Sep 18 2007
OK, enough fun and games. Time to get serious. And there isn’t any topic more serious than the Iraq War.
As the Big A may or may not recall, he was starting to convince me regarding the defunding argument prior to his departure from DailyKos. I want to thank him for his efforts, as they really helped me clarify all my thoughts on the matter.
Sep 18 2007
This is an OPEN THREAD. Here are four stories in the news at 4 o’clock to get you started. A handful of bees is worth more than a sackful of flies.
The Bush administration is racing to protect their secretive Praetorian Guard, The Guardian reports that Rice has apologized for the Blackwater USA shootings. “The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, apologised to the Iraqi government yesterday in an attempt to prevent the expulsion of all employees of the security firm Blackwater USA. ¶ Ms Rice called the prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, to apologise for the shooting. They agreed to run a ‘fair and transparent investigation’, according to a statement from Mr Maliki’s office. ¶ It added: ‘She has expressed her personal apologies and the apologies of the government of the United States. She confirmed that the United Sates will take immediate actions to prevent such actions from happening again.’ ¶ The apology offers a face-saving exercise for both the Iraqi and the US governments. The US would find it temporarily awkward if Blackwater was expelled. At the same time, it does not want to be seen to be undermining the decisions of the Iraqi government, which the Bush administration repeatedly insists is autonomous.” Meanwhile, there is more fallout from the Blackwater USA shooting spree. The New York Times reports that Iraq will review all security contractors in their country. “The Iraqi government said today that it would review the status of all foreign and local security companies working in Iraq after a shooting that left eight Iraqis dead.”
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), has released their third annual report on the most corrupt members of Congress. Twenty-two members of Congress made the group’s list with a special “dishonorable mention” going to Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) and Sen. David Vitter (R-LA). According to CREW, “this encyclopedic report on corruption in the 110th Congress documents the egregious, unethical and possibly illegal activities of the most tainted members of Congress. CREW has compiled the members’ transgressions and analyzed them in light of federal laws and congressional rules.” The four senators on this year’s list are: Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-NM), Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK). The 18 representatives on this year’s list are: Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA), Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-CA), Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL), Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA), Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-LA), Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), Rep. Gary G. Miller (R-CA), Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (D-WV), Rep. Timothy F. Murphy (R-PA), Rep. John P. Murtha (D-PA), Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM), Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ), Rep. Harold Rogers (R-KY), Rep. David Scott (D-GA), Rep. Don Young (R-AK), Rep. Jerry Weller (R-IL), and Rep. Heather A. Wilson (R-NM). Summaries for each member of Congress listed in the report can be found at beyonddelay.org.
According to The Independent, the World’s first major wave farm is set to get the green light off the coast of Cornwall in Southwest England. “Wave Hub, a £28m project off the Cornish coast, is expected to be in place and producing renewable energy by 2009… ¶ Generators attached to Wave Hub’s infrastructure… will produce enough electricity for 7,500 homes, directly saving 300,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions over 25 years… ¶ Wave Hub could create 1,800 jobs and contribute £560m to the British economy over 25 years”. The Guardian lists the benefits and drawbacks of wave power.
News of a strange, noxious meteorite in Peru is being reported by The Guardian. “A meteorite has struck a remote part of Peru and carved a large crater that is emitting noxious odours and making villagers ill, according to local press reports. ¶ A fireball streaked across the Andean sky late on Saturday night and crashed into a field near Carancas, a sparsely populated highland wilderness near Lake Titicaca on the border with Bolivia, witnesses said. ¶ The orange streak and loud bang were initially thought to be a plane crashing. When farmers went to investigate, however, they found a crater at least 10m wide and 5m deep, but no sign of wreckage.”
One more story below the fold…
Sep 18 2007
I’ll be putting this in orange in about 1/2 an hour, after you guys get first crack at me! 🙂
Give me a fucking break.
Quote all the Post Patriot Act Law all you want.
Get all gooey and concerned over Officer Safety as you want.
This is pure fucking bullshit.
Introducing 50,000 volts into someones body and taking the risk of death to get a pair of handcuffs on someone who is already subdued is excessive.
Period.
Sep 18 2007
While all the rage are primary diaries, OJ back in jail, Stars who will be dancing once again and the Patriots who seemed to have cheated, we just passed 1,000,000 dead Iraqi civilians.
This blood is on your, mine and every other American’s hands until we stop this war. We are the barbarians at their gate, their new Khan knocking on their door. More Iraqis have now died than during the Rwanda genocide. What will history call this? We should be beyond ashamed, we should be hiding our face in horror from international view until we stop this war.
Below, each O represents 20 dead Iraqi civilians.
Each O represents just one of these, JUST ONE:
Look at it below. LOOK AT IT.
LOOK AT IT NOW AND SEE WHAT OUR COUNTRY HAS WROUGHT.
End the damn war, or accept our place in the annuals of time as the harbringers of doom. HISTORY WILL NOT ABSOLVE US. LOOK AT IT.
EACH O IS 20 DEAD IRAQIS. LOOK AT IT. LOOK AT IT NOW.
Sep 18 2007
Last night when I put up that “Let’s Introduce Ourselves” essay, I stated my genuine motivation for doing it right up front: I didn’t want myself or anyone else here to feel like an “outsider.”
Then, when my brain started winding down and I went to bed, some things came together for me that I’d like to share with all of you. It has to do with a quote I included in my last diary here from a book titled The Culture of Make Believe by Derrick Jensen where he is having a conversation with a friend about the similarities between corporations and hate groups:
He said, “They’re cousins.”
I just listened.
“Nobody talks about this,” he said, “but they’re branches from the same tree, different forms of the same cultural imperative…”
“Which is?”
“To rob the world of its subjectivity.”
“Wait – ” I said.
“Or to put this another way,” he continued, ” to turn everyone and everything into objects.”
Sep 18 2007
Appearing at The Jaundiced Eye, the Independent Bloggers’ Alliance, and My Left Wing.
Glenn Greenwald, whose forthcoming book is on the meaningless chest-thumping of chicken-hawk culture, offers the following illustration. He quotes Fred W. Kagan, whose argument against Jim Webb’s proposal for allowing our troops more time at home between deployments, is that it will be a bureaucratic nightmare.
So this amendment would actually require the Army and Marine Corps staffs to keep track of how long every individual servicemember had spent in either Iraq or Afghanistan, how long they had been at home, how long the unit that they were now in had spent deployed, and how long it had been home…
Sep 18 2007
Anybody who watches Countdown with Keith Olbermann regularly has seen his recurring feature, the Apology Hall of Fame. In it, the snivelling apology of Congressman federal prisoner Randy “Duke” Cunningham always holds a prominent place. And well it should. He’s arguably “the most corrupt Congressman in history”. (Or at least, right up there.)
Most of that corruption was in conjunction with defense contractor Brent Wilkes. Wilkes’s criminal trial is coming up, and his defense attorneys have issued subpoenas to 13 sitting Congressmen to appear as witnesses in the trial. Nine of the 13 are Republicans.
All of them, in consultation with House attorneys, will not honor the subpoenas. Call me old fashioned, but I always thought subpoenas weren’t optional. Like if you don’t show up, you’re in contempt of court. And can get your ass thrown in jail. But maybe they’re all looking to the White House, and modelling their behavior on that…
Sep 18 2007
This is a short diary about personal goals, and political goals, under capitalism.
Sep 18 2007
There are three factions in the war over health care in our country. In one corner are the advocates of universal single-payer care, which is my favorite team and what all other developed countries provide their citizens. It is simple, less-expensive, and more effective in delivering health care. Any American who is proud that the quality of care in our country is on par with Cuba should have their head examined for termites. Somehow, one of the poorest countries of the world, long hampered economically by a boycott from the United States, is able to provide care as good as we get in this country at a tiny fraction of the cost. Hip hip … um… hooray? We have 47 million people without health insurance and medical care costs are more than double the costs in other developed countries.
Universal health care has been branded as socialized medicine by the evolutionarily inept. To appease those with small brains, even smaller hearts, and no functioning conscience, politicians have looked for bandaids to put on gunshot wounds. Mandated coverage is the new trojan horse. Make insurance companies cover people and make people buy their terrible products as the way to increase coverage and presumably give us better health outcomes. Never mind that forcing people to buy insurance does not guarantee that insurance companies will pay the claims.
Sep 18 2007
I’ve grown accustomed to your Face screen name… to see it every day. please don’t leave. me here. surely, you can find your way back.
Sep 18 2007
One would think that a bill that would allow 60,000 high school graduates a year the opportunity to pursue higher education could garner pretty widespread support in Washington, particularly given our President’s commitment to educational excellence and leaving no child behind.
And if these graduates came from a segment of society which the right-wing continually claims under-performs academically and eventually becomes a burden on society, one would think winger politicians would be falling over themselves to support legislation that would enable these ethnic scholars to become more productive members of society, even if to only supply more to the tax base.
Yeah, I Know..who am I kidding.
We all know that wingers see 60,000 immigrant kids yearning for an education and say: “No way, your American dream ends right here, we don’t care that you were raised and schooled in this country, we don’t care that despite all odds, you’ve succeeded, we don’t care that you’re just as ‘American’ as the next kid.” …all they see are “illegal aliens”
Sep 18 2007
This is Mr. KrisC, on his fathers’ boat out of Provincetown. Mr. C. comes from a long line of Portuguese fisherman and his people have been fishing these waters for five generations. We have made a wonderful living because of it, as have the previous generations.
The industry is dying, however. Everybody sees it, and it affects us all.
Hold your breath and dive into the big blue below the fold……