NPK is out of town, so instead of Friday Night at 8, welcome to a mini version of the NOLA/Gulf Coast Blogathon. I know NPK would approve!
April 2008 archive
Apr 19 2008
Pfriday Phony Pony Party
this is a phony pony….SomeOne Pforgot!
here’s some more phony’s….
pflease don’t REC this phony pony. Go see some of the Great Essay’s on the Pfront Page. They deserve your REC’s.
Apr 19 2008
President Obama – promise me you’ll clean house?
Do these people have no shame?
The LA Times is reporting that the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles has been trying to ring up impressive numbers – by having his prosecutors going after, well, parking violators:
The disgruntled prosecutors in Los Angeles say they are now spending an exorbitant amount of time working on less significant cases — mail theft, smaller drug offenses and illegal immigration — to reach quotas. They cited the recent disbanding of the office’s public integrity and environmental crimes section, a unit with a history of working on complex police corruption and political corruption cases, as evidence of a shift toward high-volume, low-quality prosecutions . . .
Apr 19 2008
NATO’s Own Mercenaries Supply the Taliban
So in the news today, The Guardian has this story: Nato admits mistakenly supplying arms and food to Taliban.
Nato forces mistakenly supplied food, water and arms to Taliban forces in southern Afghanistan, officials today admitted.
Containers destined for local police forces were dropped from a helicopter into a Taliban-controlled area of Zabul province…
A Nato spokesman said the pallets were carrying rocket propelled grenades, ammunition, water and food.
Nothing like delivering rocket propelled grenades into the hands of the Taliban to help “win” in Afghanistan.
Apr 19 2008
Friday Philosophy: Torture
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There seems to have been a lot of discussion about torture lately. How’s that for an understatement. I’ve taken note but have mostly resisted taking part in any of the discussions. Well, actually, I don’t suppose going to a lecture by a refugee rights advocate on Tuesday about the US role in torture actually counts as “resisting,” but I’ve mostly stayed away from online discussions. I’ve expressed my feelings about it in the past and it has not always been accepted in the spirit it was offered.
I was raised a boy, preordained to be a man. There is no dismissing that. That gives me a fairly rare perspective, given what has happened in my life in later years.
In the world of my youth, there were boys who took pleasure in torturing animals lower on the food chain. Like it or not, such boys were accorded status. Torturing animals was cool…up to a point. Except to those of us who thought it was gross. But expressing that disgust was a possible way to become a target oneself.
Apr 18 2008
Impeachment is the only way they don’t get away with torture
United States Constitution, Article 2, Section 2: The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
Emphasis mine.
Impeachment at this juncture and based on the revelations over , regardless of the arguments against it, is a moral imperative. Bush will no doubt pardon anyone that has any connection to any wrongdoings, and even though Obama and Clinton talk about investigating the crimes committed in this administration, I think we all probably know how difficult it will be to get anything meaningful done in that respect, although if either of them do, I will be so very pleasantly surprised.
Apr 18 2008
Four at Four
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Top general ‘hoodwinked’ over torture
By Richard Norton-Taylor, The GuardianThe US’s most senior general was “hoodwinked” by top Bush administration officials determined to push through aggressive interrogation techniques for terror suspects held at Guantánamo Bay, the Guardian can reveal.
The development led to the US military abandoning its age-old ban on the cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners.
General Richard Myers, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff from 2001 to 2005, wrongly believed that inmates at Guantánamo and other prisons were protected by the Geneva conventions and from abuse tantamount to torture.
The way he was duped by senior officials in Washington – who believed the Geneva conventions and other traditional safeguards were out of date – is disclosed in a devastating account of their role… in his new book…
Is this operation CYA for Myers?
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NATO mistakenly supplying arms and food to Taliban
By Anil Dawar, The GuardianNato forces mistakenly supplied food, water and arms to Taliban forces in southern Afghanistan, officials today admitted.
Containers destined for local police forces were dropped from a helicopter into a Taliban-controlled area of Zabul province. The coalition helicopter had intended to deliver pallets of supplies to a police checkpoint in Ghazni, a remote section of Zabul late last month…
A Nato spokesman said the pallets were carrying rocket propelled grenades, ammunition, water and food.
Heckuva a job NATO! Actually, it wasn’t NATO per se. It was their private military contractors. Mercenaries at their finest.
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Pentagon institute calls Iraq war ‘a major debacle’ with outcome ‘in doubt’
By Jonathan S. Landay and John Walcott, McClatchy Newspapers
The war in Iraq has become “a major debacle” and the outcome “is in doubt” despite improvements in security from the buildup in U.S. forces, according to a highly critical study published Thursday by the Pentagon’s premier military educational institute.The report released by the National Defense University raises fresh doubts about President Bush’s projections of a U.S. victory in Iraq just a week after Bush announced that he was suspending U.S. troop reductions.
The report carries considerable weight because it was written by Joseph Collins, a former senior Pentagon official, and was based in part on interviews with other former senior defense and intelligence officials who played roles in prewar preparations.
It was published by the university’s National Institute for Strategic Studies, a Defense Department research center.
“Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle,” says the report’s opening line…
The report also singles out the Bush administration’s national security apparatus and implicitly President Bush and both of his national security advisers, Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley, saying that “senior national security officials exhibited in many instances an imperious attitude, exerting power and pressure where diplomacy and bargaining might have had a better effect.”
No one could have predicted an invasion and occupation of Iraq could go badly… oh wait. Nevermind.
Four at Four continues below the fold with an effort to convert polar bears into oil.
Apr 18 2008
Through the Darkest of Nights: Testament VIII
Every few days over the next several months I will be posting installments of a novel about life, death, war and politics in America since 9/11. Through the Darkest of Nights is a story of hope, reflection, determination, and redemption. It is a testament to the progressive values we all believe in, have always defended, and always will defend no matter how long this darkness lasts.
All installments are available for reading here on my page, and also here on Docudharma’s Fiction Page, where refuge from politicians, blogging overload, and one BushCo outrage after another can always be found.
Apr 18 2008
Filling up the tank
My first disclaimer is that this is not going to be an essay about gas prices. I’ll leave that for someone else.
What I want to talk about is how, in the midst of one outrage after another after another (those are all just from the front page here yesterday and today) we keep our sanity. Lets not fool ourselves, after awhile, staying awake and paying attention takes its toll. If it didn’t, more people would join us. There are times I can’t really blame my friends who don’t want to “mess with their beautiful minds” because its frankly exhausting keeping up with it all.
For some reason, I reached a bit of a breaking point this week in watching the ABC debate. I think it was more of a last straw than just the sheer inanity of that event. But after all the “fuck you’s” at the tv screen, I felt pretty exhausted. I need to fill up the tank.
Apr 18 2008
Scarborough: People Know John McCain….Oh really?
In the deliciously gosippy story of Rachel Maddow spanking the Very Serious Person(al) tushy of Joe Scarbough for talking over her…Moran Morning Joe states the following (paraphrased): “People don’t know him, (Obama) they know John McCain….snip….It’s about defining the candidate, defining your opponent.”
Do they Joe? Do they REALLY know him? Let’s play “Define The Candidate”
The conversation was about attacking/smearing Obama through his associations, Maddow contends that it is a matter of focusing on this sort of trivial ‘dirt’ by the campaign…and by extension the media, who can’t resist the salaciously prepared Red Meat. The classic Rovian Politics of Personal Detruction. She asks why, for example, this association, of a McCain associate in a bathroom associating with an undercover cop isn’t associated with “Knowing McCain.” Or defining him.
Teh video, from Crooks and Liars.
Also via C&L, from Cogitamus a bit of a “definition.”
Do you think if Barack Obama had left his seriously ill wife after having had multiple affairs, had been a member of the “Keating Five,” had had a relationship with a much younger lobbyist that his staff felt the need to try and block, had intervened on behalf of the client of said young lobbyist with a federal agency, had denounced then embraced Jerry Falwell, had denounced then embraced the Bush tax cuts, had confused Shiite with Sunni, had confused Al Qaeda in Iraq with the Mahdi Army, had actively sought the endorsement and appeared on stage with a man who denounced the Catholic Church as a whore, and stated that he knew next to nothing about economics — do you think it’s possible that Obama would have been treated differently by the media than John McCain has been? Possible?
And — this is fun to contemplate — if Michelle Obama had been an adulteress, drug addict thief with a penchant for plagiarism — do you think that she would be subject to slightly different treatment from the media than Cindypills McCain has been? Anyone?
Apr 18 2008
Earth Day #2: Bush Killing Coastal Louisiana
This is Part 2 of an Earth Day-themed series on environmental issues in the Gulf Region after Katrina and the federal flood.
In the first part of this Earth Day series, the environmental devastation experienced by New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Region was discussed. This installment will focus on Louisiana’s wetlands which are being washed away and the sinking of New Orleans and the rest of southern Louisiana.
Apr 18 2008
Colbert Arranges a Light Saber for Jedi Webmaster Obama
If you did not catch the Colbert Report on Comedy Central last night (Thursday, April 17th), you will probably find it worth your while to catch one of the scheduled reruns today or this evening. The show brought to a climax Colbert’s week in Pennsylvania in advance of the primary election next Tuesday.
Last night’s show was political satire at its best, but it was also political allegory at its most profound.
Stephen Colbert showed why he deserved that Peabody Award.
Here is a link to last night’s show.
Here is a quick synopsis below the break.