Nov 26 2007
Happy Monday, all! Hopefully, everyone had an enjoyable long weekend. ‘Twas not a long weekend for the Pickle, though, since I live in Canada. Nevertheless, I had an enjoyable weekend. We actually had decent weather, so Mr. Pickle and I went for a few long walks.
Oh, and I forgot to assemble something for today’s Pony Parties. I am SUCH the procrastinator. And, I’m vying to have the worst Pony Parties evah! So, instead of commentary from me, let’s hear your Thanksgiving stories!
Nov 26 2007
This is a quite interesting read for anyone interested in cross cultural interaction. It goes to show that the Hellenic miracle (thank you Zeus and the Olympians as well as the Hellenes themselves) was much more important and widespread than the brutal overlordship of the barbarians from Rome.
Nov 26 2007
If the point is that money corrupts politics, well duh. But the choice of example by the Washington Post bothers me a great deal:
Clinton's success in this unlikely setting is based almost entirely on her friendship with one man, McAllen developer Alonzo Cantu. A self-made millionaire who once picked grapes on the migratory farm labor circuit, Cantu persuaded more than 300 people in Hidalgo County, where the median household income in 2006 was $28,660, to write checks ranging from $500 to $2,300 to the senator from New York.
Cantu offers a simple explanation for what he's doing for Clinton. “To me, there's two things that will keep us from being ignored,” he said. “Money and votes. I think we've shown we can raise money. That will get us attention, or at least get us a seat at the table, get us in the room.”
Gawd forbid a self made Latino, an American citizen, involve himself in the political process by raising money. Does the Washington Post think this is a unique or even an unflattering story? In a way it is, to them.
Look, I am for complete public financing of political campaigns myself. But until that is even remotely a reality, Latinos, just like everyone else, will and MUST participate in the political system as it exists. To single Cantu out, as the WaPo does, is patronizing at best, racist at worst.
For comparison, consider how the same WaPo reporter covered white people bundling money for Obama:
They had a second dinner a few weeks later. This time Obama, Smoot and a small group of New Yorkers joined them to talk about how they would tap Manhattan for campaign funds. Wolf was on board and was on his way to becoming one of the senator's most prolific fundraisers.
As Obama's announcement neared, his outreach intensified.
. . . By early February, Obama had recruited billionaire hotel heiress Penny Pritzker to head his national finance team. The two had met when Michelle Obama's brother was coaching her children's basketball team, and they became friendly before Obama launched his political career.
. . . Obama also landed several Kerry bundlers, including Silicon Valley venture capitalist Mark Gorenberg, and lured two former fundraisers of Bill Clinton's, Boston financier Alan Solomont and New York investment manager Orin Kramer. Solomont said he was surprised by the notice his decision received. “I wasn't looking to make a statement about the Clintons,” he said. “My decision wasn't in any way based on less affection or respect for her. [Obama] just had this energy. I could tell this was going to be something different.”
I am sure access had nothing to do with white man Solomont's decision to bundle for Obama. Riiiiight.
Let's be clear, Cantu operates entirely within the law. Does not even come close to skirting it. But yet, this is supposed to be an unflattering piece. Shame on the Washington Post.
Nov 26 2007
I have been thinking about interrogation, and “Too Much Information” in blog-land of late.
It gave me a stand-up routine.
You will admit your Liberal Bias, and You will admit it now.
Nov 26 2007
This is an Open Thread: Open Minds Open Thoughts
USA
Thompson’s plan offers Americans flat tax option
Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson proposed an income tax plan yesterday that would allow Americans to choose a simplified system with only two rates: 10 and 25 percent.
Thompson’s proposal, announced on “Fox News Sunday,” would allow filers to remain under the current tax code or use the flat tax rates. “We’ve known for years any time we have lowered taxes and any time we’ve lowered tax rates, we’ve seen growth in the economy,” the former Tennessee senator said.
I’m sorry for the lack of content in todays Times. There was one finished and ready to be automatically posted to the Front Page but, reasons that shall remain a mystery it was deleted. Thank you for your understanding.
Nov 26 2007
 Muse in the Morning |
The muses are ancient. The inspirations for our stories were said to be born from them. Muses of song and dance, or poetry and prose, of comedy and tragedy, of the inward and the outward. In one version they are Calliope, Euterpe and Terpsichore, Erato and Clio, Thalia and Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Urania.
It has also been traditional to name a tenth muse. Plato declared Sappho to be the tenth muse, the muse of women poets. Others have been suggested throughout the centuries. I don’t have a name for one, but I do think there should be a muse for the graphical arts. And maybe there should be many more.
Please join us inside to celebrate our various muses…
Nov 26 2007
Hello and welcome to the second installment on MMND. Today we will do things a little differently, due to the Holiday there weren’t many stories released on Friday that would qualify for our regular approach. Instead, headlines from various news sources across the country will be the focus. The same basic question will apply however: when will the Corporate Media focus on these important stories?
As a reminder to news editors in Corporate Media establishments. Well over 2/3rds of us Americans are paying attention.
IndyStar.com has some gut-wrenching statistics posted regarding child-poverty.
The number of Hoosier children living in poverty has increased by nearly 21 percent since 2000, a growth rate nearly twice that of the U.S. average for the period.
If these statistics do not cause a major upheaval in the way Indiana allocates it’s resources, there is little hope for Indiana in the future.
Nov 26 2007
Six months ago, I was confidently telling people that if the Democrats couldn’t win the presidency in 2008, we should just disband the party.
Lately, I have started hedging my bets.
And an hour with the front section of Sunday’s New York Times was enough to make me think that we are headed for another heartbreaking and unnecessary loss.
What did we learn today from the “liberal media?”
1. Violence is on the decline in Iraq.
2. One brigade of US troops has started to pull out.
3. The troop surge has not produced the political progress that was promised, so the Bush administration is simply downsizing its goals, to make it look like progress.
4. The Democratic presidential candidates appear ready to soften their stances, or at least their language, on Iraq and change the subject to domestic issues.
Here we go again.
We will be fooled again, it would appear.
Which brings us to the question: What is an antiwar Yellow Dog Democrat to do, after reading that one of Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy advisors, Michael O’Hanlon, is saying:
“The politics of Iraq are going to change dramatically in the general election, assuming Iraq continues to show some hopefulness,” said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who is a supporter of Mrs. Clinton’s and a proponent of the military buildup. “If Iraq looks at least partly salvageable, it will be important to explain as a candidate how you would salvage it – how you would get our troops out and not lose the war. The Democrats need to be very careful with what they say and not hem themselves in.”
Nov 26 2007
“There! You see? I was right! I was only thirty years too soon. What was treason in me thirty years ago, is patriotism now.”
— Aaron Burr, upon hearing of the Texas Revolt, 1836
Perhaps someday, if the neocon plan works out and America does manage to establish itself as the master of a global hegemony of subject nations and enslaved peoples, the 9% of our fellow citizens who don’t think Dick Cheney sucks will be able to point to some future event and try to use it to vindicate not impeaching the current veep now – but I rather doubt it. History is not kind to fools and poor leaders – and only occasionally rewards the schemers and the scammers – yet it has always been notoriously difficult to pry such men from perches of power, since the people with the ability to do so often lack the chutzpah of their intended target.
Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight we’ll meet a veep whose poor decision-making skills (and chutzpah) may have actually eclipsed those of Fourthbranch. We’ll also contemplate the scary truth that it wasn’t until after he’d left office that our first Treasonous Veep engaged in his zaniest schemes of usurpation.
Nov 26 2007
I have recently started visiting some of the blogs in the blogroll (from a meta standpoint I’ll tell you that while a lot of the places you can visit are the same here as at dK, here they open in a NEW window which is a feature I find highly superior).
One author I find is almost as important as Monday through Thursday with Jon Stewart (who memorably said to Tucker)-
and Stephen who said this about all of them, the vacant gape mawed Villagers drooling at the trough of slime that turns them into zombies-
… let’s review the rules. Here’s how it works: the president makes decisions. He’s the Decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ’em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know – fiction!
is Glenn Greenwald at Salon (that’s a zoom link btw, that way you can decide how you want to open it. That and using a storyonly/Permalink are two courtesy lessons I owe to CSI Bentonville).
Every day he comes up with something that is at least worth looking at and today was no exception-
Exactly like a stenographer in a court proceeding, their only job is to record the words that they hear accurately, not to identify what actually is true. And here is Klein admitting — finally — that this is exactly what he did (although in this case, he wasn’t even a good stenographer since he only wrote down what one side said, not both).
The very idea of a reporter and a major news magazine publishing a piece about a crucial bill that neither the reporter nor any editor has ever even bothered to read is amazing. No blogger that I read regularly would ever think about doing that. But that’s how the Bush administration has been able to depict all of its false statements about Iraq, and its illegal spying on Americans, as some sort of complex, impossible-to-resolve “controversy.” GOP operatives say “X” and reporters write it down, and it would be terribly “partisan” for them to point out that “X” is actually an outright lie.
Had Klein even bothered to read the Democrats’ bill before calling it “well beyond stupid” and passing on lies about it, he would have had a real story. This:
Last week, House Democrats passed a bill that allows the government to eavesdrop on foreigners outside of the U.S., but requires court approval to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens inside the U.S. But GOP operatives/politicians have spent the week telling reporters that the bill does the opposite, falsely claiming that it gives the same rights to Terrorists that it gives to U.S. citizens. Those are the objective facts. That is actually what happened. Yet Klein’s function — like those of most of his colleagues — isn’t to report what actually happened, so he’ll never say that. And thus, Time has yet again completely misled its readers on a critical political issue by passing on GOP falsehoods as fact, and they are highly unlikely to do anything in the way of alerting their readers to what they did, let alone reporting the real story here: how and why that happened.