Friday, July 01, 2005

ACTION ALERT: From FAIR From FAIR.org Paul Harvey's Tribute to Slavery, Nukes, Genocide Hateful rant shows Disney's double standard on speech July 1, 2005 Disney/ABC radio personality Paul Harvey, one of the most widely listened to commentators in the United States, presented his listeners on June 23 with an endorsement of genocide and racism that would have been right at home on a white supremacist shortwave... - canuk [CanadianPerspective] 8:57:10 PM     Fairly unbalanced The policy of the local San Die... Fairly unbalanced The policy of the local San Diego Union-Tribune is to publish letters in such a manner that they reflect the balance of opinions on a given subject. If that is true, the Steely-Eyed Rocketman is plummeting to Earth and burning up on re-entry. Readers unimpressed by Bush policy, speech If our president must stage his press conferences, such as Tuesday's at Fort Bragg, N.C., why... - tbogg [»«TBogg»«] 8:56:08 PM     The FoxSpews Media Whores Are Cracking Me Up….  Anyone want to know what a totally useless fucking “News” program does when it has no “news” to report on its Whore-Flogging Beat and the actual “News,” such as dead soldiers (or civilians, take your fucking pick) in Iraq, or the Preznit’s God-Fucking Awful Poll Numbers just won’t do, and there hasn’t been a fucking [...] [The Blaghdad Cafe] 8:55:28 PM     Supreme Court Chances. So here's a question: can we actually block anyone that Bush wants? The last heroic victory was the rejection of Robert Bork, and that was pulled off by a 55-45 Democratic majority. I guess we can filibuster, at least... [Ezra Klein] 1:21:25 PM     The Upcoming Civil War. This is either going to be hilarious or heartbreaking. On the one hand, a nasty partisan Supreme Court confirmation is going to require a lot of hard work and patience. Now would be a good time to have a well-funded primary campaign challenger to wave in front of perennial turncoats like Joe Liberman. We don't need any of your "Compromise is what the American people want" bullshit, thankyouverymuch. The Democrats have done a good job holding the coalition together, but this is going to be the ultimate test. Shine your filibustin' shoes boys and girls, it's gonna be a looong few months. At the same time, this is also going to be the funniest thing to hit wingnuttery since Jesus didn't come back to Earth in 2000. Not just "red tape on a protester's mouth at Terri Schiavo's hospice" funny or the President saying "I couldn't imagine somebody like Osama bin Laden understanding the joy of Hanukkah." funny. No, this confirmation process will be Mel Gibson's Jesus snuff film, laugh out loud, Long Dong Silver funny. Robertson, Dobson, Falwell, they'll all be pouting publicly that the President owes them a conservative loony on the bench. Replacing a moderate with an ultra-conservative is the golden goose for these guys, so you can expect them to give the thumbs down to anyone who utters the word "abortion" without using the words "butcher", "slaughter", or "holocaust". In the end, either the Religious wrong will loose their bid to place a theocratic judicial activist in the court and will abandon the GOP or they'll win and the American people will finally see that the Republican party really are the small tent, witch burning, big government religious puppets that we've been saying they are. I'm kinda hoping for the former, but you never know with these guys. UPDATE : DavidNYC over at DailyKos has some good ideas on action you can take right now to help in the nomination fight. [The Talent Show] 1:20:43 PM     The Three Legged Stool of Corruption: Money, Media, and Mobilization. I'll quote Dave Johnson in the comments of my last post. It isn't the Joe Bidens who decide where the money goes. That's why I'm like a broken record on this. We have to get the word out that the current Progressive model of issue organizations communicating with their membership is a waste of our resources now.... Do you know of even ONE Progressive organization that is working to reach out to the general public-at-large to promote underlying Progressive values? [BOPnews] 1:19:50 PM     What If It's Gonzales?. Some friends of mine who have good sources tell me that Gonzales is in the mix for filling Justice O'Connor's Supreme Court seat. So we may be faced with the question of what we do if it is Gonzales. I may be in the minority here, but I will vigorously oppose his confirmation. Of course the condoning of torture marks Gonzales as morally reprehensible. But, even if one is only going to look at this cynically, Gonzales can not be trusted. We THINK he is a moderate. We THINK he'll support the right to choose. We THINK he'll support affirmative action. But how do we know? What has Gonzales done to earn the belief that he won't be a patsy in the hands of a Scalia? Nothing as far as I'm concerned. Indeed the opposite is true. Mark me down as a vigorous NO on Gonzales, should it come to that. [Daily Kos] 1:18:25 PM     The Optimism of a Pessimist. The Optimism of a Pessimist Stephen Roach | New York | July 1 Morgan Stanley - A lot of people are upset with me these days. For the past several years, I have been rather vocal in stressing the mounting risks of an unbalanced world. With that stance comes the inevitable label of the pessimist -- the doomsayer who is increasingly expected to say something bad about everything. When I don’t do that -- as exemplified by my recent bullishness on bonds and my more constructive views on Europe -- the response has bordered on shock. Other pessimists feel as if I have turned on them in an almost “treasonous” fashion. Such are the perils of labels. No one -- neither an optimist nor a pessimist -- should be painted with one brush. [The Agonist] 1:17:19 PM     House ethics committee grinds to a start. DeLay inquiry will be moving forward in a couple of months. Leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives ethics committee on Thursday cleared the way for a long-anticipated investigation of Majority Leader Tom DeLay by resolving a partisan staffing dispute [...] The new accord will clear the way for the hiring of a nonpartisan staff, including investigators and a chief counsel, which could take a couple of months [...] Under the deal, the committee's "nonpartisan staff" will be headed by a chief counsel-staff director accountable to the chairman and ranking Democrat. Two "shared staff members" will have no managerial authority over the "nonpartisan staff," it added. Hastings and Mollohan each appoint their own shared staff members, so named because they serve on the committee as well as in the lawmakers' congressional offices. It may soon be time for DeLay to cash in his special card. [Daily Kos] 8:38:33 AM     Choose: Mercenaries or our soldiers. Fox spins it for the mercenaries. When they first arrived for the current job, Peters and his team were stationed in the extremely dangerous Baghdad International Airport area. They made the 17-mile drive down what they called "Hell's highway" to the Green Zone for work every day. When one of the Iraqi engineers he was working with found out a contact was moving out of his Green Zone space, Peters jumped at the chance to rent it. He signed what he thought was a legitimate rental agreement with the Iraqi owner of the apartment, which is in a building of mostly former Iraqi Republican Guard soldiers. He paid the presumed Iraqi owner $10,000 for the space and spent another $3,000 on furniture. But when he arrived at the apartment on June 3, the Iraqi police told them to vacate the area. An American police consultant at a nearby Iraqi police station recommended Peters call Casey for help. According to Peters, when he called Casey the next day, help was the last thing he received. "If I had to put it in a word, he was vicious," Peters told FOXNews.com, referring to his first conversation with the officer. "The guy came back really strong and made it very, very clear that he absolutely wanted me out of there, that the whole thrust of why I was over here was to make money." Peters said Casey didn't give him any explanation why he needed to leave and issued him a warning: "If I can find you, I'll have you out in 24 hours." "Not having a safe place to live in Iraq is extremely unsafe and dangerous, to be evicted and cast out in the street was unimaginable and certainly unacceptable," Peters wrote in a diary he is keeping about his situation, a copy of which was obtained by FOXNews.com. This unaccountable mercenary, profiting from the misery of war, whines that the US Army hates him. Well they do -- these "security contractors" act as they're not beholden to any laws, they shoot at our troops, they make more money in a month or two than many soldiers make in a year, and their cowboy antics generate resentment and put our troops in even greater risk. Gilliard says: Mercenaries have no rights under the laws of war. The colonel is under no obligation to help a rich mercenary live in safety. If Iraq is too dangerous for him, he has the option that every 11B would love to have. He can go home. The Colonel can't, the MP's manning the guardposts can't. The Trauma nurses can't. But he can go home at any time of his choosing. Of course our soldiers hate them, regardless how much the wingers might idolize and defend them. [Daily Kos] 8:37:23 AM     Go Forth, Ye Wonks, And Prosper. Kevin's right, Open CRS, the new site collecting the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service's policy summaries, is a great service. The CRS is a taxpayer funded agency that prepares reports on various policy topics for congressmen. The reports are short,...  [Ezra Klein] 8:35:40 AM     Shell Game. So where will they come from? The Army plans to draw far fewer reservists for Iraq duty in a new rotation of forces that has just begun, counting instead on active-duty soldiers to fill most of the deployment requirement, the Army’s top officer reported yesterday. Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army’s chief of staff, said in Senate [...] [Suburban Guerrilla] 8:34:32 AM     Fewer Guard to Iraq When the Guard's away, fire will play Army to Use Fewer National Guard Troops in Iraq By Bradley Graham and Josh White Washington Post Staff Writers Friday, July 1, 2005; Page A17 The Army plans to draw far fewer reservists for Iraq duty in a new rotation of forces that has just begun, counting instead on active-duty soldiers to fill most of the deployment requirement, the Army's top officer reported yesterday. Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, said in Senate testimony that the number of Army National Guard brigades in Iraq will drop from seven this year to as few as two next year. In relation to the total number of troops, that would cut the share of Guard units from 41 percent to 11 percent. "The Guard brigades will be down," the general told the Senate Armed Services Committee. The move comes not a moment too soon for the nation's community of formerly part-time soldiers, which has been badly strained by lengthy deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. With many of the better-equipped reserve units nearing a two-year maximum call-up limit declared by the Bush administration, Army leaders had warned earlier this year that they were running out of upper-tier brigades to send to Iraq. Army officials said yesterday that the greater reliance on active-duty units has become possible as a result of the creation of new regular brigades, part of a major restructuring effort begun a year and a half ago aimed at increasing the number of active-duty brigades from 33 to at least 43, and making each more easily deployable. Well, that might extend the life of our colonial war in Iraq by a few weeks, but not by much longer [The News Blog] 8:33:41 AM     Out On A Limb. Interesting: Tony Blair is contemplating an unprecedented rift with the US over climate change at the G8 summit next week, which will lead to a final communique agreed by seven countries with President George Bush left out on a limb. The alternative is to face a “catastrophic failure” of his plan to get concerted action to combat [...]   [Suburban Guerrilla] 7:20:44 AM     Mexican stamp fracas strains US relations - The Boston Globe This is the passage I found most interesting in this article on Mexican reaction to US criticism of the Memin Pinguin stamp set. The latest controversy is mystifying many Mexicans, however, who often affectionately call Caucasians ''Whitey" in the street and nickname darker-skinned Mexicans ''Negro" or ''Moreno" without causing upset. ''It's not offensive," said Irma, 33, a post office clerk in... - Professor Kim [Professor Kim's News Notes] 7:00:04 AM     Brzezinski blasts 'Bush's hollow fiction of Iraq war'. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor, publishes a highly critical tribune in the Financial...  [Booman Tribune] 6:58:55 AM     "Sign up or Shut Up" stickers, tees, mugs, and more A few of you requested "Sign Up or Shut Up" stickers and tees. Download your free stickers here. They're formatted to print on Avery 5294 round labels . Tee shirts, mugs, thongs, dog clothes, etc. are available here . - Gen. JC Christian, Patriot [Jesus' General] 6:35:51 AM

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