A little dab’ll do ya……….

A little dab’ll do ya………. 28 November 2007

Posted by marisacat in 2008 Election, DC Politics, Democrats, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Israel/AIPAC, WAR!.
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Giant Fish Eating Jellyfish

“We’ll have as much spine as we possibly can, under the circumstances.” — Sen. Clinton, on the trail.

“It is time for our party, the Democratic Party, to show a little backbone.” — Former senator John Edwards, D-N.C., in a recent campaign ad.

From ABC’s The Note

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Meanwhile the rapacious work of State, in which they have and fully intend to collaborate, continues unimpeded (and stop calling it a failure or mismanaged, however it IS a quagmire…):

The Bush administration is turning Iraq into a test tube for modern techniques of repression, from sophisticated biometrics that track populations to devastating weapons systems that combine night-vision optics from drone aircraft, heat resonance imaging and deadly firepower from the sky to kill suspected insurgents.

These high-tech capabilities, when mixed with loose rules of engagement that allow U.S. troops to kill Iraqis at the slightest sign of hostility, have contributed to what U.S. generals and a growing number of American journalists are hailing as an improving security situation.

Or, as President George W. Bush reportedly told Australia’s deputy prime minister in September, “We’re kicking ass.”

…

“Even as evidence has mounted that General Petraeus’ new counterinsurgency strategy is succeeding, Democrats have remained emotionally invested in a narrative of defeat and retreat in Iraq, reluctant to acknowledge the progress we are now achieving,” said Sen. Joe Lieberman, a neoconservative Independent from Connecticut, in a Nov. 8 speech.

They are so on their knees to War.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Angry Arab:

“A Palestinian man was killed Tuesday in Hebron on the West Bank as Palestinian Authority police officers loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas fired weapons to disperse protests against the Middle East peace conference taking place in Annapolis, Md. In Gaza, which is controlled by the Islamic group Hamas, crowds estimated at more than 100,000 came out to protest the Annapolis meeting. The circumstances of the man’s death were not immediately clear, but medical workers said he had been shot in the chest, news media reported.”

Posted by As’ad at 7:17 AM 198 comments

An unspoken political vulnerability of Sen. Hillary Clinton is that she is the first presidential candidate to have both her and her spouse subject to regular, long-term surveillance by an Executive Branch under the control of an opposing political party.

Since they left the White House in 2001, Bill and Hillary Clinton – as the former President and First Lady – have been under the protection of the Secret Service, formerly a branch of the Treasury Department and now part of the Homeland Security Department. Records are maintained showing where they go and, to an extent, whom they meet.

Ordinarily, those records are kept as closely held secrets [oh right! tell us again about "Blind Trusts" and all that silliness ---Mcat], but theoretically at least, President George W. Bush – with his expansive view of his powers as “unitary executive” – could gain access to them, either formally or informally.

…

Already, new rumors about the Clintons’ marriage have begun to circulate on the Internet. But a scandal would prove especially devastating if backed by real information, like what might be available in Secret Service records. [hard to care! Other than popcorn value, I mean! --- Mcat]

One of the reasons that civil libertarians have been especially alarmed about George W. Bush’s assertion of virtually unlimited executive authority over such tactics as wiretapping, data-mining and domestic spy satellites is that it has coincided with a Republican goal for near-permanent political control of the U.S. government.

Those dreams were dealt a blow in Election 2006 and appear even more precarious amid Bush’s slumping popularity. However, now Republicans are worried about their political eclipse if the Democrats win the White House and manage to expand their majorities in the House and Senate.

Grabbing the sauce pan for the butter…..

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Comments»

1. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 November 2007: Lucid, 93 last thread:

Before long, we too, will be watering our crops with gatorade – ‘because it’s got what plants crave. Its got electrolytes’…

You can already charge your iPod with Gatorade and an onion, so it’s only a matter of time.

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2. Miss Devore - 28 November 2007: Circumstantial spine–what a concept–collapses when necessary. Why don’t they “grow a turtleshell” instead, so they can duck back in for protection?

Love the pic of The Essential Democrat, Beached Again.

I totally suspect this Admin has been spying in all the ways it knows how on its political opponents. Or enablers.

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3. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 November 2007: it has coincided with a Republican goal for near-permanent political control of the U.S. government.

Big deal, as if the parties were anything more than a fiction. It’s ALREADY under permanent control of corporate hegemony, and has been for decades, brief little spasms of justice not withstanding.

Oh, and IOZ on the kos-o-sphere’s exclamations on Mitt’s Mormonism etc.

IOZ is short, to the point, and sums up a view of ALL the various cults, mainstream or otherwise, really well.

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4. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 November 2007: About that civility thing

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5. marisacat - 28 November 2007: madman

yeah I agree on the caveat that Rep want hegemony. The Eternal Government is the ultimate decider… And as worthwhile as Parry is, he is def in the Lesser of Evils camp.

However: I DO think that factions and individuals (and the Clintons do have enough personal persuasion and are connected to enough machines that they are individual pols, imo) jockey for primary access to power..

Mainly as there is so much scim, off the top. The “take” so to speak.

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6. melvin - 28 November 2007: Second jellyfish pack moves on UK

less than a week after an overwhelming attack by Pelagia nocticula killed 100,000 salmon at a Northern Ireland fish farm.

such swarms may become more prevalent in Scottish waters as a result of climate change.”
~~~
Marine scientist Ricardo Aguilar elaborated to New Scientist back in July: “But it’s also just the general reduction in marine vertebrates [by overfishing]. Where vertebrates fall, invertebrates increase.”

As adirect result of overfishing, jellyfish are coming to predominate the once incredibly rich Benguela current fishery.

The worst part is, even a moratorium on fishing will not restore the balance. In the absence of larger fish to eat the jellies, they may dominate indefinitely.

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7. marisacat - 28 November 2007: Miss D

LOL oh that is funny, the Essential Democrat, beached again.

Too true.

***********

Crude Oil dropping to 90/barrel….

Looking over on the right column I see bad news in Zogby poll for HIllary… (she loses in head to head match ups, for the first time)

(Both in the McClatchy 2008 Blog feeder…)

And Huckabee, in at least one poll, pulls ahead in Iowa.

Some panic in some hotel suites.

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8. melvin - 28 November 2007: 7 McCain shows holy relics at debate:

“I’d take an old veto pen that St. Ronald gave me” and veto all unnecessary spending.

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9. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 November 2007: Oh, sure … always gonna be fights for the corner office betwixt the ethics challenged, and in that battle the Reps generally win, though HillBill, being Reps in Liberal sheepskins, do a pretty good job of it themselves.

Oh, has everybody seen this yet?

Rudy’s Ties to a Terror Sheikh
Giuliani’s business contracts tie him to the man who let 9/11′s mastermind escape the FBI
by Wayne Barrett
November 27th, 2007 3:39 PM
Three weeks after 9/11, when the roar of fighter jets still haunted the city’s skyline, the emir of gas-rich Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifah al-Thani, toured Ground Zero. Although a member of the emir’s own royal family had harbored the man who would later be identified as the mastermind of the attack—a man named Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, often referred to in intelligence circles by his initials, KSM—al-Thani rushed to New York in its aftermath, offering to make a $3 million donation, principally to the families of its victims. Rudy Giuliani, apparently unaware of what the FBI and CIA had long known about Qatari links to Al Qaeda, appeared on CNN with al-Thani that night and vouched for the emir when Larry King asked the mayor: “You are a friend of his, are you not?”

“We had a very good meeting yesterday. Very good,” said Giuliani, adding that he was “very, very grateful” for al-Thani’s generosity. It was no cinch, of course, that Giuliani would take the money: A week later, he famously rejected a $10 million donation from a Saudi prince who advised America that it should “adopt a more balanced stand toward the Palestinian cause.” (Giuliani continues to congratulate himself for that snub on the campaign trail.) Al-Thani waited a month before expressing essentially the same feelings when he returned to New York for a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly and stressed how important it was to “distinguish” between the “phenomenon” of 9/11 and “the legitimate struggles” of the Palestinians “to get rid of the yoke of illegitimate occupation and subjugation.” Al-Thani then accused Israel of “state terrorism” against the Palestinians.

But there was another reason to think twice about accepting al-Thani’s generosity that Giuliani had to have been aware of, even as he heaped praise on the emir. Al Jazeera, the Arabic news network based in Qatar (pronounced “Cutter”), had been all but created by al-Thani, who was its largest shareholder. The Bush administration was so upset with the coverage of Osama bin Laden’s pronouncements and the U.S. threats to bomb Afghanistan that Secretary of State Colin Powell met the emir just hours before Giuliani’s on-air endorsement and asked him to tone down the state-subsidized channel’s Islamist footage and rhetoric. The six-foot-eight, 350-pound al-Thani, who was pumping about $30 million a year into Al Jazeera at the time, refused Powell’s request, citing the need for “a free and credible media.” The administration’s burgeoning distaste for what it would later brand “Terror TV” was already so palpable that King—hardly a newsman—asked the emir if he would help “spread the word” that the U.S. was “not targeting the average Afghan citizen.” Al-Thani ignored the question—right before Giuliani rushed in to praise him again.

In retrospect, Giuliani’s embrace of the emir appears peculiar. But it was only a sign of bigger things to come: the launching of a cozy business relationship with terrorist-tolerant Qatar that is inconsistent with the core message of Giuliani’s current presidential campaign, namely that his experience and toughness uniquely equip him to protect America from what he tauntingly calls “Islamic terrorists”—an enemy that he always portrays himself as ready to confront, and the Democrats as ready to accommodate.

… speaking of individual pols, jockeying and lack of ethics etc.

There are a lot of folks who fucking hate Rudy in the center of the big media universe, with fat juicy rolodexes. If we end up with him and HillBill it’s going to be a battle of the slimey.

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10. Hair Club for Men - 28 November 2007: One of the reasons that civil libertarians have been especially alarmed about George W. Bush’s assertion of virtually unlimited executive authority over such tactics as wiretapping, data-mining and domestic spy satellites is that it has coincided with a Republican goal for near-permanent political control of the U.S. government.

Haven’t they had this for a long time? Think about J. Edgar Hoover’s files on the Kennedys or his photos of Joseph Alsop having gay sex in Moscow.

The big difference now it the level of techological sophistication but, quite frankly, it still leaves the unreliable human element. Who controls this high tech snoop machine? The Clinton family or the Bush family?

There answer is very obviously decentralization. The less power is concentrated in a few charismatic individuals, the less effective this kind of snooping is because the vast majority of this kind of raw data/intelligence on idividuals is a lot like listening into somebody else conversation when they’re on the cell phone on the train.

Hello. I’m on the train. That’s right. The train. I’m on the train.

If I could listen on in Hillary’s cell phone converstations I’d be willing to sit through five hours of “I’m on the train” for 20 seconds of good stuff

But spread out over a wide enough, diffuse enough, democratic enough system of government, then it becomes like Nigerian spam. Noone even wants to listen to it.

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11. marisacat - 28 November 2007: Haven’t they had this for a long time?

Generally speaking, 50+ years.

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12. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 November 2007: The Reagan Era Death Squads Surface Again, This Time In Iraq. Which Ones are on “Our Side”? Good Question.

Needless to say, Iraq remains a powder keg, as the Sunday Times article indicates, because the death squad policies of the Bush Administration (which, of course, you don’t hear about at Pentagon or White House briefings) are inevitably setting up all sides against the middle.

Bush is doing what he always does: what is most expedient to save his butt.

In the end, he is creating a Somalia style nation of warlord enclaves, each with their own militias.

The death squad strategy was the pride and joy of the neo-cons who cut their teeth in the Reagan Administration. If Blackwater can get away with murder, don’t you think that death squads operating with U.S. military and CIA support can carry out dirty deeds with impunity?

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13. marisacat - 28 November 2007: If we end up with him and HillBill it’s going to be a battle of the slimey.

Just don’t burn the butter…

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14. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 November 2007: NORMAN MAILER FOR MAYOR 1969 campaign poster

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15. Hair Club for Men - 28 November 2007: Haven’t they had this for a long time?

Generally speaking, 50+ years.

Every once in awhile of course I realize how creepy it is that the gubbment can access my Amazon.com purchases and find out how many books by Chomsky and Finkelstein I’ve bought.

That’s one thing they couldn’t do 50 years ago that they can now do with the click of a mouse.

Then with a few more clicks of a mouse they can track my ATM card purchases and which towers my cell phone hits and get an idea of my movements in real time. Then they can always get in touch with Comcast and see what mischief my IP has been up to on the web.

Then sound out the trucks to round people up. On a positive note, if we’re all in the stadium together, my guitar playing skills are pretty good and I’ve learned enough of the Victor Jara catalogue to entertain everybody.

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16. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 November 2007: Apparently there Is Not Enough Crime in NYC

That’s one thing they couldn’t do 50 years ago that they can now do with the click of a mouse.

Somewhere Jeremy Bentham is jerking off in glee.

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17. Hair Club for Men - 28 November 2007: Apparently there Is Not Enough Crime in NYC

Ah. The New York Times catches up. A guy I know “broke” this story over a year ago in a local NYC paper.

http://www.thevillager.com/villager_178/luckybagstingcharges.html

I need to give him props.

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18. marisacat - 28 November 2007: well the object is utter collapse of any shred of privacy… and total removal of the 4th amendment.

Another reason Griswold which paved the way for Roe is the objective. IMO.

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19. Hair Club for Men - 28 November 2007: Chris Hanson was also doing something similar a few months ago.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20078671/

Leaving iPods in public than tracking down the iPod thiefs, or, er, iPod finders.

I think he dropped it though. iPod finders just make less effective TV villains then child molesters do.

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20. marisacat - 28 November 2007: melvin – 6

Thanks for that… I just googled images of jellyfish… and this one really worked (poor slug Dems, all washed up)… then read the accompanying text at the blog it was at…

Very interesting.

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21. marisacat - 28 November 2007: entertaining on so many levels………. post and thread

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22. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 November 2007: LOL … you continue to haunt the ocher-sphere:

asdf (5.00 / 1) That original comment (starting with “Oh, I have a clue”) is worthy of Marisacat: brief, insightful, and with just the right amount of vinegar. Nicely done.

by coyote @ Wed Nov 28, 2007 at 17:05:22 PM CST
[ Parent ]

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23. marisacat - 28 November 2007: hmm got onto this site thru Danny Schechter’s News Dissector… not all that new, but there is this (and I like his 7 points, just sanity, but we will never get it):

A little side note for you: I firmly believe Robert Gates, the current Secretary of Defense and Bush Sr.’s right-hand man in the covert world, used computer cryptography and software security assets to get Bush Jr. elected both times. I do not have direct knowledge of the operation, but research “Robert Gates,” “Bill Owens,” “electronic voting security,” “HAVA,” “VoteHere” and “Scientific Applications International Corp.” [We will post more on this in the near future.]

The operation went so well that Gates was going to be made the first ever Director of National Intelligence. He turned down the job, but then took the Secretary of Defense position when Rumsfeld was removed from his public position. I don’t think there will ever be solid evidence linking directly to members of the administration; it’s all a tangled web of plausible deniability. But I do think it will eventually be proven that the elections were manipulated to deliver Bush the victory. Many people in the covert world take this for granted, as common sense.

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24. bayprairie - 28 November 2007: ioz getting started on the “write my fucking book” kos post.

Oh-ho. It must be something to live in an asylum where all the inmates think they’re Napoleon. You do have to give credit where due, though. Even when they lose, they win. Joseph Heller, eatcherheartout.

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25. Miss Devore - 28 November 2007: this is a test. who is this poster?:

“When you ask for Karma when I counter ATTACk against accusations of being a racist and a race abiter.

This site is filled with phonies of your stripe.

pf8 is among the biggest.

Spare me your kumbaya and live up to your so called principles.

I find this diary utterly dishonest.

Frankly, I find this community to be largely dishonest.”

It’s in a new diary that the pff diary linked to.

Nippleprongedkitty apparently rushed to the defense and made some claim that people often blame their bad behavior on Aravia.

I suspect she’d love to have him beat her with her own bongos.

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26. marisacat - 28 November 2007: Pepe Escobar identifies who may rise in Pakistan. Negroponte spent more time with the rising star than with “Mush”.

Negroponte’s lush experience of deadly counter-insurgency in Honduras and Mexico in the early 1980s was not handy enough to make Musharraf see the writing on the wall himself: clean up your act (that is, cut a deal with Bhutto as soon as possible) or else. “Or else”, with Musharraf out of the picture, would be Bhutto cutting a deal with the new top dog in boots, chain smoker and president of the Pakistan Golf Association General Kiani, the new Washington darling.

…

Negroponte met twice with Kiani. According to Urdu-language media, “he spent more time with General Kiani than with General Musharraf.” Pakistani analysts are virtually unanimous. Beyond the Ahsan or Kiani “minor” issue, Negroponte’s visit had nothing to do with democracy, but with guaranteeing the prosecution of the “war on terror” and the interests of US multinationals. The White House didn’t bother to utter a single word about the fierce demands for democracy by Pakistani lawyers, journalists, students or human-rights activists.

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27. marisacat - 28 November 2007: I think it is hilarious this SNAFU’d FUBAR involving Armando rose over the [front page Wapo] report of the McAllen TX bundler for Hillary… .

LOL

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28. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 November 2007: so, death squads to Pakistan. Great.

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29. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 November 2007: I don’t know, as there was no way in hell I was going to watch, but I’m willing to bet that THIS You Tube question wasn’t used tonight.

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30. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 November 2007: What goes on behind the scenes at Elmo’s World?

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31. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 November 2007: The USA’s Oily Devil

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32. marisacat - 28 November 2007: yeesh… I scrolled down a bit while at Sivacracy and Siva (at least) there endorses Obama – O – Mama.

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33. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 November 2007: Oh, yes, I skipped that. A bunch of professional historians came out for Obama.

Great thing about these internets tube thingies (both of them) is that I don’t have to watch an entire piece of crap when I can find entertaining excerpts like the crowd booing McCain for going all Godwin on Ron Paul.

Nothing like two crazy old coots slap-fighting with each other.

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34. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 November 2007: the direct permalink doesn’t seem to work, so just look for the title:

COUNTERPUNCH EXCLUSIVE!
Counterattack as Fateful Referendum Looms
CIA Venezuela Destabilization Memo Surfaces

On November 26, 2007 the Venezuelan government broadcast and circulated a confidential memo from the US embassy to the CIA which is devastatingly revealing of US clandestine operations and which will influence the referendum this Sunday, December 2, 2007.

The memo sent by an embassy official, Michael Middleton Steere, was addressed to the Director of Central Intelligence, Michael Hayden. The memo was entitled ‘Advancing to the Last Phase of Operation Pincer’ and updates the activity by a CIA unit with the acronym ‘HUMINT’ (Human Intelligence) which is engaged in clandestine action to destabilize the forth-coming referendum and coordinate the civil military overthrow of the elected Chavez government. The Embassy-CIA’s polls concede that 57 per cent of the voters approved of the constitutional amendments proposed by Chavez but also predicted a 60 per cent abstention.

The details below that introduction are worrying.

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35. marisacat - 28 November 2007: Here is some more of the Counterpunch (it is the article right at the top, if you go the main URL it is right there)

The Opposition

With strong financial backing from the US Embassy ($8 million dollars in propaganda alone according to the Embassy memo) and the business elite and ‘free time’ by the right-wing media, the Right has organized a majority of the upper middle class students from the private universities, backed by the Catholic Church hierarchy, large swaths of the affluent middle class neighborhoods, entire sectors of the commercial, real estate and financial middle classes and apparently sectors of the military, especially officials in the National Guard. While the Right has control over the major private media, public television and radio back the constitutional reforms. While the Right has its followers among some generals and the National Guard, Chavez has the backing of the paratroops and legions of middle-rank officers and most other generals.

The outcome of the Referendum of December 2 is a major historical event first and foremost for Venezuela but also for the rest of the Americas. A positive vote (Vota ‘Sí’) will provide the legal framework for the democratization of the political system, the socialization of strategic economic sectors, empower the poor and provide the basis for a self-managed factory system.

A negative vote (or a successful US-backed civil-military uprising) would reverse the most promising living experience of popular self-rule, of advanced social welfare and democratically based socialism. A reversal, especially a military dictated outcome, would lead to a blood bath, such as we have not seen since the days of the Indonesian Generals’ Coup of 1966, which killed over a million workers and peasants or the Argentine Coup of 1976 in which over 30,000 Argentines were murdered by the US- backed Generals.

A decisive vote for ‘Sí’ will not end US military and political destabilization campaigns but it will certainly undermine and demoralize their collaborators. On December 2, 2007 the Venezuelans have a rendezvous with history.

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36. Hair Club for Men - 28 November 2007: Obama – O – Mama

Obama’s going to be in Harlem tomorrow and lots of people are planning to go to “aggressively question” him on HR 1955.

I can find entertaining excerpts like the crowd booing McCain for going all Godwin on Ron Paul.

I’m kind of over Ron Paul. It seems to me that the cable news networks are starting to script the “Ron Paul vs. Latest Neocon” exchanges to boost ratings. It’s starting to seem like the same professional wrestling match that’s going on between Edwards/Obama/Hillary at Kos.

BTW, what’s with McCain’s neck?

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37. ms_xeno - 28 November 2007: Has McKinney changed her mind about running ? Will she run as an Indy ? Stan Goff seems to think so.

Link passed on to me by Scruggs.

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38. Hair Club for Men - 28 November 2007: Has McKinney changed her mind about running ? Will she run as an Indy ?

I really wish she’d shit or get off the pot.

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39. marisacat - 28 November 2007: obama should jsut say, I will be campaigning the day the vote comes up on Jane’s radical Rand stitch quilting bill.

He won’t be saying much. Think he ditched the Iran vote (the most recent) iirc.

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40. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 November 2007: oooo, thanks ms_x … if I could bake I’d rustle up some macaroons.

Have some Dengue Fever instead.

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41. Hair Club for Men - 28 November 2007: Those Paul vs. Neocon exchanges, definitely scripted. The first one with Rudy was genuine. But then Les Neocons, Paul, and Les News Networks Cables found that it was mutually beneficial to repeat them.

Rudy/McCain get to seem tough. Chris Matthews swoons over the tough answer the next day.

Paul gets to fire up his base and raise $$$ and get Justin Raimondo worked up and excited.

CNN gets to make it look like a real debate when it’s just a steel cage match.

The Rudy vs. Mitt Romney slap fights are the same thing.

How do you get out of the matrix?

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42. marisacat - 28 November 2007: 37

the thread at Feral Scholar is interesting, thanks for that ms xeno………..

8)

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43. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 November 2007: or if that didn’t work, some Sharon Jones.

Believe it or not, a young Madman once owned the original First Edition album with that song, obtained at age 7 by dumpster diving when the landlord kicked out a bunch of hippies in the apartment complex where we lived.

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44. marisacat - 28 November 2007: good comment from Stan Goff in the thread…

McKinney doesnlt need some unified campaign. Her candidacy is not Rommel in the desert. She needs 5,000 campaigns, conducted by groups of people who are deeply embedded where they work, and who have the environmental awareness and agility of alley cats. People who can take broad guidance (similar to the kind above) and say, hey, here’s how we can get this done here. I know so-and-so, we can do this. You know so-and-so, maybe we can try that. Collectivity as a fetish stifles initiative and creativity; and it is slow as pond water. Small groups of tight friends can pull off some amazingly creative and povocative things.

Cross-pollinization of these efforts happen through lateral-network communications, without the heavy hand of a Central Committee.

That’s also what our resistance politics needs more generally. I think.

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45. moiv - 28 November 2007: Madman @ 29

So far, nobody’s been asked this question, either.

And likely won’t be.

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46. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 November 2007: “lefty”-don’t-get-it … version umpteen million and one.

I don’t understand radical folks who dismiss Kucinich because he remains a Democrat, but are more than happy to support the latest third party candidate. At least Kucinich, through his membership in the party, gets noticed and pushes that whole debate somewhat leftward.

And Tinkerbell will live if you clap REALLY LOUD.

K would do more good if he resigned from the party, preferably the day after his re-election.

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47. Madman in the Marketplace - 28 November 2007: Great one moiv.

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48. lucid - 28 November 2007: Well moiv… if you are a poor recipient of abortion, you should receive more time than a rapist. If you are a provider, it depends. Redeemable doctors should simply be relocated clandestinely, so they can continue to provide safe abortion services to wealthy women. Their staff? Well the christian one’s should be forgiven and the heathens should be made an example of. As for wealthy women, well they should be able to have abortions whenever they want without penalty, because God’s plan is to force poor women to have more children so that our Christian military has more fodder for endless wars to secure America’s God given right to every resource in the world.

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49. marisacat - 28 November 2007: just landed on this in the Feral Scholar thread… and had a really good laugh:

Legume Sam:

Stan/De:

Have you considered posting at Docudharma? They seem pretty disgusted with the Democrats at this point & are looking for an alternative…

27 November 2007, 3:57 pm

think legume sam is done, but someone could fork him.

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50. marisacat - 28 November 2007: oh what a giggle.. the gay retired general with a yOuTube question tonight is on the LGBT Steering Committe for HIllary. Not a volunteeer a paid worker.

LOL…

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51. bayprairie - 28 November 2007: yes marisa! i just saw that too.

haha! what a hoot.

this just in, unconfirmed as of this moment.

UPDATE: In the final seconds of the post-debate coverage, CNN Anchor/Reporter James Carville, speaking for Anderson Cooper, acknowledges that CNN messed this up and states that neither CNN nor Carville knew that Kerr has a position within the Clinton campaign and that had they known, CNN would have disclosed the association.

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52. marisacat - 28 November 2007: oh right James (Anchor/Reporter!) we all buy that one.

Yeah right……………..

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53. BooHooHooMan - 29 November 2007: Phase one:

Let’s Chat

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54. marisacat - 29 November 2007: oh here is a good excuse to ramp up our renewed “temporary” military presence on the Philipines…

Philippine soldiers launch an assault on a luxury Manila hotel, after it was taken over by dozens of armed renegade troops.

For more details: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news

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55. Madman in the Marketplace - 29 November 2007: CNN interviewed the gay general this morning (“In the interests of full disclosure” … LOL). I have to say, the old guy was pretty sharp.

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56. JJB - 29 November 2007: BHHM, no. 101, last thread,

My pleasure, one of the things I’ve always liked doing was discovering interesting material on the Internet and sharing it. Another excellent source for information about how the CIA extended its tenticles into the worlds of publishing, academia, philanthropy, the arts and assorted cultural institutions is a book by Frances Stonor Saunders alternately entitled The Cultural Cold War, or Who Paid The Piper? (I believe the latter is an updated version that bears the title the book was given in the UK market). The edition of the book I have is the first US, which includes speculation that Plimpton and the Paris Review were creatures of the CIA. I understand that later editions were more forthright in this claim and more information became available.

One interesting tidbit that serves to add weight to the charge Cummings makes that the staff of Newsweek was full of people with CIA connections during the 1960s and 70s is Saunder’s claim that the late pundit Stewart Alsop, who for a number of years was the Last Page columnist for the magazine (he was the first as I recall, and he filed a piece every week instead of alternating with someone as is the practice now) was a full-fledged CIA agent whose main job was to feed disinformation to the foreign statesmen and diplomats he would interview during the course of his long journalistic career (and it’s hard to believe he didn’t slip these tidbits to selected Senators and Congresscritters as well). Alsop wrote a syndicated column with his brother Joseph for many years (the most widely read column in the country during the 1950s, IIRC), then served as chief political correspondent for The Saturday Evening Post before switching over to Newsweek (the SEP was about to go under when he left and his new job would boost his influence tremendously). During WWII, he joined the British Army allegedly because the our own wouldn’t take him due to high blood pressure. Then in 1944, he was transferred to the US Army, and was sent on OSS-planned missions. Anyone who’s seen The Good Shepheard, or done even the most cursory research into how spook agencies operate will recognize that he was almost certainly a spy from the very first, trained by the Brits and then transferred back to us. He was certainly every bit the sort of Ivy League blueblood the OSS and CIA recruited so eagerly – Eleanor Roosevelt was a cousin, he attended Groton and Yale, etc.

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57. Miss Devore - 29 November 2007: Henry Hyde dead.

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58. Hair Club for Men - 29 November 2007: Henry’s dying was a youthful indiscretion.

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59. JJB - 29 November 2007: Henry Hyde has croaked.

I’ll try very hard to summon up the spirir of John Donne’s “Meditation XVII.” Certainly the line about a “clod be washed away” is apropos given that the late swine of a Congressman is the very essence of the word’s contemporary definition. I guess Kosolini must feel as if he’s come first circle, 20 years ago he was campaigning for the guy, now he’s passing judgment on the likes of Hyde as a pundit (of sorts).

Which for no reason reminds me of something else that bothers me about Kos and his attempt to get others to write his book or do research for nothing (most big time writers have considerable help with their books, but at least they pay for it and list the people in the acknowledgements). Time was an author would pitch the idea for a book like the one Kos is “writing” after they had already accumulated a lot of material while writing on other subjects. To use just one example, after Barbara Tuchman had published The Guns of August, she decided to write a book about the period prior to the war, largely because she came across so many statements by people about what a wonderful, Golden Age had existed the Great War (the premise of the resulting book, The Proud Tower, was that the era in question was anything but Golden, and that all such statements about it’s wonderful nature were made post-1918). Kos, like the hack he is, agrees to produce a book on a general topic without any clear idea of what he might write about, then realizes he can’t think of any examples that support his general premise, i.e., that “Netroots ‘Activism’” of the sort he is said to practice has enabled ordinary people to make out political system more responsive to their needs. It would be interesting to see if this book ever gets published, my guess is “not likely.”

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60. Hair Club for Men - 29 November 2007: Kos and Hyde have another connection.

Rahm Emmanuel pushed an anti-war democrat out of competing for Hyde’s seat and put in a “fighting Democrat” (Tammy Duckworth, who lost).

Not a lot of protest from Kos.

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61. JJB - 29 November 2007: A diary Kos could but won’t write:

“Henry Hyde inspired me to become what I am today!”

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62. marisacat - 29 November 2007: oh Kos and Los Boyos participated in the marginalising of Cegelis so Duckworth could win the primary. At one time Kos and Boyz supported Cegelis and Kos even slightly fund raised for her… then removed her name from the list…

Another reason I say the Boyz are minions of Rahm, of the DCCC… some osrt of “product enhancement” work… like Amber Waves of Grain McCreamy, etc… opps that was a typo but just as much Mccreamy as McDreamy… LOL.

I really disliked Duckworth – she was a fucking asshole, to be blunt. And I never could run it down but I suspected a lot of masked religion there as well, I thought it likely she came from mission converts in Asia. The whole thing stank. She promised to help pass pro life judges, they pushed her damned war record, the loss of her legs to sell her.

I found it utterly despicable.

And then at My dd the Boyz were so shocked she did not win the nomination big (they had been told… etc) – she scraped in… and then were shocked she did not win (Rahm pumped all sorts of money into that run… even they had to admit it and be non plussed)…

Veyr ugly run. And she like Patrick Murphy and a couple others were shoved forward to suck up all the national attention.

Think she has gone back to her patronage job at the god damned fucking Rotary Club.

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63. marisacat - 29 November 2007: Glad Henry is gone. Bet he is not shocked at all there is no God…

LOL

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64. aemd - 29 November 2007: Sweet babe Jesus, IOZ nails it…. again.

“Their debates read like Coen brothers’ scripts: shockingly inarticulate people hurling themselves against injustices that seem cosmic to them, comic to us. Their back stories are insane, and also Coenesque. The slick Mormon with a barely hidden streak of sadism. The egomaniacal, satyriac, thrice-married, ex-Catholic, mobbed-up lunatic Mayor of a New York made into a glistening parody of itself. The circus-freak fat-man who loved Jesus enough to lose the weight. The absolutely monomaniacal congresscreature obsessed to the point of paranoia with the fluoridation of the American bloodline through Mexican subterfuge. The senile, exhausted, former-prisoner-of-war, Vietnam vet Senator who seems, in every instance, on the verge of tears.”

Sadly the GOP’s vapid, phony script will give the Dems a run for the money. All the very big money. We truly are fucked.

http://whoisioz.blogspot.com/2007/11/dramatis-personae.html

A little link about community sites. It may be just sports but it’s all about grassroots and “average, mediocre, and some outright awful” free user content. To some it’s a community, to others a business plan. LOL.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/stopthepresses_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003677395

“Bet he is not shocked at all there is no God”

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65. Miss Devore - 29 November 2007: 63-he expected a fetal cheerleading squad as he entered the afterlife. Cherub embryos.

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66. Hair Club for Men - 29 November 2007: Sadly the GOP’s vapid, phony script will give the Dems a run for the money. All the very big money. We truly are fucked.

I noticed that Romney has Copher Black as an advisor, not a household name but familiar to anybody who’s read Scahill’s book on Blackwater.

It almost seems these Republicans are so bad that they almost seem to be scripting THEMSELVES as bogeymen for a Democratic lesser of two evils run.

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67. marisacat - 29 November 2007: TruthOut picks up on the Harman bill:

The Violent Radicalization Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007

TO Link

Truthout’s Matt Renner reports:

“A month ago, the House of Representatives passed legislation that targets Americans with radical ideologies for research. The bill has received little media attention and has almost unanimous support in the House. However, civil liberties groups see the bill as a threat to the constitutionally protected freedoms of expression, privacy and protest.”

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68. marisacat - 29 November 2007: Cofer Black for Romney and a passel of hard liner pro Israel NeoCon for Guiliani.

They may be fully nutz or borderline, but there is plenty of powerful backing around.

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69. BooHooHooMan - 29 November 2007: I wonder if they might have hors doevres and an openbar at the funeral home?

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70. BooHooHooMan - 29 November 2007: *u put the u in hors doeuvres,Henry…( I know I didn’t)

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71. marisacat - 29 November 2007: LOL

Bill Clinton’s Claim of Opposing Iraq War From Outset Disputed

By Glenn Kessler and Anne Kornblut
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, November 29, 2007; Page A08

A former senior aide to then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice disputed Bill Clinton’s statement this week that he “opposed Iraq from the beginning,” saying that the former president was privately briefed by top White House officials about war planning in 2003 and that he told them he supported the invasion.

Clinton’s comments in Iowa on Tuesday went far beyond more nuanced remarks he made about the conflict in 2003. But the disclosure of his presence in briefings by Rice — and his private expressions of support — may add to the headaches that the former president has given his wife’s campaign in recent weeks. ::snip::

Oh how could I forget: Go Bill. Rah rahrahrah.

All aboard for the War Train:

Hillary Mann Leverett, at the time the White House director of Persian Gulf affairs, said that Rice and Elliott Abrams, then National Security Council senior director for Near East and North African affairs, met with Clinton several times in the months before the March 2003 invasion to answer any questions he might have. She said she was “shocked” and “astonished” by Clinton’s remarks this week, made to voters in Iowa, because she has distinct memories of Abrams “coming back from those meetings literally glowing and boasting that ‘we have Clinton’s support.’ ”

Leverett, a former career foreign service officer who said she is not involved in any presidential campaign, said the incident affected her because of her own doubts about the wisdom of an attack. “To hear President Clinton was supportive really silenced whatever questions I had,” she recalled. Leverett, who worked in the same office as Abrams at the time, said Rice and Abrams “made it a high priority” to get Clinton’s support, meeting with him at least twice. Abrams was tasked to answer Clinton’s questions and “took the responsibility very seriously,” Leverett said. “Elliott was then very focused on making sure that we followed up on Clinton’s questions to keep Clinton happy and on board.”

ohyeah it was such work to get BillHill on board. hmm mmm.

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72. marisacat - 29 November 2007: just saw this on the Reuters feed on the sidebar:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The government may tap emergency oil reserves to offset Canadian imports lost after a deadly Minnesota pipeline explosion briefly choked off more than 10 percent of foreign supplies to the world’s top consumer.

Enbridge Inc restarted two of the four pipelines on the system linking Ontario to the Central United States on Thursday, with the biggest line expected back up later in the day and the last line seen back up in two to three days.

But throughput at the 1.5 million-barrel-per-day (bpd) Enbridge pipeline system will likely be reduced for weeks as the Department of Transportation investigates the Wednesday blast in Clearbrook, Minnesota, which killed two workers.

U.S. oil surged more than $2 a barrel as Midwest refiners scrambled to find alternate supplies on concerns about a prolonged crimp in Canadian crude flows. ::snip::

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73. marisacat - 29 November 2007: Breaking News from ABCNEWS.com:

BRITISH SCHOOL TEACHER FOUND GUILTY OF INCITING RELIGIOUS HATRED, SENTENCED TO 50 DAYS – correction: FIFTEEN Days IN PRISON BUT NO FLOGGING, THE AP REPORTS

http://abcnews.go.com?CMP=EMC-1396

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74. marisacat - 29 November 2007: yum.

FAIR takes on Bill’s claim to have been opposed to Iraq war. LOL… and they have one of his UK opinion pieces, from the Guardian…

But Clinton’s public support for the war is a matter of record. Just before George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair invaded Iraq, Clinton published an op-ed in the London Guardian (3/18/03) urging Britons to “Trust Tony’s Judgment”:

As Blair has said, in war there will be civilian was well as military casualties…. But if we leave Iraq with chemical and biological weapons, after 12 years of defiance, there is a considerable risk that one day these weapons will fall into the wrong hands and put many more lives at risk than will be lost in overthrowing Saddam.

Clinton’s column included the less-than-prescient prediction that “military action probably will require only a few days.”

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75. Arcturus - 29 November 2007: Prospect Island Update: There are still live fish at Prospect Island!

by Dan Bacher

Bob McDaris and I went to Prospect Island yesterday afternoon (November 28) to find if there were any live fish to rescue. The good news is that we found that there are hundreds, possibly thousands, of striped bass still alive in the section that we investigated. There were also many dead striped bass in the muddy wallow that we waded through.

The bad news is that we saw fish dying as we were there. And although DFG and Bureau of Reclamation staff have removed most of the tens of thousands of dead fish, I took photos of a massive, putrid pile of fish that included thousands of native Sacramento splittail minnows, carp and largemouth bass.

btw, Bacher is worth searching out/following on CA water issues – from the Delta, Klamath, Trinity, & Winnemum Wintu/Pitt River Shasta dam disputes to Arnie’s proposed dams & peripheral ‘water conveyance’ measure – Counterpunch sometimes picks up his pieces – he also edits a nice l’il local rag here, Because People Matter

2 others of his today:

Faced with a series of environmental disasters in the Bay-Delta Estuary, including the ongoing fish kill at Prospect Island, the Pelagic Organism Decline in the Delta and the Cosco Busan oil spill, what does the Department of Water Resources plan to do? Make things worse by proposing alarming changes to the water contracts for the State Water Project. Meanwhile, California’s “green Governor,” Arnold Schwarzenegger continues to campaign for the peripheral canal, more dams and more water exports, a plan that would result in the complete destruction of the Bay-Delta Estuary, the largest and most significant estuary on the West Coast.

. . .

If adopted permanently, these amendments would:
• Eliminate urban safeguards for water in droughts and shortages
• Eliminate the requirement for DWR to determine the reliable safe yield of the water that can be pumped from northern California and the Bay Delta estuary
• Eliminate prohibition on the use of “surplus” Delta water for permanent development
• Give away the State’s largest groundwater storage facility — the Kern Water Bank
• Promote increased transfers from northern California, and promote transfers from agriculture to urban areas with little public oversightlink

& Fishermen and Indian Tribes Blast Contradictory FERC Report on Klamath River Dams

you know, the ones owned by meester humanitari-billionaire warren buffet

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76. marisacat - 29 November 2007: you know, the ones owned by meester humanitari-billionaire warren buffet

thanks for the links Arcturus.

Ain’t it the truth on WB. I am so sick to death of the bended knee hosannas he buys himself for muttering a thing or two about estate taxes. Same thing the Gates FAMILY pulled, they sent Granddad out to mutter about estate taxes.

Such scams. And people love it.

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77. Arcturus - 29 November 2007: mmm-hmmm — google gates/ seed /africa sometime when you’re bored

& since there are some litchrachore lovers here, mebbe someone might wanna send some love to the author of Sunrise in Armageddon

t’is the season ‘n shit . . .

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78. marisacat - 29 November 2007: I’ve written on Gates and Africa, but not specificlaly on seeds…

And Gates Foundation and Africa (let’s get real, Africom) means Buffet’s money.

Yes what a scam it all is. Like Clooney calling Eric Prince and asking what he can do “to help” in Darfur.

The dots are so bright. And they huddle together, not needing to be connected.

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79. marisacat - 29 November 2007: Marcus Marbury, Glenn Kessler, and Bumiller… all on The News Hour scrubbing clean and fine the life and Great Works of Condi.

we are so fucked up.

Marbury pushes the Civil Rights fiction the R cloak her in, Kessler slobbers slobbers slobbers (Arabs love her personal story) and Bumiller minces.

It is beyond disgusting. For antoher of leadership that suffers from terminal juvenalia.

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80. Hair Club for Men - 29 November 2007: Huckabee on Hardball seriously playing up the welfare state Xtian philosophy.

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81. NYCO - 29 November 2007: Marisacat…

…jumping out of lurk to marvel aloud, WHERE DO YOU FIND THESE PHOTOS?

I haven’t laughed so hard at a photo accompanying a blog post, since I don’t know when.

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82. Madman in the Marketplace - 29 November 2007: Think she has gone back to her patronage job at the god damned fucking Rotary Club.

Nope, IL Gov He’s tapping wounded Iraq war vet Tammy Duckworth to be the new director of the Illinois Veterans’ Affairs Department.

“I thought it was a natural fit for me and my background,” Duckworth told me.

Glad Henry is gone. Bet he is not shocked at all there is no God…

It’s times like this I wish I had the comfort of that stupid religion, so that I could relish the idea of that demogogue roasting in hell. Oh, btw, someone on the lauditory NPR story about his death assured us all that he was NEVER a demogogue. Right after they played a clip of him giving that famous speech about how the Supreme Court wouldn’t allow the death penalty of rapists, but would allow the “extermination” (I think that was the word he used) of feti. Irony … lost on the neo-NPR.

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83. marisacat - 29 November 2007: NYCO

a hoot isn’t it? Like the jellyfish blob that ate Washington DC, or something.

I googled up jellyfish images. It popped up pretty fast, page 3 or 4. Plus the little story that accompanied it was not too bad either.. I had not heard that jellyfish are becoming a big problem…

8)

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84. Madman in the Marketplace - 29 November 2007: Just because I’m feeling silly:

Pong Gone Wrong

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85. Madman in the Marketplace - 29 November 2007: President Bush’s travel entourage

Now we know where all that children’s healthcare money goes.

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86. Madman in the Marketplace - 29 November 2007: Remember the clueless idiot executive I linked to the other day from Universal Music? Someone was inspired by his idiocracy to create a little webcomic in his honor.

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87. marisacat - 29 November 2007: HC

LOL just reading everywhere how much the media luvs Huckabee.

gah.

*************

Plus I am enjoying this from the ABC afternoon Sneak Peek:

AP’s Ron Fournier looks at Bill Clinton’s latest campaign appearance by the numbers. “He was unscripted, in-depth and generous,” Fournier writes in his “On Deadline” column.

“He also was long-winded, misleading and self-absorbed.”

How many performances like this before he becomes scarce on the trail?

Fournier:

“He used the word ‘I’ a total of 94 times and mentioned ‘Hillary’ just seven times in an address that was as much about his legacy as it was about his wife’s candidacy.”

The R operatives and media (well assisted by Dem/Kerry camp bad logistics, poor pre prep) worked to slam Heinz Kerry so hard, they knocked her negatives to higher than CHENEY’s… not saying she was not a difficult customer, she was… but still, the wife of the nominee for the Dem party ticket.

So, fire up the butter. Prepare the rotisserie for Bill. Basting brush in hand………

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88. Hair Club for Men - 29 November 2007: LOL just reading everywhere how much the media luvs Huckabee

They don’t love Huckabee. They’re just getting a better look at Rudy and Romney.

Did you ever catch those old AMC Movie Channel ads when they were running “Silence of the Lambs”?

They played the dorkiest possible clips of that head psychiatrist and those two nerdy guys who taught Jodie Foster what the moth was and a clip of Buffalo Bill and the voiceover was “sometimes when you consider the competition, Hannibal Lector’s actually a pretty good catch. He is a doctor”.

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89. Madman in the Marketplace - 29 November 2007: cool

Federal Court Rules Pot To Be Returned To Driver
GARDEN GROVE, Calif. (CBS) ―

Eight grams of medical marijuana seized from a Garden Grove man during a traffic stop must be returned to him, according to an appeals court ruling directing local law enforcement to uphold state, not federal law.

A three-justice panel of the 4th District Court of Appeal weighed in on the issue in a published decision that sets precedent for future cases on similar issues.

The marijuana, which belonged to Felix Kha, 22, was confiscated during a traffic stop on June 10, 2005.

Kha pleaded guilty to a traffic violation. The charge of possessing marijuana while driving was dropped after he produced a doctor’s note approving Kha’s use that he said was for severe back pain.

Despite objections by the prosecution, the judge ordered Kha’s marijuana returned, according to the ruling.

Hey, CA, don’t bogart those joints!

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90. marisacat - 29 November 2007: well I think the media panders to the evangelicals and the classic, most hidebound, Baptists by promoting Huckabee. It’s a story they like.

Plucky [but fucking crazy which will be mentioned at a later time] insurgent governor. Etc.

Everyone is a cartoon by now……….

As a blonde I know this……..

8)

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91. Madman in the Marketplace - 29 November 2007: Those racial politics

You know, to listen to Buchanan talk, you would think that the drawing of racial lines that he’s decrying as unnaturally divisive was a recent invention — caused, perhaps, by the recent mass influx of Latino immigrants, or perhaps the civil-rights movement.

You’d never guess that those racial lines were drawn well over a hundred years ago in this country, and they were not only drawn but enforced by them for well over a century. The “Balkanization” he sees was created long ago, though it may have been invisible to his eyes — since it’s clear that, in Buchanan’s eyes It’s been only because of the fight for civil rights and the rise of multiculturalism that this has changed at all.

As I’ve noted before, “identity politics,” though it was not called that then, was an invention of 19th-century white supremacists who divided the nation up into a distinct racial hierarchy that had economic outcomes, with white Europeans at the top of the heap and everyone else somewhere at whatever bottom could be scraped out for them. Whites continued to employ such divisions with abandon through most of the first half of the last century. Their heirs continue to do so, but in less nakedly racial terms.

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92. Arcturus - 29 November 2007: The News Hour – I can’t do NPR

but listening now to good interview w/ Dahr J on Flashpoints – much preferable to these tired ears . . .

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93. Madman in the Marketplace - 29 November 2007: Submit, or else:

Cop Tasers Pregnant Woman

TROTWOOD, Ohio — A policeman forced a pregnant woman to the ground and used a stun gun on her when she refused to answer the officer’s questions and resisted being handcuffed, authorities said Thursday.

The woman went to the police department on Nov. 18 to ask officers to take custody of her one-year-old son, said Michael Etter, Trotwood’s public safety director.

The woman told the officer she was “tired of playing games” with the baby’s father, Etter said.

The woman refused to answer questions, became frustrated and tried to leave with the child, Etter said. The officer feared allowing her to leave could jeopardize the child and he decided to detain her to get more information.

He said the officer grabbed the woman, got the child away from her and forced her to the ground. When she resisted being handcuffed and tried to get away, the officer used the stun gun on her, Etter said.

The woman wore a winter coat and did not tell the officer she was pregnant, Etter said. “She was totally unco-operative,” he said.

So she deserved to be tortured, of course.

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94. Madman in the Marketplace - 29 November 2007: I actually found the link to this at Crooks and Liars, of all places:

Healing — a Crucial Aspect of Any Revolution

The US government decries Chavez and calls his government a dictatorship. However, Chavez was freely elected. His government continues to present to the governing assembly and to the people its proposals for their approval. In fact, the Reform is being campaigned for–the election is slated for December 2 and people will have a choice. If they don’t want the Reform, they can vote against it. If the majority wins, this will be the law of the land. That’s democracy.

In the Opinion section of the LA Times, Saturday, November 24, 2007, William Ratliff, who is supposed to be a learned intellectual, a research fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland and at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, claims that the 69 constitutional amendments in the Reform will most likely pass, and that the Venezuelans are fools for doing this.

They are no fools. They are one of the most intelligent, engaged and feisty electorate you’ll ever find (I truly don’t believe Mr. Ratliff has gone down there to find out). They want change, and for now Chavez represents that change.

Ratliff says, “the vote will be bad not only for Venezuela but for the rest of Latin America.” Why? Isn’t that what democracy is all about? If there are truly open elections that’s good for Latin America where such elections in the past have been fraudulent, violent and un-democratic (especially in countries that the US government has backed). Ratliff also calls this a “populist dictatorship.” A contradiction in terms. If the majority of people want it that’s their choice. And their right.

Ratliff also misrepresents the Reform. He says the new amendments would allow Hugo Chavez to be “president for life.” In fact, it would allow him and any other candidate to run indefinitely, but the people will still have to choose their president. He calls the probable support of the Reform on December 2 “self destructive voting.” You mean like the last two presidential elections in which George Bush won. That is definitely self-destructive. In fact, the US democratic process is one of the most cumbership, complicated, money-driven, and wholly undemocratic in the world. Maybe Venezuela can show the world how it’s done.

For this Reform is not just an election. It’s part of a revolution.

Now, for me, any real revolution is about healing. It has to heal centuries of injustices, including against the indigenous and African peoples, and decades of control of the major industry and resources by a small number of families. It has to heal the exploitation of the poor and the uneducated. It has to open the schools, the factories, the housing, and the land’s bounty to ALL the people. This is what the rich opposition is against–they want this control for themselves.

The whole thing is really good, and there are other good posts there too.

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95. Madman in the Marketplace - 29 November 2007: Another:

The United States–Is Revolution Possible?

There is already, then, a revolution in the productive forces of society laying the basis for a political/social revolution. What people need in the US is an orientation of this and the class forces at play, a clarity of the objective realities we face–with a vision of where to go and a strategy of how to get there. That’s the job of revolutionaries. Something that is also in the early stages of developing.

Is revolution possible in the US? Yes. Will it happen tomorrow? No. The United States is a large, multi-layered and complicated society. It is also the heart of empire and war in the world. Social revolution is possible, but it will entail serious, long-range and fully engaging efforts on the part of revolutionaries in relation to the maturing objective conditions.

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96. marisacat - 29 November 2007: Not sure what it means but this was at Danny Schechter’s News Dissector:

CYNTHIA

In the evening I was invited by former Congress member Cynthia McKinney to a lectue she gave at Baruch College. It was noted that 40,000 republicans crossed over to vote against her bid for reelection in her District primary in Georgia. She lost but she is now moving into a larger arena. She gave me a new card she printed up announcing that she has put together a committee to explore a bid as a presidential candidate for the Green Party.

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97. Madman in the Marketplace - 29 November 2007: Another reminder of why I would NEVER live in Tejas (sorry you fine ladies who post here from there … but still):

State science curriculum director resigns

The state’s director of science curriculum has resigned after being accused of creating the appearance of bias against teaching intelligent design.

Chris Comer, who has been the Texas Education Agency’s director of science curriculum for more than nine years, offered her resignation this month.

In documents obtained Wednesday through the Texas Public Information Act, agency officials said they recommended firing Comer for repeated acts of misconduct and insubordination. But Comer said she thinks political concerns about the teaching of creationism in schools were behind what she describes as a forced resignation.

Agency officials declined to comment, saying it was a personnel issue.

Comer was put on 30 days paid administrative leave shortly after she forwarded an e-mail in late October announcing a presentation being given by Barbara Forrest, author of “Inside Creationism’s Trojan Horse,” a book that says creationist politics are behind the movement to get intelligent design theory taught in public schools. Forrest was also a key witness in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case concerning the introduction of intelligent design in a Pennsylvania school district. Comer sent the e-mail to several individuals and a few online communities, saying, “FYI.”

Agency officials cited the e-mail in a memo recommending her termination. They said forwarding the e-mail not only violated a directive for her not to communicate in writing or otherwise with anyone outside the agency regarding an upcoming science curriculum review, “it directly conflicts with her responsibilities as the Director of Science.”

The memo adds, “Ms. Comer’s e-mail implies endorsement of the speaker and implies that TEA endorses the speaker’s position on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral.”

So the head of the science curriculum MUST REMAIN NEUTRAL ON TEH SCIENCE OR TEH SUPERSTITION?

*** shakes head ***

Really, the South and Tejas should have been allowed to fucking leave the union.

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98. marisacat - 29 November 2007: Dahlia Lithwick manages to be all over the place on HR 1955, the Harman bill:

am not yet willing to panic about Harman’s “thought crimes” bill, because as drafted, it does no more than explore whether those thought crimes are a problem. It doesn’t create new crimes, although that is presumably the next step. I don’t much care for the idea of roving commissions with subpoena power skipping around the country trying to stamp out “radical” ideas on the Internet. But as expensive threats to free speech go, I’ll take a time-limited commission over a bill that criminalizes speech. Maybe I’m being shortsighted, but then the Democrats in Congress have taught me to keep my expectations very low. Today, therefore, I am profoundly grateful that instead of criminalizing protected speech outright, Democrats merely form a commission that will do a study, which will in turn christen a Drive-Thru Center for Excellence, where they will someday consider criminalizing protected free speech.

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99. moiv - 29 November 2007: Yeah, Tejas joined the Union by treaty anyway, so where the hell did they get off not letting us leave? But don’t worry about hurting our feelings; as Texian women, we thrive on adversity.

I saw that story earlier about those Ohio cops tasering a pregnant woman. It was plainly her own fault, since she was wearing a coat that obscured her gravid condition, and failed to announce it when she walked through the door: “Stand back! I’m pregnant!”

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100. Madman in the Marketplace - 29 November 2007: I always get confused about which of those bastions of (in)sanity wanted to leave, and which ones didn’t. Sorry my friend!

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101. marisacat - 29 November 2007: tasering comments…

admittedly on limited information – and she does gives rise to at least concern, wanting to abandon the child at a police station, but I don’t understand the attempt to stop her from then leaving (I gather with the child in her arms) that ESCALATED to a physical attack.

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102. Madman in the Marketplace - 29 November 2007: I always get confused about which of those bastions of (in)sanity wanted to leave, and which ones didn’t. Sorry my friend!

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103. Madman in the Marketplace - 29 November 2007: I always wondered what happened to TALKING to people. Cops are very quick to move to violence.

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104. bayprairie - 29 November 2007: madman, that’s a textbook battle story, the operative info is this:

Move comes months before comprehensive curriculum review.

wars are fought over textbooks in texas, and i mean that literally, and it lines up along relgious lines.

but “never living in texas” doesn’t necessarily mean your state will escape the results of the battle. texas is one of the largest purchasers of secondary education textbooks in the united states. and textbook publishers pay very close attention to whats acceptable and whats not and its often the case, as i understand things, that the textbooks adopted in this state are then sold nationwide.

Is the Trend of Trashing Textbooks in Texas Going National?

With a nearly $600 million budget for textbook purchases Texas is second only to California and the potential for gutting environmental and social science books to their core is frightening. With over 200 social and ecological science books up for the review this November the Republican dominated state board of education and their “flat earth friends” at TPPF look to eviscerate topics such as global warming, acid rain and rampant population growth from textbooks. And if the recent past is a mirror of the future, Texas politics may create a firestorm nation-wide.

its my opinion ms comer was in a somewhat influential position in the TEA. i would also suppose her viewpoint is probably reflected by many TEA employees. its the appointed review boards shot through with the baptists, not so much the TEA thats the real danger. political pressure from the xtians is a powerful force, and i would suppose its fear of that pressure that cost her her job. frankly, comer should have played her cards closer to her breast. one has to work pretty hard to get fired from a state job. shes out of the game now though, “killed” in a minor skirmish in a war with much at stake and no gain to show for it. and with the position up in the air lord knows who’ll get the appointment now, or what side they support.

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105. bayprairie - 29 November 2007: oh by the way. i should note that my cite isdated. its from 2002. use it for illustration purposes.

it’s relevant today because the textbook battles are still going on.

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106. marisacat - 29 November 2007: btw, wrt to the Texas case above…

the Frontline (think it ws, might have been NOVA) show on Kitzmiller v Dover was very encouraging. It was just a relief to see parents stand up for what was right.

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107. moiv - 29 November 2007: Educational research Analysts sounds like a legitimate organization, but its nerve center was the kitchen table of Mel and Norma Gabler of Longview, Texas. Mel died three years ago. and Norma died last summer.

They spent their lives ridding Texas’ — and as Bay noted, the nation’s — textbooks of what they considered to be factual errors and immoral influences.

Because Texas public schools make up the second-largest textbook market in the nation, behind California, and because Texas books are selected statewide instead of by individual districts, publishers often made their Texas offerings the template for the rest of the nation. And those books bore the unofficial Gabler seal of approval.

The Gablers, who began their work in 1961 after finding errors in one of their son’s textbooks, came to recognize that they could have a powerful influence over the books the nation’s schoolchildren would read. They also set in motion a process of review and selection that grows ever more rancorous across the country.

At their kitchen table, they founded the nonprofit Educational Research Analysts to examine textbooks eligible for adoption. They soon became well known statewide, often journeying to Austin to testify before the State Board of Education and confront publishers with their objections. After a few years, they were doing lectures and making appearances across the country and were almost as well known as Phyllis Schlafly, an opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment, or James Dobson, founder of the Christian organization Focus on the Family.

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108. moiv - 29 November 2007: Mel Gabler worked the oil patch, and Norma never finished high school — but they shaped the public school curricula of the entire nation.

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109. bayprairie - 29 November 2007: and here’s the way the process works. note that ms comer worked for the TEA but the textbooks are provided, per the constitution, by the State Board of Education. here’s the important section.

A Brief Overview of the Adoption Process

Publishers who plan to offer instructional materials for adoption in the state provide finished-format review samples to the Texas Education Agency, each of the 20 regional education service centers, and members of the appropriate state textbook review panels appointed by the Commissioner of Education.

Members of the state textbook review panels are charged with evaluating instructional materials to determine coverage of essential knowledge and skills and with identifying factual errors. At the close of the review period, panel members submit evaluations to the commissioner of education. Based on these evaluations, the commissioner prepares a preliminary report recommending that instructional materials be placed on the conforming list, be placed on the nonconforming list, or be rejected.

Texas residents are allowed to file written comments regarding instructional materials submitted for adoption. In addition, a public hearing is held before the SBOE approximately two months before scheduled adoption.

After consideration of evaluations submitted by state review panel members, information provided by publishers, and staff recommendations, the Commissioner of Education submits a final report to the SBOE recommending that instructional materials submitted be placed on the conforming list, placed on the nonconforming list, or rejected.

appropriate state textbook review panels appointed by the Commissioner of Education = a hell of a lot of fundamentalists.

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110. Madman in the Marketplace - 29 November 2007: oh, the textbook battles, either fought out of TX or KS, having been going on for decades. the roots of the eventual election of Reagan were grown from school board battles in those states. First places with extreme theofascists really won in the modern era.

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111. Hair Club for Men - 29 November 2007: I always wondered what happened to TALKING to people.

http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2007/11/shocked-death-shocked-life-more-taser-story

Dziekanski’s inhuman treatment at the hands of the Canadian police must be seen in this context. The police were called when Dziekanski, lost and disoriented, began shouting in Polish, at one point throwing a chair. Faced with a foreigner like Dziekanski, who spoke no English, why talk when you can shock? It strikes me that the same brutal, short-cut logic guided Poland’s economic transition to capitalism: Why take the gradual route, which required debate and consent, when “shock therapy” promised an instant, if painful, cure?

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112. moiv - 29 November 2007: Fundamentalists all the way. From the Education Research Analysts site.

BEST STRATEGY
Texas is the most conservative big state that state-approves textbooks. Texas has national leverage on publishers. Texas’ all-elected State Board of Education responds more to citizens. To impact Texas, Mel left in place a long institutional past, unusually experienced reviewers, and highly specific goals.

MOST MEMORY
Mel left in place extensive textbook review files, State Board of Education archives, Texas Education Agency records, and lessons from past victories and defeats, dating back to the early 1960s. That preserved wisdom of close to half a century is a priceless asset for Christian conservative activists.

CLEAR EMPHASES
Mel left in place written standard review criteria, which are checklists of what textbooks have censored before, and shopping lists telling publishers what to include next time. They are cumulative insights by many people from numerous reviews on multiple prior adoptions nationwide.

RIGHT POLICY
Mel left in place the rule that however many 2+2=5-type factual errors we find in textbooks, they are but means to our chief end of critiquing textbooks’ substantive subject-matter content as Christian conservatives, whose thoroughness and knowledgeability our error lists just confirm.

SOLE SPECIALTY
People often ask if other groups in other states do what we do in Texas. Some fine conservatives participate on occasion in textbook adoptions elsewhere. To our knowledge, however, Mel left in place the only operation anywhere tied each year to a large state textbook approval process.

…For who hath despised the day of small things?… This work has always been too exceptional to exist, except God were in it; too unlikely to succeed, save that Jesus Christ helped it; too fragile to endure, unless the Lord willed it. Yet Mel went to heaven in peace that his legacy would prosper, with the succession nearly complete before he died.

For 22 years as senior textbook analyst I have written almost all of Educational Research Analysts’ textbook reviews, and since 1999 all our newsletters, plus many other projects. … Through God’s grace and your prayers, together we will extend Mel’s legacy for another generation.
— Neal Frey, Senior textbook analyst

This all started over 40 years ago, and it’s not going away anytime soon.

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113. bayprairie - 29 November 2007: and on a more hillaryous note, hillary just keeps the hits coming this week. first powell and now this.

Clinton woos evangelicals at AIDS conference

The evangelicals all say warren’s “gone liberal”. clinton’s evidently gone batshit crazy.

i’ m not sure which is worse. republican presidential preachers, or democratic ones. I suppose she’ll be praying it up with benny hinn next.

maybe benny can cast out the thousand demons inhabiting her body.

if not i fear ole hill will soon be sitting on one of our texas textbook review panels pimping intelligent design!!!!!!

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114. marisacat - 29 November 2007: don’t forget mama Cheney, deep in the text book saga.

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115. marisacat - 29 November 2007: Hillary is downright frigtening, and also endless entertainment. However it turns out, media and the conservative bloc will be making her work for the Yankee dollar, as I like to put it from the euphemistic old WW2 era song….

LOL this could get pretty degrading before it is over. I don’t think she will mind.

And an “anti-war” Bill and that mouth that just lies open for flies, has blown the little story of Rove and who rushed to the war ovte right out of the news.

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116. Hair Club for Men - 29 November 2007: And an “anti-war” Bill and that mouth that just lies open for flies

I can’t believe this story has any credibility. Scott Ritter has been talking about how Clinton manipulated the inspections process in order to bomb Iraq for years now.

1.) Inspectors are about to declare the Iraq’s WMDs are largely destroyed. That means the end of the embargo.

2.) Uh Oh. Can’t have that. Must get them out before they certify Iraq as WMD Free.

3.) Order inspectors out of country then bomb country and chose targets the weapons inspectors have visited.

4.) This makes them look like spies.

5.) Problem solved. They can’t get back into the country to certify that there are no more WMDs and that they can lift the embargo.

6.) Sure Saddam was a brutal moron who got played, but he got played by Clinton who very much wanted to keep those sanctions in place in order to soften the country up for the inevitable invasion.

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117. marisacat - 29 November 2007: somebody out there is searching for MB under his known name + AIM. it is turning up on my search words and phrases that caused hits…

8)

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118. marisacat - 29 November 2007: uh no one that I have noticed or read buys Bill’s lies. Except the most hidebound Dem party base. The promoters, fundraisers, fluffers and volunteer operatives, …

and they, all that sort above, give a flying hoo hoo about the war, either way.

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119. bayprairie - 30 November 2007: such karmic bliss in the threads over at howdydoodydharma this evening.

the great armando©! can anyone singlehandedly devastate a blog with such malignant skill as he?

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120. marisacat - 30 November 2007: LOL someone built a tree house for Armando, over at Docudonot.

Not the only tree house around, either…

8)

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121. marisacat - 30 November 2007: major caveat, it is Michelle Malkin blog… but JESUS! is the YouTube questioning falling apart or what?

Not that I care, mind you… LOL… according to MM, in the rebroadcast of the debate CNN ditched the retired gay general.

If her digging is at all accurate (and why not?) they need to excise several Youtuber questioners..

LOL

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122. melvin - 30 November 2007: 119 — Glad I beat the rush. People are getting trampled in the stampede for the exits. At least my name isn’t associated with that drunken lunatic.

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123. marisacat - 30 November 2007: oh now I must go over and look. Another Armando melted cheese on rye.

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124. melvin - 30 November 2007: 123- Don’t know how much you will see. Armando is deleting everything that doesn’t meet with his approval, leaving a chorus of affirmation.

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125. marisacat - 30 November 2007: well I am reading thru the NLinStPaul diary on “Tokenism”.

Good luck to them all. The LAST place I’d expose my opinions would be at a site like that, with a dog like Armando roving around.

Geesh…

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126. marisacat - 30 November 2007: well following the thread I see that pinche tejano is a Ron Paul supporter, in fact he says he is more, a cat herder for RP. Considering his nasty nasty misogyny on PFF, what a SHOCK!… LOL.

WHEN ARE THESE FUCKING SITES GOING TO STOP REFERRING TO THEMSELVES AS ANYTHING BUT CENTER RIGHT???

GMAFB.

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127. marisacat - 30 November 2007: jackass:

*[new] Ok, we do not see eye to eye on this. (0.00 / 0)

In fact, I was so pissed off at Ron over this I went to Shane Sklar’s camp in the general last year in 2006. I had long been a fan of Ron Paul on Dkos, long before anyone there knew who he was except Jay Elias.
He was shocked I had turncoated on Ron leading up to the general, especially since I am a “traveler” in Texas. We got Shane to 40% in the general, 60-40 final count, which was a shocker.

Even though I do cat herder for Ron now (I am more than just a supporter), we still do not see eye to eye on this. Since it is a constitutional amendment, I am not worried because that would require more than an executive order to overturn, it would take a new amendment to the Constitution.

Still don’t know why that bug is up his damn butt, he lives in Tejanolandia, he knows the score between Texas and Mexico, especially concerning citizenship, he is extremely wrong on birthright.

Will Rogers never met a George Bush.

by: pinche tejano @ Thu Nov 29, 2007 at 14:32:17 PST
[ Parent | Reply

he is the one went after a female poster taking brief and polite issue with Ron Paul, it was ugly, insanely angry, abusive and invasive. On tejano’s side.

What jerks inhabit the so called liberal (but NONE o fit is) Blahgsnottery.

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128. marisacat - 30 November 2007: tejano’s absolute vicious hatred of women is all thru his comments to Ginger Bred in this thread.

http://www.politicalfleshfeast.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1064

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129. marisacat - 30 November 2007: new thread…

LINK

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Marisacat