April 2008 archive

Last night I was headed from Hyannis, Massachusetts back to the island of Nantucket on the Steamship Authority’s ferry boat, and decided to check my email and see what was happening on my favorite blogs.  I logged onto the boat’s WiFi service, typed in the URL for Docudharma, and then, to my horror, I was…

Once again filling in for RiaD’s T.I.T.A.S.S.  (Thurdays I Think About Stupid Stuff—- for the libidinous n00bs)

RiaD is obviously still not 100%, having only posted 4 Essays and made 233 comments since her return Mar. 30th.  Rest and Eat dear Ria.  

So,anyway, I had been planning to take a bunch of cheap shots at this:

http://www.megryanblog.info/

but my friend, we’ll call him Bill, received another shipment of vinyl.  In it was an album by The Monks.

So Meg and her fan will have to wait.

Introducing The Monks

Gary Burger: Lead guitar, lead vocalist

Larry Clark: Organ, vocalist

Dave Day: Banjo (initially rhythm guitar), vocalist (died January 10, 2008)

Eddie Shaw: Bass guitar, vocalist

Roger Johnston: Drums, vocalist (died November 8, 2004)

All the members were American GIs stationed in Germany in the mid-sixties. They began playing together in 1964, calling themselves the 5 Torquays. The Torquays differed little from countless other bands of the time: They covered Chuck Berry songs and played music inspired by the British beat groups. But the band experimented together musically – Gary Burger said:

“It probably took us a year to get the sound right. We experimented all the time. A lot of the experiments were total failures and some of the songs we worked on were terrible. But the ones we kept felt like they had something special to them. And they became more defined over time.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T…

Maybe can’t quote from the official site.

http://www.the-monks.com/index…

This will not be pleasing to everyone.

The Monk Chant

and

How To Do Now

Shaw told me in a 2003 interview. “Our crowd was a harder crowd, so to speak. We’d play that song very sarcastically, and the whole audience would sing, ‘I want to fuck your hand.'”

http://www.citypages.com/datab…

[I know buhdy already wrote on this — see cite for him below — but I figured an extra commentary wouldn’t hurt, providing also a bit more information on the legalities involved. — V.]

In a very interesting follow-up to the unfolding story on the 2003 John Yoo memorandum that justified the use of torture, ABC news is reporting how the CIA came to the White House after the spring 2002 capture of al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan and asked for permission to use more “aggressive” interrogation techniques. Citing anonymous sources, ABC says that beginning with the Zubaydah case, “the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency.” These discussions evidently included the use of waterboarding, as the CIA has admitted using this torture technique on Zubaydah.

The “Principals” — high-level Bush administration officials — present included National Security Adviser Condolezza Rice, who chaired the meetings, “Vice President Cheney… Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.”

While Ashcroft is said to have signed off on the legality of the interrogations, he got squeamish about how it was being approved. Perhaps he was afraid of future legal and political consequences. Perhaps he remembered how the secrets of the Wannsee Conference were ultimately leaked. Per the ABC story (also reported over at Reuters):

Let’s get one thing straight, now.  There are no liberal Republican Senators.  But the GOP’s got a secret-play in its handbook: the media carte-blanche from being an “independent”-minded poseur.  And 2006 showed us it works for Republicans..

1. The Los Angeles Times reports the Bush administration hopes to admit more Iraq refugees. “State Department officials, who have been harshly criticized for moving too slowly in allowing Iraqi refugees into the U.S., issued new immigration figures Wednesday and suggested they may reach a goal of admitting 12,000 refugees this fiscal year. Government figures show that 2,627 Iraqis have been cleared to enter the country since Oct. 1… The administration did not meet its 2007 goal… Between 2003 and 2006, about 5,000 of the estimated 2 million Iraqis who fled their country came to the United States”.

   Compare the 5,000 (to 6,000) we’ve allowed to move to the U.S. with the 40,000 Sweden let move to their country. But now, the Washington Post reports Iraqi refugees find Sweden’s doors closing.

   Sweden, which has one of the world’s most welcoming refugee policies, has become the new home of 40,000 Iraqis since the war began in 2003. Last year alone, more than 18,000 Iraqi refugees came to Sweden. According to the State Department, the United States has taken in roughly 6,000 Iraqis in programs for refugees and translators…

   The national government budgets $30,000 to help settle each person granted asylum. It pays for Swedish language classes, helps with housing and job training and pays a monthly allowance for living expenses…

   According to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, 4.5 million Iraqis have been forced out of their homes. Half of them are still in Iraq, and 2 million have fled to neighboring countries, particularly Syria and Jordan, where most live in poor and crowded conditions. For the Middle East, “it’s the greatest refugee catastrophe since 1948,” the year Israel was born, said Tobias Billstrom, Sweden’s minister for migration.

   The world has a “moral obligation” to help these people, Billstrom said. If the United States accepted as many people per capita as Sweden, a nation of 9 million, he said, it would have taken in 500,000 refugees.

   The U.S. no longer has the moral high ground, if it ever did.

More issues of morality can be found below the fold as Four at Four continues…

We need universal health care in this nation.  Nyceve has written about it extensively.  (Read the NYCEVE diaries here.)  Many kossaks, like myself, have long supported single payer.  Last year, John Edwards came out with a universal health care plan that was a road to single payer.  

Elizabeth Edwards spoke about universal health care on Olberman last night:

Elizabeth Edwards is right.

On Olberman last night:

I keep getting asked the difference between these two candidates and their policies and on health care, I prefer Senator Clinton’s to Senator Obama’s.

The difference-more important to me is the difference between Senator McCain’s proposed plan, I said plan, with the ideas of either of the Democratic candidates, and you’re talking about narrower differences between the Democrats and then this gulf that I was describing earlier, a solar system of difference between what Senator McCain is suggesting for health care and what these candidates are suggesting.

More, after the fold, including video on Elizabeth on Olberman and ABC, among other places.