A Very Important Speech

Yes, Even More Important
Than Hillary's Concession Speech

Bill Moyers' entire NCMR address (40 minutes)

- or click here to go to YouTube,
(if you wish to watch it full-screen.)

You can't help feeling that Mr. Moyers isn't really talking about the media so much as he's talking about a last-ditch effort to save democracy. But he can speak for himself as well as anyone, and better than most, so I'll just excerpt a couple of what I consider to be his most important statements.

What we need to know to make democracy work for all Americans is compromised by media institutions deeply embedded in the power structures of society.
[...]
Democracy without honest information creates the illusion of popular consent while enhancing the power of the state and the privileged interests protected by it.

As the state has accumulated more power it has simultaneously devolved towards protecting the privileged. At the same time the media has been co-opted into serving those very same privileged interests. This is decidedly NOT a good thing. The multinational corporatocracy has a huge incentive on getting a grip on the power structures of American (and international) society. The people have to wake up to the realization that they have a vested interest in opposing this naked fascist power grab.

RISE UP! Before it's too late.

---

BONUS VIDEO: I know that the Bill Moyers speech, at 40 minutes, is very long for YouTube, or for anyone on the rapid-fire internet to devote their time to. Still, I give you this five minute speech from John F. Kennedy on the dangers of secret societies. It was delivered to the National News Publishers Association on April 27, 1961.

Somehow I feel as if the US federal government has become a branch office of Skull and Bones, with the co-operation of FOX news, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal. Everything is secret, and no-one seems willing to expose any of it. Everything that Kennedy warned of has come to life. Anyway, kudos to the person who posted this - the series of accompanying images is very appropriate. More here, with a transcript of the entire (19 minute) speech.

TAGS: Bill Moyers, Addresses the NCMR, Media Reform
Talking Overpaid Bobbleheads Pushing Pre-processed Pablum Down the Necks of a Gormless Public

McCain's Phony Reformer Cred Fracturing

About John McCain affixing his name to the Obama/Coburn good government bill, Mike at Born at the Crest of the Empire, writes, "Two candidates competing for the 'good government' mantle might have some positive effects." Between this bill and his transformation of the DNC, Barack Obama is reforming the government before he gets elected (The Young Turks look at Obama's takeover of the DNC here), just imagine what he'll do when he's president. While McCain jumping on board is very welcome in this instance, he has a very deep-seated lobbyist problem. If he is competing for the mantle of good-government, it is a fraudulent stance that he can not sustain much longer because he's utterly surrounded by lobbyists.

His alledged chief economist, former GOP senator-turned-lobbyist, Phil Gramm has the same kind of business record George W. Bush had before he became Texas governor--complete failure. Firedoglake blogger Christy Hardin Smith asks, "Is this what we could expect McCain to foist on the rest of the country -- a man who helped run energy and banking policy in the ground while he and his family pocketed millions?" Over at Rising Hegemon, Attaturk has the story of Gramm being on the other side of another Obama bill working its way through congress that will eliminate off shore tax shelters.

Meanwhile, lobbyists are actually trying to push back against the demonizing of their brand. It hurts their feelings. "What I have trouble with is the hypocritical nature of these comments" said a lobbyist. "Both candidates have worked with lobbyists, recognize the value of their input, received legal campaign contributions from lobbyists, and yet never hesitate to throw us to the wolves when it behooves them to do so." I applaud this lobbyist for over-the-top rhetoric portraying lobbyists as being thrown to wolves, as opposed to, say, under a bus, but fresh cliché aside, this argument is ridiculous.

No one is trying to take away lobbyists place at "the table". What Obama is doing (and what McCain pretends he's doing) is trying to make sure that "the table" is not bought-and-paid-for by vastly wealthy corporate interests intent on legally bribing their way around laws and rules that were made (or will be made) to protect us. This "table" is where the poeple's interests have to be addressed, yet when it's entirely legal to use the campaign finance system to buy off both sides of a phoney debate, it is the people who pay for it when they literally die, or get sick, or go hungry, or lose their house, or get cheated out of jobs, or lose rights, or work for poverty wages, or go to jail for no good reason, or, or, or...

Even undue influence on a dead issue can be incredibly damaging. Take, for example, McCain's most recent (there might be a new one, I haven't checked today) flip-flop on telecom immunity. Nick Juliano of Raw Story writes, "While McCain's position on wiretaps and telcos is zigging this way and that, a new report also details the extent to which lobbyists who earned a living representing the very phone companies accused of breaking the law are now working for his campaign." Not that Republicans in Congress give a shit about wasting time in that august body, but don't you think that this "debate" over telecom immunity has gone on long enough? How long has this crap been going on? Chris Dodd was still in the race when this thing got smashed. They keep bringing it back because when you funnel millions to politicians on both sides (I'm looking at you Jay Rockefeller) stupid debates like this will last forever, crowding out important legislation. Of course, having a 492-page bill read into the record to kill even the most suspect global warming legislation could be considered a bigger problem. Perhaps the next time a lobbyist is out looking for sympathy they should open with that instead of stressing "the value of their input".

McCain's lobbying connections also undermine his alleged national defense credibility. McCain has flopped around quite a bit on the subject of divestment from Iran. Actually divesting will be difficult for a candidate, who, as Sam Stein reports, "employs [chief campaign strategist Charlie Black and] several other campaign aides and fundraisers who have served in lobbying capacities in which they advocated on behalf of foreign clients with investments and interests in Iran."

And please, don't buy the meme that McCain is cleaning up now that he's up against a real reformer in Obama. Less than a week and a half ago McCain's campaign manager met with about 70 top Republican lobbyists.

TAGS: Reform, John McCain, Lobbying, Election 2008

The Energy Blues

One thing traveling abroad brings home is the high cost of energy we've avoided. I filled my rental car with diesel for 6.12 Euros/Gallon on Friday ($9.05 Bushbucks/gallon), a normal price for diesel in Germany. Of course demand for diesel is higher - one of the ways the Germans have managed to keep muscle cars relatively fuel efficient is to replace the Otto-cycle gasoline engines with diesels. The little Audi A3 I had would do 240 km/h (150 mph) and when I filled it, I calculated the miles per gallon: 44 MPG. That was a combination of in-town and autobahn driving.

The cost of a gallon of gas here has never paid for the cost of driving a vehicle. Economists refer to this as externality - someone else is footing part of the bill for your actions. In Europe, by contrast, taxes on both cars and fuel are high and are designed to defray the total costs of driving: Road repair, pollution, cleanup of old gas stations, etc. We haven't made that switch. Instead our property taxes, income tax and so forth go partially to pay for roads, bridges, environmental cleanups and so forth. Drivers don't pay for themselves in the US. We never have.

So now the bill is coming due. Europeans take mass transit, ride bikes, walk, live close to work, carpool, anything they can to keep their driving costs down. So I thought I'd start a thread of ideas to help keep energy costs down (through reducing consumption or through creation of alternate energy). Here are a couple of things I'm doing and have done to reduce the cost of energy in my home:

1. I bought a backpack for my PC last week and will use it as I cycle to work three days per week. Benefit: A bit of fuel saved and a lot of good exercise.

2. I've replaced all the light bulbs in my house with CFLs. Direct reduction of energy costs of $30/month.

3. I have installed a programmable thermostat. My energy bill dropped another $6/month because of that.

4. On a macro level, allow US nuclear power plants to reprocess spent fuel rods. The Plutonium generated increases the overall efficiency of nuclear power and decreases vastly the amount of nuclear waste produced. Here's a pretty good article.

And here's a pretty technical one.

Others?
TAGS: Energy, Conservation, Green Ideas, Potpourri for $200

Grüße aus Germany, Teil 2

Ein wunderschon guten Abend wünscht der Bear.

Once again I find myself overseas, this time for a week only in Germany with a side trip to Gothenburg, Sweden. Tomorrow it's time to go home to the land of internal espionage. I mention that because it's recently become quite the hot theme here as several companies, the Deutsche Telekom among others, have been shown by the magazine Der Spiegel to be spying on their own employees and on reporters.

The similarities are amazing. Once discovered, the Liberal parties immediately wanted to strengthen the Datenschutzgesetz, the data protection law. The Conservatives, of course, think the existing laws are quite strong enough. The difference is that both think what happened is wrong and the people are quite upset.

I've had to earn my pay this trip, working pretty much all the time I'm awake and not traveling, so not much to report and no pictures to show. Even on the trip to Sweden I got to see nothing. Advice: Never fly SAS. That airline has perfected the art of the flying cattle car, the only thing missing is use of cattle prods to speed the boarding process. On the trip to Gothenburg, I was stuck between two rather large Swedes in a middle seat over the wing. There were plenty of seats a bit forward but those were another class, as the flight attendant told me, a class with a bit of leg room, although the seats themselves were still small even by southeast Asian standards. Anyway, in the back where I sat, you even paid for a drink of water. Same thing coming back except I was stuck in the very back seat of a MD-80. When I got the ticket I realized I was in the middle and asked to change. The agent lied - I could see the computer screen - telling me there were no others available. As a result, I think my right ear, the one closest to the motor six feet and two cigarette wrappers from my head, is a bit deaf now.

Again the differences in behavior are striking. You don't take your shoes off at screening. I didn't even show my passport to enter Sweden nor was there anyone at Customs. Walk through and you're free and clear in the country. Our branch there even joked they probably had a few illegals working there. And I got meatballs for lunch. Gothenburg is a beautiful city full of attractive, friendly people and I'd love to spend some more time there. Preferably in June - winter lasts seven months.

So, tomorrow, back to the Land of the Spied and the Home of the Paranoid. I won't be shocked this time going through Denver customs by the faces of those my ancestors stole the land from - an ironic joke that their faces grace the entrance hall to the country formed from their stolen lands, a country called free that spies on its own people, a land proud of its courage made paranoid by an attack and a fear-mongering president, a land where orange is the new green.

A land where, when I'm in Europe, I'm sometimes a bit ashamed to call home.
TAGS: Germany, Sweden, Domestic Espionage, Paranoia will destroya

New and Disturbing Rules Sought

Taking Liberties with YOUR Civil Liberties

It looks like they're still trying to find some way to give retroactive immunity to telecoms who broke the law by co-operating with Bu$hCo™'s illegal warrant-less wiretapping program.

Story from TPMMuckraker;
Story from Crooks and Liars

Of note for those still naive enough to think that the US is going to vote itself out of the current Bush-created crises in November is the capitulation of Texas 'Democrat' (In Name Only) Silvestre Reyes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. The so-called compromise would leave it up to the FISA courts themselves to determine whether immunity should be granted. My deepest sympathies go out to anyone with a teen-aged daughter who is as incapable of saying NO as the FISA courts are. Or as willing to roll over onto her back as the Democrats are.

As has been consistently shown in every legal case that this administration has had contact with, the new rules he's trying to put in place can be summed up as:

1) - If you're 'with us', you can get away with whatever the hell you like, including murder. Think of the KBR/Halliburton thugs that gang-raped Jamie Leigh Jones. Or the contractors involved in the black-site interrogation TO DEATH of dozens of alleged terrorists. Or the $10 BILLION in cash that went missing in Iraq under Paul Bremer's watch - and nobody even bothered to look for it. Etc, etc, etc....

1) If you're not 'with us', you are by explicit definition 'with the terrorists', so you are guilty regardless of any evidence that a crime being committed. Think of Don Siegelman, or once again of those dozens of alleged terrorists who've been tortured to death.

Above all think of the appointment of the most partisan group of hacks to ever inhabit the Supreme Court, and the Prosecutors' Purge that has created what amounts to a Department of Injustice in America. The march toward a full-blown fascist state continues unimpeded.

TAGS: FISA, Warrantless+Wiretapping, Department of Justice, = Injustice

An Unruly Book: "Uprising!"

Pitchfork? Check.

Torch? Check.

Unruly attitude? Check.

OK let's go:

In all the noise and fury of the last primary run, and Scott McClellan's book last week, there's a unruly gem in them thar hills:

"David Sirota is a clear-headed and principled hell-raiser for economic justice. More like him and we'll have a real uprising on our hands. "
—Naomi Klein, author of "No Logo" and "The Shock Doctrine"

Do I have your attention, Mob? Good, I thought so.

I saw this on Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now!" show last night. I am a latecomer to David Sirota. He has been blogging on Squarestate.net which is a major Colorado progressive blog, (credentialed to the DNC by the way) and I always thought he was interesting, but I had never dug fiercely into him before. Last night's show had me absolutely riveted.

You can watch the whole show here, but I have excerpted a couple of points:

His observations about Obama, the political process this cycle being the "starting point, not the end point" and further observations about "direct action" making Wall Street and K Street "scared" are just music to my ears. Literally.

Just listen to what he says about the Iraq War. We've been saying it for the longest time!

AMY GOODMAN: David Sirota, you talk about conflicts of interest within the antiwar movement: the antiwar movement, which enjoys widespread support, and the politicians who ally themselves with pro-war consultants.

DAVID SIROTA: Right. What happened, in the chapter that I reported on the antiwar movement, is back in 2007, what we found is that you just had an election where the Democrats were elected promising to end the war, and what ended up happening was that the same Democratic Congress refused to really do what it takes to actually end the war. And part of that was, I think, a strategic decision on behalf of the antiwar organizations in Washington about how they said we could end the war. You had consultants who were simultaneously being paid by the Democratic Party and Democratic Party politicians.

AMY GOODMAN: Like?

DAVID SIROTA: You had Hildebrand Tewes. You had consulting firms. They were the lead consulting firm. And I don’t mean to pick on them. It’s just that they were the consulting firm that was heading up the major coalition in Washington of antiwar groups. And so, the strategy that came out of those antiwar groups was we have to simply bash the Republicans to end the war, when in fact, of course, Congress was controlled entirely by Democrats. Last I checked, Democrats have forty-one senators in the US Senate, if they wanted to filibuster a bill to continue funding the war [sic-they could]. They haven’t done that. Yet the strategy kept saying, well, we have to only focus the ads, the media buys and the pressure on Republicans. It was sort of a dishonest strategy, and I think it had something to do with the fact that you have organizations in Washington that put partisan affinity over movement goals. [emphasis mine]

He is totally speaking our Unruly Language, I do believe. The part about sneaking into the Exxon Shareholder meeting is GREAT!

Watch the whole show, (Sirota's interview starts at 30 minutes into the stream) and buy the book. I have never EVER said buy something before on this blog, but I'm telling you I am buying it, and from what I saw of the interview, Sirota's insights into the whole political process and "direct action" really speak to what we as the Unruly Mob hold dear.

Pitchfork? Check.
Torch? Check.
Unruly attitude? Check.

OK let's go!

TAGS: Democracy Now!, David Sirota, "Uprising", Let's Do Something Besides Blog

Australia Joins Coalition of the Leaving

Over the weekend Australia pulled their troops from Iraq.

From AP (h/t C & L):

SYDNEY, Australia - Australia, a staunch U.S. ally and one of the first countries to commit troops to the war in Iraq five years ago, ended combat operations there June 1.

Soldiers lowered the Australian flag that had flown over Camp Terendak in the southern Iraqi city of Talil. The combat troops are expected to return to Australia over the next few weeks.

The move fulfills a campaign promise by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who was swept into office in November largely on the promise that he would bring home the country's 550 combat troops by the middle of 2008. Rudd has said the Iraq deployment made Australia more of a target for terrorism.

Rudd's predecessor, former Prime Minister John Howard, said he was "baffled" by the decision to withdraw the troops.

(more)

For those looking for a model for prosecution of crimes committed by the Bush administration might want to keep an eye on former Prime Minister Howard. A legal brief has been sent to the International Criminal Court by something called the ICC Action Group, which the Australian Broadcast Corporation says is comprised of "peace activists, lawyers, academics and politicians".

TAGS: Australia, War Crimes, Iraq, John Howard

Force Conservatives To Throw The 'Discrimination Switch'

Back in 2004, California's Supreme Court did something completely disgraceful when it annulled the marriages of 4000 gay couples on procedural grounds without considering the larger question of whether denying homosexuals the right to marry is even constitutional. In 2008, though, they corrected themselves ruling that homosexuals did, in fact, have a constitutionally protected right to marry.

Predictably, this has thrown California's conservatives into a tizzy. Faced with the prospect of 10's of thousands gay marriages before they get their chance to officially write discrimination into our constitution, they've asked the court to stay its ruling until after the November election. Moreover, they've been joined by the Attroneys' General of ten states that aren't prepared to consider the question of whether or not to recognize gay marriages performed in California.

But, like death penalty advocates who'll never be required to 'throw the switch', these cowards want to keep gay marriage hidden from public view until they can make it a non-issue. After all, it's a lot easier to convince the electorate that gay marriage is the downfall of society when there aren't any happily married gay couples around to put the lie in your stance—when you never have to face the people whose rights you'll be taking away.

The court, however, should not give in and conservatives who support this nonsense should be exposed as the intellectually dishonest throwbacks they are. They should have to explain and, whether they succeed or fail, have their noses rubbed in their folly. Not a hundred, nor a thousand, nor even ten thousand gay marriages are enough. We should have one marriage for each and every conservative that would deny homosexuals equal protection under the law, and on election day those conservatives should be forced to personally confront the couples whom they would make into second-class citizens.

TAGS: Marriage, Rights, California, Homosexuality

Judge Fired in Khadr Case

From CBC.ca:

The U.S. military judge presiding over the trial of Canadian terrorism suspect Omar Khadr has been fired, said Khadr's lawyer.

In a news release issued Thursday, Lt.-Cmdr. William C. Kuebler said the judge, Col. Peter Brownback, was replaced after threatening to suspend proceedings in the case earlier this month.

Brownback told prosecutors they had to provide Khadr's defence lawyers with records of his confinement at the detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or he would suspend the proceedings.

Kuebler, Khadr's U.S. military-appointed lawyer, said he learned Brownback had been fired in an email from the chief judge of the U.S. military commissions, Col. Ralph Kohlmann. Kuebler's news release also included an email sent Wednesday by lead prosecutor Maj. Jeff Groharing, which complained of numerous delays in trial proceedings.

Kuebler told CBCNews.ca he believes the prosecution hopes the change will "speed things up."

The trial of Omar Khadr as an armed enemy combatant has been a showcase for all the ways that Bu$hCo™ can twist the concept of 'justice' out of shape until it's beyond recognition. To begin with, under international convention Khadr, who was only 15 years old when captured should never been treated as a soldier under international conventions, but as a VICTIM of war. He barely survived the wounds he suffered when two rounds hit him IN THE BACK as he tried to flee American soldiers.

Not a pretty sight, is it? Adding insult to injury the government locked him up as an enemy combatant and he eventually wound up in Guantanamo Bay, facing charges for murdering a US marine sergeant by lobbing a hand grenade during a firefight. There are a couple of inconvenient facts that contradict that conclusion, and in any kind of non-Kafkaesque world he'd have been exonerated long ago.

The first fact was that Khadr was captured in a building that also contained another brown-skinned Muslim, who may have been the one to have tossed the grenade. The other person, an adult, was killed when he was also shot by the same marines infuriated by the death of their corpsman. So he could have just as well been the man for whose crime Omar is standing trial. But the other fact is even more inconvenient. There were no grenades found inside the hut where Khadr and his companion were holed up, but the US forces were using them. It was most likely a case of 'friendly' fire. (Now THERE is an oxymoron for you.)

So Khadr's adolescence and brief adulthood have been dominated by this travesty of justice created by the Military Commissions Act, a travesty in its own right. Normal civilian courts were not corrupt enough for the Bush administration, even with prosecutors and judges having been purged of all but 'loyal Bushies.' Even the military courts that might have saluted, said, "Sir, yes sir!" and done whatever they were ordered could not be relied upon to be sufficiently compliant. A whole new legal mechanism had to be created for the occasion, one whose rules could be adjusted in the prosecutions favor as the trial went along. The situation is so corrupted and devoid of normal legal niceties that even the former lead prosecutor has criticized the process openly. From TPMmuckraker:

The current chief judge there has written that the military tribunals have “credibility problems." And the former chief prosecutor, after resigning, publicly criticized the system as "deeply politicized."

Now that former prosecutor, Col. Morris Davis, has given more evidence of that politicization in an interview with The Nation after the six Gitmo detainees were charged. Davis says that in an August, 2005 meeting with William Haynes, then the Pentagon's general counsel, Haynes seemed to completely discount the possibility of the military tribunals acquitting any of the detainees. Now, of course, Haynes has been installed as the official overseeing the whole process, both the prosecutors and the defense. From The Nation:

"[Haynes] said these trials will be the Nuremberg of our time," recalled Davis, referring to the Nazi tribunals in 1945, considered the model of procedural rights in the prosecution of war crimes. In response, Davis said he noted that at Nuremberg there had been some acquittals, something that had lent great credibility to the proceedings.

"I said to him that if we come up short and there are some acquittals in our cases, it will at least validate the process," Davis continued. "At which point, [Haynes's] eyes got wide and he said, 'Wait a minute, we can't have acquittals. If we've been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can't have acquittals, we've got to have convictions.'"

Davis submitted his resignation on October 4, 2007, just hours after he was informed that Haynes had been put above him in the commissions' chain of command. "Everyone has opinions," Davis says. "But when he was put above me, his opinions became orders."

I'm no lawyer, but when the outcome of a trial becomes dependent upon how it looks politically for the government rather than on the facts of the case, something is terribly wrong. When I first blogged about Omar Khadr back in June of last year, it was to announce that the charges against him had been dropped. The travesty then was that the dropping of all charges did not mean that Khadr was going to be released. That's right, even though it was ruled that the Military Commissions didn't have the authority to try Khadr, the US government could still hold him in a cell indefinitely. This is why the MCA is such a piece of vile shit, it purports to suspend habeas corpus in DIRECT violation of the US Constitution (Article 1, section 9.) The clowns currently masquerading as the US Supreme Court have refused to rule on this issue, to their eternal shame.

Five months later came the news that the Khadr trial had begun, accompanied by protests from Khadr's defense that the prosecution had withheld exculpatory evidence from an eyewitness. In a normal civilian court that would have led to the charges being thrown out of court and the prosecutor facing sanctions, possibly even disbarment. This is serious shit, or so I'm led to believe.

There has been a glimmer of hope in Khadr's case recently. One development had the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) rule that Khadr's defense would have access to documents generated when Canadian officials interviewed him at Guantanamo. The other, much more significant, was the move Col. Brownback was making to dismiss the case. And then he gets fired. I'm trying to think of a way that political interference could be more blatantly signaled than that, but I'm having a hard time of it. This latest move reaches a new low even for the Bush administration.

---

A couple of excerpts from Guantanamo's Child give just a glimpse of the humiliation and pain that this young man has suffered in his brief life.

There were raw scars on his chest where there had once been two deep holes. Shrapnel had punctured the skin along his arms and legs. While the nicks and scrapes can sometimes look minor, they have a cruel habit of causing pain for years to come. Doctors will often not remove embedded shrapnel, preferring to allow the body to work on its own to eject foreign objects. While considered safer than extraction, it is incredibly painful as the shrapnel works its way to the surface, eventually bursting through like blood blisters.
[...]

The guards left him in the interrogation booth for hours, short-shackled with his ankles and wrists bound together and secured to a bolt on the floor. Unable to move, he eventually urinated and was left in a pool of urine on the floor.

When the MPs returned and found the soiled teenager, Omar's lawyers later said, the guards poured pine oil cleaner on his chest and the floor. Keeping him short-shackled, the guards used Omar as a human mop to clean up the mess. Omar was returned to his cell and for two days the guards refused to give him fresh clothes.

When and if the Bush crime family is ever put on trial for war crimes, I expect the Khadr case to be particularly problematic for the defense.

~~~UPDATE:

Oh, and one other thing. Colonel Brown can hardly be considered to be a civil libertarian upstart in this case, or he would have tossed it long ago on any one of a number of points of law. As this story shows, he was dismissive of America's obligation under international treaty with regard to Khadr's status as a child soldier when he was captured.

Colonel Peter Brownback issued a brief ruling in which he described the international statutes dealing with the protection of children involved in armed conflict as “interesting as a matter of policy,” but made it clear that they would have no impact on the kangaroo court proceedings organized by the White House and the Pentagon at Guantanamo.

That story was from less than three weeks ago. Brownback has been ruling in favor of the administration in nearly every instance up until now. But he takes one step out of line and look what happens. It speaks volumes.

TAGS: Omar Khadr, Guantanamo Bay, Military Commissions, Travesty of Justice

BREAKING: Lobbyists Not Getting Bang For Buck

A swelling chorus of complaints prompted the crack, and I do mean crack, ONN Team to rush this production to video:

In The Know: Are Politicians Failing Our Lobbyists?

A visibly angry Darth Cheney responded.

"Look, I've done everything, and I mean EVERYTHING that SithCo has asked me to do. Just because this planet isn't an utter and complete shambles yet, doesn't mean I won't accomplish it. Everybody knows the challenges I've had with the Death Star, and SithCo has been a little slow with the bucks, yaknowwhadimean?"

Calls to the Empire for further comment were not returned, however members of the White House press corps who wished to remain anonymous agreed that it appears they do all the twisting and groveling, and that the White House and Congress do not seem to be doing their fair share. "It's just not fair," one source said. "You think there would be at least some honor among thieves, but the old saying is probably true."

TAGS: Darth Cheney, Lobbyists, Just can't get a bribe to stick, Whaaa

McCain Heckled in Denver Yesterday

Via ThinkProgress:

McCain was speaking at the University of Denver yesterday about arms proliferation. Elisabeth Bumiller from the New York times was in the audience; in fact she's been riding around with McCain on the campaign's bus and on the plane and in the blimp and the submarine and whatever other conveyeances Cindy probably owns.


What Bumiller had to say was this:

DENVER — Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, distanced himself from the Bush administration on Tuesday by vowing to work more closely with Russia on nuclear disarmament and by calling for a reduction in tactical nuclear weapons in Europe.

In what his campaign promoted as a major speech on nuclear security policy, Mr. McCain told a largely friendly crowd at the University of Denver that he supported a legally binding accord between the two nations to replace verification requirements in the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or Start, which expires in 2009. The Bush administration has refused to accept such binding limits on nuclear weapons, which the administration’s critics say has created paranoia in Moscow. [emphasis mine.]

Well, watch this largley friendly crowd:

You won't get one whiff of that from the article Bumiller turned in. I call "HACK!" BTW, there's a certain paranoia here about McCain or nuclear or US bombing policies in general. You don't have to go all the way to Moscow.


Pass the cocktail weenies, please.

TAGS: More NYT Hackery, Cocktail Weenie Press, Mock McCain

Memorial Mile 2008

Gainesville, Florida

At four in the morning on Saturday, over 50 people gathered at the corner of 34th Street and 8th Avenue in Gainesville, Florida to work on a monument to those Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

From The Gainesville Sun:

Neat rows of miniature gravestones stretch for one mile east of 34th Street on the south side of 8th Avenue. Each of the 4,516 "gravestones," lovingly and carefully made by groups of people getting together for months preceding this Memorial Day weekend, bears the name, rank, date of death and hometown of these brave members of our armed services. Additional markers were ready for 2009.

The Gainesville chapter of Veterans for Peace organized the event, which was also held last year.

I used to live three houses from the intersection where Memorial Mile originates and I used to walk this mile of road daily for months. The statues that normally span this stretch are of the nine planets (we include Pluto) situated roughly to scale. Seeing the head stones literally stretch from the Sun to Pluto is a shattering cosmic metaphor.

Here's a look at the Memorial Mile and the 4,577 monuments.


TAGS: Memorial Day, Memorial Mile, Gainesville, Gainesville Veterans For Peace