October 13, 2007 archive

I needed to laugh. And if you have the 7 or so minutes, i highly recommend watching this clip from Barefoot in the Park with Jane Fonda, Robert Redford, and the fantastic Mildred Natwick.

It’s funny; it’s great. Enjoy.

Rock and roll.  Started out black music, started out being the blues.  Started out sung in the fields by slaves, trying to get through their lives day by day.

Changed over the years, but folks never forgot where it came from, which is why there was so much furor over rock and roll when it started to affect white kids.  It was why Alan Freed was really destroyed, not because of the official story of payola.

And while Little Richard was blasting this new music into the waiting ears of young black kids, Pat Boone was the one making all the money (try, once, to listen to Little Richard do “Tutti Fruitti” and then listen to Pat Boone singing it — you may just go mad).

It all boiled down to sex, though.  It did.  Listen to the blues, to early rhythm & blues, listen to that beat and try not to move your body to it, try  not to get turned on.  Can’t be done, sez I.

But this isn’t going to be a political essay about racism or the music business.  And I have no particular judgment over what I’m about to write.  I just find it interesting, and hope some of you will find it interesting as well.

Ricardo Sanchez:

In a sweeping indictment of the four-year effort in Iraq, the former top American commander called the Bush administration’s handling of the war incompetent and warned that the United States was “living a nightmare with no end in sight.” In one of his first major public speeches since leaving the Army in late 2006, retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez blamed the administration for a “catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan” and denounced the current “surge” strategy as a “desperate” move that will not achieve long-term stability.

. . .  “There was been a glaring and unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders,” he said, adding later in his remarks that civilian officials have been “derelict in their duties” and guilty of a “lust for power.”

Cue Rush. We got another Jesse Macbeth on our hands.

So you gotta love Jay’s comment in Digby’s first DKos diary:

Digby, you’re pretty smart… (0+ / 0-)
…so I’ll ask you this:

I’ve been making it my business to let those four Democrats know that at least one Democrat supports their vote.  I’ve been doing so not because I oppose health care for children, but because no one had come up with a meaningful explanation of why this plan should be funded entirely on the back of tobacco smokers except for political expediency.

If you can explain why else that should be in a satisfying way, I’ll stop trying to hurt your cause.  I hope you see that as a decent deal.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false face for the urge to rule it. ~ H.L. Mencken

Jay’s question is a good one. He asked me last night. As you can see, I did not have a good answer. Anybody else have a good one?

P.S. For the record, Digby and I go back in our blogging and I admire her greatly. HEr diasry is admirable. But Jay raises a good question. 

In the latest of a seemingly endless series of shocking revelations about the Bush Administration’s attempts to punish anyone who attempts to hold them accountable to the rule of law, it is being reported today that the CIA is investigating its own Inspector General for investigating the CIA for committing acts of torture.

From the New York Times:

The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, has ordered an unusual internal inquiry into the work of the agency’s inspector general, whose aggressive investigations of the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation programs and other matters have created resentment among agency operatives.

Detention and interrogation programs? In other words, torture.

A small team working for General Hayden is looking into the conduct of the agency’s watchdog office, which is led by Inspector General John L. Helgerson. Current and former government officials said the review had caused anxiety and anger in Mr. Helgerson’s office and aroused concern on Capitol Hill that it posed a conflict of interest.

Concern? This warrants more than concern! This warrants an immediate and aggressive investigation by Congress into a clear case of attempting to suppress dedicated public servants because they may believe the United States should abide by international law and basic human morality.

Any move by the agency’s director to examine the work of the inspector general would be unusual, if not unprecedented, and would threaten to undermine the independence of the office, some current and former officials say.

To state the obvious: that’s stating the obvious.

The CIA, of course, officially says this investigation of the investigators is no big deal, completely appropriate, have a doughnut and some coffee and- hey, how’s the weather, today?

Meanwhile, back in reality: