Every item in their budget is secret.
note this from the ap:
Faced with hundreds of claims by detainees at Guantanamo Bay, a federal appeals court pressed the Bush administration on Wednesday to say how much power judges will have to determine the legality of the detentions.
The three-judge panel is being asked to decide whether the Detainee Treatment Act, signed by
President Bush on Dec. 30, retroactively voids hundreds of lawsuits by abolishing a right to challenge detentions that has been part of U.S. legal principles since the nation's founding.
Judges David B. Sentelle and A. Raymond Randolph seemed willing to accept the administration's view that the act forces dismissal of more than 200 lawsuits filed in U.S. District Court here on behalf of over 300 detainees.
of course the hideous sentelle was willing to accept the administration's view - as long as it's republican, he'll walk around with a daisy up his crack if they ask him to. if you're not familiar with the hideous sentelle, read this by robert parry.
and note this by the center for constitutional rights:
On March 22 in New York a three-judge panel heard arguments from attorneys representing Guantánamo detainees in the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals (Al Odah v. United States of America and Boumediene v. Bush). They asked the panel to reject the Government's effort to have the cases dismissed. CCR won the Supreme Court case establishing the detainees' right to challenge their detention in U.S. court (Rasul v. Bush), and currently oversees more than 500 pro-bono attorneys representing the detainees.
Barbara Olshansky, CCR Deputy Legal Director who attended oral arguments today stated:
"Despite the government's effort to the contrary, I feel that the Court understood the great importance of preserving the writ of habeas corpus. Their questions about ensuring the Court's ability to consider factual evidence of innocence made clear that justice is their true concern."
Olshansky expects a ruling from the Court in the next few weeks. According to recent estimates, the government is currently detaining about 490 prisoners at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp. CCR is working around the clock to achieve their release to freedom or a fair trial.
now go check out cedric's 'Will Interview With The Vampire become the new Catcher in the Rye?'
3/22/2006
alan sandals endorsed by feminist majority pac for us senate seat in penn
"Feminist Majority PAC Endorses Alan Sandals for US Senate Race in PA, Statement of Eleanor Smeal"
3/21/2006 - The Feminist Majority PAC is very proud to announce its endorsement of Alan Sandals to be Pennsylvania's next United States Senator.
Alan Sandals' candidacy is in keeping with Pennsylvania's long history of progressive thought and action.
Pennsylvania has long been the heart of the feminist movement, as so many of the movement's leaders got their start in that state, including myself. I grew up in Pennsylvania and raised my own children during their formative years in the South Hills of Pittsburgh. I've traveled all over the state organizing for women's rights and social justice, and I served as president of the Pennsylvania National Organization for Women.
I feel strongly that Pennsylvania needs the kind of progressive leadership that Alan Sandals would bring.
The Feminist Majority PAC has thoroughly examined Sandals' record, and we believe he represents the best of the Pennsylvania tradition of women's equality and social justice. Pennsylvania needs a strong voice in the U.S. Senate for women's rights, reproductive rights, pension rights, economic justice, and the rights of older Americans, especially women. Alan Sandals would be that voice.
This is a critical time for reproductive rights in the United States. South Dakota has just passed a ban on virtually all abortions in the state, and some eleven other states are considering similar bans. The Senate has confirmed two anti-choice Supreme Court Justices in the past six months. And the Supreme Court will soon decide whether the federal abortion procedure ban is constitutional.
There is no question -- Pennsylvania voters are in favor of keeping abortion and family planning legal. Alan Sandals represents these strongly held views. As a pension rights lawyer, he also is a fighter for economic justice for women. Alan Sandals is the best choice to represent Pennsylvania in the U.S. Senate.
that's from the feminist wire daily and, if you live in pennsylvania, get on it. or send him money even if you don't. penn needs a senator, a real one. arlen's holding hands with the administration right now but not sure what base he's going to let them get to (nsa spying). he's not up for re-election. rick santorum is and the sooner he's out of office the quicker he can star in those solo j/o porn films he seems destined for. but casey junior is a creep and not worth voting for. casey junior is daddy's boy and there's something really sad about a grown man being daddy's little boy. so support alan sandals.
bully boy's working hard to try to build public support for his illegal and unpopular war. you just know he's going to need 6 weeks at the crawford ranchette any day now. i love how jennifer loven of ap calls it his 'iraq strategy.' there's a strategy? maybe she means when he infamously taunted 'bring it on'? it won't wash. just another daddy's boy trying to act like a man.
c.i. wrote about that and iraq this morning:
Bully Boy's efforts at the latest wave of Operation Happy Talk (not surprisingly) didn't charm/fool this community. This as CBS announces that Abdul Ameer Younis Hussein will be tried April 5th. The CBS cameraman will stand trial (no charges announced) exactly one year after he was taken into military custody. This news comes as Samir Mohammed Noor is released (Reuters cameran) after being held for eight months without charges. And in Baghdad, a car bomb has taken the life of at least one person and injured at least three others. Also in Baghdad, at least two people have been killed and forty-two wounded as Iraqi Shi'ites were targeted on their return from a pilgrimage. Away from Iraq, Dr. Malcolm Kendall-Smith is now facing a court martial for refusing to deploy to Basra. The prosecution/persecution, sounding a lot like Bully Boy, said that the issue of the legality of the war was "irrelevant." This as "US Faces Charges of Two Massacres of Iraqi Civilians." That's a small snap-shot of where we are as year four of the illegal war of choice begins.
in 1946, the united nations created the human rights commission. with bully boy's favorite reach around john bolton as our ambassador to the un it sees the death of the commission. in its place, a human rights council will be created. the us voted 'no' on this, by the way. from the article:
Many developing nations were critical of the plan for a new rights council, saying Western powers merely wanted to target poor countries and would protect their friends.
to find out what daryl hannah did for world water day click here.
i spent most of the night on the phone including over an hour with kat after i read her post. and i was on the phone with elaine as well and recommend her 'Musings' - highly recommend.
i spent so much time on the phone that was my whole night. so i'll leave it at this for the post tonight.
3/21/2006 - The Feminist Majority PAC is very proud to announce its endorsement of Alan Sandals to be Pennsylvania's next United States Senator.
Alan Sandals' candidacy is in keeping with Pennsylvania's long history of progressive thought and action.
Pennsylvania has long been the heart of the feminist movement, as so many of the movement's leaders got their start in that state, including myself. I grew up in Pennsylvania and raised my own children during their formative years in the South Hills of Pittsburgh. I've traveled all over the state organizing for women's rights and social justice, and I served as president of the Pennsylvania National Organization for Women.
I feel strongly that Pennsylvania needs the kind of progressive leadership that Alan Sandals would bring.
The Feminist Majority PAC has thoroughly examined Sandals' record, and we believe he represents the best of the Pennsylvania tradition of women's equality and social justice. Pennsylvania needs a strong voice in the U.S. Senate for women's rights, reproductive rights, pension rights, economic justice, and the rights of older Americans, especially women. Alan Sandals would be that voice.
This is a critical time for reproductive rights in the United States. South Dakota has just passed a ban on virtually all abortions in the state, and some eleven other states are considering similar bans. The Senate has confirmed two anti-choice Supreme Court Justices in the past six months. And the Supreme Court will soon decide whether the federal abortion procedure ban is constitutional.
There is no question -- Pennsylvania voters are in favor of keeping abortion and family planning legal. Alan Sandals represents these strongly held views. As a pension rights lawyer, he also is a fighter for economic justice for women. Alan Sandals is the best choice to represent Pennsylvania in the U.S. Senate.
that's from the feminist wire daily and, if you live in pennsylvania, get on it. or send him money even if you don't. penn needs a senator, a real one. arlen's holding hands with the administration right now but not sure what base he's going to let them get to (nsa spying). he's not up for re-election. rick santorum is and the sooner he's out of office the quicker he can star in those solo j/o porn films he seems destined for. but casey junior is a creep and not worth voting for. casey junior is daddy's boy and there's something really sad about a grown man being daddy's little boy. so support alan sandals.
bully boy's working hard to try to build public support for his illegal and unpopular war. you just know he's going to need 6 weeks at the crawford ranchette any day now. i love how jennifer loven of ap calls it his 'iraq strategy.' there's a strategy? maybe she means when he infamously taunted 'bring it on'? it won't wash. just another daddy's boy trying to act like a man.
c.i. wrote about that and iraq this morning:
Bully Boy's efforts at the latest wave of Operation Happy Talk (not surprisingly) didn't charm/fool this community. This as CBS announces that Abdul Ameer Younis Hussein will be tried April 5th. The CBS cameraman will stand trial (no charges announced) exactly one year after he was taken into military custody. This news comes as Samir Mohammed Noor is released (Reuters cameran) after being held for eight months without charges. And in Baghdad, a car bomb has taken the life of at least one person and injured at least three others. Also in Baghdad, at least two people have been killed and forty-two wounded as Iraqi Shi'ites were targeted on their return from a pilgrimage. Away from Iraq, Dr. Malcolm Kendall-Smith is now facing a court martial for refusing to deploy to Basra. The prosecution/persecution, sounding a lot like Bully Boy, said that the issue of the legality of the war was "irrelevant." This as "US Faces Charges of Two Massacres of Iraqi Civilians." That's a small snap-shot of where we are as year four of the illegal war of choice begins.
in 1946, the united nations created the human rights commission. with bully boy's favorite reach around john bolton as our ambassador to the un it sees the death of the commission. in its place, a human rights council will be created. the us voted 'no' on this, by the way. from the article:
Many developing nations were critical of the plan for a new rights council, saying Western powers merely wanted to target poor countries and would protect their friends.
to find out what daryl hannah did for world water day click here.
i spent most of the night on the phone including over an hour with kat after i read her post. and i was on the phone with elaine as well and recommend her 'Musings' - highly recommend.
i spent so much time on the phone that was my whole night. so i'll leave it at this for the post tonight.
3/21/2006
year 4 of the illegal war begins
it's the war queen hillary from isaiah's 'got war?' for the world today just nuts. look, she's got her blood mustache and drops of blood drip from it.
kylie e-mailed to say it's the bully boy's illegal war but a lot of others got us over there and keep us over there. i agree completely and hillary clinton is 1 of the 1s who has the blood lust just like the bully boy.
it's people like hillary that keep us over there and that's worth remembering as year four of the illegal war begins and reality seems to fade. (check out c.i. for how the new york times invents false 'trends' to avoid covering reality in iraq.)
cedric thinks he just lost his whole post. he goes to post it and gets a message just as it is posting 'blogger is down.' they're down an awful lot considering that most of the bugs never get worked out.
wally's already noted that bully boy is now saying that the troops will remain in iraq long after the bully boy is gone. another case of him starting something he can't finish.
the associated press has this:
America risks convicting the innocent and letting the guilty evade justice in how it handles detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the military attorney defending an Australian terror suspect held at the U.S. prison camp said Monday.
Maj. Michael Mori, a Marine Corps lawyer, told an audience at George Washington University that no civilized justice system would accept "information being acquired potentially under torture or questionable methods."
are we finally in a place where we can listen and hear? i don't know. i hope the warning won't go unheeded but i know we've had so much fear instilled in us and so many lies that this could just fly right over a lot of heads.
but what's happening in guantanamo goes against democracy, against the consitution and stains every american.
here's something from the jerusalem post:
On Saturday, Feingold said that for him the censure was not just an important moral decision but a smart political move. He disdained other Democrats who have been afraid to take a stronger stance against the administration and who warned last week that Feingold's motion would play into the hands of Republican strategists, who would use it as a way to rally their own base around an embattled president.
and from the bbc:
US military investigators have flown to Iraq to study reports that marines shot dead at least 15 civilians, including seven women and three children.
The incident is said to have happened in Haditha on 19 November 2005.
The military's initial claim that the civilians died in a roadside blast was disproved by an earlier investigation.
Investigators will now ask if the civilians died in crossfire or were targeted deliberately in a potential war crime.
and here's this from the independent:
The US military is investigating two incidents in which American soldiers killed at least 26 Iraqi civilians and then claimed that they were either guerrillas or had died in cross fire.
The growing evidence of retaliatory killings of unarmed Iraqi families, often including children, by US soldiers seemingly bent on punishing Iraqis after an attack, will spark comparisons with the massacre of Vietnamese villagers at My Lai in 1968.
US troops have been notorious among Iraqis for their willingness to shoot any Iraqi they see in the aftermath of an insurgent attack. But it is only now that convincing and detailed information is becoming available about the killings.
good thing bully boy's so full of optimism, right? it would be awful if reality confronted him and he had to see the ugliness of the illegal war he forced on the world.
jesse jackson is attempting to get the election in new orleans postponed because there have not been adequate provisions to ensure that displaced people will be able to vote.
cedric lost 1/2 his post. i've just stayed in this window waiting for word that blogger is back up so i didn't lose anything by attempting to post.
i told him to forget it and i'd grab the section he lost.
okay, this is what he wanted to note from democracy now:
Historic Black Church Faces Closure in New Orleans
And in New Orleans, ten people barricaded themselves inside one of the country's oldest black Roman Catholic Churches Monday to protest its planned closure. Freed slaves founded the St. Augustine Church in 1841. The New Orleans Archdiocese plans to close it down as a cost-saving measure. We reached Cynthia Dolliole, who is among the ten people inside the church. She said: "We are just trying to get answers as to why they would close the oldest black church in the US when everyone in New Orleans has lost everything else and now we are trying to make us lose our church; we're very disappointed and hoping someone will hear us and we'll get better answers than what we've gotten before."
with all the scandals the catholic church has been through it shocks me that they're inviting a new 1. why does a chuch exist? i never counted the collection plate so i always assumed it was to provide a community with spiritual support.
can you think of a community that needs support now more than new orleans? but the church wants to pull out. (we can't pull out of iraq but the catholic church can pull a church out of an area where it's needed - logic 2006.)
with everything that has been lost what is the catholic church thinking when they decide that the community can also lose a church? it seems like a slap in the face to me.
they need to rethink that decision and they need to stay. a church should always be where it is needed and if they don't think they're needed in new orleans, they'd kidding themselves.
seth's posted again so check him out. he's weighing in on when soaps go cowardly.
3/20/2006
bully boy thinks war is funny, do you?
that's isaiah's the world today just nuts.
it's the 3rd anniversary of the illegal invasion. 3 years of an illegal war.
if you don't get the joke bully boy's making about wmd - he made it to the d.c. press corps.
yucked it up about not being able to find wmd.
want to know something even sicker?
the press laughed.
they thought it was all a joke.
we're entering the 4th year of the occupation. over 200,000 iraqis have died.
2317 american military deaths in iraq; 17004 troops wounded.
and bully boy and the press suck up to 1 another in the illegal war he launched, the illegal war they helped 'market.'
you should be disgusted. he can't be. he can't even say 'war.'
the press can't be. they can't even take accountability for their actions.
'and the war drags on' is worth reading every sunday & thursday but especially on the 3rd anniversary.
bully boy won't end the illegal war.
only we can.
so don't let this topic fall by the wayside tomorrow. talk about the war. bring it up with your friends, with your teachers, in classes, anywhere you can, anyway you can.
it's all grins & giggles to the bully boy. there's been no sacrifice for him.
don't let him get away with his illegal war of choice that never should have been launched and that's taking lives each day.
bring the troops home. we can make it happen.
if you're not sure you can do it, read this.
3/18/2006
stop depending on corporate media (and those who schill for it)
i told cedric to blog and then i would. we both agreed to put off blogging last night so that we could take part in a thing common ills community member polly was doing. we were glad to take part but we both thought we'd have time to blog early today. that didn't happen.
i'm not complaining.
please, we're in holding pattern on The Third Estate Sunday Review because c.i.'s at a rally. this is the 3rd location c.i.'s been in today. i won't dare whine about being tired with that example in my face.
we've got two ideas for stories for the third estate sunday review and dona's asking that we try to think of at least 1 short entry. everyone's exhausted from speaking out today. i hope you are too. it's a good kind of exhaustion but it's also true that people need their rest and, as dona pointed out, we may not get any tonight.
tomorrow night, sunday night, on RadioNation with Laura Flanders christian parenti will be one of the guests so be sure to listen. he's smart, he's sexy, he's parenti. don't miss him.
cedric's written 'About the fighters: Russ Feingold, Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez' and you should check it out. those are fighters. they put the rest of us to shame.
"New York Times Chief Military Correspondent Michael Gordon Defends Pre-War Reporting on WMDs" is what you need to check out. amy and juan don't take any crap from michael gordon and all michael gordon has to offer is crap.
and read c.i.'s "NYT: Can't own up to mistakes, be it the paper or Michael Gordon" which outlines just how full of crap michael gordon and his paper are. fly boy and i were reading that this morning. fly boy said, 'c.i.'s really not in the mood for crap these days.' no.
i think it has to do with seeing so much nonsense around us. so many people acting like a war isn't going on. acting like people aren't dying. and you've got supposed left of center people who are still talking the b.s. of 'stay the course.'
i wonder about some blogs who whine that they don't get attention but all they do is repeat the talking points from the dnc. if they missed it, established democrats aren't real popular right now. russ feingold is popular. the spineless cowards? not.
but, and you know who they are, you see a lot of idiots rushing in to shore up weak ass policies and statements. like the flag waver who didn't know a thing about cindy sheehan but that didn't prevent her from writing about it. has any 1 ever been more stupid than that woman who, in the midst of camp casey, wrote that cindy sheehan wasn't for bringing the troops home?
it's ignorance. it's because you've got people who just tell you what the democratic party says and turn to mainstream media for their news. they rely on mainstream media. you never see them mention democracy now. now maybe if the idiot had watched democracy now she would have known who cindy sheehan was before camp casey and she would have known that cindy sheehan is for and has been for bringing the troops home now.
so you get those idiots and you wonder why the country is in the state it is?
take the dope who, in january of 2005, hectors c.i. about how james dobson needs to be respected and listened to. now if that was a right-wing site, no problem. but that fool, a man this time, thought he was left-of-center if not left.
that was just nonsense.
people like that should have to eat their damn words. they are so uninformed and they go and blog about something they know nothing about. whether it's james dobson or cindy sheehan or promoting the hideous t.d. jakes.
know something about what you're talking about.
or how about the fool claiming 'free speech' allows recruiters on campus. no, it doesn't. free speech isn't for the federal government. the federal government did not need a bill of rights. that's not why it was created.
and it's these voices that have pissed off so many.
we're tired of the uninformed still saying 'stay the course.' maybe, because their posts are archived, they can't pretend like they haven't been preaching that all this time?
you can put all the flags up on your site that you want, if you want this war, get your ass over there and serve. quit hiding behind the flag and quit trying to pretend your left.
you're nothing but a dlc dem.
1 of the idiots, the man, wrote something like 'simon rosenberg is making sense' or some such nonsense. c.i. asked him, 'are you for the war?' this was back in 2004 or 2005. no, he said, he was opposed to the war. then why didn't he know that simon rosenberg was for the war before the war and during the war?
i mean, come on people, use your brains. try reading.
they think because they went to the popular click of the day they're informed. they know the 'big story' of the day, as reported by mainstream media, but because they don't buy a paper or magazine, that's all the know.
you need to quit relying on the mainstream media that's failed this country repeatedly.
and little wimps who want to say 'i can't speak out on the war' need to just shut up then. seriously. there's one 'online mag' (you know which 1) that thought it was okay to go to town on bright eyes and kat. they can't speak out against the war, this online mag, but they can slam people who do (while they promote the new republic). that's nonsense.
seriously, it's useless, it's just wasting every 1's time.
of the little fool who thought she was funny trashing ms. magazine. well, if you can't read, maybe all you can do is blog about a cover photograph. (and even that you can't comprehend.)
we're sick of them and their nonsense.
we're sick of a supreme court judge retiring and a supposed feminist blogging about her dopey vacation instead of the retirement. (repeatedly. for days and days and days.)
the bully boy is destroying the constitution, we've got 2 wars (afganistan and iraq) and bully boy wants a 3rd, reproductive rights are under attack, gays and lesbians are under attack and there's just a feeling of 'i'm not in the mood for the nonsense.'
i get e-mails complaining about that. people wondering why it's so hard for some 1 who sets up a blog to declare a position on the war, for instance? i have no idea. i have no idea why some 1 would go to the trouble of setting up a blog to share their thoughts and have no thought to share on the illegal occupation.
i think a lot of people have made themselves useless.
and unless we want 3 more years of this war (or more than that), we need to use our voices. online or offline, we need to use our voices. we need to talk about the war. about the wars overseas and the wars at home. and if we're not doing that, if we're busy talking about the latest time cover story because it's the hot link of the day (and a cover story that media matters will demolish shortly - after some of the dopes and dupes have praised it), what good are we to any 1?
so there is a feeling of 'i've had enough.'
if you've had enough, use your voice. and seek out alternative media.
3 years into the war that corporate media sold, it's time to stop depending on the corporate media.
i'm not complaining.
please, we're in holding pattern on The Third Estate Sunday Review because c.i.'s at a rally. this is the 3rd location c.i.'s been in today. i won't dare whine about being tired with that example in my face.
we've got two ideas for stories for the third estate sunday review and dona's asking that we try to think of at least 1 short entry. everyone's exhausted from speaking out today. i hope you are too. it's a good kind of exhaustion but it's also true that people need their rest and, as dona pointed out, we may not get any tonight.
tomorrow night, sunday night, on RadioNation with Laura Flanders christian parenti will be one of the guests so be sure to listen. he's smart, he's sexy, he's parenti. don't miss him.
cedric's written 'About the fighters: Russ Feingold, Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez' and you should check it out. those are fighters. they put the rest of us to shame.
"New York Times Chief Military Correspondent Michael Gordon Defends Pre-War Reporting on WMDs" is what you need to check out. amy and juan don't take any crap from michael gordon and all michael gordon has to offer is crap.
and read c.i.'s "NYT: Can't own up to mistakes, be it the paper or Michael Gordon" which outlines just how full of crap michael gordon and his paper are. fly boy and i were reading that this morning. fly boy said, 'c.i.'s really not in the mood for crap these days.' no.
i think it has to do with seeing so much nonsense around us. so many people acting like a war isn't going on. acting like people aren't dying. and you've got supposed left of center people who are still talking the b.s. of 'stay the course.'
i wonder about some blogs who whine that they don't get attention but all they do is repeat the talking points from the dnc. if they missed it, established democrats aren't real popular right now. russ feingold is popular. the spineless cowards? not.
but, and you know who they are, you see a lot of idiots rushing in to shore up weak ass policies and statements. like the flag waver who didn't know a thing about cindy sheehan but that didn't prevent her from writing about it. has any 1 ever been more stupid than that woman who, in the midst of camp casey, wrote that cindy sheehan wasn't for bringing the troops home?
it's ignorance. it's because you've got people who just tell you what the democratic party says and turn to mainstream media for their news. they rely on mainstream media. you never see them mention democracy now. now maybe if the idiot had watched democracy now she would have known who cindy sheehan was before camp casey and she would have known that cindy sheehan is for and has been for bringing the troops home now.
so you get those idiots and you wonder why the country is in the state it is?
take the dope who, in january of 2005, hectors c.i. about how james dobson needs to be respected and listened to. now if that was a right-wing site, no problem. but that fool, a man this time, thought he was left-of-center if not left.
that was just nonsense.
people like that should have to eat their damn words. they are so uninformed and they go and blog about something they know nothing about. whether it's james dobson or cindy sheehan or promoting the hideous t.d. jakes.
know something about what you're talking about.
or how about the fool claiming 'free speech' allows recruiters on campus. no, it doesn't. free speech isn't for the federal government. the federal government did not need a bill of rights. that's not why it was created.
and it's these voices that have pissed off so many.
we're tired of the uninformed still saying 'stay the course.' maybe, because their posts are archived, they can't pretend like they haven't been preaching that all this time?
you can put all the flags up on your site that you want, if you want this war, get your ass over there and serve. quit hiding behind the flag and quit trying to pretend your left.
you're nothing but a dlc dem.
1 of the idiots, the man, wrote something like 'simon rosenberg is making sense' or some such nonsense. c.i. asked him, 'are you for the war?' this was back in 2004 or 2005. no, he said, he was opposed to the war. then why didn't he know that simon rosenberg was for the war before the war and during the war?
i mean, come on people, use your brains. try reading.
they think because they went to the popular click of the day they're informed. they know the 'big story' of the day, as reported by mainstream media, but because they don't buy a paper or magazine, that's all the know.
you need to quit relying on the mainstream media that's failed this country repeatedly.
and little wimps who want to say 'i can't speak out on the war' need to just shut up then. seriously. there's one 'online mag' (you know which 1) that thought it was okay to go to town on bright eyes and kat. they can't speak out against the war, this online mag, but they can slam people who do (while they promote the new republic). that's nonsense.
seriously, it's useless, it's just wasting every 1's time.
of the little fool who thought she was funny trashing ms. magazine. well, if you can't read, maybe all you can do is blog about a cover photograph. (and even that you can't comprehend.)
we're sick of them and their nonsense.
we're sick of a supreme court judge retiring and a supposed feminist blogging about her dopey vacation instead of the retirement. (repeatedly. for days and days and days.)
the bully boy is destroying the constitution, we've got 2 wars (afganistan and iraq) and bully boy wants a 3rd, reproductive rights are under attack, gays and lesbians are under attack and there's just a feeling of 'i'm not in the mood for the nonsense.'
i get e-mails complaining about that. people wondering why it's so hard for some 1 who sets up a blog to declare a position on the war, for instance? i have no idea. i have no idea why some 1 would go to the trouble of setting up a blog to share their thoughts and have no thought to share on the illegal occupation.
i think a lot of people have made themselves useless.
and unless we want 3 more years of this war (or more than that), we need to use our voices. online or offline, we need to use our voices. we need to talk about the war. about the wars overseas and the wars at home. and if we're not doing that, if we're busy talking about the latest time cover story because it's the hot link of the day (and a cover story that media matters will demolish shortly - after some of the dopes and dupes have praised it), what good are we to any 1?
so there is a feeling of 'i've had enough.'
if you've had enough, use your voice. and seek out alternative media.
3 years into the war that corporate media sold, it's time to stop depending on the corporate media.
3/16/2006
never cheerlead an illegal war
okay, i need some help here. sing with me here, we're going for the melody to dionne warwick's 'i'll never fall in love again.'
what do you get when you cheerlead an illegal war?
bit of reality to burst your bubble.
that's what you get for all your trouble
mara liasson, never cheerlead a war again.
what do you get when you rah-rah-rah?
americans coming home with worse than pneumonia
some of whom can never phone you
chris matthews, never cheerlead a war again
chris matthews, never cheerlead a war again.
don't tell me what's it all about
because you were a fool and people died
from those lies
your lies that bind you
that is why i'm here to remind you.
what do you get when you cheerlead an illegal war?
you only get lies and pain and sorrow
so take a vow for peaceful tomorrows
never cheerlead an illegal war again.
never cheerlead an illegal war again.
the inspiration for the above version of hal davis and burt bacharach's classic is a new item from fair - '"The Final Word Is Hooray!" Remembering the Iraq War's Pollyanna pundits' and here are some of my personal favorites of dupes embarrassing themselves as they got on board for the illegal war:
"Oh, it was breathtaking. I mean I was almost starting to think that we had become inured to everything that we'd seen of this war over the past three weeks; all this sort of saturation. And finally, when we saw that it was such a just true, genuine _expression. It was reminiscent, I think, of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And just sort of that pure emotional _expression, not choreographed, not stage-managed, the way so many things these days seem to be. Really breathtaking." (Washington Post reporter Ceci Connolly, appearing on Fox News Channel on 4/9/03, discussing the pulling down of a Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad, an event later revealed to have been a U.S. military PSYOPS operation [stunt]--Los Angeles Times, 7/3/04)
"The war winds down, politics heats up.... Picture perfect. Part Spider-Man, part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan. The president seizes the moment on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific." (PBS's Gwen Ifill, 5/2/03, on George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech)
"This has been a tough war for commentators on the American left. To hope for defeat meant cheering for Saddam Hussein. To hope for victory meant cheering for President Bush. The toppling of Mr. Hussein, or at least a statue of him, has made their arguments even harder to defend. Liberal writers for ideologically driven magazines like The Nation and for less overtly political ones like The New Yorker did not predict a defeat, but the terrible consequences many warned of have not happened. Now liberal commentators must address the victory at hand and confront an ascendant conservative juggernaut that asserts United States might can set the world right." (New York Times reporter David Carr, 4/16/03)
"Over the next couple of weeks when we find the chemical weapons this guy was amassing, the fact that this war was attacked by the left and so the right was so vindicated, I think, really means that the left is going to have to hang its head for three or four more years." (Fox News Channel's Dick Morris, 4/9/03)
use the link to relive more embarrassing moments of the war cheerleaders.
so how are you protesting the war on the third anniversary of the invasion?
andrea and her best friend hannah are going to read a piece they wrote together to their grandmother's saturday mah jong group. andrea asked her asked her grandmother and she said 'sure.' andrea says she and hannah are really excited and have been practicing their presentation in front of her grandmother who says it's really good.
i'm sure it is and i'm sure if 2 young women, 12 year olds, can find a way to make their voices heard, you can too.
goldie's having her friends over for a sleep over like mindy's doing this week (and like goldie did in september) but this time, before the sleep over, they're going to walk up and down the sidewalks carrying signs. they've already made 'stop the war'; 'bring the troops home'; and 'bush lied people died' and they're working on the other 1s. goldie's mom told her it was fine as long as she made sure the other mothers knew ahead of time so she and mom called the other mother's and everything is okay with it. they're working a cheer to chant right now.
7 high schoolers are attending their 1st protest. some of you who became protest veterans in 2005 are gearing up for the next wave and bringing friends along.
there's a huge group in oregon that's working on sign they'll hang from a bridge over a highway.
we've got 2 different women organizing teach ins with their friends.
so what are the rest of you doing?
if nothing else, you can make a point to talk 1 on 1 to a friend about the war. in my opinion, that's the very least you can do, bare minimum.
check out elaine's "Peace doesn't come about through silence" and wally's "THIS JUST IN! BULLY BOY LAUNCHES OPERATION GET IT UP!" and c.i.'s "NYT: It's only news when Republicans issue statements."
and do something. make your voice heard.
fair
war cheerleaders
like maria said paz
the daily jot
the common ills
what do you get when you cheerlead an illegal war?
bit of reality to burst your bubble.
that's what you get for all your trouble
mara liasson, never cheerlead a war again.
what do you get when you rah-rah-rah?
americans coming home with worse than pneumonia
some of whom can never phone you
chris matthews, never cheerlead a war again
chris matthews, never cheerlead a war again.
don't tell me what's it all about
because you were a fool and people died
from those lies
your lies that bind you
that is why i'm here to remind you.
what do you get when you cheerlead an illegal war?
you only get lies and pain and sorrow
so take a vow for peaceful tomorrows
never cheerlead an illegal war again.
never cheerlead an illegal war again.
the inspiration for the above version of hal davis and burt bacharach's classic is a new item from fair - '"The Final Word Is Hooray!" Remembering the Iraq War's Pollyanna pundits' and here are some of my personal favorites of dupes embarrassing themselves as they got on board for the illegal war:
"Oh, it was breathtaking. I mean I was almost starting to think that we had become inured to everything that we'd seen of this war over the past three weeks; all this sort of saturation. And finally, when we saw that it was such a just true, genuine _expression. It was reminiscent, I think, of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And just sort of that pure emotional _expression, not choreographed, not stage-managed, the way so many things these days seem to be. Really breathtaking." (Washington Post reporter Ceci Connolly, appearing on Fox News Channel on 4/9/03, discussing the pulling down of a Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad, an event later revealed to have been a U.S. military PSYOPS operation [stunt]--Los Angeles Times, 7/3/04)
"The war winds down, politics heats up.... Picture perfect. Part Spider-Man, part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan. The president seizes the moment on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific." (PBS's Gwen Ifill, 5/2/03, on George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech)
"This has been a tough war for commentators on the American left. To hope for defeat meant cheering for Saddam Hussein. To hope for victory meant cheering for President Bush. The toppling of Mr. Hussein, or at least a statue of him, has made their arguments even harder to defend. Liberal writers for ideologically driven magazines like The Nation and for less overtly political ones like The New Yorker did not predict a defeat, but the terrible consequences many warned of have not happened. Now liberal commentators must address the victory at hand and confront an ascendant conservative juggernaut that asserts United States might can set the world right." (New York Times reporter David Carr, 4/16/03)
"Over the next couple of weeks when we find the chemical weapons this guy was amassing, the fact that this war was attacked by the left and so the right was so vindicated, I think, really means that the left is going to have to hang its head for three or four more years." (Fox News Channel's Dick Morris, 4/9/03)
use the link to relive more embarrassing moments of the war cheerleaders.
so how are you protesting the war on the third anniversary of the invasion?
andrea and her best friend hannah are going to read a piece they wrote together to their grandmother's saturday mah jong group. andrea asked her asked her grandmother and she said 'sure.' andrea says she and hannah are really excited and have been practicing their presentation in front of her grandmother who says it's really good.
i'm sure it is and i'm sure if 2 young women, 12 year olds, can find a way to make their voices heard, you can too.
goldie's having her friends over for a sleep over like mindy's doing this week (and like goldie did in september) but this time, before the sleep over, they're going to walk up and down the sidewalks carrying signs. they've already made 'stop the war'; 'bring the troops home'; and 'bush lied people died' and they're working on the other 1s. goldie's mom told her it was fine as long as she made sure the other mothers knew ahead of time so she and mom called the other mother's and everything is okay with it. they're working a cheer to chant right now.
7 high schoolers are attending their 1st protest. some of you who became protest veterans in 2005 are gearing up for the next wave and bringing friends along.
there's a huge group in oregon that's working on sign they'll hang from a bridge over a highway.
we've got 2 different women organizing teach ins with their friends.
so what are the rest of you doing?
if nothing else, you can make a point to talk 1 on 1 to a friend about the war. in my opinion, that's the very least you can do, bare minimum.
check out elaine's "Peace doesn't come about through silence" and wally's "THIS JUST IN! BULLY BOY LAUNCHES OPERATION GET IT UP!" and c.i.'s "NYT: It's only news when Republicans issue statements."
and do something. make your voice heard.
fair
war cheerleaders
like maria said paz
the daily jot
the common ills
3/15/2006
you don't need a pollster to know which way the wind blows
Feingold Criticizes Fellow Dems Bush Measure
Here in the United States, Senator Russ Feingold has lashed out at fellow Democrats for not supporting his measure to censure President Bush for his warrantless domestic spy program. Feingold has failed to attract any co-sponsors. Appearing on Fox News, Feingold said: "I'm amazed at Democrats, cowering with this president's numbers so low. The administration just has to raise the specter of the war and the Democrats run and hide. … Too many Democrats are going to do the same thing they did in 2000 and 2004.… [Democrats shouldn't] cower to the argument, that whatever you do, if you question the administration, you're helping the terrorists."
that's from democracy now. so are we surprised?
the democrats are still running scared. the evan blahs are running the show and the result is every 1 plays duck and cover. scared little turtles afraid to come out of the shells.
they better learn to do something or quit complaining about the results of elections.
2006 is supposed to be a lock, a sure thing.
of course we heard that in 2004 and 2002 as well. remember?
in 2002, it was 'we're going to win! we're going to win! the opposition party always, always, always picks up seats in the mid-terms!' and?
they lost.
in 2004, it was 'people are sick of bully boy so we're going to win!' and?
they're so scared to say a damn thing.
i'm sick of the hillary clintons who want to get their war on. i'm sick of the bean counters who crunch the numbers. i'm sick of james carville most of all.
he really needs to go away.
he and paul begela are cowards and have always been cowards. carville knows how to shout, when he's not stammering, but what's the point when he can't stand up for anything?
could he or the weasel begela stand up for cynthia mckinney? no, they ran with the press lies and slammed her.
that's who they are. if there's a hint of controversy, they run.
and i really do not think 1 of our talking heads should be married to mary matalin. not because she's a republican, not because she wipes the floor with him in their 'cutesy' tv matchups, but because she's involved with cheney.
with all that's happened regarding scooter libby and the outing of valerie plame, with the hunting accident, with every thing, he needs to step away from the limelight.
we have no idea who aided in the lies and who didn't. matalin's a spinner. she's often a liar. if she's part of the lie the people into war, then we don't need her husband speaking for us.
if she was involved in the conspiracy to out valerie plame, do you think she'll get what's coming to her or will she get a pass?
i'm not saying she is involved. i'm saying there are too many serious issues coming out of the vice president's office and someone so close to it should not be the spouse of a democratic talking head. he needs to step away from the limelight.
worst case scenario, he's married to this year's g. gordon liddy. the democratic party doesn't need him speaking for them.
so what do we lose out on?
a few of his bizarre sayings that make tim russert chuckle and make us look like idiots?
that's really all we miss out on.
he's 1 of the triangulators. his whole life is triangulation.
he's not going to step away, even if mary matalin gets frog marched off, so we should wake up to the fact that he's not a political genius.
he can't figure out how to solve a problem and his campaign strategy for bill clinton was nothing but the most simplistic crap that every 1's used since. in bill clinton's 1st campaign, there was betsy wright to balance out carville and wright got the big picture.
carville doesn't. that's why he runs such crappy campaigns and why kerry's campaign was doomed the minute carville and the others hopped on board.
it's all about 'don't make any waves and you'll win.'
this while the other side launches attacks and makes their own waves.
so the candidate floats along while a tidal wave mounts until it's wipe out time.
then there's jimmy carville within 2 weeks telling the press how the candidate failed. the candidate. it's never jimmy carville's fault.
i'm really sick of him and his centrist, b.s. crowd that can't speak honestly because they're too busy polling to figure out what people MIGHT think.
i don't know what's worse, those people are a democratic party inane enough to send out a fund raising e-mail entitled 'russ feingold is a traitor.' after the generic salutation, 'howard dean' tells you that's what the republicans want you to think. (i didn't get an e-mail with that title from republicans, 'howard dean.') then they hit you up for money.
here's some of that e-mail:
That's what Republicans want you to think.
They are so scared of having a legitimate debate about Iraq or national security that they have only one reaction to news of their failures or calls for accountability.
On Monday, Democratic Senator Russ Feingold introduced legislation to censure the President for breaking the law by creating a secret domestic spying program. Agree or disagree with his proposal, as a Senator -- and as an American -- he has the right to speak his mind and express his views without Republican Senators questioning his patriotism.
But that's exactly what happened. This week Republican Senator Wayne Allard of Colorado, in an interview with Fox News radio, said in response to Feingold's action that he has "time and time again [sided] with the terrorists".
they're scared, 'howard'? them? i didn't see any democrats in the senate rushing to defend feingold. so who's scared?
seriously, let's be objective. wayne allard's an idiot. but he's speaking his mind. his inflamatory statement passed his polling group or he side stepped them. where are the democrats?
some 1 needs to tell them: YOU DON'T NEED A POLLSTER TO KNOW WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS.
until they can figure that out, they're stuck in their own mess as sure as we're stuck in iraq.
tomorrow, i'm going to note some things that readers are planning to mark the 3rd annivesary of the invasion but tonight, i'm too pissed off at cowardly democrats. if you need to know about something serious, something the dems won't talk about, go read c.i.'s "NYT: They're calling the current situation in Iraq 'strife'". i read it this morning while drinking my coffee. i had parts of read it to me by t over the phone. (she loves it.) then fly boy came by tonight (not a good night because we had the roundtable for the gina & krista round-robin) and wanted to talk about it and he's still wondering exactly what it takes up to wake up the big media and the democratic party to what's going on in iraq? i have no idea.
Here in the United States, Senator Russ Feingold has lashed out at fellow Democrats for not supporting his measure to censure President Bush for his warrantless domestic spy program. Feingold has failed to attract any co-sponsors. Appearing on Fox News, Feingold said: "I'm amazed at Democrats, cowering with this president's numbers so low. The administration just has to raise the specter of the war and the Democrats run and hide. … Too many Democrats are going to do the same thing they did in 2000 and 2004.… [Democrats shouldn't] cower to the argument, that whatever you do, if you question the administration, you're helping the terrorists."
that's from democracy now. so are we surprised?
the democrats are still running scared. the evan blahs are running the show and the result is every 1 plays duck and cover. scared little turtles afraid to come out of the shells.
they better learn to do something or quit complaining about the results of elections.
2006 is supposed to be a lock, a sure thing.
of course we heard that in 2004 and 2002 as well. remember?
in 2002, it was 'we're going to win! we're going to win! the opposition party always, always, always picks up seats in the mid-terms!' and?
they lost.
in 2004, it was 'people are sick of bully boy so we're going to win!' and?
they're so scared to say a damn thing.
i'm sick of the hillary clintons who want to get their war on. i'm sick of the bean counters who crunch the numbers. i'm sick of james carville most of all.
he really needs to go away.
he and paul begela are cowards and have always been cowards. carville knows how to shout, when he's not stammering, but what's the point when he can't stand up for anything?
could he or the weasel begela stand up for cynthia mckinney? no, they ran with the press lies and slammed her.
that's who they are. if there's a hint of controversy, they run.
and i really do not think 1 of our talking heads should be married to mary matalin. not because she's a republican, not because she wipes the floor with him in their 'cutesy' tv matchups, but because she's involved with cheney.
with all that's happened regarding scooter libby and the outing of valerie plame, with the hunting accident, with every thing, he needs to step away from the limelight.
we have no idea who aided in the lies and who didn't. matalin's a spinner. she's often a liar. if she's part of the lie the people into war, then we don't need her husband speaking for us.
if she was involved in the conspiracy to out valerie plame, do you think she'll get what's coming to her or will she get a pass?
i'm not saying she is involved. i'm saying there are too many serious issues coming out of the vice president's office and someone so close to it should not be the spouse of a democratic talking head. he needs to step away from the limelight.
worst case scenario, he's married to this year's g. gordon liddy. the democratic party doesn't need him speaking for them.
so what do we lose out on?
a few of his bizarre sayings that make tim russert chuckle and make us look like idiots?
that's really all we miss out on.
he's 1 of the triangulators. his whole life is triangulation.
he's not going to step away, even if mary matalin gets frog marched off, so we should wake up to the fact that he's not a political genius.
he can't figure out how to solve a problem and his campaign strategy for bill clinton was nothing but the most simplistic crap that every 1's used since. in bill clinton's 1st campaign, there was betsy wright to balance out carville and wright got the big picture.
carville doesn't. that's why he runs such crappy campaigns and why kerry's campaign was doomed the minute carville and the others hopped on board.
it's all about 'don't make any waves and you'll win.'
this while the other side launches attacks and makes their own waves.
so the candidate floats along while a tidal wave mounts until it's wipe out time.
then there's jimmy carville within 2 weeks telling the press how the candidate failed. the candidate. it's never jimmy carville's fault.
i'm really sick of him and his centrist, b.s. crowd that can't speak honestly because they're too busy polling to figure out what people MIGHT think.
i don't know what's worse, those people are a democratic party inane enough to send out a fund raising e-mail entitled 'russ feingold is a traitor.' after the generic salutation, 'howard dean' tells you that's what the republicans want you to think. (i didn't get an e-mail with that title from republicans, 'howard dean.') then they hit you up for money.
here's some of that e-mail:
That's what Republicans want you to think.
They are so scared of having a legitimate debate about Iraq or national security that they have only one reaction to news of their failures or calls for accountability.
On Monday, Democratic Senator Russ Feingold introduced legislation to censure the President for breaking the law by creating a secret domestic spying program. Agree or disagree with his proposal, as a Senator -- and as an American -- he has the right to speak his mind and express his views without Republican Senators questioning his patriotism.
But that's exactly what happened. This week Republican Senator Wayne Allard of Colorado, in an interview with Fox News radio, said in response to Feingold's action that he has "time and time again [sided] with the terrorists".
they're scared, 'howard'? them? i didn't see any democrats in the senate rushing to defend feingold. so who's scared?
seriously, let's be objective. wayne allard's an idiot. but he's speaking his mind. his inflamatory statement passed his polling group or he side stepped them. where are the democrats?
some 1 needs to tell them: YOU DON'T NEED A POLLSTER TO KNOW WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS.
until they can figure that out, they're stuck in their own mess as sure as we're stuck in iraq.
tomorrow, i'm going to note some things that readers are planning to mark the 3rd annivesary of the invasion but tonight, i'm too pissed off at cowardly democrats. if you need to know about something serious, something the dems won't talk about, go read c.i.'s "NYT: They're calling the current situation in Iraq 'strife'". i read it this morning while drinking my coffee. i had parts of read it to me by t over the phone. (she loves it.) then fly boy came by tonight (not a good night because we had the roundtable for the gina & krista round-robin) and wanted to talk about it and he's still wondering exactly what it takes up to wake up the big media and the democratic party to what's going on in iraq? i have no idea.
3/14/2006
what are you doing to be heard?
so the weekend is fastly approaching. have you made your plans for how you're going to make yourself heard on the third anniverary of the invasion of iraq?
now i know i have young readers but i know they are strong readers. you never fail to amaze me with your strength and your convictions. mindy is 13 and is planning a sleep over with her 12 girlfriends. they're all against the war so what she's going to do is try to make sure they all have information on the war. she was wondering if i had any suggestions for dvds she could show? she wants to show at least 2 movies. i wrote her back that if she only shows 1 movie it needs to be danny schechter's weapons of mass deception.
i'm participating in a discussion on that tonight for the gina and krista round-robin. i was out today and there seems to be some problem with my cell phone judging by the number of people complaining to my answering machine here. i did have some messages on my cell phone but i've got a lot of people who called my landline and left a message on answering machine saying they called repeatedly and couldn't get through.
but that's the 1 movie to watch if you're only going to watch 1. i'm sending mindy another movie that's shorter and is about falluja. but i told her that it should be used only after and and only if every 1 is still in the mood for another dvd.
why? because you don't just need to watch, you need to discuss. so if you watch danny schechter's documentary and then discuss it, with every 1 sharing, it will have a huge impact. you shouldn't attempt to load every 1 down with a series of dvds.
if you're not able to attend a rally, then you need to be thinking along those lines. something with information that people will watch (and enjoy) that can prompt a discussion.
we need to all be having a dialogue. (c.i. wrote about how the media refuses to do so last night.)
if you don't use your voice, what good are you?
hey, sounds like a question for the senate democrats, right? if you missed it, they're having a hard time figuring out where they stand regarding russ feingold's call for censure:
"Democrats run and hide" when the administration invokes the war on terrorism, Feingold told reporters.
Feingold introduced censure legislation Monday in the Senate but not a single Democrat has embraced it. Several have said they want to see the results of a Senate Intelligence Committee investigation before supporting any punitive legislation.
isn't that sweet. aren't they so brave?
cedric and i spoke about this today and we can't believe how disgusted we are with the cowards.
he's already shared his thoughts on it so be sure to read that.
right before i started this entry, kat called me about a story she heard on kpfa's evening news tonight. i hadn't heard about it but i looked online and here's a link to an associated press story on the topic. what's going on?
The Bush administration last year quietly rewrote the rules for allowing gays and lesbians to receive national-security clearances, drawing complaints from civil rights activists.
The Bush administration said security clearances cannot be denied "solely on the basis of the sexual orientation of the individual." But it removed language saying sexual orientation "may not be used as a basis for or a disqualifying factor in determining a person's eligibility for a security clearance."
are you surprised? you shouldn't be. and lincoln logs who support bully boy (log cabin republicans) and other gay and lesbian people who support him should either admit that they're self-hating or masochistic or both if they can't wake up to the reality that they are not a part of the republican big tent.
that is so disgusting. this was done in december. stephen hadley distributed the changes on dec. 29th. we hear about it now.
guess what else? bully boy has a record. his administration has rejected, said no to, storm disaster loans more than any administration in 15 years. well it's not like any 1 needed them in 2005 or now, right? it's not like we've had any hurricanes in years, right?
he's a loser. he's an embarrassment. he's a war criminal.
which must be why pat roberts has decided to rush through the investigation into the faked intel that bully boy used to lead us into an illegal war.
so are we going to use our voices? we need to. mindy's using her's. all you high schoolers reading, is a 13 year-old about to show you up? (i think she might.)
now i know i have young readers but i know they are strong readers. you never fail to amaze me with your strength and your convictions. mindy is 13 and is planning a sleep over with her 12 girlfriends. they're all against the war so what she's going to do is try to make sure they all have information on the war. she was wondering if i had any suggestions for dvds she could show? she wants to show at least 2 movies. i wrote her back that if she only shows 1 movie it needs to be danny schechter's weapons of mass deception.
i'm participating in a discussion on that tonight for the gina and krista round-robin. i was out today and there seems to be some problem with my cell phone judging by the number of people complaining to my answering machine here. i did have some messages on my cell phone but i've got a lot of people who called my landline and left a message on answering machine saying they called repeatedly and couldn't get through.
but that's the 1 movie to watch if you're only going to watch 1. i'm sending mindy another movie that's shorter and is about falluja. but i told her that it should be used only after and and only if every 1 is still in the mood for another dvd.
why? because you don't just need to watch, you need to discuss. so if you watch danny schechter's documentary and then discuss it, with every 1 sharing, it will have a huge impact. you shouldn't attempt to load every 1 down with a series of dvds.
if you're not able to attend a rally, then you need to be thinking along those lines. something with information that people will watch (and enjoy) that can prompt a discussion.
we need to all be having a dialogue. (c.i. wrote about how the media refuses to do so last night.)
if you don't use your voice, what good are you?
hey, sounds like a question for the senate democrats, right? if you missed it, they're having a hard time figuring out where they stand regarding russ feingold's call for censure:
"Democrats run and hide" when the administration invokes the war on terrorism, Feingold told reporters.
Feingold introduced censure legislation Monday in the Senate but not a single Democrat has embraced it. Several have said they want to see the results of a Senate Intelligence Committee investigation before supporting any punitive legislation.
isn't that sweet. aren't they so brave?
cedric and i spoke about this today and we can't believe how disgusted we are with the cowards.
he's already shared his thoughts on it so be sure to read that.
right before i started this entry, kat called me about a story she heard on kpfa's evening news tonight. i hadn't heard about it but i looked online and here's a link to an associated press story on the topic. what's going on?
The Bush administration last year quietly rewrote the rules for allowing gays and lesbians to receive national-security clearances, drawing complaints from civil rights activists.
The Bush administration said security clearances cannot be denied "solely on the basis of the sexual orientation of the individual." But it removed language saying sexual orientation "may not be used as a basis for or a disqualifying factor in determining a person's eligibility for a security clearance."
are you surprised? you shouldn't be. and lincoln logs who support bully boy (log cabin republicans) and other gay and lesbian people who support him should either admit that they're self-hating or masochistic or both if they can't wake up to the reality that they are not a part of the republican big tent.
that is so disgusting. this was done in december. stephen hadley distributed the changes on dec. 29th. we hear about it now.
guess what else? bully boy has a record. his administration has rejected, said no to, storm disaster loans more than any administration in 15 years. well it's not like any 1 needed them in 2005 or now, right? it's not like we've had any hurricanes in years, right?
he's a loser. he's an embarrassment. he's a war criminal.
which must be why pat roberts has decided to rush through the investigation into the faked intel that bully boy used to lead us into an illegal war.
so are we going to use our voices? we need to. mindy's using her's. all you high schoolers reading, is a 13 year-old about to show you up? (i think she might.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)