Ten More Years! Ten More Years!

I don't know if we plan to be there for the duration of the insurgency but it certainly won't be over soon.

"The insurgency in Iraq is not likely to be put down in a year or even two since history shows such uprisings can last a decade or more, the United States' top military commander said on Friday.

Air Force Gen. Richard Myers said that in the past century, insurgencies around the world have lasted anywhere from seven to 12 years, making a quick fix to the problem in Iraq unlikely.

'This is not the kind of business that can be done in one year, two years probably,' said Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council here.

Myers was filling in for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who was scheduled to address the group but became ill after a long trip to Europe.

Myers said, however, that recent elections in Iraq were a sign that insurgents were not succeeding in their efforts to strike fear in the Iraqi people. American television was full of images in January of Iraqis whose fingers were stained with indelible ink after casting their ballots.

'They were sticking that ink-stained finger in the eye of the insurgents,' Myers told a packed ballroom at the Beverly Hilton hotel.

In Iraq, negotiations continued on Friday over who would lead the country's new government, talks made more complicated by delicate ethnic and sectarian issues.

'There is a lot of tension in the system politically ... which is a very good thing' for a new democracy, Myers said.

The new government is expected to make security an immediate focus. Three U.S. soldiers were killed and eight wounded in a roadside blast north of Baghdad on Friday, the military said.

'There's more and more thought both from religious circles and intellectual circles that (the insurgency) absolutely is unacceptable behavior,' Myers said. "

Nancy Grace Has None

I used to hate when Nancy Grace filled in for Larry King. While I understand that she lost her fiance to random violence, while she was in college, she doesn't appear to have moved beyond it. Though I am sure the tragedy is what fueled her passion as a prosecutor and as a pundit, she grates my nerves - to death. I have yet to tune into her new show and, with the Michael Jackson trial beginning today, doubt that I'll be watching her any time soon. On-air persona aside, it sounds as though her off-stage antics are just as vitriolic.

Anyone who witnessed legal analyst Nancy Grace's combative performance at the recent Television Critics Association press tour in Los Angeles won’t be surprised by the behind-the-scenes reports coming from CNN Headline News’ new show, Nancy Grace. The diva act continues.

However, CNN may be inclined to take the bad with the good, because Grace is lifting the beleaguered channel in the ratings.

Just one week into the prime time show (which got off with a rocky start with a glitch-filled premiere), Grace has already had her make-up person reassigned, and laced into a production staffer so mercilessly that he quit the show. In a departure for the traditionally low-glitz CNN, Grace has commanded a room of her own for makeup. But it's not as if she wants privacy; the host calls her staff in for meetings while she's being spruced up.

As the show enters its second week, CNN staffers expect more tension. This is cable honey, skip the diva business, says one. It was an echo of reactions to Grace at the TCA gathering in January, when her grande-dame manner during Q&As with journalists raised eyebrows.

In FoxNews-like fashion she, along with Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin, have the "screaming meme's" down to a science. She also seems to have caught a whiff of her own armpits and is inhaling much too deeply.

Ooooh My Bad ...

... said Putin.

I don't know if "Pooty Poot" is confused, only pretending to be confused or if he is just messing with Dubya's mind. But this is too funny!

It was meant to be a heart-to-heart: just the two presidents and their translators, sitting alone inside the historic castle that overlooks the Slovak capital of Bratislava. Four years earlier, in another castle in Central Europe, George W. Bush looked Vladimir Putin in the eye and saw his trustworthy soul. But what he saw inside Putin last week was far less comforting. When Bush confronted his Russian counterpart about the freedom of the press in Russia, Putin shot back with an attack of his own: "We didn't criticize you when you fired those reporters at CBS."

It's not clear how well Putin understands the controversy that led to the dismissal of four CBS journalists over the discredited report on Bush's National Guard service. Yet it's all too clear how Putin sees the relationship between Bush and the American media—just like his own. Bush's aides have long feared that former KGB officers in Putin's inner circle are painting a twisted picture of U.S. policy. So Bush explained how he had no power to fire American journalists. It made little difference. When the two presidents emerged for their joint press conference, one Russian reporter repeated Putin's language about journalists getting fired. Bush (already hot after an earlier question about his spying on U.S. citizens) asked the reporter if he felt free. "They obviously planted the question," said one of Bush's senior aides.

Trying not to be my usual pessimistic self but I'd say that our relationship with Russia is heading towards the skids.

Coming Back Crazy

I know "crazy" isn't politically correct but one of my biggest concerns about the war is the condition of the troops when they come home. It is bad enough seeing the footage of maimed, limbless soldiers who smile for the cameras and tell reporters they "don't mind" not having legs or arms or full eyesight but there are going to be thousands coming back with wounds we can't see.

Jeremy Harrison sees the warning signs in the Iraq war veterans who walk through his office door every day — flashbacks, inability to relax or relate, restless nights and more.

He recognizes them as symptoms of combat stress because he's trained to, as a counselor at the small storefront Vet Center here run by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He recognizes them as well because he, too, has faced readjustment in the year since he returned from Iraq, where he served as a sergeant in an engineering company that helped capture Baghdad in 2003.

"Sometimes these sessions are helpful to me," Harrison says, taking a break from counseling some of the nation's newest combat veterans. "Because I deal with a lot of the same problems."

As the United States nears the two-year mark in its military presence in Iraq still fighting a violent insurgency, it is also coming to grips with one of the products of war at home: a new generation of veterans, some of them scarred in ways seen and unseen. While military hospitals mend the physical wounds, the VA is attempting to focus its massive health and benefits bureaucracy on the long-term needs of combat veterans after they leave military service. Some suffer from wounds of flesh and bone, others of emotions and psyche.

I hope our Veterans hospitals are making extra efforts to accommodate these people. I keep hearing stories of facilities and services being backed -logged and sick (mentally and otherwise) soldiers not getting the services they deserve. It was one thing for the Bush Administration to underestimate the number of soldiers needed to "win the peace" in Iraq. It is for that reason that so many of our soldiers are being injured or killed. But there is positively no excuse for not having an adequate number of healthcare workers and administrative employees to win the wellness of our soldiers when they come home.

Livin' The Vida Single

I guess Japanese men will have to send off for mail order brides from foreign lands. Perhaps I need to move to Japan where the majority of women think like me and people won't look at me cross-eyed when I tell them I see no advantage to marriage.

"A newspaper poll published Friday shows that 73% of single women in Japan say they are happy not being married. But 24% of single women said they did not think they could be happy without marrying eventually.

The poll, conducted by the Yomiuri Shimbun, also found that 67% of single male respondents were happy despite not being married. The newspaper conducted the street survey on Feb 12 and 13 by interviewing 3,000 people, of whom 1,853 gave valid answers. Fifty-two percent of the respondents were women."

Switcharoo

Whew! I thought I was going crazy! When I saw the references to Ann Coulter calling journalist Helen Thomas an "old Arab." I was wondering how I had missed that when I read her column. Now I see that the version I saw was the edited, syndicated version and not the one on her website.

"Writing in her February 23 column for Universal Press Syndicate, Coulter observed, among other things, that Guckert/Gannon was a better reporter than The New York Times' Maureen Dowd and his 'only offense is that he may be gay.' Nothing unexpected there, but Coulter also wrote: 'Press passes can't be that hard to come by if the White House allows that old Arab Helen Thomas to sit within yards of the president.'

But when the column got posted by Universal on its Web site, that line was changed to: 'Press passes can't be that hard to come by if the White House allows that dyspeptic, old Helen Thomas to sit within yards of the president.' "

I don't know what her problem is nor why, like other conservatives, she is justifying Guckert/Gannon's presence in the White House as though it is, at any level, acceptable. With the exceptions that "gay" being in direct conflict with the Bush Administration's platform and unacceptable in the military, that part of the scandal can be dismissed. For some odd reason I thought that prostitution was illegal and butt naked pictures on the internet could be construed as pornography. Additionally, non-journalists who work for non-news agencies with fake names aren't generally allowed into the White House, without a background check, with daily passes and biased access to the President.

At the very least, his presence is an insult to the real, hardworking, experienced journalists who are not allowed the same privilege.

An Ownership Society Where You Own Nothing

I guess people will have to be herded up on a poor farm before they realize what is going onIs This Your Ownership Society?:

"Would you invest in a company that cut your wages, laid off your cousin, polluted your neighborhood, cut your health insurance and raided your retirement fund? If so, you'll love President Bush's 'ownership society.'

At a time of rising support for socially responsible business, Bush's ownership society offers less social responsibility, less opportunity and accelerating dis-investment in the future.

Extensive studies demonstrate the economic benefits of corporate social and environmental responsibility, including improved financial performance, productivity, quality, innovation and reduced operating costs. 'For example,' says Business for Social Responsibility, 'many initiatives aimed at improving environmental performance -- such as reducing emissions of gases that contribute to global climate change...also lower costs.'

The ownership society backed by Bush's fiscal year 2006 budget is the worst of all worlds: fiscally, socially and environmentally irresponsible, morally bankrupt, and toxic to democracy.

Lincoln fought for 'government of the people, by the people, for the people.' Bush stands for government of the owners, by the owners, for the owners.

The richest 1 percent of households already owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined. Take-home pay as a share of the economy is at the lowest level since 1929.

Bush is reshaping the tax and budget system so workers pay a greater share of the costs and owners pay less. As wealth is increasingly sheltered from taxes, inequality will become more entrenched and hereditary in Bush's ownership society.

While Bush runs up the national debt to reckless levels, risking economic crisis, to give more tax breaks to millionaires, his budget cuts education, a pillar of individual and national progress, on the pretense of fiscal responsibility.

The unemployment rate is 30 percent higher than it was in 2000. About one out of six Americans has no health insurance, and half of all bankruptcies are illness-related. One out of eight Americans lives below the meager official poverty line -- and many more can't make ends meet above it.

Yet, Bush's budget slashes already inadequate small business assistance, workforce development, community economic development, public health and safety, Medicaid, housing assistance, public transit, food stamps, childcare and much more"

The Bush administration was good at selling himself as a man who can promote the ideals of family values and religion. With the release of the proposed budget, many are seeing that Bush may sell family values, but it really doesn't buy the average American anything tangible for their future. It's sad. For some people all you have to do is mention Jesus and you can sell them shit on a stick!

Yellow Journalism's Finest

I am no longer appalled or amazed by the antics right-wing propaganda machine commonly known as FOX News . What ethical reporter or editor would permit the changing of words in a direct quote to match the preferred lingo of a biased news organization?

"Since April 2002, FOX News has consistently doctored Associated Press articles featured on the FOX News website concerning terrorist attacks in the Middle East to conform to Bush administration terminology. Without any editorial notation disclosing that words in the AP articles have been changed, FOX News replaces the terms 'suicide bomber' and 'suicide bombing' with 'homicide bomber' and 'homicide bombing' to describe attackers who kill themselves and others with explosives. In at least one case, FOX News actually altered an AP quote from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) to fit this naming convention, and then revised it to restore the quote without noting either the original alteration or its correction.

The Associated Press noted in April 2002 that FOX News first began using the term 'homicide bombing' in its own reports immediately after Bush administration officials -- such as then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer -- adopted the term. While other news organizations continued to use the term 'suicide bomber,' the AP reported, 'Dennis Murray, executive producer of [FOX News'] daytime programming, said executives there had heard the phrase ['homicide bombing'] being used by administration officials in recent days and thought it was a good idea.'

But Media Matters for America has found that FOX has applied the 'homicide' terminology not only in its own original reports, but also in the AP reports that it publishes on its website. Readers are led to believe that the AP itself uses the 'homicide' terminology, when in fact it does not. According to a Media Matters search, the AP has used the terms 'homicide bomber' or 'homicide bombing' when referring to terrorist attacks in only one article, published on May 7, 2004. These terms have otherwise appeared in AP articles only in quotations."

Those guys are just skeevy!

Powell Speaks

I knew it would only be a matter of time before his diplomatic silence was broken. Of course, this is nothing new:

"Colin Powell, the former US secretary of state, has for the first time publicly criticised troops levels in Iraq and spoken of the rifts between himself and Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, that undermined his role as architect of American foreign policy.

Mr Powell, in his first interview since resigning last November, also told The Telegraph of his 'dismay' at the deterioration in relations between America and Europe and of his 'disappointment' with France.

While holding back from blaming Mr Rumsfeld by name for the problems that eventually persuaded him to resign, Mr Powell showed that much of the innuendo and leaks surrounding his volatile relationship with the defence secretary had been well-founded.

Admitting that Mr Rumsfeld's controversial plan to fight the war with limited troop numbers had been an outstanding success, Mr Powell said the 'nation building' that followed had been deeply flawed.

There had been 'enough troops for war but not for peace, for establishing order. My own preference would have been for more forces after the conflict.'"

To Be On God's Side

This Alternet interview with Rev. Jim Wallis really breaks down the differences in how people interpret their Christian beliefs. It comes down to believing that either God is on your side or that you are on God's side. The difference may seem subtle but it is also the reason why equally God loving people can be so divided in this nation.

[...]
Let me close by paraphrasing something Susan Jacoby brought up in an interview we did recently, a famous statement Abraham Lincoln made about the Civil War. He said, in essence, I can't say whether God is on our side, but my great concern is to be on the side of God. That seems to be emblematic of much of what we're discussing. President Bush says God is on his side. He has said he was selected by God to be president, that he was leading a Crusade, although he backtracked on that comment, and that God had chosen him to lead this war against Iraq, and that God is on his side. This is pretty definitive. As you say, perhaps he indeed believes that. Lincoln, on the other hand, said we must hope we are on the side of God, which is a very different emphasis.

Yes, you're right. These are the two ways of bringing God into public life. This is our American history. One is God on our side, and that leads to the worst things in politics. It leads to overconfidence and hubris – triumphalism – and often to bad foreign policy, often to wars, and in this case, now pre-emptive, unilateral war.

The other way about worrying – praying earnestly if we're on God's side – brings into politics the things that we're missing today, like humility and penitence and reflection, and even accountability.

Lincoln got it right. We don't claim God's blessing on our politics and policies. We don't claim that God is on our side. We worry, we pray, we just always examine ourselves to see if we are on God's side. And if Lincoln got it right, I think Martin Luther King did it best. With that Bible in one hand and the Constitution in the other hand, he really didn't pronounce, he persuaded. He didn't shut people out; he invited everybody in to a moral discourse on politics. And he said we can do better. We can do better than this by our democratic values, by our religious values.

We have to ask what kind of people do we want to be, what kind of nation do we want to have, what kind of world do you want to leave for our children. And when every major progressive social movement in our nation's history was fueled and driven in part by religion, by faith, by moral values, we have a very powerful, prophetic and progressive religious tradition in America and around the world.
[...]

Where There's Bush, There's War

Gotta love the friendly welcome the President gets overseas!

Thousands of Germans March to Protest Bush Visit

"Demonstrators pulled a float portraying a prisoner being beaten at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison through the German city of Mainz on Wednesday, part of a protest by several thousand people against visiting United States President George Bush.

The float featured a woman in military fatigues whipping a 'prisoner' in an orange jumpsuit -- a replication of abuse by US troops at the Baghdad prison. Also among the marchers were four people in brown cow costumes bearing a sign: 'We don't need you, cowboy.'

Police said about 5 000 people turned out for the rally and parade through the streets of Mainz. Riot police in body armour kept a close watch, with a helicopter hovering overhead and officers passing out leaflets asking people to express their views peacefully.

The route kept the protesters well away from the city's Baroque palace where Bush met German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder. But it did take them past the home of a supporter who opened a window and began tossing baked pretzels to the marchers as they passed, rock music blaring from the apartment.

Maximillian Weizel (16) showed up with 10 classmates after their high school cancelled classes because of Bush's visit.

'Bush has messed up,' he said, adding that he disagrees with 'Bush's list of regimes he wants to overthrow'.

The protesters carried placards reading: 'We don't want your kind of peace', 'Where Bush is, there's war', 'World's number 1 terrorist' and 'Wanted dead or alive -- George 'Dubya' Bush and his band of congressmen'.

Margret Koehler-Gutsch (68) held a sign that said: 'God bless America -- with reason.'

'The majority of Americans who voted Bush into office and talk about God should read the Ten Commandments,' she said. 'They should remember that the commandments say, 'Thou shalt not kill,' and that people should love their neighbours.'

'I cannot understand how someone can say they are acting in God's will and then wage war,' she added. 'It's perverse.'

The demonstration was organised by an association of about 50 anti-war, environmental and anti-globalisation groups that came together under the name Not Welcome Bush."

Kill Me, No Oil

We can call Chavez paranoid and crazy if we want to but if he turns up dead ...

"Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez said Sunday that he would stop oil exports to the United States if the U.S. government tries to assassinate him.

'If anything happens to me, forget about Venezuelan oil Mr. (George W.) Bush,' said Chavez during his weekly radio and television show.
Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro accused the United States last week of planning to assassinate Chavez.

'If I am assassinated, there is only one person responsible: the president of the United States. You must take action if this happens,' Chavez said to listeners of his show.

Relations with the United States, Venezuela's main oil buyer, have deteriorated in the past months due to Washington's criticism of weapons purchases by Venezuela.

Venezuela is the world's fifth oil exporter and is the fourth largest supplier of oil to the United States, shipping nearly 1.2 million barrels of crude to U.S. ports daily.

However, relations have been tense under Chavez, a strong critic of U.S. involvement in Iraq and free market deals backed by Washington.

Chavez has accused the U.S. government of being behind a 2002 coup attempt that it was slow to condemn. "

On Brother Malcolm

Well, I've certainly caused an isht storm by passing this around to many of my internet discussion lists. The funny part is that, minus the obvious disdain for Brother Malcolm, I basically agree with Stanley Crouch that, in recent years, Malcolm has been conjured up into a figure who is far larger in death than he ever was in life.

Truth about Malcolm X

Forty years ago today, Malcolm X was shot down in front of his family and an audience of followers at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. When he died, Malcolm X had been estranged from the Nation of Islam for about a year and had begun to call Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the cult, a liar, a fraud and a womanizer.

Those were mighty hot words to direct at the Nation of Islam, which was feared throughout the black community as a known gathering place for violent criminals of all sorts who had been converted in prison, the way Malcolm himself had. Before his ascent in the cult world of homemade Islam, Malcolm Little had been known as 'Big Red,' a street hustler with a big mouth, a cocaine habit and a willingness to get rowdy and wild if the occasion called for it.

Sent to prison for a series of burglaries, Malcolm turned to Islam, or a version of it, promoted as the 'black man's true religion' which held the secrets to liberation from white domination and black self-hatred. A convert, he began the liberation by replacing his 'slave name' with an Islamic name or an X.

Malcolm X appeared on the national scene in 1959, presented by the media as the face of what white racism had done to black people. He was a minister of hate who used fiery rhetoric to teach that the white man was a devil invented 6,000 years ago by a mad black scientist. White audiences were appalled or darkly amused by this cartoon version of Islam, but more than a few black Americans were influenced by the Nation of Islam and by its dominant mouthpiece - light-skinned, freckle-faced, red-haired Malcolm X, the voice of black rage incarnate.

Some Negroes left the Christian church, others changed their names. A number stopped eating pork and demanded beef barbecue, and a good many eventually stopped frying their hair and became more nationalistic and hostile to whites, in their own rhetoric and in the rhetoric they liked to hear.

Malcolm X proved how vulnerable Negroes were to hearing another Negro put some hard talk on the white man. The long heritage of silence, both in slavery and the redneck South, was so strong that speech became a much more important act than many realized. Martin Luther King Jr. recognized this, observing that many of those who went to hear Malcolm X were less impressed with his ideas than they were with the contemptuous way he spoke to white power.

Since his death, Malcolm X has been elevated from a heckler of the civil rights moment to a civil rights leader - which he never was - and many people now think that he was as important to his moment as King. He was not, and Malcolm X was well aware of this. But in our country, where liberal contempt for black people is boundless, we should not be surprised to see a minor figure lacquered with media 'respect' and thrown in the lap of the black community, where he is passed off as a great hero.

The truth is that, in my opinion, Malcolm X wasn't viewed as a civil rights leader back then. Like the Black Panthers, he reached people who didn't feel that Dr. King had done enough or that his efforts were addressing the right things ... that all that singing an marching wasn't going to get black people what they wanted in the long run (was he right or wrong?). The truth is that I don't recall Malcolm being as prominent as he is now until Spike Lee's movie "X" was released (and even then some choice negroes would see Malcolm X and think it was Malcolm "10" ... 'nuther topic). Most folks hadn't read his autobiography (and I never went to the theater to see the movie because I had read the book).

While I am glad that Malcolm X's legacy has been re-evaluated and that many of his ideas, particularly the ones after he completed the hajj are being remembered with such reverence, Malcolm X was a walking, talking, breathing example of introspection, growth and re-birth - more than once. He wasn't always the man he was when he was killed on February 21, 1965. That man was a new man. That man, like Martin King, had been to the mountain top. That man also wasn't around very long. So, I think that is what Stanley Crouch is saying in his seemingly hostile rememberance to Brother Malcolm. Malcolm's current popularity, in my view, is based on the Malcolm who was at the hour of his death and the Malcolm we believe he'd be if he'd lived. Post-mortem he is larger, stronger, more powerful and more revered that he was the day he died.

Expose The Deviants

At what point is someone going to take a stand and expose these "Christian" fundamentalists as the deviants they are? There has got to be an illness or pathology associated with the need to fixate on sexuality , in all its forms, so voraciously.

On its website the Traditional Values Coalition is warning parents about the cross-dressing and transgender themes contained in the hit DreamWorks feature, now on DVD.

'Shrek 2 is billed as harmless entertainment but contains subtle sexual messages,' says the coalition, which describes itself as a grassroots inter-denominational lobby with more than 43,000 member churches.

'Parents who are thinking about taking their children to see Shrek 2 may wish to consider the following.'

The article then proceeds to describe one of the characters, an 'evil' bartender (voiced by Larry King) who is a male-to-female transgender in transition and who expresses a sexual desire for Prince Charming.

In another identified scene, Shrek and Donkey need rescuing from a dungeon by Pinocchio and his nose, which is made to extend as an escape bridge by getting the wooden boy to lie about not wearing women's underwear."

I think it is time for a watch group to start watching these evangelicals who see sex in all things. That is a big red flag for something - something nasty. Somebody needs to start digging. I'll bet we'd find some of the seediest, most salacious things about the people who protest these cartoons the loudest. Anybody who doesn't have anything better to do than watch cartoons and conjure up homosexual innuendo has problems - BIG ONES!

Doing Things That Make For Peace

At least that is the intent of the World Council of Churches.

"The World Council of Churches has urged its 347 member denominations to give 'serious consideration' to pulling investments out of Israel in protest of what it sees as mistreatment of Palestinians.

In calling for church-sponsored 'economic pressure,' the WCC on Monday (Feb. 21) gave strong support for last year's controversial decision by the Presbyterian Church (USA) to seek 'phased selective divestment' from Israel.

'This (Presbyterian) action is commendable in both method and manner, uses criteria rooted in faith and calls members to do the things that make for peace,' the WCC's 150-member Central Committee said in its resolution.

The Geneva-based WCC is the major ecumenical voice for the world's mainline Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox churches. It does not include the Roman Catholic Church or most evangelical or Pentecostal churches. While the WCC statement is significant, it is not binding on member churches.

The WCC said its concern was focused on companies that assist Israel in demolishing Palestinian homes, constructing settlements and erecting a controversial 'dividing wall' within the Palestinian territories."

It's a little un-nerving to keep seeing the Roman Catholic Church lumped in with evangelicals and Pentacostals. But, that's right, I'm an ex-Catholic now!

He's Looking For A Soldier Cowboy

Beyonce is looking for a soldier. Bush is looking for a cowboy.

"Bush opened his discussions with a gesture of reconciliation toward disgruntled allies, hosting an elegant dinner for French President Jacques Chirac, the harshest critic of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

'I'm looking for a good cowboy,' Bush joshed when a reporter asked if relations had improved to the point where Chirac might receive an invitation to the president's Texas ranch. Chirac said U.S.-French relations have been excellent for 200 years and the war had not changed that. They dined on lobster risotto and filet of beef.

Despite the cordial meeting, Bush told Chirac the United States adamantly opposes Europe's plans to lift its 15-year arms embargo against China.

Hmmmm. We'll see how long this make up session lasts.

With Christian Friends Like These ...

I think that Dick Morris, former friend of Bill Clinton, is a total slimeball. I constantly see him on FoxNews and his only area of expertise is bashing Bill and Hillary Clinton. It is almost rather scary because he seems thoroughly obsessed. I realize that his friendship with The Clintons took a beating when Bill fired him. But, as a friend, he should have understood the climate and moved on like a big boy. Instead, it appears that he is going to spend the rest of his life trying to get them back. We all have spats with our friends but his behavior, after a decades long friendship, is traitorous and I flip the channel every time I see him on somebody's panel.

Now it seems that President Bush has his own traitor. Naturally, I was intrigued and hoping for something juicy when I heard that there were tapes of President Bush. But my glee immediately disappeared when I found out that a so-called friend had been secretly taping him. The man had been an evangelical minister at that. His excuse was lame because there is no excuse for this.

"'I didn't want them to become public,' said Doug Wead, 58, an author, former minister and one-time spiritual adviser to the American president.

'They were (a) personal record for me,' Wead, who recorded nine hours of his private conversations with Bush, told CNN television.

Wead taped the conversations between the summer of 1998 and 2000, while Bush

was the governor of Texas and a candidate for the US presidency.

Wead's just-released book, 'The Raising of a President,' draws on the recordings, which were made without Bush's knowledge.

In the tapes, Bush appears to strategize about the best way to finesse answers to potential campaign-trail questions about marijuana and cocaine.

'I wouldn't answer the marijuana question. You know why? Cause I don't want some little kid doing what I tried,' Bush is heard to tell Wead."

I am still a rabid Bush detractor but even foes need friends they can trust. Doug Wead was thinking about his own future and used his friendship with the Bush family to secretly secure fodder for what he thought would help him write a historic book. Again, I ask, what kind of Christian is this? What kind of friend is this?

Pissing Contest

Oh Jeeee-bus! Here we go with a war of words and threats! Bush is still harping on Iran. Now Iran is issuing "double dares" right back!

"Iran has begun publicly preparing for a possible U.S. attack, as tensions mount between the Bush administration and this country's hard-line leaders over Tehran's purported nuclear weapons program.

'Iran would respond within 15 minutes to any attack by the United States or any other country,' an Iranian official close to the conservative clerics who run the country's security and military apparatus said on condition of anonymity.

The Tehran government has announced efforts to bolster and mobilize recruits in its citizens' militia and is making plans to engage in the type of 'asymmetrical' warfare that has bogged down U.S. troops in neighboring Iraq, officials and analysts say.

Iran insists it needs nuclear technology to meet its burgeoning domestic energy requirements and bolster its scientific community. But the United States accuses it of using nuclear energy as a fig leaf for a weapons program. "

I'd be hard pressed to believe that either Iran or the United States(or Israel) is going to attack the other (but you never can tell). It would be disastrous for both sides and the entire region if this escalates any further. Bush is still spewing his edicts to Iran. They, in turn, are spewing taunts right back. It is really starting to get silly and seems more like a dick fight than anything else.

I Already Knew That

You Are 100% Psychic

You are so very psychic. But you already predicted that, didn't you? You have 'the gift' - and you use it daily to connect with others. You're very tapped into the world around you... Just make sure to use your powers for good!

Are You Psychic?

Eve And Eve

I've been missing Fresh Air on NPR quite a bit lately but I wish I hadn't missed this interview outlined by the blogger at preemptivekarma.com. I interlaced my comments in bold.

In an interview with NPR Fresh air host Terry Gross on February 9, author/VP spouse Lynne Cheney gave an unchallenged "both ends against the middle" analysis of lesbianism/female intimacy.

During the interview, Cheney is asked by Gross about the new Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings. Specifically, Gross queried Cheney about Spellings' quest to remove the Department of Education seal and all references of DOE funding from the animated children's show, "Postcards from Buster". Spellings' objection to Buster stems from an episode where on a trip to Vermont, Buster meets some children with lesbian parents.

Cheney responds that she believes parents want control over what their children see and hear, especially in terms of things having to do with sexuality. (The Buster episode in question contains no references to sex or sexuality in any way. The children have two women as parents. There is no reference to their sexuality).

Uh, HELLO! Does this mean you didn't "control" what little Miss Mary watched? After the Sponge Bob Square Pants fervor, I just couldn't bring myself to address the absurdity of the new Secretary of Education jumping on a bunny cartoon as her first order of business. When do cartoon bunnies talk about sexuality? I ended up seeing a brief clip of the "controversial" PBS program and all Buster the Bunny did was go visit two ladies who make frickin' syrup. Without the heads up from the homo police, I probably wouldn't have picked up that the women were "partners." I know for a fact, that if I'd seen it as a kid, I'd just now be figuring it out!

Later in the interview, Gross asks Cheney about her book Sisters,which contains the following passages:

"'To my Helena, my dearest lover...Thine always, A.T.' Helen and Amy Travers? No, it couldn't be, simply couldn't."

"Helen, my joy and my beloved...Let us go away together, away from the anger and the imperatives of men...There will be only the two of us...In the evenings I shall read to you while you work your cross-stitch in the firelight. And then we shall go to bed, our bed, my dearest girl..."

"Society as a whole might conclude that women were sexless creatures, but she knew otherwise. She also knew that claiming a relationship was not erotic, thinking it could not be would not keep it from being so. There could be no tearing off of one's clothes and lustily hopping into bed, not if one would preserve the love-religion. But the loving words and the warm embrace were permitted, and the kiss before sleep, the arousal gentle enough so that its nature would not have to be acknowledged."

"The women who embraced in the wagon were Adam and Eve...-- no, Eve and Eve, loving one another as they would not be able to once they ate of the fruit and knew themselves as they truly were. She felt curiously moved...she saw that the women in the cart had a passionate, loving intimacy forever closed to her."

Whaa? So, according to evangelicals, God didn't make Adam and Steve but in Lynne Cheney's book he made Eve and Eve?

Cheney tells Gross that these passages aren't about lesbianism and that those who believe so are guilty of "presentism": assigning the notions of today to pioneer women as some, Cheney says, are trying to now do with Lincoln.

Cheney further goes on to claim that a loving relationship between two women isn't necessarily sexual. Indeed. But here's the problem: she just told Gross a few minutes earlier that two women in the Buster episode are sexual, even though there are absolutely no sexual references.

Uh, right! Sorry, but I am in a sorority and ... we no say tings like that to each other ... Blood sisters don't either

Oddly, today I made the stupid mistake of posting comments (as Qusan) on a conservative sistah's blog (no not LaShawne Barber ... that chick is scary ... I avoid her blog the way I avoid FoxNews) who posted about Maya Keyes' coming out earlier this week. The stupidity was in knowing that a good number of her readers are bible thumping zealots who only know the language of fear and sin and that any chance for intelligent discussion is lost because the debate is based on two different premises: sinful choice vs. genetics.

I said during the election season that I thought Lynne Cheney was in denial about Mary (even though she was at the ignauguration with the entire family along with her partner) and even feels twinges of guilt that she, somehow, made Mary that way. It's sad.

Brain Gender

Your Brain is 60.00% Female, 40.00% Male

Your brain is a healthy mix of male and female You are both sensitive and savvy Rational and reasonable, you tend to keep level headed But you also tend to wear your heart on your sleeve

What Gender Is Your Brain?

Explain The Difference

Let's see, we are shaking in our boots from the fear that the Shiite majority will somehow form an Iranian style theocratic state run by mullahs and clerics. Yet, the likes of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are persistent advisors who are constantly making demands and holding Bush's feet to the fire over campaign promises. Islamic Rule? Evangelical Rule? What is the difference?

"Evangelist Pat Robertson indicated Tuesday that if Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist expects backing of religious conservatives for a possible 2008 presidential bid, he had better get President Bush's judicial nominees confirmed by the Senate, or at least voted on.

'It is the ultimate test,' Robertson said at the National Press Club. 'He cannot be a leader and allow Democrats to do what they did in the last session.'

The Democrats' ability to stall White House picks for the federal bench was one of the most contentious issues of Bush's first term.

With a Senate comprised of 55 Republicans, 44 Democrats and a Democrat-leaning independent, Democrats still have the 40 votes necessary to uphold a filibuster and block a vote on a nominee by the full Senate. In the case of a vote by the full Senate on a nominee, a simple majority would be needed for confirmation.

'To the evangelicals, that is the number one consideration,' Robertson said, saying 'unelected judges' were largely responsible for laws on abortion, gay marriage and Internet pornography.

Bush has sent judicial nominations back to the Senate that were blocked in his first term, assuring another fierce fight. Conservative Christians are a core group of the Republican voter base, so their backing can be crucial in a presidential campaign.

Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition and head of the Christian Broadcasting Network, said he's also worried about Middle East peace efforts.

'I do not believe the state of Israel will be secure if it has a Palestinian state in its heart,' Robertson said. A Palestinian state, he said, would have the ability to import weapons to groups in the country that have not agreed to the peace process."

And no Palestinian state either? Isn't that part of what used to be the "road map to peace in the Middle East?" Dubya needs to jump out with is "gotcha guys!" now because these kooks are out of control.

The Stepford Reporters

Now that the effects of the poppies have worn off, everyone has an opinion on the Gannon/Guckert story. Here is Marueen Dowd's, of the New York Times, take:

I'm still mystified by this story. I was rejected for a White House press pass at the start of the Bush administration, but someone with an alias, a tax evasion problem and Internet pictures where he posed like the "Barberini Faun" is credentialed to cover a White House that won a second term by mining homophobia and preaching family values?

At first when I tried to complain about not getting my pass renewed, even though I'd been covering presidents and first ladies since 1986, no one called me back. Finally, when McClellan replaced Ari Fleischer, he said he'd renew the pass - after a new Secret Service background check that would last several months.

In an era when security concerns are paramount, what kind of Secret Service background check did James Guckert get so he could saunter into the West Wing every day under an assumed name while he was doing full-frontal advertising for stud services for $1,200 a weekend? He used a driver's license that said James Guckert to get into the White House and, once inside, switched to his alter ego, asking questions as Jeff Gannon.

McClellan shrugged this off to Editor & Publisher, oddly noting, "People use aliases all the time in life, from journalists to actors."

I know the FBI computers don't work, but this is ridiculous. After getting gobsmacked by the louche sagas of Guckert and Bernard Kerik, the White House vetters should consider adding someone with some blogging experience.

Does the Bush team love everything military so much that even a military-stud Web site is a recommendation?

Or maybe Gannon/Guckert's willingness to shill free for the White House, even on gay issues, was endearing. One of his stories mocked John Kerry's "pro-homosexual platform" with the headline "Kerry could become first gay president."

With the Bushies, if you're their friend, anything goes. If you're their critic, nothing goes. They're waging a jihad against journalists - buying them off so they'll promote administration programs, trying to put them in jail for doing their jobs, and replacing them with ringers.

Jokes and butt naked photos aside, this really is a tragic shame. I never used my Journalism degree as a reporter but always respected the quality of training that I received and still have a lot of respect for old schoolers who understand the responsibility and ethics required to be a true member of the press. Those days seem to be over with this administration. Journalists with credentials and integrity are being mined out and replaced by Stepford robots.

Wouldn't Call It A Double-Cross?

Bwaaaaah!

I'm just clueless as to how people, particularly farmers, cannot recognize a wolf in sheep's clothing when they see one. Now all of these farmers, who believed Bush's fraudulent family values rhetoric see that he is willing to snatch the bread right out of their mouths.

Some farmers from battleground election states who campaigned and voted for President Bush say they are not happy about proposed cuts in federal farm subsidies and other agriculture programs.

"We wouldn't call it a double-cross or anything like that, but I don't think this is going to sit real well," said Harold Bateson, whose family's grain farm covers 2,300 acres in northwest Ohio near Bowling Green.

The president has proposed an across-the-board cut of 5 percent for all farm payments and a reduction in the cap on individual subsidies to $250,000. The cuts would total $2.5 billion — more than reductions in health, housing and law enforcement.

Some farmers say they understand the need to balance the budget, but believe they have been burdened with an unfair portion of the budget reductions compared to other programs.

"It's kind of a slap in the face," said Neil Clark, an Ohio grain farmer who worked to gather support among farmers for Bush's campaign in Hancock County.

In Ohio and other key election states, conservatives in small towns and farm communities went to the polls for Bush. In rural Ohio, the vote helped negate Democrat John Kerry's advantage in the state's big cities.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns has defended the cuts in government subsidies, saying most of the money was going to only a handful of large agribusiness corporations, rather than small family farms.

And not all farmers are angry with Bush over the proposed cuts.

Richard Clemens, a cattle farmer from Marshall, Mo., who volunteered with the Bush campaign, agreed that farm families are not getting big government payouts anyway.

Despite the proposal, Clemens said he does not expect the president to suffer much political backlash in the farm community.

"Sometimes these huge farm payments have given agriculture more of a black eye than they've helped us," he said.

Well, if the reductions don't really impact them anyway ...

Ask Me No More Questions ..

I'll Tell You No More Lies

Has Donald Rumsfeld flipped his lid? The Washington Post's rather extraordinary account of Rumsfeld's day on Capitol Hill might leave you asking.

Rumsfeld has always been a little grumpy and a lot brusque, but he seemed to take things to a whole new level Wednesday during hearings in the House and the Senate. When Robert Byrd asked Rumsfeld why the White House has put certain long-term military budget items into an emergency budget request rather than in the president's new budget proposal, the Secretary of Defense said that the issue was 'really beyond my pay grade.' When Patrick Leahy pointed out that there aren't many folks who outrank the Secretary of Defense -- militarily speaking, there's exactly one -- Rumsfeld snapped back: 'Senator, I thought Congress was Article I of the Constitution.'

And it didn't stop there. The Post's Dana Milbank lays it out in rapid-fire style:

'Asked about the number of insurgents in Iraq, Rumsfeld replied: 'I am not going to give you a number.'

'Did he care to voice an opinion on efforts by U.S. pilots to seek damages from their imprisonment in Iraq? 'I don't.'

'Could he comment on what basing agreements he might seek in Iraq? 'I can't.'

'How about the widely publicized cuts to programs for veterans? 'I'm not familiar with the cuts you're referring to.'

'How long will the war last? 'There's never been a war that was predictable as to length, casualty or cost in the history of mankind.''

Members of the House Armed Services Committee had more questions for the Secretary of Defense but didn't get to ask them. Midway through Wednesday's hearing, Rumsfeld announced abruptly that he needed to go to lunch."

These people have yet to answer to anybody. What else is new?

Full Frontal View. Full Frontal Access

Okay. I haven't posted on this story because the information was coming out so fast it was making my head spin. Between americablog, dailykos and atrios, I couldn't keep up with all the stuff they were digging up on this guy. The White House has been "playing stupid" as usual and acting as though this is no big deal - the same way it was no big deal that there were no WMD's. Most of the mainstream news (and most Dems) have been handling this with kid gloves - at least the salacious part about the guy being a gay, male, prostitute marine - but this thing is emerging as a story that won't die. Most outlets have at least touched on it but the key bloggers keep digging, two Congressmen have called for investigations and even Comedy Central and Court TV have featured it on their programs.

"James Guckert's mysterious career as a White House correspondent for Talon News just took another strange twist. And once again, the newest revelation raises the central question: Who broke the rules on Guckert's behalf to give him access to the White House? Despite administration claims that Guckert simply followed established protocol in order to routinely slip inside the White House briefing room, it now appears clear that Guckert, who just months before his 2003 debut as a cub reporter was offering himself up online as a $200 an hour male escort, benefited from extraordinarily preferential treatment, likely granted by someone inside the White House press office.

Thanks to the continued digging by online sleuths, there's now documented evidence that Guckert attended White House briefings as early as February 2003. Guckert, using his alias 'Jeff Gannon,' once boasted online about asking then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer a question at the Feb. 28, 2003, briefing. The date is significant because in order to receive a White House press pass, Guckert would have needed to prove that he worked for a news organization that, in the words of White House press secretary Scott McClellan, 'published regularly,' in itself an extraordinarily low threshold. Critics have charged that while Talon News may publish regularly, it boasts a nearly all-volunteer news team that includes not a single person with actual journalism experience. (The team does, though, have quite a bit of experience working on Republican campaigns.) In other words, the outfit is not legitimate or independent, two criteria often used in Washington to receive press credentials.

But what's significant about the February 2003 date is that Talon did not even exist then. The organization was created in late March 2003, and began publishing online in early April 2003. Gannon, a jack of all trades who spent time in the military as well as working at an auto repair shop (not to mention escorting), has already stated publicly that Talon News was his first job in journalism. That means he wasn't working for any other news outlet in February 2003 when he was spotted by C-Span cameras inside the White House briefing room. And that means Guckert was ushered into the White House press room in February 2003 for a briefing despite the fact he was not a journalist."

I realize that everyone doesn't want to touch the sexual details but, heck, for a President who got elected partly because of his stance on gays and purported family values, I think it is a big deal that some random (until we find out what this is really about), gay man - whose full frontal view pictures are posted on male escort sites - was given carte blanche to press briefings and was hand picked to ask GOP-friendly questions. Just as sure as Monica was doing Bill, Jim/Jeff Gannon/Guckert was doing something or somebody to have daily access to the White House. This inquiring mind wants to know!

A Consumer Of Intelligence?

I was wondering what possible experience an Ambassador and diplomat could have that would make him qualified to be the newly established Director the National Intelligence Agency. But I see now. He's an experienced consumer of intelligence ... a consumer folks!

Bush picks Iraq envoy to be new spy chief: printer friendly version: "At 65, Negroponte, whose first foreign posting was in Vietnam, has spent 41 of the past 45 years in government service, serving in senior posts at both the State Department - as ambassador to the United Nations, Mexico, the Philippines and Honduras - and at the White House, where he was deputy national security adviser under President Ronald Reagan.

'I trust his judgment and I look forward to working with him,' Bush said of Negroponte, adding that his service since last June had provided the ambassador with 'an incalculable advantage for an intelligence chief: an unvarnished and up-close look at a deadly enemy.'

Bush said Negroponte's most important qualifications included not only his long experience as a consumer of intelligence but his savvy as someone who 'understands the power centers of Washington.' The latter is an attribute that many intelligence officials say may prove particularly important in a job whose most immediate priorities may include arbitrating disputes between the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. "

Now, months ago (when I still had that nightmare of a commute to Monterey everyday), when Negroponte was selected to be the Ambassador To Iraq, I listened to an interesting segment on Democracy Now tenture as Ambassador to Honduras.

[...] President Bush announced he was appointing John Negroponte to head up the U.S. embassy in Iraq. Perhaps the two events are just a coincidence, or maybe the Hondurans know something most of the world hasn't been told. And that is the record of John Negroponte as U.S. ambassador to Honduras during the 1980s.

Negroponte currently serves as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. But it is his reputation as ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985 that earned him a reputation for supporting widespread human rights abuses and campaigns of terror. As ambassador to Honduras, Negroponte played a key role in coordinating US aid to the Contra death squads in Nicaragua and shoring up a CIA-backed death squad in Honduras. During his term as ambassador there, diplomats alleged that the embassy's annual human rights reports made Honduras sound more like Norway than Argentina.

According to a four-part series in the Baltimore Sun, in 1982 alone the Honduran press ran 318 stories of murders and kidnappings by the Honduran military. In a 1995 series, Sun reporters Gary Cohn and Ginger Thompson detailed the activities of a secret CIA-trained Honduran army unit, Battalion 3-16, that used "shock and suffocation devices in interrogations. Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves." In 1994, Honduras's National Commission for the Protection of Human Rights reported that it was officially admitted that 179 civilians were still missing.

Former official Rick Chidester, who served under Negroponte, says he was ordered to remove all mention of torture and executions from the draft of his 1982 report on the human rights situation in Honduras. During Negroponte's tenure, US military aid to Honduras skyrocketed from $3.9 million to over $77 million. Much of this went to ensure the Honduran army's loyalty in the battle against popular movements throughout Central America.

In the hearings on Negroponte's appointment to his current post as UN ambassador, he was questioned by Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff members on whether he had acquiesced to human rights abuses by death squads funded and partly trained by the Central Intelligence Agency. Negroponte testified that he did not believe the abuses were part of a deliberate Honduran government policy. "To this day," he said, "I do not believe that death squads were operating in Honduras."
[...]

While it went virtually uncontested, it seems that Sister Laetitia Bordes, a Catholic nun with the society of Helpers, a Catholic community of woman, was none too thrilled about his appointment:

SISTER LAETITIA BORDES: I'm filled with sadness. I'm filled with fear. I fear that the people of Iraq, because I feel that John Negroponte certainly is not concerned about the democracy of Iraq. I think that John Negroponte is concerned about his reputation. He is an expert in counter insurgency tactics. We see that in his background. And John Negroponte will stop at nothing. At nothing.

So now, the death squad diplomat, will be a key advisor to the President while the new director of the CIA, Porter Goss, will be his subordinate. Wow! I wonder what he did, in less than a year in Iraq, to merit daily access to the Commander in Chief.?

Double Duh and WTF!

Here we go again! Once more, this clown is casually and matter of factly mentioning that he has no clue and has no way to find one.

"U.S. intelligence agencies have failed to provide reliable estimates of the size of Iraq's insurgency, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says.

Rumsfeld, during a hearing of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee on Wednesday, declined to publicly answer lawmakers who asked him the numerical strength of the insurgency fighting the roughly 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.
'The intelligence community looks at that. The CIA does, DIA (Defence Intelligence Agency) does, others do. And they have differing assessments,' Rumsfeld said.

'My job in the government is not to be the principal intelligence officer and try to rationalize differences between Iraqis, the CIA and the DIA. I see these reports. Frankly, I don't have a lot of confidence in any of them, on that number,' Rumsfeld said."

And WHY, oh why, is someone in the Bush administration always telling us what their job is and what it is not? Who asked for a job description? Who cares? Americans want the problems solved - not a run down of who is supposed to do it!

Who Has The Most To Gain?

After getting a hat tip on this theory from comments on the PBA site, I wandered to the source and got a different take on what happened in Lebanon on Monday.

Stepping back and considering the simple question "Who benefits?" allows us to throw light on the bombing on Monday in Beirut.

Looking at the geo-political situation, we see the United States and Israel working to implement their ongoing strategy to destroy the Arab world. For Israel, growing confusion and destruction means an opportunity to establish the mythical "Greater Israel" which, if realised, will stretch from the Mediterranean through Mesopotamia. Israel has already invaded and occupied portions of Lebanon. It has attacked positions in Syria under the guise of "fighting terrorism". Things are moving along nicely it seems.

France has been a strong opponent of the US agenda in Iraq and has been working to find a negotiated settlement over the issue of Iranian nuclear development. At the same time, the US is attempting to paint Syria as a "terrorist" state. By killing Hariri, one of Jacques Chirac's good friends, and pinning the blame on Syria, another wedge is driven between those who oppose the US presence in Iraq. It might also increase division between France and Russia, two of the key members of the anti-US imperialist coalition that also includes China.

As we see below in another article, Russia is going ahead with the sale of missiles to Syria that would be able to shoot down the Israeli fighters that now bomb Syria with impunity. Given that Israel has been waging a propaganda campaign in the Western media against the Russo-Syrian missile deal, the bombing in Beirut and the resulting public defaming of Syria could not have come at a better time for Sharon and his cohorts. "Who benefits?"

The bombing and assassination also threaten to throw Lebanon back into the chaos it suffered in the 1970's and 80's. That chaos gave Israel an excuse to invade and occupy southern Lebanon. Would the excuse work a second time?

Israel is well-known for its false-flag operations. Why should we think that this operation was any different?

The more I think about it, the more I agree. It just makes more sense for Israel to have had a hand in it than for Syria - especially now that there is hope for a bit of peace with the Palestinians.

But would the Syrians be rash enough to risk the international condemnation—or worse—that would follow if they were found to be behind the assassination? Already, the United Nations Security Council has passed Resolution 1559, demanding that Syria take its troops out of Lebanon. On Tuesday the Council ordered the UN's secretary-general, Kofi Annan, to investigate Mr Hariri's murder. A "shocked and angered" President George Bush has recalled America's ambassador to Syria and is pressing other Security Council members to take action against whoever was behind the assassination.

So far, Mr Bush has stopped short of directly accusing Syria. Nevertheless, America is likely to turn up the pressure on what it considers a destabilising rogue state in the Middle East. Some believe that increased regional tension, rather than internal Lebanese score-settling of whatever kind, was the goal of the attack. Silvan Shalom, Israel’s foreign minister, said the bombing “proves that there are organisations and countries, such as Syria and Lebanon, striving to undermine the stability in the region and prevent democratisation in the Arab world."

The Arab media has already accused Israel's Mossad and presents an interesting case from their perspective:

Israel and the U.S. seek to sever the spiritual and physical contacts between Syria and Lebanon in order to isolate Syria in the Middle East and check its political sway in the region.

Neither the Lebanese government nor the majority of its citizens want Syrian troops to quit their country.

However, if Syrian forces withdraw from Lebanese territory, it would surely pave the way for the political and military machinations of the United States and Israel.

The Lebanese and Syrian nations, due to their historical, ideological, and ethnic affinities, are in fact one nation in two separate lands. The regional and trans-regional powers must understand this and must realize that the two nations cannot be separated spiritually. Now, the question is: Who benefited from the assassination of Hariri, a man who played a constructive role in the reestablishment of security in Lebanon?

All the evidence indicates that the Israeli intelligence service Mossad killed Hariri, since it had previously plotted to assassinate important Lebanese politicians.

I just don't think it is a coincidence that no sooner than we have "elections" in Iraq and a ceasefire between the Israelis and the Palestinians, we start threat rhetoric with Iran and Syria (yet want to be diplomatic with N. Korea who has nuclear weapons). Our mission for oil can only be disguised by finding ways to justify attacking and invading these resource rich countries. But, fortunately - and maybe unfortunately too - I don't think that the rest of the world will stand by and allow much more of this. We may get more than we bargained for from places we never expected it from.

Iran And Syria United

So, I guess we've removed Iraq and added Syria to the "axis of evil" triangle. Not only is Iran developing their own nuclear program, now they have aligned with Syria to help them protect themselves against us.

"'We are ready to help Syria on all grounds to confront threats,' Iranian Vice-President Mohammad Reza Aref said after meeting Syrian PM Naji al-Otari.

Washington has accused Tehran of seeking nuclear weapons and has withdrawn its envoy to Damascus.

US tensions with Syria have soared since Monday's killing of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri in a bombing.

To point to Syria in a terrorist act that aims at destabilising both Syria and Lebanon is truly like blaming the US for 9/11. Many Lebanese blame the car bombing in Beirut on Syria, but the Syrian government has denied it was responsible for the blast.

The US has recalled its ambassador to Syria in protest at the attack, although it has not directly accused Damascus of responsibility."

If that isn't enough, Russia also plans to sell missiles to Syria.

Russia is negotiating the sale of advanced antiaircraft missiles to Syria, The Associated Press reported from Moscow on Wednesday. It said the Interfax-Military News Agency had quoted an unidentified senior official at the Russian Defense Ministry as saying that talks were under way on the sale of Strelets air defense missile systems.

The report did not say how many missiles would be sold to Syria or contain any other details of the deal. The Strelets system is a vehicle-mounted launcher for Igla-type missiles. Israel and the United States have been angered by the prospect of Russia selling air defense missiles to Damascus, saying they could fall into the hands of terrorists.

The Defense Ministry official was quoted by Interfax as saying that Igla missiles from the Strelets system couldn't be used separately as shoulder-fired weapons, a statement apparently intended to assuage concerns that they could be used by terrorists.

So, basically, everyone is arming up, gearing up and - in essence - taking sides. I guess our brief alliance with Russia may be drifting into the twighlight too.

Good job President Bush. The stage is set for World War III.

It's In His Kiss

That kiss action was just odd! But I guess when you've been kissing this administration's behind regarding the invasion of Iraq and singing the praises of Condoleezza Rice - in clear opposition to the rest of your party - during the confirmation hearings, a the peck on the cheek is just the first of many rewards for loyalty to "the family."

"... in Washington, the buzz continues about 'The Kiss.' No, not Gustav Klimt's famous painting. It's the big fat one an exuberant President Bush planted on Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman's right cheek as he waded through the Capitol crowd after the State of the Union a couple of weeks ago.

The Connecticut Democrat said he didn't mind it and thought Bush was thanking him for his support of the administration's foreign policy. Or maybe it was for Lieberman's not dismissing outright Bush's Social Security proposal.

Or maybe it was something else. There's been K Street chatter, our colleague Jeffrey H. Birnbaum tells us, that Lieberman could be on an administration list to replace Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in the next year or so.

That would be convenient for Lieberman, whose term is up in 2006, and could give Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell (R) an opportunity to appoint a Republican to the seat for at least a few months before the election, inching the GOP closer to a filibuster-proof Senate.
Or maybe it's just love?"

I will forever be grateful that the Gore/Lieberman ticket didn't win in 2000 afterall. And to think, my lack of enthusiasm about Gore was reversed when he selected Lieberman as his running mate (I thought it was time). He's turning out to be a Likudian like the rest of those neo-cons. Ugh! He's a bigger sell-out than crazy Zell Miller.

That Girl?

Ignoring the "mammy/house nigger" type rhetoric that even Condi's own dish out here, I'm kinda pissed that President Mugabe called the most powerful black woman in the world "that girl." After some French diplomat made some comment about her trip to Europe being "operation seduction", I'm wondering how much respect the first black woman to hold the position of Secretary of State of the United States is going to be able to garner. I wasn't paying enough attention when Madeline Albright served in that capacity so perhaps I missed what I consider to be sexist remarks during her tenure. Colin Powell didn't seem to have any problems as a black man either. Unfortunately, I think that Ms. Rice is going to catch double heat for being a black woman. Apparently, you can be one (a woman) or the other (black) but not both:

"President Robert Mugabe on Friday sharply criticised US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, saying she was a 'slave' to white masters in Washington who had branded Zimbabwe an outpost of tyranny.

Launching the election campaign of his ruling party, Mugabe referred to Rice as 'that girl born out of the slave ancestry, who should know from the history of slavery in America, from the president situation of blacks in America that the white man is not a friend'.

'The white man is the slave master to her,' said Mugabe in a two-hour speech launching the campaign of his Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) party for the March 31 parliamentary elections."

Just a reminder. I don't agree with Condoleezza Rice nor do I appreciate that she is a loyal guardian of Geroge W. Bush and his doctrine. But, I think she is brilliant enough to have concluded that she agrees with him and the neo-con's mis-guided foreign policy on her own. She's no slave. She's a co-conspiritor, collaborator and partner and she is glad about it.
link from afronetizen.com

Why Can't We Call A Spade A Spade?

It is painfully obvious to everyone except Bush's red state sheeple that the primary reason for invading Iraq was the oil. I just don't understand why they need to lie about it when there is evidence, in plain sight, that verifies their true motives.

The Earlier Cheney on Our Soldiers

In August 1992, Dick Cheney, then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney under a very different President Bush, was asked to explain why US tanks did not roll into Baghdad and depose Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War. Cheney said:

'I don't think you could have done that without significant casualties... And the question in my mind is how many additional casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not that damned many... And we're not going to get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq.'

'Where the Prize Ultimately Lies'

Later, then-CEO Dick Cheney of Halliburton found himself focusing on different priorities. In the fall of 1999 he complained:

'Oil companies are expected to keep developing enough oil to offset oil depletion and also to meet new demand...So where is this oil going to come from? Governments and national oil companies are obviously in control of 90 percent of the assets... The Middle East with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost is still where the prize ultimately lies.'

What had changed in the seven years between Cheney's two statements?

• The US kept importing more and more oil to meet its energy needs.
  
• Energy shortages drove home the need to ensure/increase energy supply.
  
• Oil specialists concluded that 'peak oil' production was but a decade away, while demand would continue to zoom skyward.
  
• The men now running US policy on the Middle East appealed to President Clinton in January 1998 to overthrow Saddam Hussein or 'a significant portion of the world's supply of oil will be put at hazard.'
  
• In October 1998 Congress passed and Clinton signed a bill declaring it the sense of Congress that 'it should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein.'
  
• International sanctions left a debilitated Iraq with greatly weakened armed forces headed by an 'evil dictator.'
  

Shortly after George W. Bush entered the White House in January 2001, Vice President Cheney's energy task force dragged out the maps of Iraq's oil fields. (We now have some of the relevant documents, courtesy of a bitterly contested Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. But the courts have upheld the White House decision to keep the task force proceedings, and even the names of its members, secret.)

To be fair, taking over Middle East oil fields was not a new idea. In 1975 Henry Kissinger, using a pseudonym, wrote an article for Harpers titled 'Seizing Arab Oil,' outlining plans to do just that, preventing Arab countries from having absolute control over the modern world's most vital commodity. But in those days there was a USSR to put the brakes on such adventurism."

It's about the oil. It has always been about the oil. It will always be about the oil.

Creationists Still Fighting Evolution

The theory of evolution is just that - a theory. Scientifically, it could be close to the mystery of how we got here - or it could be way off base. A fundamentalist once said to me that he didn't believe we came from monkeys.

"Ever since they won the battle but lost the war in the Scopes trial of 1925, conservative Christians have waged an intensive war against evolution. Despite repeated court decisions insisting that evolution must be taught in high school classes, the conservative Christians have managed to keep one form or another of 'creationism' alive and well as an alternative in the minds of many Americans -- including 62 percent of African-American Christians, 52 percent of mainline Protestants, 42 percent of Catholics and 26 percent of Jews. (Seventy-eight percent of Conservative Christians reject evolution).

Evolution, they insist, is only a theory and one that has a lot of holes in it. Moreover, it is godless, indeed it is part of an assault by a liberal elite on the beliefs of a god-fearing people. Their assaults are especially effective in smaller towns and rural areas where teachers and school administrators are subject to strong pressure from these God-fearing people. For their own protection, many teachers, according to a recent article in the New York Times, skip over the chapters on evolution in the biology textbook. In Cobb County Georgia, they forced the schools to put a sticker on the cover of a textbook asserting that 'intelligent design' was an equally valid theory.

'Theory' is not a good word because it implies doubt. The Copernican theory about the motion of planets around the sun and the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe are models which in their broad outline are simply true. However much remains to be explained within the model, they fit the known data so well that they are not in danger of rejection -- especially when there is no alternative theory that even begins to fit the data. So too is evolution a model that fits the data, even if there is still much exploration to be done within the model. It does not follow that there is any other model available that fits the data.

'Intelligent design' as an alternative to evolution implies that if one believes in God, the evolutionary 'theory' is unacceptable no matter how powerful its explanatory power. In fact, belief in 'intelligent design' is completely compatible with scientific acceptance of evolution. The design is inside the model, not something intruded from the outside. It is not up to science to validate such design. It merely reports what it sees and leaves to the religion and the religious believer to judge whether it was a wise God who launched the process, just as She launched the 'Big Bang' with the polymers and parameters for human life on this planet built-in. Science can't say whether God did that or not -- and moreover shouldn't.

Bible Christians cannot accept such a perspective, because they must necessarily believe the Book of Genesis, word for word inspired by God, is an accurate and literal book of science. It is clear to the rest of us that Genesis teaches that God created and established order in the cosmos, religious truths indeed that go beyond the realm of science but not against it."

Well, I don't believe that women came from some man's rib!

Why Do We Hate Their Freedom?

But we cannot figure out why we are so despised in the Arab world? All this hoopla about freedom and elections and we are trying to undermine the results.

"To head off this threat of a Shi'ite clergy-driven religious movement, the US has, according to Asia Times Online investigations, resolved to arm small militias backed by US troops and entrenched in the population to 'nip the evil in the bud'.

Asia Times Online has learned that in a highly clandestine operation, the US has procured Pakistan-manufactured weapons, including rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, ammunition, rockets and other light weaponry. Consignments have been loaded in bulk onto US military cargo aircraft at Chaklala airbase in the past few weeks. The aircraft arrived from and departed for Iraq.

The US-armed and supported militias in the south will comprise former members of the Ba'ath Party, which has already split into three factions, only one of which is pro-Saddam Hussein. They would be expected to receive assistance from pro-US interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's Iraqi National Accord."

Is there no shame at all?

(link via stevegilliard.blogspot.com)

Moi? The Coquette?

Your Seduction Style: The Coquette

You are a pro at playing the age old game of hard to get. Your flirting style runs hot and cold, giving just enough to keep them chasing you. Independent and self-sufficient, you don't need any one person to make you compelte. And that independence is exactly what makes people pursue you.

What Is Your Seduction Style?

My Inner Valentine

discover your inner candy heart @ quiz me

Buddy Can You Spare A Job?

I don't know which of these power seekers (who hadn't been in Iraq for DECADES prior to the war) is worse - Chalabi or Allawi. Last I heard, Chalabi was in Iran scheming and sucking up. From the election it looks like he is booty out with his Shia brethren so now Allawi is yanking on the coat tails of the Kurds looking for an "alliance."

Beaten by a wide margin by the Shiite party, supported by Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, Iyad Allawi tries to build a coalition. From our special envoy in Erbil (Iraqi Kurdistan).

After meeting with the Shiite and Sunni parties in Baghdad, Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi met Massoud Barzani, head of the Democratic Party of Kurdistan (DPK), on Thursday, February 10, in Erbil. In their statements, the two men insisted on their common desire to see 'a democratic, federal, and pluralistic' Iraq emerge. Iyad Allawi explained that for that to happen, 'all political forces will have to arrive at a consensus. No category of Iraqi society will be excluded from the process, whatever the results of the election.' The message referred to Sunni Arab parties, notably absent from the January 30 elections. But he was greeted with irony by a Kurdish journalist: 'It's Allawi who is going to be excluded from the political process if he doesn't get a Kurdish alliance pretty quick.'

This state of mind also colored reception of the Prime Minister's gracious comment on the subject of Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) leader Jalal Talabani's candidacy for Iraq's presidency. 'Any Iraqi has the right to apply. A Kurd has the same right as any Arab to stand as a candidate for any function,' Mr. Allawi declared. In spite of his daily presence on the three big national television channels for the whole pre-electoral period, and in spite of the many broadcasts of the documentary 'A Man, a Fatherland,' Iyad Allawi did not achieve the success that had been anticipated in the elections. After a partial counting of the votes, he is only coming in third place, with 13.6% of the votes, behind the Unified Kurdish Party (UKP)'s 24.6% and very far behind the Shiite party supported by Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, credited with 51.4% of the vote.

If these figures are confirmed, Mr. Allawi will consequently be able neither to keep his job nor to assert a preponderant role in the Iraqi political scene. 'His only opportunity to stay in power consists of building a coalition around himself, a coalition of parties able to counterbalance the power of the Al-Sistani party' is how Fouad Hussein, a Kurdish political analyst explains it."

I don't know about them but my attitude would be "N$*@! please!"

Countdown To The Movable Feast

Lent started this week and Ash Wednesday fell on the same day as the beginning of Chinese Lunar New Year. It's odd but I'd never bothered to retain why Easter was on a different Sunday each year and certainly didn't research how that came to be. Now I know:

Because the church said so in A.D. 325. The date of Easter is determined according to the lunar calendar, while the date of Christmas is fixed on the solar calendar. Before 325, there was no official celebration of the birth of Christ, and Easter was celebrated by some Christians on Passover (a lunar holiday) and by others the following Sunday. The rationale: Christ's last supper took place on or around Passover, he was crucified on a Friday, and the festival of Easter celebrates his resurrection two days later.

In 325, church officials at the First Council of Nicaea formalized the date of Easter in an effort to get everyone to celebrate on the same day (and also, possibly, to dissociate it from the Jewish Passover feast). From then on, the holiday was celebrated on the Sunday following the first full moon after March 21, the start of spring.

At the same time, the council inaugurated Christmas by making Dec. 25 the Feast of the Nativity. Because Christmas was not directly related to a lunar holiday, and because it had never been celebrated before—the date of Christ's birth is not mentioned in the Bible, and questions about it had been settled by a proclamation from the pope just five years earlier—the council was able to establish an unambiguous date for the celebration.

But Easter remained tough to pin down. The Julian calendar in use at the time relied on the leap year to keep seasons from drifting with respect to dates, but the correction only worked so well. By the mid-16th century, the vernal equinox was occurring more than a week before March 21.

In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII solved this problem by issuing a papal bull that eliminated 10 days from the calendar that year. Oct. 4, 1582, was followed immediately by Oct. 15, 1582. The start of the following spring occurred on March 21, and Easter was restored to its proper season. To avoid future problems, Pope Gregory abolished leap years for every year that is evenly divisible by 100, except those that are evenly divisible by 400. (So, the year 2000 had an extra day, but 1900 didn't and 2100 won't, either.)

In theory, Easter falls on the Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox. In practice, the church's methods are a bit imprecise, in part because the vernal equinox doesn't always fall on March 21 and in part because the church uses traditional tables (rather than modern astronomy) to determine the dates of full moons.

Eastern Orthodox churches never adopted the Gregorian calendar, so their Easter remains on the Julian calendar. This year it will fall on May 1, five weeks after the Western Easter.

As I watched footage of the ailing Pope this week, I shook my head at how much his role has been diminished since the days of the Holy Roman Empire and old Europe. Despite my being Catholic (okay a currently a self-proclaimed ex-Catholic), I thought to myself, "this Pope business sure is played out." But, back in the day, he had his grip on the pulse of the modern world.

I know and argue with many a zealot these days so I like passing info like this on to them. Many of them don't think that Catholics are even Christian so I like sharing that that the Pope, hence the Catholic Church, set much of the basis for modern Christianity no matter what denomination one is.

(This is cross-posted from my new blog which will focus soley on spiritual and religious topics).

But, What Will We Tell The Women?

As many Americans cheer, pat themselves on the back and demand that the world overlook the fact that we invaded Iraq under precarious circumstances because we've held some semblance of elections, Iraqi women are rightfully worried that they will come up far short once the new Iraq emerges.

"We will never be able to stop this one way or another," he said, asserting that 80 percent of the country wants Islamic law anyway.

There is opposition. Yanar Mohamed, the leader of the Women's Freedom Movement and a member of the Worker's Communist Party, is organizing demonstrations and a conference on the subject for March 8. She is also planning to visit schools and workplaces in the coming weeks to educate women about the issue. In case you were wondering, Mohamed stopped keeping track of the death threats a long time ago.

Mohamed was at the fore of the demonstrations that forced US proconsul Paul Bremer to belatedly veto order 137, which was passed by the US-appointed Interim Governing Council last year and would have enshrined some tenets of sharia then. This time, however, there is no such oversight.

"Those that are promoting the religious constitution are very well funded and very well supported, they are well-supported by the surrounding countries," Mohamed said. "The Islamic republic of Iran has supported these groups. They have the guns and they control the country's resources — we do not have the same resources to reach the millions, but we are trying to make people aware with a ripple effect, through our newspapers and through our demonstrations, that there is a movement in Iraq."

She also said that many of the people who voted for the "Shiite list" didn't know quite what they were voting for. Sistani's fatwa -- his edict commanding Shiites to go to the polls -- has been interpreted on the street to mean everything from "you don't go to heaven if you don't vote" to "you're no longer allowed to have sex with your wife if you don't vote." He never said it, but these are some popular interpretations. She also raised some articulate concerns about what sort of "democracy" last month's vote signifies.

"If all the population is scared stiff and they want a strong party that has all the militias to rule and they are scared stiff because Sistani has issued a fatwa and you will go to hell if you don't vote, they are being robbed of their political will," she said. "They don't know what happened after the Iranian revolution, when all these clerics they thought would be moderate began killing their opponents."

This Is Not Adventureland

When I was in grade school, in Chicago, there were two theme parks that were annual destinations for either my class or my daycamp: The Enchanted Forest and Adventureland. Well, Iran has declared that their country is NOT the place to come for adventure.

"U.S. officials have stressed diplomacy but have not ruled out an attack on nuclear sites which Iran insists are working only to meet booming demand for electricity.

'The Persian Gulf is not a region where they can have fireworks and Iran is not a country where they can come for an adventure,' senior cleric and former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani told worshippers at Friday prayers.

'It is not acceptable that developed countries generate 70 or 80 percent of their electricity from nuclear energy and tell Iran, a great and powerful nation, that it cannot have nuclear electricity. Iran does not accept this,' he added.

France produces close to 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power stations, but most major industrialized nations derive under 30 percent from this source, U.S. Energy Information Administration data show.

Analysts often speak approvingly of Rafsanjani as a pragmatist who wants to restore diplomatic relations with the United States.

But Iran's right to produce its own nuclear fuel from uranium mined in the central deserts is a subject that unites conservatives and reformists, whatever else they differ on."

Honestly, I cannot fathom the United States (or Israel for that matter) doing a massive strike on Iran or invading them. But then again, stranger things have happened. Our plate certainly is chocked full of foreign crises these days.

Can Someone Sell Us Some Diplomacy Please ?

Well, alrighty then! North Korea says they have nukes for us to "talk to the hand!"

"North Korea boasted publicly for the first time Thursday that it has nuclear weapons and said it will stay away from disarmament talks, dramatically raising the stakes in the 2-year-old dispute. The Bush administration called on Pyongyang to give up its atomic aspirations so life can be better for its impoverished people.

North Korea's harshly worded pronouncement posed a grave challenge to President Bush, who started his second term with a vow to end North Korea's nuclear program through six-nation disarmament talks.

'We ... have manufactured nukes for self-defense to cope with the Bush administration's ever-more undisguised policy to isolate and stifle the (North),' the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency. The agency's report used the word 'nukes' in its English-language dispatch."

Not only that, Iran wants us to "smell what The Rock is cooking" as well:

"The Iranian nation does not seek war, does not seek violence and dispute. But the world must know that this nation will not tolerate any invasion," President Mohammad Khatami said in a fiery speech to the crowd in central Tehran.

"The whole Iranian nation is united against any threat or attack. If the invaders reach Iran, the country will turn into a burning hell for them," he added, as the crowd, braving heavy snow, chanted "Death to America!" and "Death to Israel!."

But we're on semi-good terms with the EU, right? ... Not quite. Seems that, against our wishes, they are lifting their arms embargo on China:

Ms Rice made clear her continuing objections to normalising arms sales with Beijing yesterday during a visit to Brussels. However, she avoided a direct clash on the issue and hinted that a compromise could yet be found.

The European Commission president, Jose Manuel Barroso, said: "We are moving towards lifting the arms embargo. The European Union cannot be accused of rushing into this."

So, less than a month into Bush's second term and only a couple weeks into Condoleezza's new gig we have a continuing bloodbath in Iraq. Iran is threatening to burn us up. North Korea is threatening to "nuke" us and the European Union is going to sell arms to China. Well, Condoleezza Rice is definitely going to get her baptism by fire but she's going to have to put down that battle ax and start learning some tact and diplomacy. It appears, friends, that people "ain't a-scared" of us anymore and would just love for us to "bring it on!"

Get The Violins

I've yet to take on the task of writing about Michael Jackson and all of his troubles. But I do know that the Corey Feldman was quite the whiney, manipulative and not well liked nut job on the first season of The Surreal Life. Oddly, both he and housemate (the marvelsously well adjusted) Emmanuel Lewis of Webster fame were both child pals of the much older Jackson. I am not sure what Feldman's motives are for suddenly wanting to speak out. Just from his persona on The Surreal Life, he seemed to be a walking, talking one man pity party who worked everyone's nerves.

About face: ABC has just announced that Corey Feldman, the former child actor ('Gremlins,' 'The Goonies,' 'Stand by Me') who once counted Michael Jackson among his closest friends, is now ready to discuss certain 'sickening' details about his relationship with Jackson. And he's planning to do so with none other than Martin Bashir, the British journalist turned ABC newsman who captured that infamous footage of Jackson discussing his penchant for sharing his bed with children, including the young boy now accusing him of molestation. 'I started looking at each piece of information, and with that came this sickening realization that there have been many occurrences in my life and in my relationship to Michael that have created a question of doubt,' Feldman tells Bashir in an interview airing on '20/20' Friday at 10 p.m.

The interview marks a startling reversal for Feldman, now 33, who has defended Jackson in the past. Appearing on 'Larry King Live' in November 2003, Feldman insisted that all was kosher between him and his older bud. 'We shared rooms a couple of times,' he said. 'Never shared a bed. But ... one time we went to Disneyland and we went to the Disneyland Hotel and, you know, he was ... so much of a gentleman ... he actually offered his bed and allowed me to sleep in his bed and he took a cot. And he slept in the cot.' What's more, Feldman, who was 13 when Jackson befriended him, told King, 'I have to be completely honest, because I couldn't do it any other way ... I've never seen him act in any inappropriate way to a child,' including toward him. Then again, even in the King interview, Feldman allowed that he was taking 'more of a neutral stance' toward Jackson's current case, in contrast to his outspoken defense of Jackson when similar allegations against him surfaced more than a decade ago. 'Michael and I have had our personal issues through the years,' Feldman said, 'and we've had our differences and for that reason, I'm not here as a cheerleader.' At this point, that appears to be putting it mildly. (ABC News, CNN's 'Larry King Live')"

I guess he's run the story about his parents stealing all of his money into the ground so now he's looking for something to give him more mileage, sympathy and reason to feel sorry for himself. I don't know. He, like the other accuser (and his mother), are going to have credibility problems. I'd be inclined to believe Emmanuel Lewis if he came out with some info and he's defended MJ before as well. But, I haven't heard a word Corey Feldmansaid yet and am already closing my mind.

Not Enough Business

So, they must not have any real problems in Virginia because they are just pulling bills out of their asses.

The state's House of Delegates passed a bill Tuesday authorizing a $50 fine for anyone who displays his or her underpants in a 'lewd or indecent manner.'

Del. Lionell Spruill Sr., a Democrat who opposed the bill, had pleaded with his colleagues to remember their own youthful fashion follies.

During an extended monologue Monday, he talked about how they dressed or wore their hair in their teens. On Tuesday, he said the measure was an unconstitutional attack on young blacks that would force parents to take off work to accompany their children to court just for making a fashion statement.

'This is a foolish bill, Mr. Speaker, because it will hurt so many,' Spruill said before the measure was approved 60-34. It now goes to the state Senate.

The bill's sponsor, Del. Algie T. Howell, has said constituents were offended by the exposed underwear. He did not speak on the floor Tuesday.

Spruill and Howell, also a Democrat, are both black."

Granted, I'm not too fond of the baggy, droopy pants with the baggy boxers exposed but I know how to ignore it. Here in the Bay Area, this 'look' is the norm for black, white, Asian, Hispanic or any random combination of those groups so the fashion cops would have to be pulled off of real crimes to enforce it.

I am happy for Virginia. All of their other problems must be solved. As long as they are talking about lewd and indecent, perhaps they could start fining people for bad comb-overs, over grown nose and ear hair, socks with sandals and beer guts that peek through shirts that are too small. That stuff grosses me out!

Oh Gaaaawd!

Conveniently forgetting that this man thinks Sponge Bob, Square Pants is promoting homosexuality to children, James Dobson is more than just a little creepy. He is also fixated on teenage twattage? I'm sorry, for someone from the religious right, isn't he a little obsessed with sex - homosexual and otherwise - and female matters?

I strongly recommend that parents of strong-willed and rebellious females, especially, quietly keep track of the particulars of their daughters' menstrual cycles. Not only should you record when their periods begin and end each month, but also make a comment or two each day about moods. I think you will see that the emotional blowups that tear the family apart are cyclical in nature. Premenstrual tension at that age can produce a flurry of skirmishes every 28 days.

If you know they are coming, you can retreat to the storm cellar when the wind begins to blow. You can also use this record to teach your girls about premenstrual syndrome and how to cope with it. Unfortunately, many parents never seem to notice the regularity and predictability of severe conflict with their daughters. Again, I recommend that you watch the calendar. It will tell you so much about your girls.

What will he recommend next? Monthly virginity checks?

A Rebel Without A Cause

... now has no balls.:

"A Welsh rugby fan cut off his own testicles to celebrate Wales beating England at rugby, the Daily Mirror reported Tuesday.

Geoff Huish, 26, was so convinced England would win Saturday's match he told fellow drinkers at a social club, 'If Wales win I'll cut my balls off,' the paper said.
Friends at the club in Caerphilly, south Wales, thought he was joking.

But after the game Huish went home, severed his testicles with a knife, and walked 200 yards back to the bar with the testicles to show the shocked drinkers what he had done.

Huish was taken to hospital where he remained in serious condition, the paper said.
Wales's 11-9 victory over England at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff was their first home win over England in 12 years. "

This is where a lot of beer and little direction will get you. I would say that this would be a great tale for the grandkids - except he won't be having any!

Christian Shariah

Here we go! Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and the thought of going to mass - for old time's sake - crossed my mind. But, you know, why fake the funk? I am sick of the Catholic BS. I don't believe in it. I don't subscribe to it. There is a "crisis" with child rape and molestation by Catholic priests yet the Catholic Church is spending more time protesting gay marriage (American Catholics even going to Canada to mind their business), telling people not to vote for candidates who are pro-choice (not pro-abortion), and now, tightening restrictions on this totally bogus annulment thing. I am so through - again. Everytime I think I can just go to mass just to get a message, I realize what a freaking cult the Church - outside of the churches of my upbringing - is. All this doctrine and dogma is no more than Christian Shariah. The all male Vatican (and I've been to the Vatican) needs to worry about the thousands of children whose lives have been maimed by some perverted priest.

"The Vatican has revised its guidelines on marriage annulments, acknowledging some abuses and saying Monday that it wants the practice that some critics have dubbed 'Catholic divorce' handled in a more serious way.

Publication of the compendium of canon law aspects about marriage comes on the heels of the most recent criticism by Pope John Paul II, who complained that annulments are too easily obtained and expressed worry that tribunals face the risk of corruption.

'In the context of a divorce mentality, even canon processes of annulment cases can be easily misunderstood, as if they weren't anything more than ways to obtain a divorce with the blessing of the church,' said Cardinal Julian Herranz, head of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, who presented the new guidelines to reporters.

For Catholics who want to remarry, annulment is their only hope of being able to do so in the church, which forbids divorce. "

A few years ago, I worked with a guy who turned out to be the biggest "fake" Catholic I'd ever met. He was telling me how he made bets with his friends regarding giving things up for lent. Even though I hadn't practiced that ritual in a while, I was just flabbergasted. Since when is the sacrifice made during the Lenten season between you and your friends? I thought that was between you and The Lord. I figured I didn't need lent to do that anymore. I do it when necessary.

So, again, they are trying to close the "loopholes" on another Catholic law where people were finding a way to "workaround" their mistakes and do exactly what they want to do. It's just a joke. The same kind of joke those who deliberately "sin" then run to confession play with God all the time. I don't know who is still buying into this mess. Like I said, the practicing Catholics I've met over the years really seem to think it is some kind of game and they do things I'd never think of doing but feel they are exempt because they run to church every Sunday, take communion, pray the rosary or go to confession.

Okay. I'm a good, ex-Catholic again. Do I have to turn in my pretty pink rosary to someone?

It's The Empathy, Stupid!

You cannot be a compassionate conservative when you have no empathy!

"Last Friday when promoting social security reform with 'regular' citizens in Omaha, Nebraska, President Bush walked into an awkward unscripted moment in which he stated that carrying three jobs at a time is 'uniquely American.'

While talking with audience participants, the president met Mary Mornin, a woman in her late fifties who told the president she was a divorced mother of three, including a 'mentally challenged' son.

The President comforted Mornin on the security of social security stating that 'the promises made will be kept by the government.'

But without prompting Mornin began to elaborate on her life circumstances.

Begin transcript:

MS. MORNIN: That's good, because I work three jobs and I feel like I contribute.

THE PRESIDENT: You work three jobs?

MS. MORNIN: Three jobs, yes.

THE PRESIDENT: Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that. (Applause.) Get any sleep? (Laughter.) "

It's fantastic that this woman has to work three jobs? No! It's pathetic that this woman, in her 50s no less, has to work three jobs. Yes, it's getting to be uniquely American. The jobs with good wages are being sent overseas and people in other countries - who probably used to work three jobs - now have one good one!

George W. Bush bites and quite a few more of us are going to get chomped up before he is done.

Mind If I Call You Colored?

A California soror of mine had this experience and sounded the alarms to the press and ever other organization she could think of.

A Brentwood woman is fuming over an ice cream shop's wall art that she says perpetuates old stereotypes of blacks.

Erika Booker did a double-take Wednesday when she stopped by Cherry Pop Parlor and spotted two pictures amid the clutter of 1950s-era decor featuring caricatures of blacks.

"They are derogatory," Booker said of the 16-by-20-inch metal placards, which are reproductions of decades-old advertisements for food products.

"I don't care what race is up there. If they're depicted in a negative light, they need to not be there," said the 24-year-old office manager.

One sign plugging a blackberry punch drink depicts a barefoot boy in overalls with grotesque red lips.

Another just above the front door advertising something called "Picaninny Freeze" shows a grinning girl -- also with huge red lips -- holding a slice of watermelon aloft.

"I wouldn't want to be drawn that way," said Booker, adding that the Depression-era images are out of place in a setting designed as an homage to the days of Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe.

Booker said the store's owner appeared to shrug off her concerns when she complained and asked him to remove the offending art.

He's no racist, responded Doug Ferreira, 30, who said his wife chose the signs from a catalog titled "Nostalgic Images."

"We didn't know the history of (the pictures)," he said. "I have nothing against black people."

Prior to this being published, this woman posted her outrage to one of my internet lists. This article fails to mention that the man's original response was something to the effect that she didn't have to patronize his establishment if she didn't like the pictures.

As Ms. Booker stated, if the rest of the memorabilia is centered around the 50s and Elvis, why do they have icons of black people from decades before? My issue, though, is not so much the pictures, it is the lack of understanding as to why she is upset or why the pictures could be construed as racist or offensive. That is what really bothers me these days. People have no knowledge of history (and that goes for the black co-ed at a southern college seen riding on a pickup truck with his white buddies with the confederate flag draped around him - totally clueless) and don't want to learn if you try to teach them.

I'm sure she won't go back and, probably, many of her friends won't either. Taking a poll of black people to see if they mind the pictures seems ridiculous. It reminds me of some of the dumb questions I've been asked like "do you mind if I call you colored?" (I'd prefer you call me by my name and "colored" is a little dated but ...) So, what is he going to do? Interrupt people who are eating to ask if they mind the "ole darkie pictures" hanging on the wall? Naturally, there will be some folks, like the black patron in the article, who are so busy stuffing their faces that they don't notice the pictures and, perhaps because they don't have southern roots, don't really get it either.

So much for honoring progress during Black History Month.

He's Got Hoes

(... in different area codes - and decades too!)

Over the past several months I've tried, but never quite found the words, to comment on the statements that Bill Cosby has been making about "poor" blacks in America. I think he is entitled to his opinion but his quips and stereotypical remarks are hardly valid solutions for something as complex as whatever has caused this sub-culture of the black community to evolve. Though, in frustration, I've made similar comments (not just about black people either) I don't think that his rantings and ravings are really helping. It's funny because I just saw one of his "town hall" meetings on PBS last Sunday night. He was on a panel with Jesse Jackson and others. I recognized the President of Chicago's Malcolm X College in the front row (go, soror!). I actually had to laugh. He was preaching to the choir. The folks who were assembled were just his amen corner. The people who he is talking about a) probably didn't even know he was in town b) probably don't watch PBS. So, though there are some issues that need to be addressed, all of his posturing is being wasted on people who already understand what he is talking about .

Anyhow, the typical conspiracy theories are circulating about why these women are suddenly popping up now that he is being so vocal. I really can't see "the man's" hand in this, however, because he is a voice which is letting them off the hook for the poorest segment of society. I think his big mouth has given him new visibility and that is why woman number one got the big idea to see if she could get a little cash. This second woman claims she is just doing her "civic duty".

"A California lawyer says she has told Montgomery County investigators who are probing sex allegations against Bill Cosby that the entertainer drugged her and tried to force himself on her about 30 years ago.

Tamara Green, a longtime criminal and civil lawyer and former fashion model, said she decided to tell her story after Cosby's lawyer and the Montgomery County district attorney publicly cast doubt on a former Temple University women's basketball executive's allegations that Cosby drugged and groped her at his Elkins Park mansion last year.

'I realize that him doing it to me 30 years ago doesn't prove he did it to this girl today, but when I heard the circumstances, I felt compelled to call up and say, 'He did exactly the same thing to me,' ' said Green, 57, in a phone interview from her Ventura, Calif., home.

'Do I want everybody to know that he had his dirty paws all over me? No,' she said.

'But I don't think it's right that they're going to disregard this woman and her allegations. I feel like they should look into it more seriously than I thought they were going to.'"

I heard rumors about Bill and his roving eye more than a decade ago (ya know, from someone who went to college with one of his kids). It isn't that I think that these accusations diminish whatever message he is trying to get across, but if you are preaching family values, parenting, respect for women, etc ... don't you think you ought to be practicing those same things yourself? These little chickens are starting to come home to roost. Perhaps Bill needs to slow his roll for a while.

Oh Hay-ell No!

I need to stop talking. Just last night, I called Karl Rove a wicked, wicked man. Now this!

"President Bush's senior adviser, Karl Rove, will take on a wider role in developing and coordinating policy in the president's second term, the White House announced on Tuesday.

Rove, who was Bush's top political strategist during his 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns, will become a deputy White House chief of staff in charge of coordinating policy between the White House Domestic Policy Council, National Economic Council, National Security Council and Homeland Security Council.

Rove will continue to oversee White House strategy to advance Bush's agenda and will 'make sure we have an open and fair process for the development of policy and to make sure the policy is complementary and consistent with the various councils,' White House spokesman Scott McClellan said."

Good Lord, help us!

A Romantic Realist Huh?

Gee. I actually did better than I thought.

You Are A Romantic Realist

You are more romantic than 40% of the population. You tend to be grounded when it comes to romance. Sure, you can fall hard... but only for someone you've gotten to know. And once you're in love, you can be a total romantic goofball... But you'd never admit it to your friends!

Are You Romantic or Realistic?

And The Poor Get Poorer

This is the headline in the UK's Guardian regarding Bush's "budget." I'm glad they don't mince words.

Poor to pay price of US deficit:

"Sweeping cuts in welfare, education and housing programmes for the poor were the centrepiece of austerity budget proposals announced by George Bush yesterday to meet his campaign pledge of halving the US budget deficit in his second term.

In a package hailed by the White House as the toughest since the days of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, only defence and homeland security were spared from the fiscal squeeze. "

So, where is that compassionate conservatism? Must be the in same place as those WMDs.

How Dumb Are You?

So Laura Flanders wants to know: How dumb does George really think we are?:

"The President's plan gives one set of folks security and those are the people at the financial services firms. Don't take it from me. Take it from the Wall Street Journal. 'If only two percentage points of payroll tax were diverted into privatized accounts, this would mean $60 Billion a year could flow into mutual funds and other securities,' as reported by the WSJ Feb 20 1996. And that's a low-end estimate.

The world's biggest 401k for someone to manage. Which fund wouldn't want that? No wonder the Wall St. middle men are marshalling millions to push Bush's dream-scheme. If they pull it off, we the taxpayers will pay them of course, out of our no-longer guaranteed 'benefit.' Look at Great Britain - over 40 % of the money accumulated in privatized accounts there is being spent on fund management fees. In Chile, it's over one third. No wonder those financial firms are marshalling millions to push W's program.

How would it work? W could tell you but he won't. People divert part of their payroll taxes into private accounts. That money would be their own, the President assured us last week: 'the government can never take it away.' Right. But the government will take a way a huge hunk of those separate social security checks, in exchange. In fact, they'll be cutting those checks by exactly the amount the private investor earns in the market, minus inflation (and those fees.) No matter whether you've chosen to participate in Bush's wacky scheme or not, everyone's benefits will be cut to cover what there is of an anticipated Trust Fund shortfall because Bush's plan doesn't even pretend to address that anymore. Now that's Congress's job. In fact Bush said in the State of the Union that he's 'open to anyone who has a good idea.' Now do you feel more secure?

Think you'll come out ahead? If you're lucky you'll come out even. If your private fund doesn't do so well, you'll come out worse than you had if you hadn't invested in a private account"

Not only does George Bush think that the 51% who voted for him are dumb. He must think they are blind, cripple and crazy too. Once again, I didn't vote for him but a whole lot of stupid people, who are going to be broker than they are now, did. They may only be able to afford cat food when they retire. But at least those fags won't be able to get married.

But We Knew This ... Right?

So much for women's rights! If women in Canada are battling against Shariah, you know what is in store for the women of the new Iraq. This is why Saddam and prior colonialists kept the Shiites under foot.

"With religious Shiite parties poised to take power in the new constitutional assembly, leading Shiite clerics are pushing for Islam to be recognized as the guiding principle of the new constitution.

Exactly how Islamic to make the document is the subject of debate.

At the very least, the clerics say, the constitution should ensure that legal measures overseeing personal matters like marriage, divorce and family inheritance fall under Shariah, or Koranic law. For example, daughters would receive half the inheritances of sons under that law."

Clueless! Careless! Shameless!

Did the point just fly over this guy's head?

"According to an audio recording of Mattis' remarks, he said, 'Actually, it's a lot of fun to fight. You know, it's a hell of a hoot. ... It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right upfront with you, I like brawling.'

He added, 'You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,' Mattis continued. 'You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.'
Thursday, Gen. Mike Hagee, commandant of the Marine Corps, issued a statement saying, 'I have counseled him concerning his remarks and he agrees he should have chosen his words more carefully.' "

It's not the words moron! It's the intent and the action. This kind of fun is why our soldiers are being sent to jail for torturing and abusing prisoners. If this is the mentality that Generals have over there, I think we can see why the peons who are being court martialed now behaved the way they did.

Silly Girl!

I'm so glad I turned the channel when I saw Ann Coulter on Scarborough Country last night. I think she just says this stuff for shock value.

"On the February 7 edition of FOX News' Hannity & Colmes, Coulter criticized ads that aired during the 2005 Super Bowl, saying, 'this is juvenile, 4-year-old humor,' and added: 'And last year's Super Bowl show, ooh, simulated interracial sex.' During the 2004 performance, Timberlake ripped a piece of Jackson's clothing, briefly exposing one of her breasts in what Timberlake later called a 'wardrobe malfunction.'

On the February 7 edition of MSNBC's Scarborough Country, appearing alongside host and former Representative Joe Scarborough (R-FL) and Republican strategist Karen Hanretty to discuss University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill's comparison of some victims of the World Trade Center terrorist attacks to Nazis, Coulter commented: 'These guys [college professors] want to go around acting like big radicals, getting laid by coeds with hairy armpits who probably don't like men, by going to conferences and saying, 'Oh, yes, I'm the one who said that.''

Later in the same segment, Coulter responded to a question from Scarborough about the military's recent demotion of a female U.S. soldier in Iraq for indecent exposure during a mud wrestling party: 'I would like a United States military capable of winning wars, which will not involve sending girls to do fighting.' Coulter concluded: 'And, yes, I think it's appalling that these women are mud wrestling, but I think it's appalling that they are in the military.'"

And, BTW, it's not that I approve of mud wrestling but, after hearing (from the friend of a friend who had a family member in Iraq) stories of male soldiers spending their entire paychecks for the "services rendered" by their female counterparts, I think it seems pretty harmless.

Kill Kids, Not Fetuses

The pro-lifers are no where to be found when crises like this arise.

'Children in urban war zones die in vast numbers, not just due to violence, but also from diarrhea, respiratory infections and other causes, owing to unsafe drinking water, lack of refrigerated foods, and acute shortages of blood and basic medicines in clinics and hospitals.'

Pregnant women and their fetuses suffer from these same lethal deprivations and pregnant women and their fetuses are being bombed in their homes. If you who sanctimoniously wear the 'pro-life' banner were really pro-life-and pro-fetus, that would bother you and we would be hearing your voices raised powerfully in peace protests around the world. We don't. Therefore we must conclude that you are not 'pro-life' and that if you say you are, you are liars. American military leaders in Iraq have been quoted as saying 'we don't do body counts.' (Interesting, since even 'the mob' does body counts.)

The respected British journal The Lancet did a body-count of civilians killed in Iraq. They concluded that there are more than 100,000 civilians deaths, most due to U.S. Military action. President Bush is responsible for those murders because he entered this war without the Declaration of War that the constitution (Article one, Section 8) requires. A cowardly Congress in a week of infamy (October 3-10, 2002) limply handed over their war-declaring rights to him, giving the president open-ended authority to use unrestricted power, which could mean nuclear weapons whenever he alone deemed it appropriate. How did those who call them selves 'pro-life' respond to this appalling assault on the Constitution and on life. They voted en masse for George W. Bush, the slaughter-master of Iraq, the killer of civilian men, women and children, including pregnant women and their fetuses in a war that Pope John Paul called a 'defeat for humanity.' Mr. Bush said he saw their vote as an endorsement of his war. He was right. The election was a chance to vote against that war, but, overwhelmingly the so called 'pro-life' vote was for war.

This Land Wasn't Made For You And Me

Well, he's back to preaching to his own choir again. Just like when he was on the campaign trail, if you are known to be a democrat or someone who disagrees with his policies, you are not allowed into his private rallys.

"City Commissioner Linda Coates says she was shocked to learn she and her husband were among more than 40 area residents on a list of people barred from attending President Bush's speech here Thursday.

The list was supplied to workers at the two Fargo distribution sites, along with tickets and other forms citizens were asked to fill out, The Forum reported.
The list includes critics of Bush or the war in Iraq. It includes two high school students, a librarian, a deputy Democratic campaign manager and a number of university professors."

Y-T People Rant

Okay! I know my horns are out today. For the first time in my life I have come down with two headcolds in a month so I am congested and grouchy. I am downing doses of S.S.S. Tonic everyday because my iron levels are so low and I am just a wee bit low on patience for dumb, ignorant isht today -- and probably tomorrow too!

I've been on Yahoo IM for years and chat with my usual suspects as well as a few old co-workers whose names are still on my buddy list. Why, oh why, did an old co-worker that I used to chat with regularly - but not in a while - pop up out of the blue today and after the "Hi. How are you" felt the need to tell me that he saw Bill Cosby on TV last night?

dumb-boy: So I was watching Bill Cosby late last night talking straight with a black audiance. (his spelling, not mine)

%$*#@ AND? Am I supposed to be handing out cookies for that? You haven't had crap to say in weeks but you want me to know you saw Bill Cosby (whose adulterous behind has been on a rant about poor blacks for months now)? Huh?

What am I, a third generation college graduate, supposed to say? I'm supposed to relate? I'm supposed to agree? What can he, a Dutch guy who grew up in Africa (probably living it up like most descendents of colonialists), contribute to the topic when all he can say about black people is that he has some African friends and that he once got his college-boy feelings hurt because his pursuit of some black punani ended when she dumped him - 20+ years ago folks (again, more information than I needed but have heard more than once ... I should tell his wife)? What conversation could we possibly have when, at 40+ years old, he has never put in one volunteer hour or had any connection to the type of people Bill Cosby was talking about? Why would I, for whom volunteering has been a lifestyle since I was 10, even try to go there with the likes of him?

Further, this guy is no intellect or intuit. Let's talk about NO critical thinking skills and NO ability to process sarcasm. You can't get deep with him and I accept that. But, if he were a woman, I'd put him right up there with Gracie Allen and Chrissy Snow. He, like our President, is coasting through life being dumb as dirt - and making way more money than me without a hint of my technical skill.

Anyhow, that is a peeve and it touched a nerve that I am sick of having plucked. So, to y-t people everywhere: I don't care what dumb black movie you saw (no, no one in my family farts at the table like the family in The Nutty Professor). I cannot show you how to dance. I don't care about the one and only black friend you had in kindergarten. I don't care if you listen to rap. I don't care if you think Halle Berry is hot! I don't care if Michael Jordan is your idol. I don't care if you think that Colin Powell is 'articulate!'

Leave me alone! Keep your ignorance to yourself! We will not bond over nonsense like that! Let me be black in peace!

Any Damn Latino ...

With the confirmations of Condoleezza Rice and Alberto Gonzales, the Republicans prefaced every statement of support with monologues on the humble or adverse beginnings that they've both come from. While I think their accomplishments are admirable, they have nothing to do with why people who opposed their nominations, had taken issue with them. Obviously, if qualifications, academic achievement and hard work were the true indicators of one's ability to hold a prestigious position, George W. Bush would never have been elected President. So, while I did oppose both appointments, I am painfully reminded that their successes are so stellar while the leader of the free world's pale, miserably, in comparison. This shows, glaringly, that if you are white, you can do nothing and succeed, while if you are a minority, you must be extraordinary to play less than second fiddle.

As with black opposition to Clarence Thomas and every other far right prominent black person, I knew that Gonzales is not representative of every person of Latin descent in this country. And, I've seen no evidence that his own are rushing to support him:

And now look how far we've come... or have we? Gonzales is touted as the proverbial "bootstrap" success story the second of eight children, whose parents were children of Mexican immigrants, Gonzales was the only one in his family to complete college. Many of us share Gonzales' story. Like Gonzales, I was born and raised in Houston. My father, like Gonzales' father, was a construction worker. In fact, like Gonzales, I attended Douglas MacArthur High School. Gonzales and I have much in common actually similar family backgrounds and early education, both active in our communities, an interest in political science (his undergraduate major) and we both ended up in law school.

Then why, people ask me, don't I join in the "victory? Why don't I join the Latinos across the United States who hail Gonzales' appointment as a sign of how far we have come, how we finally have a place at the table. Because I refuse to overlook the glaring injustices in Gonzales' record simply for the sake of putting a brown face in the White House. Because I don't believe (as some groups have conceded) that Gonzales "is not nearly as bad as we might have expected." Because I want to believe that just policies, human rights, and due process are infinitely more important than playing the race card. This myopic view that a Latino, any damn Latino, in the White House will trickle down to the rest of us has allowed many to turn a blind eye to Gonzales' track record on important legal issues. As a Latina, I feel my duty to my community is to do my homework to understand just exactly what Alberto Gonzales will bring to the White House.
[...]
Gonzales does not come close to this "ideal." Latinos who blindly stand behind Gonzales have lost sight of more than our future they have forgotten our past and our present. Believe me, I know plenty of brilliant, talented, judicious Latinas/os, including some from high-ranking government positions, and we could have done a lot better than Gonzales. Confirming his nominationn, given his clear record of injustices, tells the world that not only is he the best we think we can do, but that a record of supporting torture and death doesn't bother us. As a Latina committed to social justice, plenty of things the Bush administration has done have been "not in my name," but this nomination and confirmation are one of the worst.

This man represents the face of torture and sanctioned abuse - not every Hispanic man or woman's dream.

I Don't Know About All That!

You Belong in 1963

1963 If you scored... 1950 - 1959: You're fun loving, romantic, and more than a little innocent. See you at the drive in! 1960 - 1969: You are a free spirit with a huge heart. Love, peace, and happiness rule - oh, and drugs too. 1970 - 1979: Bold and brash, you take life by the horns. Whether you're partying or protesting, you give it your all! 1980 - 1989: Wild, over the top, and just a little bit cheesy. You're colorful at night - and successful during the day. 1990 - 1999: With you anything goes! You're grunge one day, ghetto fabulous the next. It's all good!

What Year Do You Belong In?

About The Shortest Month Of The Year

I've never been a big fan of "Black History Month" either. This is the United States of America and everyone who lives here, is a part of it. I suppose that since black people and their contributions were left out all together, Carter G. Woodson felt that having a designated time to acknowledge them was a good thing. I just find it rather sad that, still, your average text books refers to blacks only at two key periods in American history (slavery and civil rights movement). It's as though we just popped our heads in during those two eras then disappeared into the woodwork. To me, if it happened here, it is American History - not black history!

Growing up under the banner of the typical elementary and secondary school "Black History Month" curriculum can give a person a cynical attitude toward the month and its purpose.

By high school graduation, we all knew just about everything there was to know about Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King, Jr., Frederick Douglass, and Malcolm X. These were of course the heroes of "Black History Month", or what I affectionately call "the token Negroes".

Not to negate their achievements, but it always came across as a bit patronizing to me that we spent the better part of 12 years of our education learning about the gaggle of accomplishments of Mr. White Man “the Great”, only to spend less than 28 days a year studying everything but the lint in the pockets of the same four black Americans.

The worst of it occurs when the subject of black achievement comes up and everyone and their mothers point to Martin Luther King like he was the only black person of significance ever to walk the planet. Growing up, it seemed to me that black people certainly had more to offer than that. It didn't take me long to find out that they did.

And while I've heard some "conservatives" argue the reason white people get so much play in history curriculum is because "they built this country", I’d like to point out that we often fail to recognize on whose backs the “building” was achieved.

The way I see it, the inherent problem with "Black History Month" is that it further isolates a subject that has already had its share of isolation. In singling out the issue of black history, we never call people to account for the fact that black history isn't just "black" history; it's all peoples' history. It shouldn't just be taught alongside or in addition to our "regular" history, but instead should become a part of the curriculum that was lacking wholeness in the first place.

Alas, I guess I shouldn't be complaining. It used to just be Negro History Week!

update: Now, capitalism being what it is, you know there are some perks for this month. Borders is having a sale.

Great Scott!!

I have 50 (fifty!! fiddy!!) gmail invites. If you would like one, please email me your first name, last name and email address.

Time To Go

The Sunni's alledgedly boycotted the elections because they didn't want us there and the Shiites voted so that we would leave. I agree with this guy.We gots to go!

To be sure, President Bush did the right thing in pushing through the election, because the Sunni insurgency is not going to fade away as long as it can feed off the occupation's presence. But this positive moment will blow up in his face if it proves to be nothing more than a co-optation of the Iraqi people's strongly felt desire for self-rule. For the United States, acting in good faith is essential at this point. This past weekend, the nation took another embarrassing hit when the BBC reported that the United States' own auditors had found that nearly half of all oil revenues generated since the invasion cannot be accounted for – an astonishing $8.8 billion.

Iraqi voters risked their lives, and they deserve far more than a facade of democracy or a puppet strongman acting as the United States' "muscle" in the region, as Saddam Hussein did for so many years. They need to be given democratic and transparent control of their oil, their economy and their security. The election should also be the occasion for beginning the withdrawal of U.S. and other foreign forces.

To be clear, this does not mean abandoning the responsibilities the U.S. has taken on by crushing Iraq through two invasions and a decade of sanctions. We should make sure Iraq's international debt is absolved and its infrastructure repaired, which will take billions of dollars and many years. But if we are asked to leave, we must do so, or expose all the talk of "liberation" as just so much Great Power rhetoric.

Like I Need A Quiz Like This?

">Miserable Failure Monkey Face

What's Your George W. Bush Monkey Face?

Getting Out Of Dodge

Let's face it, other than the US and the smattering of Brits, no one else really wanted to invest a whole lot of effort or troops in Iraq. So the coalition of the willing is slowly, but surely, being reduced to the "coalition of the leaving" and the "coalition of the been done gone."

"Now that Iraq's election has passed, several of the 28 nations in the American-led military coalition intend to withdraw their troops, citing the costs--in lives and money - of operating for nearly two years inside Iraq.

Before the election, some nations had declared it was time to reduce their commitments and rely on the Iraqis to play a larger security role. Now others will be watching closely to see whether the temporary government elected Sunday can make the improvements in stability that would allow more coalition nations to draw down their forces.

The Netherlands, for example, will withdraw all but about 300 of its 1,500 troops beginning March 15, allowing time after the election to lend support.

'Our Ministry of Defense clearly stated that the Netherlands considered the mission done there,' said Rear Adm. Michiel Hijmans, the Dutch defense attache in Washington. 'We've been there 20 months now, and it's fairly difficult to continue with this operation.'"

I Need More Proof!

Sorry, they are going to have to do more thanshow Douglas Feith the door in order for me to buy that it is the end of the neocon influence. Let's not mention the fact that the damage, the devastating damage, is already done. I'm going to have to see, Paul 'spit comb' Wolfowitz gone, Richard Perle gone and Donald Rumsfeld tossed on his keister as well.

"The resignation of a U.S. undersecretary for defense does not often cause ripples, let alone waves, beyond the generous perimeter of the Pentagon.

The resignation of Douglas Feith, however, is different. For Feith is not just any U.S. defense official; he is widely seen as a focus of the group that advocated, and then orchestrated, the invasion of Iraq. Specifically, he was responsible for making the intelligence-based case for war. A close associate of the so-called Prince of Darkness, Richard Perle, he could also be described as a founder member of the ideological clique known as the neoconservatives"

Feith is a bigger fish than his job title might suggest. If it is also true that the Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld fought hard to keep him, there is but one conclusion to be drawn: The influence of the neocons inside the new Bush administration is not what it was. They are no longer capable of protecting their own. The more ideologically inclined among them -- those whose departure would not be seized upon as an acknowledgement of major policy failure -- are being quietly let go.

And while they are at it, I'd like to see less of that lipless, "talks through the slit in his mouth," Bill Kristol too! He is forever on some cable news show and I've heard enough from him!

Big Willie Style!

With rumors flying that former President Bill Clinton is itching to be the next Secretary-General of the UN, Kofi Annan is giving him some practice as the HNIC for the tsunami reconstruction effort.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan selected former President Bill Clinton to be the United Nations’ point man for tsunami reconstruction Tuesday, saying no one could better ensure that the world did not forget the needs of the countries devastated by the disaster the day after Christmas.

Clinton said in a statement that he looked forward to serving as Annan’s special envoy starting next month and would have more to say about the job at that time.

Given his undeniable charisma, I think he'd be perfect to take Kofi's place when the term is up. The only advice I have for Bill now is that he keep his stuff in his pants while he's in those lands known for their unbridled sex industry. If he can resist the temptation (or at least not get caught this time), he should most certainly have the job.

30 Nays So Far ...

I definitely want to see more "no" votes and perhaps other Dems will step up to the plate and take a stand. I was simply appalled at Gonzales' performance at the hearings. Not only wouldn't he answer the questions adequately, the dead pan look on his face and the sound of the crickets chirping made me want to commit torture on him. No, 30 no's are not enough for a man who is an architect of toture. Boxer and Feinstein better be in that number!

"Just got word that Senator Reid plans to vote 'no' on the Gonzales AG nomination, joining about 30 Democrats.

While in the perfect world we'd all love to see 45 'no' votes (with maybe a Chafee thrown in for good measure), reality is that 30 votes, including the Democratic leadership, would be phenomenal.

It will be nice to have the Democratic Party on record against torture and in favor of fundamental American values. "

Repugs, who are suddenly interested in race and ethnicity, have tried to plant the seed that Hispanics would be mad if Gonzales were not confirmed. Sorry, I think he's gonna get the same kind of support from his community that Clarence Thomas got from the black community.

Oooops! Good One Guys!

Clearly one for the absurd column, I guess all there is to do is laugh.

The report marks the first time the CIA has officially disavowed its prewar judgments and is one in a series of updated assessments the agency is producing as part of an effort to correct its record on Iraq's alleged weapons programs, officials said.

The CIA's decision to distribute the report — titled "Iraq: No Large-Scale Chemical Warfare Efforts Since Early 1990s" — in classified channels underscores the awkwardness the agency faces as it continues to reconcile its prewar reporting with postwar realities in Iraq. Before the war, the CIA asserted that Iraq had stockpiled biological weapons and was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.

A U.S. intelligence official said the document was "not a high-level report," meaning it was designed to supplant outdated assessments still on classified computer networks and was not meant to be called to the attention of President Bush or other senior government officials.

"It's basically updating the books," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, "so the information on the shelf is the most current."

Current and former intelligence officials described it as a highly unusual step for the CIA.

"It's stunning that they would actually put on paper a reversal" of previous intelligence estimates, said one intelligence official who had seen the document.

Yeah, it's stunning alright!

Waiting To Be Invited

I'm a little struck that Israel operates as a country where it can discriminate against potential immigrants because they are of a different faith or ethnic background. These folks had to prove their lineage:

"Nearly 100,000 Ethiopian Jews have immigrated to Israel since the mid-1980s. However, for many years, Israel was unable to decide on how to deal with one specific group, the Falash Mura community.

The Falash Mura say they are descendants of Ethiopian Jews who converted to Christianity many years ago, often through coercion, but have resumed practicing Judaism. During the 1990s, some Israeli authorities questioned the authenticity of their Jewish roots. Israeli officials also expressed concerns that a large number of impoverished Ethiopians would seeking to immigrate, claiming Jewish ancestry.

Three years ago, the government sent a prominent rabbi to consider the case of the Falash Mura, and he reported solid evidence of their Jewish lineage. The government decided in February 2003 that all the Falash Mura who could document Jewish ancestry on their mother's side would be allowed in to Israel.

About 15,000 to 20,000 Falash Mura are believed to fall into this category, according to the government and supporters of the Falash Mura. But the Israeli government has been allowing only 300 to enter Israel each month, a pace that would require five years or more before all would reach Israel. "

But, oh well, I guess if they don't keep importing Jews from other lands, they will die out as a Jewish state.

Rescuing Religion From the Right

The more I see, hear of and read about this guy, the more I like him. I've never been one to believe that the righteous were those who screamed and thumped the loudest and, for whatever reason, the right seems to have claimed moral authority and have made themselves the official keepers of Jesus. In this interview on Beliefnet.com, he discusses how the left can lay claim to its religious and moral values

There was a lot of discussion after the election about the moral values vote. What values did people vote on?

It's funny—a flawed exit poll has shaped a national conversation. I call it flawed because one choice was moral values. The others were about issues like Iraq and terrorism and then the economy, health care, jobs. But if I was a religious voter who cared about the war, I would have checked Iraq, and it would have been a moral value. If I were a Catholic coordinator of a food pantry, I would have checked the closest thing I could find to poverty, which would have been jobs or health care or the economy.

So if you take the issues like war and terrorism and group them as values, that was about 33% as opposed to 22% for moral values. If the economy, health care, and jobs are all values, it was about the same. A Zogby poll about a week later confirmed that intuition. It asked, What was the biggest moral issue in your voting? Forty-two percent said the war in Iraq. Then they said, what's the greatest moral crisis in America today? Something like 33% said greed and materialism. And 31% said poverty and economic jobs. So that's 64% saying that poverty, greed, materialism, and justice are the greatest moral crises in America today. I found that very encouraging. And abortion was less than 20%—16% in fact—and gay marriage about 12%. It showed there's a broader, deeper, richer conversation to be had here. It's not just one value or two values; there are a lot more fundamental moral values that need to shape our political direction.

This is his latest book:

No Argument From Me

Really! What else is new?

"Fox News star Bill O'Reilly is a big fat baby.

Friday night, he wah-wah-wahed on his top-rated cable news show about last week's edition of CBC's the fifth estate.

The U.S. is at war, the Iraqis were voting, social security reform is a huge issue and this guy devotes precious TV time to denouncing Canada, Canadians and CBC, repeating the same tired and untrue lines about how Fox had been 'banned' here.

'The Canadian government gives these people $1 billion of Canadian tax money, and the Canadian government is at fault here for allowing this kind of stuff to go on,' he railed.

Titled 'Sticks and Stones,' the hour-long fifth estate report focused on the highly polarized political discourse in the U.S., devoting about 10 minutes to the loudest mouth of them all, O'Reilly. "