(Hint, it’s not W-ya!)
“Yes, next Tuesday, vote for the real political heir to George H. W. Bush. I'm sure you know who that is.” http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/31/opinion/31friedman.html?oref=login
Get out the vote, avoid traffic, wear pajamas
There’s still time to make a difference. Make calls from home.
http://www.votercall.org/gotv/ True Majority is cool. Ben might even buy an ice cream cone if you meet him someday. It took me thirty seconds to sign up.
It’s the economy, baby
“Abortions declined in the U.S. in the Clinton years; the abortion rate dropped by 22 percent in the 1990's. But while data are incomplete, abortions appear to have increased sharply since Mr. Bush took office. Glen H. Stassen, a Christian pro-life theologian, estimates that 52,000 more abortions occurred in 2002 than would have been expected based on the previous trend. Professor Stassen attributes the rise in abortions in part to the troubled economy and concerns among pregnant women that they cannot afford to have babies.”
This and more reasons to kick out Bush The Faker; read here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/30/opinion/30kristof.html?th
BellSouth fleecing FEMA and you
The Urban Farm Report has learned from a source inside BellSouth that the telecommunications giant has ordered 12-hour, 7-day weeks for many of its repair workers in Florida through November. The move, according to our source, is to ensure all Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) hurricane recovery money awarded to the phone company is spent.
Yet the actual work needed was apparently overestimated and has been finished for several weeks now. Most of my source’s time is spent sitting in an air-conditioned truck with the engine running, listening to conservative talk radio. Base pay is some $26 per hour, putting overtime at nearly $40.
When I was in Orlando walking the neighborhoods, I noticed myriad roofs covered with blue FEMA tarpaulins. The roofing companies should get some of that federal money wasted by Ma Bell and pass it on to homeowners. What would you rather have, a phone with a repairperson wasting time in her truck or your roof replaced?
Jeb Bush is the governor; George Bush was down there showing so much concern. Seems "conservatives" would have been a bit more involved with how the money is being spent. Unless, of course, BellSouth campaign contributions had something to do with it.
Sunday, October 31, 2004
Saturday, October 30, 2004
Bush is scary, vote for Kerry
Oct 30
A lady on the bus back from Florida said her daughter made a sign that said that.
We categorically, unabashedly, wholeheartedly, fervently, earnestly, resolutely, eagerly, ardently, energetically, and spiritedly endorse John Kerry for president, John Edwards for vice president. (Our thanks to J.I. Rodale’s “The Synonym Finder.”)
Bush has lived up to his promise to run America like a business. In fact, he’s been turning it into a business for the past four years. America, Inc. keeps hammering away at a resistant Iraqi population, determined to annex and franchise the second largest oil deposit in the world. Net profit? How about a negative number of $200 billion. The shareholders should be aghast.
For the first eight months of their coup, Bush and his “good people around him” walked around the White House with their hands in their pockets, jingling their change. Domestic policy? It’s around here somewhere. No, not under here, no, not there. We’ll find one soon.
The only Bush domestic policy was to shift the tax burden to the middle class and break the entire United States budget.
Then on 11 September 2004, New York, the Pentagon, and an airliner over Pennsylvania were attacked by Saudi Arabian terrorists working out of Afghanistan. Bush had something to do. As radical as I am, I was with Bush and our government on that one.
But akin to FDR attacking Mexico for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Bush would listen to nothing but a case for regime change and takeover of Iraq. And he gave the wealthy and corporations the biggest government gifts of all time.
Workers were cut adrift from their jobs with no concrete hope for a future. Health care went down the toilet. Weekend warriors were sent on long weekends to hell, sometimes a year or more.
W-Ya! got the big job by the skin of his teeth in an election handed to him by a Supreme Court stacked with one conservative too many. After 091101 he had a chance to step up to bat and meet a great challenge. He let those good-people-around-him dust off a tired old neocon white paper and take over our democracy in the name of experimentation on behalf of a handful of unelected “geniuses” allied with the Christian Coalition.
Bush’s Trojan Horse has attempted to deceive all of us, especially true religious and spiritual citizens around the world. The horse is lame now, the obfuscation exposed. Time to put it down.
A lady on the bus back from Florida said her daughter made a sign that said that.
We categorically, unabashedly, wholeheartedly, fervently, earnestly, resolutely, eagerly, ardently, energetically, and spiritedly endorse John Kerry for president, John Edwards for vice president. (Our thanks to J.I. Rodale’s “The Synonym Finder.”)
Bush has lived up to his promise to run America like a business. In fact, he’s been turning it into a business for the past four years. America, Inc. keeps hammering away at a resistant Iraqi population, determined to annex and franchise the second largest oil deposit in the world. Net profit? How about a negative number of $200 billion. The shareholders should be aghast.
For the first eight months of their coup, Bush and his “good people around him” walked around the White House with their hands in their pockets, jingling their change. Domestic policy? It’s around here somewhere. No, not under here, no, not there. We’ll find one soon.
The only Bush domestic policy was to shift the tax burden to the middle class and break the entire United States budget.
Then on 11 September 2004, New York, the Pentagon, and an airliner over Pennsylvania were attacked by Saudi Arabian terrorists working out of Afghanistan. Bush had something to do. As radical as I am, I was with Bush and our government on that one.
But akin to FDR attacking Mexico for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Bush would listen to nothing but a case for regime change and takeover of Iraq. And he gave the wealthy and corporations the biggest government gifts of all time.
Workers were cut adrift from their jobs with no concrete hope for a future. Health care went down the toilet. Weekend warriors were sent on long weekends to hell, sometimes a year or more.
W-Ya! got the big job by the skin of his teeth in an election handed to him by a Supreme Court stacked with one conservative too many. After 091101 he had a chance to step up to bat and meet a great challenge. He let those good-people-around-him dust off a tired old neocon white paper and take over our democracy in the name of experimentation on behalf of a handful of unelected “geniuses” allied with the Christian Coalition.
Bush’s Trojan Horse has attempted to deceive all of us, especially true religious and spiritual citizens around the world. The horse is lame now, the obfuscation exposed. Time to put it down.
Friday, October 29, 2004
Our business school president and his sad, sad term paper
Adventure Capitalism - The Hidden 2001 Plan to Carve-up Iraq TomPaine.com
by Greg Palast Wednesday, October 27, 2004
Why were Iraqi elections delayed? Why was Jay Garner fired? Why are our troops still there? Investigative reporter Greg Palast uncovers new documents that answer these questions and more about the Bush administration’s grand designs on Iraq. Like everything else issued during this administration, the plan to overhaul the Iraqi economy has corporate lobbyist fingerprints all over it.
---
In February 2003, a month before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a 101-page document came my way from somewhere within the U.S. State Department. Titled pleasantly, "Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Growth," it was part of a larger under-wraps program called "The Iraq Strategy."
The Economy Plan goes boldly where no invasion plan has gone before: the complete rewrite, it says, of a conquered state's "policies, laws and regulations." Here's what you'll find in the Plan: A highly detailed program, begun years before the tanks rolled, for imposing a new regime of low taxes on big business, and quick sales of Iraq's banks and bridges—in fact, "ALL state enterprises"—to foreign operators. There's more in the Plan, part of which became public when the State Department hired consulting firm to track the progress of the Iraq makeover. Example: This is likely history's first military assault plan appended to a program for toughening the target nation's copyright laws.
And when it comes to oil, the Plan leaves nothing to chance—or to the Iraqis. Beginning on page 73, the secret drafters emphasized that Iraq would have to "privatize" (i.e., sell off) its "oil and supporting industries." The Plan makes it clear that—even if we didn't go in for the oil—we certainly won't leave without it.
If the Economy Plan reads like a Christmas wishlist drafted by U.S. corporate lobbyists, that's because it was.
From slashing taxes to wiping away Iraq's tariffs (taxes on imports of U.S. and other foreign goods), the package carries the unmistakable fingerprints of the small, soft hands of Grover Norquist.
Norquist is the capo di capi of the lobbyist army of the right. In Washington every Wednesday, he hosts a pow-wow of big business political operatives and right-wing muscle groups—including the Christian Coalition and National Rifle Association—where Norquist quarterbacks their media and legislative offensive for the week.
Once registered as a lobbyist for Microsoft and American Express, Norquist today directs Americans for Tax Reform, a kind of trade union for billionaires unnamed, pushing a regressive "flat tax" scheme.
Acting on a tip, I dropped by the super-lobbyist's L-Street office. Below a huge framed poster of his idol ("NIXON— NOW MORE THAN EVER"), Norquist could not wait to boast of moving freely at the Treasury, Defense and State Departments, and, in the White House, shaping the post-conquest economic plans—from taxes to tariffs to the "intellectual property rights" that I pointed to in the Plan.
Norquist wasn't the only corporate front man getting a piece of the Iraq cash cow. Norquist suggested the change in copyright laws after seeking the guidance of the Recording Industry Association of America.
And then there's the oil. Iraq-born Falah Aljibury was in on the drafting of administration blueprints for the post-Saddam Iraq. According to Aljibury, the administration began coveting its Mideast neighbor's oil within weeks of the Bush-Cheney inauguration, when the White House convened a closed committee under the direction of the State Department's Pam Wainwright. The group included banking and chemical industry men, and the range of topics over what to do with a post-conquest Iraq was wide. In short order, said Aljibury, "It became an oil group."
This was not surprising as the membership list had a strong smell of petroleum. Besides Aljibury, an oil industry consultant, the secret team included executives from Royal-Dutch Shell and ChevronTexaco. These and other oil industry bigs would, in 2003, direct the drafting of a 300-page addendum to the Economy Plan solely about Iraq's oil assets. The oil section of the Plan, obtained after a year of wrestling with the administration over the Freedom of Information Act, calls for Iraqis to sell off to "IOCs" (international oil companies) the nation's "downstream" assets—that is, the refineries, pipelines and ports that, unless under armed occupation, a Mideast nation would be loathe to give up.
---The General Versus Annex D---
One thing stood in the way of rewriting Iraq's laws and selling off Iraq's assets: the Iraqis. An insider working on the plans put it coldly: "They have [Deputy Defense Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz coming out saying it's going to be a democratic country … but we're going to do something that 99 percent of the people of Iraq wouldn't vote for."
In this looming battle between what Iraqis wanted and what the Bush administration planned for them, the Iraqis had an unexpected ally, Gen. Jay Garner, the man appointed by our president just before the invasion as a kind of temporary Pasha to run the soon-to-be conquered nation.
Garner's an old Iraq hand who performed the benevolent autocratic function in the Kurdish zone after the first Gulf War. But in March 2003, the general made his big career mistake. In Kuwait City, fresh off the plane from the United States, he promised Iraqis they would have free and fair elections as soon as Saddam was toppled, preferably within 90 days.
Garner's 90-days-to-democracy pledge ran into a hard object: The Economy Plan's 'Annex D.' Disposing of a nation's oil industry—let alone redrafting trade and tax laws—can't be done in a weekend, nor in 90 days. Annex D lays out a strict 360-day schedule for the free-market makeover of Iraq. And there's the rub: It was simply inconceivable that any popularly elected government would let America write its laws and auction off the nation's crown jewel, its petroleum industry.
Elections would have to wait. As lobbyist Norquist explained when I asked him about the Annex D timetable, "The right to trade, property rights, these things are not to be determined by some democratic election." Our troops would simply have to stay in Mesopotamia a bit longer.
---New World Orders 12, 37, 81 and 83---
Gen. Garner resisted—which was one of the reasons for his swift sacking by Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld on the very night he arrived in Baghdad last April. Rummy had a perfect replacement ready to wing it in Iraq to replace the recalcitrant general. Paul Bremer may not have had Garner's experience on the ground in Iraq, but no one would question the qualifications of a man who served as managing director of Kissinger Associates.
Pausing only to install himself in Saddam's old palace—and adding an extra ring of barbed wire—"Jerry" Bremer cancelled Garner's scheduled meeting of Iraq's tribal leaders called to plan national elections. Instead, Bremer appointed the entire government himself. National elections, Bremer pronounced, would have to wait until 2005. The extended occupation would require our forces to linger.
The delay would, incidentally, provide time needed to lock in the laws, regulations and irreversible sales of assets in accordance with the Economy Plan.
On that, Bremer wasted no time. Altogether, the leader of the Coalition Provisional Authority issued exactly 100 orders that remade Iraq in the image of the Economy Plan. In May, for example, Bremer—only a month from escaping out Baghdad's back door—took time from fighting the burgeoning insurrection to sign orders 81—"Patents,"and 83, "Copyrights." Here, Grover Norquist's hard work paid off. Fifty years of royalties would now be conferred on music recording. And 20 years on Windows code.
Order number 37, "Tax Strategy for 2003," was Norquist's dream come true: taxes capped at 15 percent on corporate and individual income (as suggested in the Economy Plan, page 8). The U.S. Congress had rejected a similar flat-tax plan for America, but in Iraq, with an electorate of one—Jerry Bremer—the public's will was not an issue.
Not everyone felt the pain of this reckless rush to a free market. Order 12, "Trade Liberalization," permitted the tax- and tariff-free import of foreign products. One big winner was Cargill, the world's largest grain merchant, which flooded Iraq with hundreds of thousands of tons of wheat. For Iraqi farmers, already wounded by sanctions and war, this was devastating. They could not compete with the U.S. and Australian surplusses dumped on them. But the import plan carried out the letter of the Economy Plan.
This trade windfall for the West was enforced by the occupation's agriculture chief, Dan Amstutz, himself an import from the United States. Prior to George Bush taking office, Amstutz chaired a company funded by Cargill.
There's no sense cutting taxes on big business, ordering 20 years of copyright payments for Bill Gates' operating system or killing off protections for Iraqi farmers if some out-of-control Iraqi government is going to take it away after an election. The shadow governors of Iraq back in Washington thought of that, too. Bremer fled, but he's left behind him nearly 200 American "experts," assigned to baby-sit each new Iraqi minister—functionaries also approved by the U.S. State Department.
---The Price---
The free market paradise in Iraq is not free.
After General Garner was deposed, I met with him in Washington. He had little regard for the Economy Plan handed to him three months before the tanks rolled. He especially feared its designs on Iraq's oil assets and the delay in handing Iraq back to Iraqis. "That's one fight you don't want to take on," he told me.
But we have. After a month in Saddam's palace, Bremer cancelled municipal elections, including the crucial vote about to take place in Najaf. Denied the ballot, Najaf's Shi'ites voted with bullets. This April, insurgent leader Moqtada Al Sadr's militia killed 21 U.S. soldiers and, for a month, seized the holy city.
"They shouldn't have to follow our plan," the general said. "It's their country, their oil." Maybe, but not according to the Plan. And until it does become their country, the 82nd Airborne will have to remain to keep it from them.
For the interview with Jay Garner and more details of The Plan, see "Bush Family Fortunes: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy," out this month on DVD. Watch a segment: http://www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm
by Greg Palast Wednesday, October 27, 2004
Why were Iraqi elections delayed? Why was Jay Garner fired? Why are our troops still there? Investigative reporter Greg Palast uncovers new documents that answer these questions and more about the Bush administration’s grand designs on Iraq. Like everything else issued during this administration, the plan to overhaul the Iraqi economy has corporate lobbyist fingerprints all over it.
---
In February 2003, a month before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a 101-page document came my way from somewhere within the U.S. State Department. Titled pleasantly, "Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Growth," it was part of a larger under-wraps program called "The Iraq Strategy."
The Economy Plan goes boldly where no invasion plan has gone before: the complete rewrite, it says, of a conquered state's "policies, laws and regulations." Here's what you'll find in the Plan: A highly detailed program, begun years before the tanks rolled, for imposing a new regime of low taxes on big business, and quick sales of Iraq's banks and bridges—in fact, "ALL state enterprises"—to foreign operators. There's more in the Plan, part of which became public when the State Department hired consulting firm to track the progress of the Iraq makeover. Example: This is likely history's first military assault plan appended to a program for toughening the target nation's copyright laws.
And when it comes to oil, the Plan leaves nothing to chance—or to the Iraqis. Beginning on page 73, the secret drafters emphasized that Iraq would have to "privatize" (i.e., sell off) its "oil and supporting industries." The Plan makes it clear that—even if we didn't go in for the oil—we certainly won't leave without it.
If the Economy Plan reads like a Christmas wishlist drafted by U.S. corporate lobbyists, that's because it was.
From slashing taxes to wiping away Iraq's tariffs (taxes on imports of U.S. and other foreign goods), the package carries the unmistakable fingerprints of the small, soft hands of Grover Norquist.
Norquist is the capo di capi of the lobbyist army of the right. In Washington every Wednesday, he hosts a pow-wow of big business political operatives and right-wing muscle groups—including the Christian Coalition and National Rifle Association—where Norquist quarterbacks their media and legislative offensive for the week.
Once registered as a lobbyist for Microsoft and American Express, Norquist today directs Americans for Tax Reform, a kind of trade union for billionaires unnamed, pushing a regressive "flat tax" scheme.
Acting on a tip, I dropped by the super-lobbyist's L-Street office. Below a huge framed poster of his idol ("NIXON— NOW MORE THAN EVER"), Norquist could not wait to boast of moving freely at the Treasury, Defense and State Departments, and, in the White House, shaping the post-conquest economic plans—from taxes to tariffs to the "intellectual property rights" that I pointed to in the Plan.
Norquist wasn't the only corporate front man getting a piece of the Iraq cash cow. Norquist suggested the change in copyright laws after seeking the guidance of the Recording Industry Association of America.
And then there's the oil. Iraq-born Falah Aljibury was in on the drafting of administration blueprints for the post-Saddam Iraq. According to Aljibury, the administration began coveting its Mideast neighbor's oil within weeks of the Bush-Cheney inauguration, when the White House convened a closed committee under the direction of the State Department's Pam Wainwright. The group included banking and chemical industry men, and the range of topics over what to do with a post-conquest Iraq was wide. In short order, said Aljibury, "It became an oil group."
This was not surprising as the membership list had a strong smell of petroleum. Besides Aljibury, an oil industry consultant, the secret team included executives from Royal-Dutch Shell and ChevronTexaco. These and other oil industry bigs would, in 2003, direct the drafting of a 300-page addendum to the Economy Plan solely about Iraq's oil assets. The oil section of the Plan, obtained after a year of wrestling with the administration over the Freedom of Information Act, calls for Iraqis to sell off to "IOCs" (international oil companies) the nation's "downstream" assets—that is, the refineries, pipelines and ports that, unless under armed occupation, a Mideast nation would be loathe to give up.
---The General Versus Annex D---
One thing stood in the way of rewriting Iraq's laws and selling off Iraq's assets: the Iraqis. An insider working on the plans put it coldly: "They have [Deputy Defense Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz coming out saying it's going to be a democratic country … but we're going to do something that 99 percent of the people of Iraq wouldn't vote for."
In this looming battle between what Iraqis wanted and what the Bush administration planned for them, the Iraqis had an unexpected ally, Gen. Jay Garner, the man appointed by our president just before the invasion as a kind of temporary Pasha to run the soon-to-be conquered nation.
Garner's an old Iraq hand who performed the benevolent autocratic function in the Kurdish zone after the first Gulf War. But in March 2003, the general made his big career mistake. In Kuwait City, fresh off the plane from the United States, he promised Iraqis they would have free and fair elections as soon as Saddam was toppled, preferably within 90 days.
Garner's 90-days-to-democracy pledge ran into a hard object: The Economy Plan's 'Annex D.' Disposing of a nation's oil industry—let alone redrafting trade and tax laws—can't be done in a weekend, nor in 90 days. Annex D lays out a strict 360-day schedule for the free-market makeover of Iraq. And there's the rub: It was simply inconceivable that any popularly elected government would let America write its laws and auction off the nation's crown jewel, its petroleum industry.
Elections would have to wait. As lobbyist Norquist explained when I asked him about the Annex D timetable, "The right to trade, property rights, these things are not to be determined by some democratic election." Our troops would simply have to stay in Mesopotamia a bit longer.
---New World Orders 12, 37, 81 and 83---
Gen. Garner resisted—which was one of the reasons for his swift sacking by Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld on the very night he arrived in Baghdad last April. Rummy had a perfect replacement ready to wing it in Iraq to replace the recalcitrant general. Paul Bremer may not have had Garner's experience on the ground in Iraq, but no one would question the qualifications of a man who served as managing director of Kissinger Associates.
Pausing only to install himself in Saddam's old palace—and adding an extra ring of barbed wire—"Jerry" Bremer cancelled Garner's scheduled meeting of Iraq's tribal leaders called to plan national elections. Instead, Bremer appointed the entire government himself. National elections, Bremer pronounced, would have to wait until 2005. The extended occupation would require our forces to linger.
The delay would, incidentally, provide time needed to lock in the laws, regulations and irreversible sales of assets in accordance with the Economy Plan.
On that, Bremer wasted no time. Altogether, the leader of the Coalition Provisional Authority issued exactly 100 orders that remade Iraq in the image of the Economy Plan. In May, for example, Bremer—only a month from escaping out Baghdad's back door—took time from fighting the burgeoning insurrection to sign orders 81—"Patents,"and 83, "Copyrights." Here, Grover Norquist's hard work paid off. Fifty years of royalties would now be conferred on music recording. And 20 years on Windows code.
Order number 37, "Tax Strategy for 2003," was Norquist's dream come true: taxes capped at 15 percent on corporate and individual income (as suggested in the Economy Plan, page 8). The U.S. Congress had rejected a similar flat-tax plan for America, but in Iraq, with an electorate of one—Jerry Bremer—the public's will was not an issue.
Not everyone felt the pain of this reckless rush to a free market. Order 12, "Trade Liberalization," permitted the tax- and tariff-free import of foreign products. One big winner was Cargill, the world's largest grain merchant, which flooded Iraq with hundreds of thousands of tons of wheat. For Iraqi farmers, already wounded by sanctions and war, this was devastating. They could not compete with the U.S. and Australian surplusses dumped on them. But the import plan carried out the letter of the Economy Plan.
This trade windfall for the West was enforced by the occupation's agriculture chief, Dan Amstutz, himself an import from the United States. Prior to George Bush taking office, Amstutz chaired a company funded by Cargill.
There's no sense cutting taxes on big business, ordering 20 years of copyright payments for Bill Gates' operating system or killing off protections for Iraqi farmers if some out-of-control Iraqi government is going to take it away after an election. The shadow governors of Iraq back in Washington thought of that, too. Bremer fled, but he's left behind him nearly 200 American "experts," assigned to baby-sit each new Iraqi minister—functionaries also approved by the U.S. State Department.
---The Price---
The free market paradise in Iraq is not free.
After General Garner was deposed, I met with him in Washington. He had little regard for the Economy Plan handed to him three months before the tanks rolled. He especially feared its designs on Iraq's oil assets and the delay in handing Iraq back to Iraqis. "That's one fight you don't want to take on," he told me.
But we have. After a month in Saddam's palace, Bremer cancelled municipal elections, including the crucial vote about to take place in Najaf. Denied the ballot, Najaf's Shi'ites voted with bullets. This April, insurgent leader Moqtada Al Sadr's militia killed 21 U.S. soldiers and, for a month, seized the holy city.
"They shouldn't have to follow our plan," the general said. "It's their country, their oil." Maybe, but not according to the Plan. And until it does become their country, the 82nd Airborne will have to remain to keep it from them.
For the interview with Jay Garner and more details of The Plan, see "Bush Family Fortunes: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy," out this month on DVD. Watch a segment: http://www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm
Ohio! Pennsylvania! Florida? come on Florida!
And on to the White House! HURAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
If we can stand our ground in Wisconsin and Iowa, or maybe pick up Colorado . . . We are going to win this election, folks. Our sisters and brothers are in the trenches in Florida. Volunteers from all over the country are down there right now Getting Out the Vote. Jay Bookman, columnist in The Atlanta Constitution, calls 300 electoral votes for Kerry. Dave Boyles and I have a hundred-dollar bet riding on the outcome now.
Will the cool guy win again? (No not me, Kerry—though I’m a lot cooler than Dave.)
Business Week editor has knack for predicting presidential winners based on “cool”
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2004/nf20041029_4248_db009.htm
The Urban Farm Report endorses Don McDaniel
If you live in district 97, Western Gwinnett, Duluth, I recommend voting for Don McDaniel. He worked for Howard Dean here, founding member of Georgia for Democracy. He supports Chattahoochee River Keeper and Sierra Club.
http://electdonmcdaniel.com/about.php
If we can stand our ground in Wisconsin and Iowa, or maybe pick up Colorado . . . We are going to win this election, folks. Our sisters and brothers are in the trenches in Florida. Volunteers from all over the country are down there right now Getting Out the Vote. Jay Bookman, columnist in The Atlanta Constitution, calls 300 electoral votes for Kerry. Dave Boyles and I have a hundred-dollar bet riding on the outcome now.
Will the cool guy win again? (No not me, Kerry—though I’m a lot cooler than Dave.)
Business Week editor has knack for predicting presidential winners based on “cool”
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2004/nf20041029_4248_db009.htm
The Urban Farm Report endorses Don McDaniel
If you live in district 97, Western Gwinnett, Duluth, I recommend voting for Don McDaniel. He worked for Howard Dean here, founding member of Georgia for Democracy. He supports Chattahoochee River Keeper and Sierra Club.
http://electdonmcdaniel.com/about.php
Thursday, October 28, 2004
Richard Avedon, 1923-2004
The great American portrait photographer, Richard Avedon, left us an incredible, unfinished portfolio called “Democracy 2004.” It’s in this week’s New Yorker and it knocks me out.
David Boyles
Dave pulls up in what he calls his “Thunder chicken,” a cool black 1996 Thunderbird. The bumper stickers announce, “Defeat Kerry and Vietnam Veterans will get the parade they never had.” And something like, “US Marine Terrorist License,” which looks like a hunting or fishing license and carries the ID number, 091101. Big ‘Nam Vets for Bush bumper stickers. Dave called me from the road and I invited him to rest here on his trip back to Florida from his hometown in Ohio.
Dave went to Viet Nam when I started going to Broward Community College. He spent two years in the Marines, six months in ‘Nam. He told me the pack he grunted weighed about a hundred and twenty pounds. I told him about Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried.” One-twenty is on the extreme heavy side, if I recall from O’Brien’s wonderful story. He must have been packing a lot of heat. Dave was one of my two main friends approximately between our ages of ten and sixteen, the years leading into high school.
As we were leaving for breakfast, I noticed a four-inch, round circle sticker with the W logo done in American-flag chic affixed to one of our outdoor garage lights. When we returned I noticed another on my mailbox, to complement our Kerry yard sign. I told Dave I was not amused and he should remove his littering graffiti at once. He did.
When he left to hit the road again, I noticed another sticker on the circuit-breaker box in the garage. Will probably find more.
Vote Bush or I’ll kill you, boy's ultimatum to girl
Thanks to Bexx for the link.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-pscrewdriver28oct28,0,7776269.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines
David Boyles
Dave pulls up in what he calls his “Thunder chicken,” a cool black 1996 Thunderbird. The bumper stickers announce, “Defeat Kerry and Vietnam Veterans will get the parade they never had.” And something like, “US Marine Terrorist License,” which looks like a hunting or fishing license and carries the ID number, 091101. Big ‘Nam Vets for Bush bumper stickers. Dave called me from the road and I invited him to rest here on his trip back to Florida from his hometown in Ohio.
Dave went to Viet Nam when I started going to Broward Community College. He spent two years in the Marines, six months in ‘Nam. He told me the pack he grunted weighed about a hundred and twenty pounds. I told him about Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried.” One-twenty is on the extreme heavy side, if I recall from O’Brien’s wonderful story. He must have been packing a lot of heat. Dave was one of my two main friends approximately between our ages of ten and sixteen, the years leading into high school.
As we were leaving for breakfast, I noticed a four-inch, round circle sticker with the W logo done in American-flag chic affixed to one of our outdoor garage lights. When we returned I noticed another on my mailbox, to complement our Kerry yard sign. I told Dave I was not amused and he should remove his littering graffiti at once. He did.
When he left to hit the road again, I noticed another sticker on the circuit-breaker box in the garage. Will probably find more.
Vote Bush or I’ll kill you, boy's ultimatum to girl
Thanks to Bexx for the link.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-pscrewdriver28oct28,0,7776269.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
Palast uncovers Republican stink in Florida
Greg Palast is a world-class patriot.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/default.stm
BBC Television News On-Line
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
Greg Palast, reporting
A secret document obtained from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggests a plan - possibly in violation of US law - to disrupt voting in the state's African-American voting districts, a BBC Newsnight investigation reveals.
(Watch it tonight at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/default.stm begining at 5.30pm EST, available for 24 hours.)
Two e-mails, prepared for the executive director of the Bush campaign in Florida and the campaign's national research director in Washington DC, contain a 15-page so-called "caging list".
It lists 1,886 names and addresses of voters in predominantly black and traditionally Democrat areas of Jacksonville, Florida.
An elections supervisor in Tallahassee, when shown the list, told Newsnight: "The only possible reason why they would keep such a thing is to challenge voters on election day."
Ion Sancho, a Democrat, noted that Florida law allows political party operatives inside polling stations to stop voters from obtaining a ballot.
---Mass challenges---
They may then only vote "provisionally" after signing an affidavit attesting to their legal voting status.
Mass challenges have never occurred in Florida. Indeed, says Mr Sancho, not one challenge has been made to a voter "in the 16 years I've been supervisor of elections."
"Quite frankly, this process can be used to slow down the voting process and cause chaos on election day; and discourage voters from voting."
Sancho calls it "intimidation." And it may be illegal.
In Washington, well-known civil rights attorney, Ralph Neas, noted that US federal law prohibits targeting challenges to voters, even if there is a basis for the challenge, if race is a factor in targeting the voters.
The list of Jacksonville voters covers an area with a majority of black residents.
When asked by Newsnight for an explanation of the list, Republican spokespersons claim the list merely records returned mail from either fundraising solicitations or returned letters sent to newly registered voters to verify their addresses for purposes of mailing campaign literature.
Republican state campaign spokeswoman Mindy Tucker Fletcher stated the list was not put together "in order to create" a challenge list, but refused to say it would not be used in that manner.
Rather, she did acknowledge that the party's poll workers will be instructed to challenge voters, "Where it's stated in the law."
There was no explanation as to why such clerical matters would be sent to top officials of the Bush campaign in Florida and Washington.
---Private detective---
In Jacksonville, to determine if Republicans were using the lists or other means of intimidating voters, we filmed a private detective filming every "early voter" - the majority of whom are black - from behind a vehicle with blacked-out windows.
The private detective claimed not to know who was paying for his all-day services.
On the scene, Democratic Congresswoman Corinne Brown said the surveillance operation was part of a campaign of intimidation tactics used by the Republican Party to intimate and scare off African American voters, almost all of whom are registered Democrats.
Greg Palast reporting. The film will be broadcast by Newsnight tonight, Tuesday, 26 October, 2004 at 2230 BST (6:30pm New York time).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/default.stm
BBC Television News On-Line
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
Greg Palast, reporting
A secret document obtained from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggests a plan - possibly in violation of US law - to disrupt voting in the state's African-American voting districts, a BBC Newsnight investigation reveals.
(Watch it tonight at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/default.stm begining at 5.30pm EST, available for 24 hours.)
Two e-mails, prepared for the executive director of the Bush campaign in Florida and the campaign's national research director in Washington DC, contain a 15-page so-called "caging list".
It lists 1,886 names and addresses of voters in predominantly black and traditionally Democrat areas of Jacksonville, Florida.
An elections supervisor in Tallahassee, when shown the list, told Newsnight: "The only possible reason why they would keep such a thing is to challenge voters on election day."
Ion Sancho, a Democrat, noted that Florida law allows political party operatives inside polling stations to stop voters from obtaining a ballot.
---Mass challenges---
They may then only vote "provisionally" after signing an affidavit attesting to their legal voting status.
Mass challenges have never occurred in Florida. Indeed, says Mr Sancho, not one challenge has been made to a voter "in the 16 years I've been supervisor of elections."
"Quite frankly, this process can be used to slow down the voting process and cause chaos on election day; and discourage voters from voting."
Sancho calls it "intimidation." And it may be illegal.
In Washington, well-known civil rights attorney, Ralph Neas, noted that US federal law prohibits targeting challenges to voters, even if there is a basis for the challenge, if race is a factor in targeting the voters.
The list of Jacksonville voters covers an area with a majority of black residents.
When asked by Newsnight for an explanation of the list, Republican spokespersons claim the list merely records returned mail from either fundraising solicitations or returned letters sent to newly registered voters to verify their addresses for purposes of mailing campaign literature.
Republican state campaign spokeswoman Mindy Tucker Fletcher stated the list was not put together "in order to create" a challenge list, but refused to say it would not be used in that manner.
Rather, she did acknowledge that the party's poll workers will be instructed to challenge voters, "Where it's stated in the law."
There was no explanation as to why such clerical matters would be sent to top officials of the Bush campaign in Florida and Washington.
---Private detective---
In Jacksonville, to determine if Republicans were using the lists or other means of intimidating voters, we filmed a private detective filming every "early voter" - the majority of whom are black - from behind a vehicle with blacked-out windows.
The private detective claimed not to know who was paying for his all-day services.
On the scene, Democratic Congresswoman Corinne Brown said the surveillance operation was part of a campaign of intimidation tactics used by the Republican Party to intimate and scare off African American voters, almost all of whom are registered Democrats.
Greg Palast reporting. The film will be broadcast by Newsnight tonight, Tuesday, 26 October, 2004 at 2230 BST (6:30pm New York time).
Didn't tell you I'd take you to Florida, said I was going to Tampa with you
Old joke but new twist. The only surefire way to fight those who might tampa with the tally is swamp 'em with numbers.
How about 900,000 doors knocked on?
That's the latest number posted by the League of Conservation Voters.
A note from the League of Conservation Voters. If you live around Atlanta and want to go, William Perry [williamperry@mindspring.com]. If you live somewhere else, http://www.envirovictory.org/
These people are for real.
From William Perry:
Thank you, thank you, thank you to all those that went to Orlando this weekend -- WHAT A GREAT TRIP!!
As mentioned, and due to popular demand, we are trying to make arrangements to send another group down this weekend. For planning purposes, if you would like to go back, please let me know:
1) when can you go and how long can you stay, from what day to what day?
2) if we can not get a bus or van, would you be willing to drive?
if you'll drive, do you have room for anyone else?
if you'll drive, would you want to caravan with others?
if you can't drive, would you be willing to carpool with someone else?
3) if we can rent vans, would you be willing to drive one (for those over 25)?
Details on housing, etc are still coming together, I'll share that info as I get it.
Thanks,William
How about 900,000 doors knocked on?
That's the latest number posted by the League of Conservation Voters.
A note from the League of Conservation Voters. If you live around Atlanta and want to go, William Perry [williamperry@mindspring.com]. If you live somewhere else, http://www.envirovictory.org/
These people are for real.
From William Perry:
Thank you, thank you, thank you to all those that went to Orlando this weekend -- WHAT A GREAT TRIP!!
As mentioned, and due to popular demand, we are trying to make arrangements to send another group down this weekend. For planning purposes, if you would like to go back, please let me know:
1) when can you go and how long can you stay, from what day to what day?
2) if we can not get a bus or van, would you be willing to drive?
if you'll drive, do you have room for anyone else?
if you'll drive, would you want to caravan with others?
if you can't drive, would you be willing to carpool with someone else?
3) if we can rent vans, would you be willing to drive one (for those over 25)?
Details on housing, etc are still coming together, I'll share that info as I get it.
Thanks,William
Three quick questions
Who is Nader's running mate again?
Where is John Ashcroft?
How is Donald Fumblesfeld?
Where is John Ashcroft?
How is Donald Fumblesfeld?
Turning up the electricity in The Magic Kingdom
It's ELECTRIC down there. After a weekend of knocking on doors in Orlando, the media are reporting grassroots action all over the state. I got goose bumps when I saw the Kerry office on the news in Brandon, Florida, a town I have visited hundreds of times to see friends and family. A town where an old friend I love lives; fellow-progressive, turned ultra-conservative, turned Bush fundraiser. We were each other’s best men in our weddings. To Brandon I say, may the best man win.
I’m struck by how easy it was to walk through neighborhoods, knock on doors, and find so many voters willing to speak with me. My recall is a mental blur, after hours of discussing many issues with forty or fifty people, maybe more. As I settle back in at home I review snapshots in time (took some real pictures and I’ll see if my “Hello” is working so I can post them.): The Greek, no-nonsense immigrant who invited me in to see some emails. Having recently visited Germany, the man tells me public support for Kerry swells throughout Europe.
“What issue is most important to you, sir?” I asked. “Bush is a moron.” The Cuban couple, husband leans strong Kerry, wife slight lean to Bush, “but I don’t know the politics that much.” The three of us had a nice long conversation. She knows the politics a bit better now. The Department of Defense worker, “I work for DOD, and so does my wife. Definitely Bush. My wife? Sure you can talk with her but . . . “ No thanks, you know what side your bread is buttered on.
The feelings, the perceptions, yard signs for Bush (usually two, come on, two signs in a 50’ front yard?) Yard signs for Kerry. Lot of Martinez/Senate signs, no Castor’s but I understand she’s pulling even with the Republican. Liberals, with their studied resolve to make a change, neocons with anger, fear, and belligerence in their eyes.
Now I know why they call them battleground states.
I’m struck by how easy it was to walk through neighborhoods, knock on doors, and find so many voters willing to speak with me. My recall is a mental blur, after hours of discussing many issues with forty or fifty people, maybe more. As I settle back in at home I review snapshots in time (took some real pictures and I’ll see if my “Hello” is working so I can post them.): The Greek, no-nonsense immigrant who invited me in to see some emails. Having recently visited Germany, the man tells me public support for Kerry swells throughout Europe.
“What issue is most important to you, sir?” I asked. “Bush is a moron.” The Cuban couple, husband leans strong Kerry, wife slight lean to Bush, “but I don’t know the politics that much.” The three of us had a nice long conversation. She knows the politics a bit better now. The Department of Defense worker, “I work for DOD, and so does my wife. Definitely Bush. My wife? Sure you can talk with her but . . . “ No thanks, you know what side your bread is buttered on.
The feelings, the perceptions, yard signs for Bush (usually two, come on, two signs in a 50’ front yard?) Yard signs for Kerry. Lot of Martinez/Senate signs, no Castor’s but I understand she’s pulling even with the Republican. Liberals, with their studied resolve to make a change, neocons with anger, fear, and belligerence in their eyes.
Now I know why they call them battleground states.
Monday, October 25, 2004
Fishing for Florida votes, caught a bunch
Mary and I returned early this morning from Orlando, canvassing for Kerry with the League of Conservation Voters. Volunteers from all over the country knocked on 50,000 doors in key Central Florida counties in one weekend! Just one environmental organization! Many other groups are down there, all over the state in a full-tilt boogie for the week leading up to the election.
What is happening is electric, incredible, and we definitely changed some minds. All it took last time was five-hundred votes. If the volunteers on just our two busloads from Athens and Atlanta snagged one each, that makes about a hundred votes. Oh, and I have a feeling we did better.
Interested in helping out? www.envirovictory.org/GA or envirovictoryfl@lcv.org, or I suggest you just call Riley Wells at (407) 420-4640. Time’s a wastin’. The League of Conservation Voters offers free transportation, dorm-style lodging, and arranges steep hotel discounts.
It's five o'clock in the morning. More later.
What is happening is electric, incredible, and we definitely changed some minds. All it took last time was five-hundred votes. If the volunteers on just our two busloads from Athens and Atlanta snagged one each, that makes about a hundred votes. Oh, and I have a feeling we did better.
Interested in helping out? www.envirovictory.org/GA or envirovictoryfl@lcv.org, or I suggest you just call Riley Wells at (407) 420-4640. Time’s a wastin’. The League of Conservation Voters offers free transportation, dorm-style lodging, and arranges steep hotel discounts.
It's five o'clock in the morning. More later.
Friday, October 22, 2004
“Condoleezza Rice is not a partisan.”
Yep, Mary Matilin said it. Dick “Go Fuck Yourself” Cheney’s flack catcher on CNN today. I bet James whispers that in her ear more than once. Not a partisan!?
Our national security advisor, just doing her job getting the word out on national security advising, just happens to be advising in the swing states. She ought to be advising someone on how to go after the real terrorists.
Count the flatware (FASTER!), button down your wallet pocket.
As foxy as ever: I keep seeing Fox News tease up to a story, “From the Koran,” and text that amounts to “instructions for beating your wife.” Sorry I missed the whole non-news-story. Laura’s real job, Cheney’s daughter, I didn’t get the memo but Fox fell right in line yesterday on women voters.
Almost as lame is their “academic freedom” story about an Eng. 101 Professor’s essay topic assignments: Iraq, good or bad? Bush policy, good or bad? and etc. Miss it? You didn’t miss anything.
Gone Fishing.
Our national security advisor, just doing her job getting the word out on national security advising, just happens to be advising in the swing states. She ought to be advising someone on how to go after the real terrorists.
Count the flatware (FASTER!), button down your wallet pocket.
As foxy as ever: I keep seeing Fox News tease up to a story, “From the Koran,” and text that amounts to “instructions for beating your wife.” Sorry I missed the whole non-news-story. Laura’s real job, Cheney’s daughter, I didn’t get the memo but Fox fell right in line yesterday on women voters.
Almost as lame is their “academic freedom” story about an Eng. 101 Professor’s essay topic assignments: Iraq, good or bad? Bush policy, good or bad? and etc. Miss it? You didn’t miss anything.
Gone Fishing.
Thursday, October 21, 2004
Jesus Saves
Oh to be a sports headline writer last night
“Hell Freezes Over,” was a good one.
Another eschews the headline for a full-frame mug shot of Babe, a tear falls from one eye.
NY Daily News: “ Ruthless”
The Globe: “A World Series Ticket”
I would have Johnny Damon’s big mug with, “Jesus Saves.”
“Hell Freezes Over,” was a good one.
Another eschews the headline for a full-frame mug shot of Babe, a tear falls from one eye.
NY Daily News: “ Ruthless”
The Globe: “A World Series Ticket”
I would have Johnny Damon’s big mug with, “Jesus Saves.”
How about the Red Socks?
Man. That was so beautiful. How about I buy a virtual beer for Boston fans everywhere, OK? Put it on my Bloomingdale's card. I worked in New Hampshire for a couple of years, Carlton Fisk's famous jumping-jack homer, first time I lived near a baseball team since I was a kid near Pittsburgh. The bars will close to sweep up in a couple of days. Etch that win in stone.
What price democracy?
Oct 21:
Now on eBay you can buy a vote! (Boy, you can’t buy a vote in this town.) One’s being prosecuted in Missouri, three more reported to have sold votes online through that auction service, according to CNN this morning.
By the way what is democracy, American Heritage Dictionary?
1. Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives.
2. A political or social unit that has such a government.
3. The common people, considered as the primary source of political power.
4. Majority rule.
5. The principles of social equality and respect for the individual within a community.
Make sure you write that on your palms before casting a vote. Just a subtle editorial aside, if you don't mind: Vote for Bush and you must not care much for the definition of democracy.
Now on eBay you can buy a vote! (Boy, you can’t buy a vote in this town.) One’s being prosecuted in Missouri, three more reported to have sold votes online through that auction service, according to CNN this morning.
By the way what is democracy, American Heritage Dictionary?
1. Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives.
2. A political or social unit that has such a government.
3. The common people, considered as the primary source of political power.
4. Majority rule.
5. The principles of social equality and respect for the individual within a community.
Make sure you write that on your palms before casting a vote. Just a subtle editorial aside, if you don't mind: Vote for Bush and you must not care much for the definition of democracy.
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Go Red Sox!
Wouldn't mind owning a Boston bar tonight$
Oct 20
Bush is happier than a dog with two dicks; back out on the campaign trail, where all he has to do is yell, “you can run but you can’t hide,” and the homegrown flock gets all riled up. Glad to get away from those pesky debates, facts, reality and all that. He’s a little messianic in a peculiar way. We’ve got a cheerleader running against the captain of the football team.
Free Speech in America? In corporate America nothing is free, not even liberty. Listen to somebody paying for it, wants it to be a good purchase:
From: Michael W
Sent: Tuesday July 13 2004 12.28pm
Subject: Dude, Iraq sucks
My name is Michael W and I am a 30-year-old National Guard infantryman serving in southeast Baghdad. I have been in Iraq since March of 04 and will continue to serve here until March of 05.
In the few short months my unit has been in Iraq, we have already lost one man and have had many injured (including me) in combat operations. And for what? At the very least, the government could have made sure that each of our vehicles had the proper armament to protect us soldiers.
In the early morning hours of May 10, one month to the day from my 30th birthday, I and 12 other men were attacked in a well-executed roadside ambush in south-east Baghdad. We were attacked with small-arms fire, a rocket-propelled grenade, and two well-placed roadside bombs. These roadside bombs nearly destroyed one of our Hummers and riddled my friends with shrapnel, almost killing them. They would not have had a scratch if they had the "Up Armour" kits on them. So where was [George] W [Bush] on that one?
It's just so ridiculous, which leads me to my next point. A Blackwater contractor makes $15,000 [£8,400] a month for doing the same job as my pals and me. I make about $4,000 [£2,240] a month over here. What's up with that?
Beyond that, the government is calling up more and more troops from the reserves. For what? Man, there is a huge fucking scam going on here! There are civilian contractors crawling all over this country. Blackwater, Kellogg Brown & Root, Halliburton, on and on. These contractors are doing everything you can think of from security to catering lunch!
We are spending money out the ass for this shit, and very few of the projects are going to the Iraqi people. Someone's back is getting scratched here, and it ain't the Iraqis'!
My life is left to chance at this point. I just hope I come home alive.
The source for this is The Guardian. From an email to Michael Moore. Here’s the rest excerpted from MM’s new book.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1005-22.htm
Sinclair misunderestimated
They were just doing a fair and balanced TV news magazine. What’s all the fuss fellas?
Sinclair to Show Only Part of Kerry Film
By ALEX DOMINGUEZ, Associated Press Writer
BALTIMORE - A documentary critical of John Kerry (news - web sites)'s Vietnam-era anti-war activities will be shown only in part during a program examining the use of such documentaries to influence elections, Sinclair Broadcast said Tuesday. The company's announcement came hours after shareholders challenged Sinclair's plans to air the program, saying the controversial broadcast may hurt their investment.
"A POW Story: Politics, Pressure and the Media," will examine the "role of the media in filtering the information contained in these documentaries, allegations of media bias by media organizations that ignore or filter legitimate news and the attempts by candidates and other organizations to influence media coverage," the company said in a statement. It will air Friday on 40 of the company's stations.
Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc., the owner of 62 television stations, has been criticized for ordering the stations to pre-empt regular programming to air the show. The company, which has previously declined comment on the issue, said reports that the documentary would be aired in its entirety were "inaccurate."
The Democratic National Committee (news - web sites) filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (news - web sites), arguing that the broadcast should be considered an illegal in-kind contribution to the Bush campaign.
Sinclair fired its Washington bureau chief Monday after he publicly criticized the company's plans.
"We have not ceded, and will not in the future cede, control of our news reporting to any outside organization or political group," said Joe DeFeo, Sinclair's vice president of news.
Groups have also called for advertisers to boycott Sinclair, whose stations reach a quarter of U.S. households, many in key swing states for the upcoming presidential election.
The news special will discuss allegations surrounding Kerry's anti-Vietnam War activities raised in the documentary, "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal," but the entire 42-minute documentary will not air, Sinclair said.
Sinclair said executives met recently with senior Kerry campaign officials but the campaign has declined to participate in the program.
"The experience of preparing to air this news special has been trying for many of those involved," CEO David Smith said. "The company and many of its executives have endured personal attacks of the vilest nature, as well as calls on our advertisers and our viewers to boycott our stations and on our shareholders to sell their stock."
Meanwhile, a lawyer said he planned to sue on behalf of shareholders, alleging insider trading by top executives as well as damage from the decision to air the film. Media Matters, a media advocacy group, announced it was underwriting the costs of a shareholder action demanding equal time for opposing views.
Eighteen senators, all Democrats, wrote last week to the Federal Communications Commission (news - web sites) to ask it to investigate Sinclair's plans. The agency declined to intervene.
New York Comptroller Alan Hevesi, also a Democrat, sent a letter expressing concern to Sinclair on behalf of the state's pension fund, which owns shares in the broadcasting company.
Sinclair shares dropped more than 3 percent Tuesday, falling 23 cents to $6.26 a share on the NASDAQ market. Sinclair stock dropped about 8 percent on Monday, and is down from a high of more than $15 a share in January.
Two groups offered programs Tuesday to Sinclair to air in response to its news special. California philanthropist Deborah Rappaport and her husband offered to pay for an hour of air time on Sinclair stations to air the documentary "Going Upriver," a positive portrayal of Kerry's service in Vietnam, before the Nov. 2 election day.
Mother Jones Magazine offered Sinclair a half-hour video of four prominent Republicans — including John Dean and Pete Peterson — condemning the Bush administration.
Oct 20
Bush is happier than a dog with two dicks; back out on the campaign trail, where all he has to do is yell, “you can run but you can’t hide,” and the homegrown flock gets all riled up. Glad to get away from those pesky debates, facts, reality and all that. He’s a little messianic in a peculiar way. We’ve got a cheerleader running against the captain of the football team.
Free Speech in America? In corporate America nothing is free, not even liberty. Listen to somebody paying for it, wants it to be a good purchase:
From: Michael W
Sent: Tuesday July 13 2004 12.28pm
Subject: Dude, Iraq sucks
My name is Michael W and I am a 30-year-old National Guard infantryman serving in southeast Baghdad. I have been in Iraq since March of 04 and will continue to serve here until March of 05.
In the few short months my unit has been in Iraq, we have already lost one man and have had many injured (including me) in combat operations. And for what? At the very least, the government could have made sure that each of our vehicles had the proper armament to protect us soldiers.
In the early morning hours of May 10, one month to the day from my 30th birthday, I and 12 other men were attacked in a well-executed roadside ambush in south-east Baghdad. We were attacked with small-arms fire, a rocket-propelled grenade, and two well-placed roadside bombs. These roadside bombs nearly destroyed one of our Hummers and riddled my friends with shrapnel, almost killing them. They would not have had a scratch if they had the "Up Armour" kits on them. So where was [George] W [Bush] on that one?
It's just so ridiculous, which leads me to my next point. A Blackwater contractor makes $15,000 [£8,400] a month for doing the same job as my pals and me. I make about $4,000 [£2,240] a month over here. What's up with that?
Beyond that, the government is calling up more and more troops from the reserves. For what? Man, there is a huge fucking scam going on here! There are civilian contractors crawling all over this country. Blackwater, Kellogg Brown & Root, Halliburton, on and on. These contractors are doing everything you can think of from security to catering lunch!
We are spending money out the ass for this shit, and very few of the projects are going to the Iraqi people. Someone's back is getting scratched here, and it ain't the Iraqis'!
My life is left to chance at this point. I just hope I come home alive.
The source for this is The Guardian. From an email to Michael Moore. Here’s the rest excerpted from MM’s new book.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1005-22.htm
Sinclair misunderestimated
They were just doing a fair and balanced TV news magazine. What’s all the fuss fellas?
Sinclair to Show Only Part of Kerry Film
By ALEX DOMINGUEZ, Associated Press Writer
BALTIMORE - A documentary critical of John Kerry (news - web sites)'s Vietnam-era anti-war activities will be shown only in part during a program examining the use of such documentaries to influence elections, Sinclair Broadcast said Tuesday. The company's announcement came hours after shareholders challenged Sinclair's plans to air the program, saying the controversial broadcast may hurt their investment.
"A POW Story: Politics, Pressure and the Media," will examine the "role of the media in filtering the information contained in these documentaries, allegations of media bias by media organizations that ignore or filter legitimate news and the attempts by candidates and other organizations to influence media coverage," the company said in a statement. It will air Friday on 40 of the company's stations.
Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc., the owner of 62 television stations, has been criticized for ordering the stations to pre-empt regular programming to air the show. The company, which has previously declined comment on the issue, said reports that the documentary would be aired in its entirety were "inaccurate."
The Democratic National Committee (news - web sites) filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (news - web sites), arguing that the broadcast should be considered an illegal in-kind contribution to the Bush campaign.
Sinclair fired its Washington bureau chief Monday after he publicly criticized the company's plans.
"We have not ceded, and will not in the future cede, control of our news reporting to any outside organization or political group," said Joe DeFeo, Sinclair's vice president of news.
Groups have also called for advertisers to boycott Sinclair, whose stations reach a quarter of U.S. households, many in key swing states for the upcoming presidential election.
The news special will discuss allegations surrounding Kerry's anti-Vietnam War activities raised in the documentary, "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal," but the entire 42-minute documentary will not air, Sinclair said.
Sinclair said executives met recently with senior Kerry campaign officials but the campaign has declined to participate in the program.
"The experience of preparing to air this news special has been trying for many of those involved," CEO David Smith said. "The company and many of its executives have endured personal attacks of the vilest nature, as well as calls on our advertisers and our viewers to boycott our stations and on our shareholders to sell their stock."
Meanwhile, a lawyer said he planned to sue on behalf of shareholders, alleging insider trading by top executives as well as damage from the decision to air the film. Media Matters, a media advocacy group, announced it was underwriting the costs of a shareholder action demanding equal time for opposing views.
Eighteen senators, all Democrats, wrote last week to the Federal Communications Commission (news - web sites) to ask it to investigate Sinclair's plans. The agency declined to intervene.
New York Comptroller Alan Hevesi, also a Democrat, sent a letter expressing concern to Sinclair on behalf of the state's pension fund, which owns shares in the broadcasting company.
Sinclair shares dropped more than 3 percent Tuesday, falling 23 cents to $6.26 a share on the NASDAQ market. Sinclair stock dropped about 8 percent on Monday, and is down from a high of more than $15 a share in January.
Two groups offered programs Tuesday to Sinclair to air in response to its news special. California philanthropist Deborah Rappaport and her husband offered to pay for an hour of air time on Sinclair stations to air the documentary "Going Upriver," a positive portrayal of Kerry's service in Vietnam, before the Nov. 2 election day.
Mother Jones Magazine offered Sinclair a half-hour video of four prominent Republicans — including John Dean and Pete Peterson — condemning the Bush administration.
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Eloquent
Thanks to my cousin Joanne, I finally got around to reading the most powerful summary of what we must do November the second. (Yeah, it's me, Mr. Hyperbole I'm not a bullshit artist but I know what I like.)
The editorial endorsement from The New York Times (10-17-04).
"The president who lost the popular vote got a real mandate on Sept. 11, 2001. With the grieving country united behind him, Mr. Bush had an unparalleled opportunity to ask for almost any shared sacrifice. The only limit was his imagination.
"He asked for another tax cut and the war against Iraq.
"The president's refusal to drop his tax-cutting agenda when the nation was gearing up for war is perhaps the most shocking example of his inability to change his priorities in the face of drastically altered circumstances. Mr. Bush did not just starve the government of the money it needed for his own education initiative or the Medicare drug bill. He also made tax cuts a higher priority than doing what was needed for America's security; 90 percent of the cargo unloaded every day in the nation's ports still goes uninspected."
And . . .
"We look back on the past four years with hearts nearly breaking, both for the lives unnecessarily lost and for the opportunities so casually wasted. Time and again, history invited George W. Bush to play a heroic role, and time and again he chose the wrong course. We believe that with John Kerry as president, the nation will do better.
"Voting for president is a leap of faith. A candidate can explain his positions in minute detail and wind up governing with a hostile Congress that refuses to let him deliver. A disaster can upend the best-laid plans. All citizens can do is mix guesswork and hope, examining what the candidates have done in the past, their apparent priorities and their general character. It's on those three grounds that we enthusiastically endorse John Kerry for president."
Read all about it, folks http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/opinion/17sun1.html?oref=login&ex=1099211497&ei=1&en=
It should be pasted on the side of every building.
The editorial endorsement from The New York Times (10-17-04).
"The president who lost the popular vote got a real mandate on Sept. 11, 2001. With the grieving country united behind him, Mr. Bush had an unparalleled opportunity to ask for almost any shared sacrifice. The only limit was his imagination.
"He asked for another tax cut and the war against Iraq.
"The president's refusal to drop his tax-cutting agenda when the nation was gearing up for war is perhaps the most shocking example of his inability to change his priorities in the face of drastically altered circumstances. Mr. Bush did not just starve the government of the money it needed for his own education initiative or the Medicare drug bill. He also made tax cuts a higher priority than doing what was needed for America's security; 90 percent of the cargo unloaded every day in the nation's ports still goes uninspected."
And . . .
"We look back on the past four years with hearts nearly breaking, both for the lives unnecessarily lost and for the opportunities so casually wasted. Time and again, history invited George W. Bush to play a heroic role, and time and again he chose the wrong course. We believe that with John Kerry as president, the nation will do better.
"Voting for president is a leap of faith. A candidate can explain his positions in minute detail and wind up governing with a hostile Congress that refuses to let him deliver. A disaster can upend the best-laid plans. All citizens can do is mix guesswork and hope, examining what the candidates have done in the past, their apparent priorities and their general character. It's on those three grounds that we enthusiastically endorse John Kerry for president."
Read all about it, folks http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/opinion/17sun1.html?oref=login&ex=1099211497&ei=1&en=
It should be pasted on the side of every building.
Monday, October 18, 2004
Bless Tony Blair's cold little infatuation with W-YA!
I read the news today, OH, BOY!, the English Army had just BEEN ORDER TO SUPPORT W (insert American flag logo here) by marching into the fire! to help Karl Rove's 2004 political takeover of American Democracy and his neocon conspiratorial empire-building ways! Nine-thousand British soldiers sent marching into the inferno so Gee-W-Ya! gets a trump card (dead English added to American bodies) to lay at the feet of the American electorate. Is this a fixed litmus test? Look how strong our coalition is now! By the way, is John Lennon turning over in his grave? A thousand and more (dead soldiers) people turned away, but I just had to look, having read the book. Tens of thousands dead . . . as many as thirty-thousand . . . at least we know who is against us, who is for us. Not the Polish; they're pulling out soon.
If this political strategy goes down, look for southern Iraq--now patrolled by the British--to become one big oil-fueled orange flame. Start gathering the firewood, heating oil will be out of reach and it's going to be a long, cold lonely winter.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1017-02.htm
If this political strategy goes down, look for southern Iraq--now patrolled by the British--to become one big oil-fueled orange flame. Start gathering the firewood, heating oil will be out of reach and it's going to be a long, cold lonely winter.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1017-02.htm
Sunday, October 17, 2004
Let’s do a little uniting; the great W-ya!-Divider won’t
Just in: now you can watch the most amazing 22 minutes in television history--OK, call me Mr. Hyperbole, it's what I do--Jon Stewart dressing down Tucker Carlson, Paul Begala, and by extenstion every shouter on the airwaves. "Stop, please, help us."
Thanks to Carol Todaro for the link.
http://homepage.mac.com/duffyb/nobush/iMovieTheater231.html
Some people tell me they are not interested in voting, never have been. Amazing. Make a difference; show up November 2.
From Paul Krugman on slime-ball republican felonious vote tampering:
“The important point to realize is that these abuses aren't aberrations. They're the inevitable result of a Republican Party culture in which dirty tricks that distort the vote are rewarded, not punished. It's a culture that will persist until voters - whose will still does count, if expressed strongly enough - hold that party accountable.”
Read all about it http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/15/opinion/15krugman.html?oref=login
MIND-NUMBING, THE BILLION-DOLLAR HEADHUNTER
With that kind of money, who needs a job? Over $1,000,000,000 will be spent on the presidential election, so much that money isn’t relevant anymore.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/14/1097607371741.html?oneclick=true
What motivates John F. Kerry? GW Bush? As a young man, Kerry chose a life of public service. Bush? Did somebody make him do it? Those “good people around him?” How will all this go down in history? Oh, no matter we’ll all be dead (right W-Ya?). Some of us on the left bank of the river Styx. Which way to the Elysian Fields? Would that be a left or a right once we're in the "mainstream?" Wouldn't want to take a wrong turn now, would we?
“FUNDAMENTALISTS are really simple folk. They can’t handle complexity, inconsistency or especially, Paradox. Just keep it simple, stupid and safe. Bless their little hearts.” http://www.riverstyx.us/
Thanks to Carol Todaro for the link.
http://homepage.mac.com/duffyb/nobush/iMovieTheater231.html
Some people tell me they are not interested in voting, never have been. Amazing. Make a difference; show up November 2.
From Paul Krugman on slime-ball republican felonious vote tampering:
“The important point to realize is that these abuses aren't aberrations. They're the inevitable result of a Republican Party culture in which dirty tricks that distort the vote are rewarded, not punished. It's a culture that will persist until voters - whose will still does count, if expressed strongly enough - hold that party accountable.”
Read all about it http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/15/opinion/15krugman.html?oref=login
MIND-NUMBING, THE BILLION-DOLLAR HEADHUNTER
With that kind of money, who needs a job? Over $1,000,000,000 will be spent on the presidential election, so much that money isn’t relevant anymore.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/14/1097607371741.html?oneclick=true
What motivates John F. Kerry? GW Bush? As a young man, Kerry chose a life of public service. Bush? Did somebody make him do it? Those “good people around him?” How will all this go down in history? Oh, no matter we’ll all be dead (right W-Ya?). Some of us on the left bank of the river Styx. Which way to the Elysian Fields? Would that be a left or a right once we're in the "mainstream?" Wouldn't want to take a wrong turn now, would we?
“FUNDAMENTALISTS are really simple folk. They can’t handle complexity, inconsistency or especially, Paradox. Just keep it simple, stupid and safe. Bless their little hearts.” http://www.riverstyx.us/
Saturday, October 16, 2004
The good people around him
That phrase haunts me, a phrase I heard throughout the presidential campaign during 1999 and 2000 from friends and acquaintances as their rationale for voting in a president who didn’t have much on the ball.
From The New York Times review of Seymour Hersh’s book, Chain of Command: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/books/review/17IGNATIE.html?8bu
Quote, by MICHAEL IGNATIEFF for the NYT:
"At the end of the book, Hersh confesses that he still hasn't got the whole story. 'There is so much about this presidency that we don't know, and may never learn,'' he writes. 'How did they do it? How did eight or nine neoconservatives who believed that war in Iraq was the answer to international terrorism get their way? How did they redirect the government and rearrange longstanding American priorities and policies with so much ease? How did they overcome the bureaucracy, intimidate the press, mislead the Congress and dominate the military? Is our democracy that fragile?'
"Yes, our democracy is that fragile. Checks and balances in the American constitutional system are functioning poorly. With some creditable exceptions -- Senators Byrd, Kennedy, Biden come to mind -- Congress did not subject the case for war to critical scrutiny. The courts deferred for too long to presidential authority, and only now with the recent Supreme Court decision, on the rights of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, that ''a state of war is not a blank check for the president,' have they begun to claw back some of their prerogatives of judicial review. Nor, in the lead-up to war, did the press, Hersh included, subject the administration case on weapons of mass destruction to the critical scrutiny it cried out for. They were taken for a ride, and so were we.
"What we have learned since, however, about the secret war fought in our name and to our discredit, we owe to reporters, chief among them Sy Hersh. This book reminds us why tough, skeptical journalism matters so much: it helps to keep us free."
I can’t help but continue to point my disturbed, restless finger at our fourth estate, the press, the profession of journalism. I wonder if there are any journalists still standing to follow in Hersh’s footsteps. If there are any good people left in the profession, when they fell the trees of dishonesty and injustice, we damn well better be in the forest to hear the crash.
From The New York Times review of Seymour Hersh’s book, Chain of Command: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/books/review/17IGNATIE.html?8bu
Quote, by MICHAEL IGNATIEFF for the NYT:
"At the end of the book, Hersh confesses that he still hasn't got the whole story. 'There is so much about this presidency that we don't know, and may never learn,'' he writes. 'How did they do it? How did eight or nine neoconservatives who believed that war in Iraq was the answer to international terrorism get their way? How did they redirect the government and rearrange longstanding American priorities and policies with so much ease? How did they overcome the bureaucracy, intimidate the press, mislead the Congress and dominate the military? Is our democracy that fragile?'
"Yes, our democracy is that fragile. Checks and balances in the American constitutional system are functioning poorly. With some creditable exceptions -- Senators Byrd, Kennedy, Biden come to mind -- Congress did not subject the case for war to critical scrutiny. The courts deferred for too long to presidential authority, and only now with the recent Supreme Court decision, on the rights of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, that ''a state of war is not a blank check for the president,' have they begun to claw back some of their prerogatives of judicial review. Nor, in the lead-up to war, did the press, Hersh included, subject the administration case on weapons of mass destruction to the critical scrutiny it cried out for. They were taken for a ride, and so were we.
"What we have learned since, however, about the secret war fought in our name and to our discredit, we owe to reporters, chief among them Sy Hersh. This book reminds us why tough, skeptical journalism matters so much: it helps to keep us free."
I can’t help but continue to point my disturbed, restless finger at our fourth estate, the press, the profession of journalism. I wonder if there are any journalists still standing to follow in Hersh’s footsteps. If there are any good people left in the profession, when they fell the trees of dishonesty and injustice, we damn well better be in the forest to hear the crash.
Friday, October 15, 2004
Send in the clowns!
Mary and I were fortunate enough to witness the most remarkable, most powerful twenty-two minutes of public expression in decades, Jon Stewart on CNN’s Crossfire. Stewart in the most elegant, simplest terms defined what is wrong with the media with questions, and pleas for help from the shouters, the distorters, the partisan puke-spewers of corporate media in America today.
He did to Tucker Carlson, and by extension Bob Novak, Bill O’Liely, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity . . . oh my God I’m getting such a high from this . . . what I have dreamed about for years—reaching into the TV screen and slapping some sense into commentators and fake journalists.
My sister in Miami, on the phone, with her husband in the room, and I here in N. Georgia, were stunned. She remarked that maybe something is happening here, and I, What it is ain’t exactly clear. But we’re working hard, it’s hard work . . . something is going down!
Let’s give it up for a great American, a patriot, Jon Stewart. If you missed the show, I can only hope somebody picks it up and replays if for you over, and over, and over . . .
He did to Tucker Carlson, and by extension Bob Novak, Bill O’Liely, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity . . . oh my God I’m getting such a high from this . . . what I have dreamed about for years—reaching into the TV screen and slapping some sense into commentators and fake journalists.
My sister in Miami, on the phone, with her husband in the room, and I here in N. Georgia, were stunned. She remarked that maybe something is happening here, and I, What it is ain’t exactly clear. But we’re working hard, it’s hard work . . . something is going down!
Let’s give it up for a great American, a patriot, Jon Stewart. If you missed the show, I can only hope somebody picks it up and replays if for you over, and over, and over . . .
That irritating debate business over, what to expect next from The Bush Channel
From the man who doesn’t pay much attention to the media, doesn’t read, $68,000 in campaign contributions from Sinclair Broadcasting http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/15/opinion/15fri1.html?th ninety-seven percent of that to republicans, buys a lot of airtime in the swing states. Look for “The Kerry Sucks Show” coming soon, along with these duplicitous strategies at
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1014-23.htm
Pictorial evidence of a radio receiver under his suit during the debates. Making light of his wife’s instructions not to slouch, not to sneer, not to show his potty-faced body language. Little more rationale for his record other than, It’s hard work, we’re working hard. Tacit approval of fringe-group and corporate media campaigns of smear and obfuscation. Unable to look inward and connect with himself and the electorate concerning substance, policy, and plans for the next four years. Bush can’t even handle the idea of having made a mistake, tries to joke that a reporter was handing him “a trick question” at one of his rare news conferences. In the debates he passes the buck on another “mistake” question onto other people, wrong appointments. Reminds me of the old one-liner, I thought I made a mistake once but I was wrong.
If I’m making a mistake by supporting the only strong candidate in this race, John Kerry, somebody please tell me. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Give me one good reason, it better be good, to vote for Bush and I will. Hell, I’ll join the Republican party and go to work in their campaigns today.
The actions of many religions and right-wing whacks have turned us away from the church doors in search of God and spirituality. Its Friedrich Nietzsche’s birthday (The Writer’s Almanac today) http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/ who said, “God is dead . . . and we have killed him.”
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1014-23.htm
Pictorial evidence of a radio receiver under his suit during the debates. Making light of his wife’s instructions not to slouch, not to sneer, not to show his potty-faced body language. Little more rationale for his record other than, It’s hard work, we’re working hard. Tacit approval of fringe-group and corporate media campaigns of smear and obfuscation. Unable to look inward and connect with himself and the electorate concerning substance, policy, and plans for the next four years. Bush can’t even handle the idea of having made a mistake, tries to joke that a reporter was handing him “a trick question” at one of his rare news conferences. In the debates he passes the buck on another “mistake” question onto other people, wrong appointments. Reminds me of the old one-liner, I thought I made a mistake once but I was wrong.
If I’m making a mistake by supporting the only strong candidate in this race, John Kerry, somebody please tell me. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Give me one good reason, it better be good, to vote for Bush and I will. Hell, I’ll join the Republican party and go to work in their campaigns today.
The actions of many religions and right-wing whacks have turned us away from the church doors in search of God and spirituality. Its Friedrich Nietzsche’s birthday (The Writer’s Almanac today) http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/ who said, “God is dead . . . and we have killed him.”
Thursday, October 14, 2004
Annoying liberals, labels
Today is the birthday of another one of them “Massachusetts liberals,” e.e. cummings. According the The Writer’s Almanac, cummings was a “conservative, irritable man.” He traveled to Russia in 1931 and later likened life under communism to Dante’s Inferno. He wrote about the experience. “Most of the publishers were communists themselves, and they turned their backs on cummings for criticizing communist Russia,” according to TWA.
It’s also the birthday of that pesky republican, Dwight D. Eisenhower, says TWA, who said, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." And, “He was also one of the only generals who loved talking to the press. He said, ‘[Journalists are] quasi members of my staff.’”
Massachusetts liberals, sneaky republicans, pesky labels.
It’s also the birthday of that pesky republican, Dwight D. Eisenhower, says TWA, who said, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." And, “He was also one of the only generals who loved talking to the press. He said, ‘[Journalists are] quasi members of my staff.’”
Massachusetts liberals, sneaky republicans, pesky labels.
A shutout
After three debates the score is three-Zip, Kerry. The leaves are beginning to change color here and you can’t even get your job approval rating over 50 percent. With all due respect, Mr. President, it’s time for your personnel review.
Seymour Hersch, he of impeccable credentials as the country’s premier investigative reporter (when will the others rediscover that all reporting is investigative?). From an article about a speech he delivered to Berkeley J-school grad students after the second debate:
"’It doesn't matter that Bush scares the hell out of me . . . What matters is that he scares the hell out of a lot of very important people in Washington who can't speak out, in the military, in the intelligence community. They know in ways that none of us know, the incredible gap between what is and what [Bush] thinks.’
“With that, he was off and running. One could safely say that for the next hour, Hersh proceeded to scare the hell out of most of the audience by detailing the gaps between what they knew and what he hears is actually going on in Iraq.”
Read it all at: http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/NewsArticle.cfm?ID=2202
Seymour Hersch, he of impeccable credentials as the country’s premier investigative reporter (when will the others rediscover that all reporting is investigative?). From an article about a speech he delivered to Berkeley J-school grad students after the second debate:
"’It doesn't matter that Bush scares the hell out of me . . . What matters is that he scares the hell out of a lot of very important people in Washington who can't speak out, in the military, in the intelligence community. They know in ways that none of us know, the incredible gap between what is and what [Bush] thinks.’
“With that, he was off and running. One could safely say that for the next hour, Hersh proceeded to scare the hell out of most of the audience by detailing the gaps between what they knew and what he hears is actually going on in Iraq.”
Read it all at: http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/NewsArticle.cfm?ID=2202
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Let’s go to Florida!
(Copied, and updated, from the site named below.)
"Free Trip to Florida (Yes, I'm Serious)!!!!
"The League of Conservation Voters' Environmental Victory Project is scheduling one more bus trip to Orlando so YOU can help elect Kerry-Edwards, Oct. 22 -24 from Atlanta. Others are leaving from other cities, such as Washington D.C. and Philadelphia.
"The Environmental Victory Project needs your help to educate undecided (crunch time is close and turning out Kerry voters is fast becoming the objective) Florida voters on the deplorable Bush/Cheney environmental project, and that's why they are footing the bill for the entire trip! That means transportation and room & board.
"Reserve your seat today at: http://www.envirovictory.org/ga or envirovictoryfl@lcv.org (subject line: GA Road Trip), or you may call Riley Wells at (407) 420-4640."
I spoke with Riley today on the telephone. He's a college student here in GA and he grew up in our old neighborhood. He told me I don't have to wait until the bus trip; I could come anytime. He's taken the semester off and is working down there fulltime. His group is working every day along the I-4 corridor, St. Pete, Orlando, Daytona, where the effort promises the most rewards on November 2. They've registered and committed some 300,000 voters and are looking at 100,000 more. Mary and I will be there with them soon.
You can stave off the idiots, make a difference, make a future we can all live with and a democracy we can further. People like Riley Wells now in Orlando at (407) 420-4640 are today's patriots. Give him a call if you're serious about doing something meaningful.
Give it up for the artists
REM, loved the new song, "Leaving New York," Bonnie Raitt, who held it together leading sixties protest songs, put on a great show at the grand finale concert last night. The E Street Band rocked. John Mellencamp rocked. The fearless Dixie Chicks rocked! Robert Redford and Sundance Rocked! (Maybe that's why Bush is losing Colorado, if the bishop's influence doesn't take hold http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/12/politics/campaign/12catholics.html?oref=login&th ) They all rocked! In the Atlanta area you can see REM at the Gwinnett Arena October 28.
"Free Trip to Florida (Yes, I'm Serious)!!!!
"The League of Conservation Voters' Environmental Victory Project is scheduling one more bus trip to Orlando so YOU can help elect Kerry-Edwards, Oct. 22 -24 from Atlanta. Others are leaving from other cities, such as Washington D.C. and Philadelphia.
"The Environmental Victory Project needs your help to educate undecided (crunch time is close and turning out Kerry voters is fast becoming the objective) Florida voters on the deplorable Bush/Cheney environmental project, and that's why they are footing the bill for the entire trip! That means transportation and room & board.
"Reserve your seat today at: http://www.envirovictory.org/ga or envirovictoryfl@lcv.org (subject line: GA Road Trip), or you may call Riley Wells at (407) 420-4640."
I spoke with Riley today on the telephone. He's a college student here in GA and he grew up in our old neighborhood. He told me I don't have to wait until the bus trip; I could come anytime. He's taken the semester off and is working down there fulltime. His group is working every day along the I-4 corridor, St. Pete, Orlando, Daytona, where the effort promises the most rewards on November 2. They've registered and committed some 300,000 voters and are looking at 100,000 more. Mary and I will be there with them soon.
You can stave off the idiots, make a difference, make a future we can all live with and a democracy we can further. People like Riley Wells now in Orlando at (407) 420-4640 are today's patriots. Give him a call if you're serious about doing something meaningful.
Give it up for the artists
REM, loved the new song, "Leaving New York," Bonnie Raitt, who held it together leading sixties protest songs, put on a great show at the grand finale concert last night. The E Street Band rocked. John Mellencamp rocked. The fearless Dixie Chicks rocked! Robert Redford and Sundance Rocked! (Maybe that's why Bush is losing Colorado, if the bishop's influence doesn't take hold http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/12/politics/campaign/12catholics.html?oref=login&th ) They all rocked! In the Atlanta area you can see REM at the Gwinnett Arena October 28.
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
The soul of America will beat the false Christians any day of the week
I’m watching the Move On concert, the finale of Vote for Change, broadcast live on Sundance. I’m watching one of the strongest industries in America fight for freedom right here on our soil.
Artists have risen up and met the challenge of those who would hijack democracy in the name of fear. They are rich and they want Bush out. Imagine that.
Oh God, save America, do not let this bunch have another day, another say in how we are governed after this election. I’m going to mix politics and prayer here, pardon me, but I pray for a Kerry victory in November. God bless the artists, probably the most independent workers on the planet.
Paraphrasing Bruce Springsteen tonight: America is not always right but it is true and in seeking these truths we find our freedom.
Notes from Friday’s debate:
Bush:
“I wasn't happy when we found out there wasn't weapons, and we've got an intelligence group together to figure out why.”
Me: Oh, really. Would you have been happier with a mushroom cloud, giving you visual support for starting a war you were just looking for a reason to start? And if you can’t even speak a sentence with verb/noun agreement, then why should I vote for you to run a war on terror in a complex world rather than a guy who not only speaks fluent English but also is learned enough to speak fluent French?
By the way, damn it anyway, why didn’t Iraq do its part and produce the WMD so you could be right? This game is tiring.
After a question about the environment and what he has done to improve it, Bush led with this:
Bush: “Off-road diesel engines--we have reached an agreement to reduce pollution from off-road diesel engines by 90 percent.’
Off-road diesel engines? Bush leads with a plan to reduce pollution from bulldozers? Well, he should because his pro-lumber, pro-developer policies might someday create an actual problem with off-road diesel engines.
“I've got a plan to increase the wetlands by 3 million.”
Now that’s a useful plan. We could use three-million new wetlands. And we’ll probably get them if Bush is reelected and developers like Wal-Mart have their way. But they’ll be oily and muddy and ugly and we might have to live in apartments overlooking them.
Bush: I guess you'd say I'm a good steward of the land.
Me: I guess I’m counting the flatware as fast as I can.
Acknowledging mistakes will have to wait until we’re dead and can’t vote:
Bush: But history will look back, and I'm fully prepared to accept any mistakes that history judges to (sic) my administration, because the president makes the decisions, the president has to take the responsibility.
Me: But Mr. President, you told Bob Woodward, as reported in his book, when he asked how history would judge your presidency, “I don’t know, we’ll all be dead.”
My question is, if you are dead how will you “accept any mistakes that history judges to (sic) my administration?”
Thanks to John Dufresne for the link to the full text of the debate. It helped fill in my recall.
Source: http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/101004X.shtml
Artists have risen up and met the challenge of those who would hijack democracy in the name of fear. They are rich and they want Bush out. Imagine that.
Oh God, save America, do not let this bunch have another day, another say in how we are governed after this election. I’m going to mix politics and prayer here, pardon me, but I pray for a Kerry victory in November. God bless the artists, probably the most independent workers on the planet.
Paraphrasing Bruce Springsteen tonight: America is not always right but it is true and in seeking these truths we find our freedom.
Notes from Friday’s debate:
Bush:
“I wasn't happy when we found out there wasn't weapons, and we've got an intelligence group together to figure out why.”
Me: Oh, really. Would you have been happier with a mushroom cloud, giving you visual support for starting a war you were just looking for a reason to start? And if you can’t even speak a sentence with verb/noun agreement, then why should I vote for you to run a war on terror in a complex world rather than a guy who not only speaks fluent English but also is learned enough to speak fluent French?
By the way, damn it anyway, why didn’t Iraq do its part and produce the WMD so you could be right? This game is tiring.
After a question about the environment and what he has done to improve it, Bush led with this:
Bush: “Off-road diesel engines--we have reached an agreement to reduce pollution from off-road diesel engines by 90 percent.’
Off-road diesel engines? Bush leads with a plan to reduce pollution from bulldozers? Well, he should because his pro-lumber, pro-developer policies might someday create an actual problem with off-road diesel engines.
“I've got a plan to increase the wetlands by 3 million.”
Now that’s a useful plan. We could use three-million new wetlands. And we’ll probably get them if Bush is reelected and developers like Wal-Mart have their way. But they’ll be oily and muddy and ugly and we might have to live in apartments overlooking them.
Bush: I guess you'd say I'm a good steward of the land.
Me: I guess I’m counting the flatware as fast as I can.
Acknowledging mistakes will have to wait until we’re dead and can’t vote:
Bush: But history will look back, and I'm fully prepared to accept any mistakes that history judges to (sic) my administration, because the president makes the decisions, the president has to take the responsibility.
Me: But Mr. President, you told Bob Woodward, as reported in his book, when he asked how history would judge your presidency, “I don’t know, we’ll all be dead.”
My question is, if you are dead how will you “accept any mistakes that history judges to (sic) my administration?”
Thanks to John Dufresne for the link to the full text of the debate. It helped fill in my recall.
Source: http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/101004X.shtml
Monday, October 11, 2004
Losing my religion, something to talk about, and more
I’m looking forward to the grand finale Move On concert tonight, with REM, Bonnie Raitt, Pearl Jam, The E Street Band, Jackson Browne, Dixie Chicks and, of course, more. Not fortunate enough to live in a battleground state, damn that Electoral College, the tour didn’t come to Atlanta. Sundance channel, tonight.
WHO IS ANN COULTER? I've never heard of her. Oh, wait a minute; didn't Al Franken write something about her in his book. Oh, yeah, let me go check that out and get back to you. (I think I thought she was a fictional character. Al is so clever I thought he made her up.)
Coulter’s bullets appear on Media Matters, http://mediamatters.org/comments/latest/200410090003
· "[Senator John] Kerry apparently wants to create jobs in the body bag industry, as we come under more attacks when he refuses to fight the war on terrorism."
· "I think they [Democrats] do get it [that a terrorist attack could occur in the United States]. I really think they don't care."
· "The media so wants to take [President] George [W.] Bush out so that John Kerry can get in and surrender for America."
WHO IS ANN COULTER? I've never heard of her. Oh, wait a minute; didn't Al Franken write something about her in his book. Oh, yeah, let me go check that out and get back to you. (I think I thought she was a fictional character. Al is so clever I thought he made her up.)
Coulter’s bullets appear on Media Matters, http://mediamatters.org/comments/latest/200410090003
· "[Senator John] Kerry apparently wants to create jobs in the body bag industry, as we come under more attacks when he refuses to fight the war on terrorism."
· "I think they [Democrats] do get it [that a terrorist attack could occur in the United States]. I really think they don't care."
· "The media so wants to take [President] George [W.] Bush out so that John Kerry can get in and surrender for America."
Sunday, October 10, 2004
Elections lasting longer than four hours . . .
The liberal media is blocking advertising of Fahrenheit 9/11 on DVD. ABC, NBC, and CBS refuse airtime to distributor Sony during news broadcasts; some also ban the ads on news magazines and bubblegum "news" shows like Today. Sony makes the point that their target audience, adults, is hard to reach without access to time slots in news programming. http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/45/deadline-finke.php It made me wonder what I would say to my kids, if they were still young, if they saw an erectile dysfunction commercial and asked, "Daddy, what's an erection lasting longer than four hours?"
Painting by numbers
Careful, you might be taking drugs from “a third world.” Might be the world W-Ya! lives in, I don’t know. Where’s the second world? Bush responding to an audience question, Friday night in St. Louis, about why he blocked prescription drugs from Canada, via U.S. drug makers . . . he’s afraid they might be dangerous, might come from “a third world.” I guess he forgot to say the word “country.” I might be wrong.
Ever wonder why Helen Thomas rarely is called on during one of W-Ya!’s rare press conferences? Probably not, it’s pretty clear. Now, why did we invade Iraq again? Has credibility lost credibility among voters polled? In this column Thomas scratches her head along with many of us. http://www.thebostonchannel.com/helenthomas/3788822/detail.html
One reports, the other decides and makes it look like a report.
Either this reporter needs to get out more and look around . . .
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0930-15.htm
Or the New York Post should send one of its own to Baghdad to investigate The Wall Street Journal:
http://www.nypost.com/business/19818.htm
Painting by numbers
Careful, you might be taking drugs from “a third world.” Might be the world W-Ya! lives in, I don’t know. Where’s the second world? Bush responding to an audience question, Friday night in St. Louis, about why he blocked prescription drugs from Canada, via U.S. drug makers . . . he’s afraid they might be dangerous, might come from “a third world.” I guess he forgot to say the word “country.” I might be wrong.
Ever wonder why Helen Thomas rarely is called on during one of W-Ya!’s rare press conferences? Probably not, it’s pretty clear. Now, why did we invade Iraq again? Has credibility lost credibility among voters polled? In this column Thomas scratches her head along with many of us. http://www.thebostonchannel.com/helenthomas/3788822/detail.html
One reports, the other decides and makes it look like a report.
Either this reporter needs to get out more and look around . . .
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0930-15.htm
Or the New York Post should send one of its own to Baghdad to investigate The Wall Street Journal:
http://www.nypost.com/business/19818.htm
Saturday, October 09, 2004
Kerry 2, Bush 0, by the way, nice values
In golf, match play, Kerry would be declared the debate winner: Two up with one to play. There is no way you can win (2-1?) after another debate.
I was struck by the way the words, “I like our values,” slipped off W-Ya!’s tongue last night. It was a surrealistic, serpentine experience, an existential hallucination maybe. He probably could have scored more points if he would have said to Kerry, “I like your shoes,” after Kerry condensed Bush’s tax-cut beneficiaries in the room at Washington University to Bush, Charlie Gibson, and himself.
EVERY TIME YOU LISTEN TO BUSH, listen to Emerson: “The more he spoke of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.” W-Ya! has spent his last two years on the job defending his blunders! We should demand he return his salary and expenses to the Treasury Department.
I was struck by the way the words, “I like our values,” slipped off W-Ya!’s tongue last night. It was a surrealistic, serpentine experience, an existential hallucination maybe. He probably could have scored more points if he would have said to Kerry, “I like your shoes,” after Kerry condensed Bush’s tax-cut beneficiaries in the room at Washington University to Bush, Charlie Gibson, and himself.
EVERY TIME YOU LISTEN TO BUSH, listen to Emerson: “The more he spoke of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.” W-Ya! has spent his last two years on the job defending his blunders! We should demand he return his salary and expenses to the Treasury Department.
Thursday, October 07, 2004
Late-breaking dance picture
Anthony Todaro, coming soon, every Tuesday night, Whole World Theatre, Atlanta
He'll kill me. This is an old school dance photo.
Late-breaking snapshots
They said that?
Responding to protesters who must have crawled through the woodwork to get in, The Right-Rev. Dick Cheney, as reported on CNN today, said “Be nice to them. We still might be able to convert them.” Amen, brother.
CNN’s Barbara Star, reporting on live violence in Baghdad today, called the city “a relatively safe place, until the gunfire starts.”
Soon after the rocket attacks on the Sheraton, there were reports of “controlled explosions.” CE’s are bombs aimed where the forces on the ground think the guys with the lethal weapons are hiding. Why don’t we just say we’re shooting back! Wait a minute, that part about aiming where we "think" the bad guys are sounds eerily familiar . . .
The pen is mightier than the sword
I emailed this to our cable company:
On 4 Sept. 2004 I spoke with Dave in your call center. I pointed out that
we were erroneously charged $35 for having a representative stop by our
house and trade-out a faulty digital receiver box. You can read that charge
on the bill of 8/21/04. Dave told me he dropped the charge from our account. We paid the bill minus the $35 charge, but it reappeared on the bill dated 9/21/04.
They wrote this:
I apologize for inconvenience (sic). However, your credit was disapproved due to
the Technician coming out to replace your Receivers.
And I wrote:
I'm getting a little bored with cable TV. Maybe there is a more-interesting service to which I could subscribe . . . Your representative told me there would be "no charge" to have an employee stop by.
So they said:
Thank you for contacting Charter Communications.
I have credit (sic) your account $35.00.
And I:
Thank you very much.
Responding to protesters who must have crawled through the woodwork to get in, The Right-Rev. Dick Cheney, as reported on CNN today, said “Be nice to them. We still might be able to convert them.” Amen, brother.
CNN’s Barbara Star, reporting on live violence in Baghdad today, called the city “a relatively safe place, until the gunfire starts.”
Soon after the rocket attacks on the Sheraton, there were reports of “controlled explosions.” CE’s are bombs aimed where the forces on the ground think the guys with the lethal weapons are hiding. Why don’t we just say we’re shooting back! Wait a minute, that part about aiming where we "think" the bad guys are sounds eerily familiar . . .
The pen is mightier than the sword
I emailed this to our cable company:
On 4 Sept. 2004 I spoke with Dave in your call center. I pointed out that
we were erroneously charged $35 for having a representative stop by our
house and trade-out a faulty digital receiver box. You can read that charge
on the bill of 8/21/04. Dave told me he dropped the charge from our account. We paid the bill minus the $35 charge, but it reappeared on the bill dated 9/21/04.
They wrote this:
I apologize for inconvenience (sic). However, your credit was disapproved due to
the Technician coming out to replace your Receivers.
And I wrote:
I'm getting a little bored with cable TV. Maybe there is a more-interesting service to which I could subscribe . . . Your representative told me there would be "no charge" to have an employee stop by.
So they said:
Thank you for contacting Charter Communications.
I have credit (sic) your account $35.00.
And I:
Thank you very much.
Wednesday, October 06, 2004
A hole in one
I pretty much took the day off yesterday and played golf with Pat and Jeff at "The Dump," The Blue Heron, a golf club built on a closed-down landfill near the Chattahoochee.
On the 116-yard par-three fifth, my nine-iron shot bounced twice, rolled a few inches into the hole. As is customary, I bought the beers.
If Juan would have been there, he would have said Buon tierro! (not sure of the spelling, can't get to the online Spanish dictionary). Good shot!
It was my third ace.
On the 116-yard par-three fifth, my nine-iron shot bounced twice, rolled a few inches into the hole. As is customary, I bought the beers.
If Juan would have been there, he would have said Buon tierro! (not sure of the spelling, can't get to the online Spanish dictionary). Good shot!
It was my third ace.
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
Joy and her "pretty mercenaries"
This is a picture of Joy's & Pat's dog, Ronin after chewing a perfect circle in a Frisbee. He eats everything. (See http://thespazzreport.blogspot.com/
Joy (my daughter) works with the Atlanta office of a modeling agency. According to The Spaz Report http://thespazzreport.blogspot.com/ she works “as a wrangler of all the pretty mercenaries.”
She also works at a cool woman’s clothing boutique weekends. She works seven days a week. From a guy who works seven days a month, I’m impressed. I’ve been in the store. Mary buys clothes there. Very interesting outfits, no thanks to the mass marketers; interesting customers, too. Joy lives in a movie waiting to be written. She’s a good writer, too, made her mark in the Agnes Scott College English department.
The Rice spin, made more wobbly
All you gotta do is watch a little TV, read a lot, and this game is easy. I commented on that little piece of spinning, overcooked Rice yesterday after watching our National Security Advisor on CNN. This email came in late yesterday. http://www.misleader.org/daily_mislead/Read.asp?fn=df10042004.html
I think I’m getting the hang of this game called top. Franchise democracy, franchise The White House! Home of the Whopper!
Get thee to another PR firm! or a think tank with fresh ideas! (The more he spoke of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.—Emerson.)
Monday, October 04, 2004
Good Morning, America!
Good Morning, America!
A work in progress by Tom Todaro, Copyright, Lone Wolf Creative, Inc. Click for a larger, more embarassing, image.
Massachusetts
I was just thinking about Ralph Waldo Emerson and his essay, “Self-Reliance.” It’s one of those gems you pick up in history or English classes that seems to follow you around for the rest of your life.
We hear so much bullshit about “Massachusetts liberals” these days. Emerson came from nine straight generations of ministers. In Concord, Massachusetts, at the beginning of the revolutionary war, his grandfather was a cheerleader for the farmers who fired the shot heard around the world (chalk one up for Bush and other cheerleaders!). Emerson even spent a winter in Florida for his health.* That should get The Senator from Mass. some key votes.
Emerson wrote:
“We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity.”
And:
“The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun.”
(I just heard, on the news, you’ll soon be able to talk on your cell phone throughout your entire transcontinental flight. Cue the chatter! solitude banned, forevermore!)
“Self-Reliance” makes a case for the responsibility of individuals in building good societies. Ralph Waldo Emerson was at a pole quite opposite from a society that would embrace and encourage the slacker, you know, like the “Massachusetts liberal.”
“Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper in the world which exists for him.”
http://www.rwe.org/works/Essays-1st_Series_02_Self-Reliance.htm
If John Kerry must be painted as a member of the “elite,” a Brahmin, he could as well be painted as a Transcendentalist, like Emerson or Henry David Thoreau; hardly shabby founding thinkers of our democracy.
W-YA! has had everything handed to him--an oil-drilling business (dried up), a baseball team (traded Sousa!), Texas (Texas!), the presidency of the United States, and a brain in Karl Rove. Now who is “elite?”
Finally, and well worth repeating if my verbatim cells are working well, Emerson said, "The more he spoke of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons."
For you O Democracy
By Walt Whitman
Come, I will make the continent indissoluble,
I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon,
I will make divine magnetic lands,
With the love of comrades,
With the life-long love of comrades.
I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America, and
along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies,
I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other’s necks,
By the love of comrades,
By the manly love of comrades.
For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme!
For you, for you I am trilling these songs.
At one of the most important moments in literature, and in American history, the publication of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass in 1855, Emerson was stoked. He “ . . . wrote enthusiastically to its author: ‘I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere for such a start.”*
(with regrets for this blog engine's technical inability to produce the line breaks and especially the indentations as the poet intended)
*The Literature of the United States, Book One, Scott, Foresman and Company, 1966, 1969
This spin is getting really wobbly
“If you underestimate the threat of a nuclear mistake by a tyrant . . . “ Dr. Condoleza Rice visiting with Wolfe Blitzer yesterday . . . She was saying it was better to err on the side of safety and create the most incredible blunderbuss of international action in world history than to play it cool.
There goes that smoking gun again, covering the U.S. Midwest with a mushroom cloud.
I only have a minor in poly-sci, so it must take a PhD to figure out that the best way to go about stamping out a nuclear threat is to start at the bottom, pick the worst intelligence, hell--make it up, and work your way to the top until you find the real culprit! in North Korea, for example, or Iran. Hell, my friend from Bombay said if you’re looking for terrorists running their fingers over the nuclear trigger just go to Pakistan. “You could probably find Osama Bin Laden having tea, watching CNN with President Pervez Musharraf.”
My friend, who has lived in the U.S. a long time, also told me he just doesn’t get how anywhere close to half of the country would vote for Bush after the travesty in Iraq. Talk to India. Talk to the cultures of Pakistan, Iran, Jordan, any country over there, and yes Iraq. Tell them to trust you to come in and set up a new system for them to follow; “trust us, you’ll like it.”
The best outcome of all this might be written this way: The neoconservative doctrine found its laboratory and tried out their twisted experiment in global domination and it just did not work. We will never try that again. How about this . . . ?
Sunday, October 03, 2004
Raiders tie another, win one
Boom! Great corner kick. Click to enlarge; that ball is not round!
Alex finished up the Georgia swing and is now headed home for her sweet sixteenth birthday. The team tied two yesterday and won their morning game today.
Notable stories and thinking in the news
Academic freedom? (Republicans attempt to muzzle Michael Moore on campus).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63399-2004Sep30.html?nav=E8
Hey, W-YA!, here’s one of them WMD you’ve been looking for; off the coast of Georgia!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63419-2004Sep30.html?nav=E8
Thomas Friedman is one of the best reporters and thinkers on many subjects concerning the Middle East. I don’t always agree with him but if one is going to be optimistic on Iraq, he shows how to do it intelligently. He’s not so upbeat right now. Good to see he’s back on the NYT op-ed page. I hope the book is coming along well.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/opinion/03friedman.html?oref=login&th
Saturday, October 02, 2004
Face-to-face with that annoying lie again
This clip from Thursday's debate in Coral Gables should be telling enough. Unfortunately we can expect more telling of that tired old lie from this bunch. Thanks to MoveOn
http://www.moveonpac.org/#
http://www.moveonpac.org/#
My niece literally kicks!
Alex and her Raiders hold off Georgia State Champs!
Our dear Alex, fifteen-year-old daughter of Sister Fran, played tough defense today as her Brandon, Florida, Raiders held the line 0 - 0 against four-time Georgia State champs, er, the girls in the yellow (name escapes me). Alex, seen here getting ready to put a hurtin' on the ball, can kick the golden orb a mile. --Tom Todaro, somewhere in East Cobb County, Georgia.
Learned on The Writer's Almanac, today is Groucho Marx's birthday. Groucho said, courtesy of TWA:
Marriage is a wonderful institution. That is, if you like living in an institution.
And from a Groucho Marx Web site:
How do you feel about women's rights? I like either side of them.
And:
I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it.
Friday, October 01, 2004
Anthony kicked ass and so did Kerry
My son the comedy student, Anthony, informed me tonight that he was just awarded a place in the Tuesday Group at Whole World Theatre!http://www.wholeworldtheatre.com/
The Tuesday Group is the elite bunch. Out of 25 or so of his troupe, only four were chosen. That means he now works at a more intense level and his tuition increase magically becomes a "comedy school scholarship!" He pays nothing! It's a step up into "joining the company." That's where you actually start getting paid for being silly. (Sigh . . . my hero).
When Anthony told me he wanted to go to comedy school, I asked him if that was a joke. Once, when I said I thought no-see-ums were biting us, Anthony said, Oh, yeah? What do they look like? That line was a pivotal confidence-building experience.
Let's give it up for Anthony! Give him a lotta love!!!
CONCERNING KERRY, AND INTRODUCING THE URBAN FARM REPORT’S NEW OMBUDSMAN
What is wrong with the mainstream media?
From Carol Todaro:
“Hi, your correspondent in Miami here. Nowhere on cable or network TV
did I see a report that Kerry kicked ass, or that his constituency
chanted to that effect. You read it first on the Urban Farm Report.
“If you didn't see it last night or this morning at 10, check out the
rerun of last night's Daily Show on comedy Central at 7 PM. They did
a wicked take on the spin coming out of both campaigns.”
Now why don’t we hear more of this on CNN, MSNBC, etc.? Let’s give it up for Carol!
The Tuesday Group is the elite bunch. Out of 25 or so of his troupe, only four were chosen. That means he now works at a more intense level and his tuition increase magically becomes a "comedy school scholarship!" He pays nothing! It's a step up into "joining the company." That's where you actually start getting paid for being silly. (Sigh . . . my hero).
When Anthony told me he wanted to go to comedy school, I asked him if that was a joke. Once, when I said I thought no-see-ums were biting us, Anthony said, Oh, yeah? What do they look like? That line was a pivotal confidence-building experience.
Let's give it up for Anthony! Give him a lotta love!!!
CONCERNING KERRY, AND INTRODUCING THE URBAN FARM REPORT’S NEW OMBUDSMAN
What is wrong with the mainstream media?
From Carol Todaro:
“Hi, your correspondent in Miami here. Nowhere on cable or network TV
did I see a report that Kerry kicked ass, or that his constituency
chanted to that effect. You read it first on the Urban Farm Report.
“If you didn't see it last night or this morning at 10, check out the
rerun of last night's Daily Show on comedy Central at 7 PM. They did
a wicked take on the spin coming out of both campaigns.”
Now why don’t we hear more of this on CNN, MSNBC, etc.? Let’s give it up for Carol!
Kerry makes a bonsai Bush
John Kerry dwarfed the President last night in the first of three debates. Kerry chose a novel tactic, the truth, as his weapon and hit the administration’s soft underbelly with surgical precision.
Kerry scored by exposing Bush’s unwavering insistence, his lie, that Iraq caused the havoc of 911, setting the record straight on that little annoying piece of propaganda.
Also, Kerry apologized for being less than articulate in expressing his senate votes on Iraq. Yet the Senator also scored on making his point that his rhetorical mistake didn’t kill some 1,200 Americans, maim thousands of others, and kill tens of thousands of innocent citizens.
Kerry reduced the belligerent Bush, most tiring after three and a half years, to a miniature shrub. Bonsai.
Kerry scored by exposing Bush’s unwavering insistence, his lie, that Iraq caused the havoc of 911, setting the record straight on that little annoying piece of propaganda.
Also, Kerry apologized for being less than articulate in expressing his senate votes on Iraq. Yet the Senator also scored on making his point that his rhetorical mistake didn’t kill some 1,200 Americans, maim thousands of others, and kill tens of thousands of innocent citizens.
Kerry reduced the belligerent Bush, most tiring after three and a half years, to a miniature shrub. Bonsai.
"You kicked ass!"
John Kerry fans gathered last night at a Miami rally featuring American pop icon, John Cougar Mellencamp. As Kerry's motorcade transporting the next President of the United States and First-lady of destiny, Theresa Hines Kerry, arrived following the debate, the crowd of a few thousand began chanting.
"My favorite moment," said our woman in Miami, Carol Todaro, "was when the testosterone in the crowd started chanting 'You kicked ass! You kicked ass!'
Melencamp closed with "...ain't that America, land of the free ," according to Todaro, who expressed disappointment with NPR's instantaneous view slanted to the right immediately following the debate.
"In the car (on the way to the rally), on the radio, we couldn't believe the pundits --they thought Bush was credible and Kerry just so-so--NPR can eat shit, no more money from us."
Kerry kicked ass. Bush? credible?
"My favorite moment," said our woman in Miami, Carol Todaro, "was when the testosterone in the crowd started chanting 'You kicked ass! You kicked ass!'
Melencamp closed with "...ain't that America, land of the free ," according to Todaro, who expressed disappointment with NPR's instantaneous view slanted to the right immediately following the debate.
"In the car (on the way to the rally), on the radio, we couldn't believe the pundits --they thought Bush was credible and Kerry just so-so--NPR can eat shit, no more money from us."
Kerry kicked ass. Bush? credible?
Special Report: Could a blogger describe in words the candidates' reactions in the debates?
Since reaction shots are outlawed in the debates, what if a blogger were allowed onto the set. Could she bootleg verbal descriptions of candidate reactions?
Bush delivers his, “and I’ll choose to defend America every time” line.
Kerry stares ahead, cartoon bubble of Bush reading My Pet Goat.
Bus delivers his “and the economy is growing” line.
Kerry stares ahead. (His cartoon buble turns to a question mark).
Kerry: And this administration has ignored the will of the world for the selfish gain of his cronies, the revenge of his so-called 'good people around him,' has ignored the struggling working class, middle class, and the very concept of ‘class. Look at the numbers.
Cut-away to Bush: leaning against the podium on his left forearm, sniggering, picks his nose.
Kerry: He misled us in congress. He misled his own people, and the people around the world we’ve called our friends for so many years. The record shows this administration has been a disaster in the arenas of diplomacy, national security, economic prudence, and social justice. I have facts. I have dates. I have times.
Cut back to Bush: Heh-heh-he’ing away, left forearm still propping him up. Glances for approval to the wings, appears to be Karl Rove standing there, arms folded.
(Kerry is saying something, but the cartoon bubble has everybody's attention now. Kerry is saying, in the bubble, "Why, thou infectious reeky guts-griping pottle-deep varlet!)
Cut to the panel, AND MY NIGHTMARE, Fox News’ rationale for “fair and balanced,” Alan Colmes, who’s question is . . . . fade and out.
Up on Bush, sniggering, bouncing, beaming.
Pan to Kerry, smiling, then staring straight ahead.
SUPER: Neither of them screwed up, Kerry used actual facts. You decide.
AROUND THE WORLD OF FREE SPEECH IN A CAPSULE
Al Lorenz, a Non-Commissioned Officer in Iraq. He works “in Civil Affairs . . . it is my job to be aware of all the events occurring in this country and specifically in my region.” For doing his job, and reporting it on this Web site, http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/lorentz1.html the NCO faces prosecution. I picked it up from Veterans for Common Sense. Thanks, VCS. (These guys have been working hard for the two years I've heard from them, even longer.)
Bush delivers his, “and I’ll choose to defend America every time” line.
Kerry stares ahead, cartoon bubble of Bush reading My Pet Goat.
Bus delivers his “and the economy is growing” line.
Kerry stares ahead. (His cartoon buble turns to a question mark).
Kerry: And this administration has ignored the will of the world for the selfish gain of his cronies, the revenge of his so-called 'good people around him,' has ignored the struggling working class, middle class, and the very concept of ‘class. Look at the numbers.
Cut-away to Bush: leaning against the podium on his left forearm, sniggering, picks his nose.
Kerry: He misled us in congress. He misled his own people, and the people around the world we’ve called our friends for so many years. The record shows this administration has been a disaster in the arenas of diplomacy, national security, economic prudence, and social justice. I have facts. I have dates. I have times.
Cut back to Bush: Heh-heh-he’ing away, left forearm still propping him up. Glances for approval to the wings, appears to be Karl Rove standing there, arms folded.
(Kerry is saying something, but the cartoon bubble has everybody's attention now. Kerry is saying, in the bubble, "Why, thou infectious reeky guts-griping pottle-deep varlet!)
Cut to the panel, AND MY NIGHTMARE, Fox News’ rationale for “fair and balanced,” Alan Colmes, who’s question is . . . . fade and out.
Up on Bush, sniggering, bouncing, beaming.
Pan to Kerry, smiling, then staring straight ahead.
SUPER: Neither of them screwed up, Kerry used actual facts. You decide.
AROUND THE WORLD OF FREE SPEECH IN A CAPSULE
Al Lorenz, a Non-Commissioned Officer in Iraq. He works “in Civil Affairs . . . it is my job to be aware of all the events occurring in this country and specifically in my region.” For doing his job, and reporting it on this Web site, http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/lorentz1.html the NCO faces prosecution. I picked it up from Veterans for Common Sense. Thanks, VCS. (These guys have been working hard for the two years I've heard from them, even longer.)
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