GOP: The Pro-Crime Party

(Apologies in advance to my ASZ compatriots - bumping to the top until 4PM today.)

Is there any question that the Republican party is beholden to the oligarchs? There shouldn't be, particularly after yesterday's machinations in the halls of power.

As you may be aware, an anti-consumer, pro-oligarch bankruptcy reform bill is proceeding through the Senate. It's going to be coming to a vote once all of the procedural maneuverings are completed. If you need the details and plenty of horror stories from a very studied and academic point of view, Josh Marshall is facilitating the discussion with an excellent boutique section of Talking Points Memo devoted exclusively to this draconian legislation.

Here's kind of where things stand as of yesterday evening:

Two amendments to the bill were offered yesterday, both which would have raised the minimum wage. One was pro-worker, offered by Democrats and fronted by Ted Kennedy (D-Ma) and one was pro-oligarch, offered by Republicans and fronted by Rick Santorum (R-VA/PA).

Kennedy made the stellar argument that if congress is going to go once step shy of creating workhouses and debtors prisons by passing bankruptcy legislation that creates (for all intents and purposes) indentured servants, then the government at least owes the lowest end workers a decent living wage. It should be noted that even Kennedy's amendment didn't get the minimum wage to poverty level, but it was in excess of $2 / hour.

Santorum, on the other hand, offered a phased in $1.10 increase an hour, removed the ability of states to mandate their own minimum wage, and removed the floor for service industry workers who rely on tips (current minimum wage for this class of workers is $2.13 / hr).

Both amendments were defeated, for different reasons. The Democratic initiative came close to passing; the GOP farce wasn't even close.

So, the bankruptcy bill comes down to Chuck Schumer's (D-NY) amendment that would prevent persons convicted of crimes from discharging civil judgments, levied as a result of the crimes, in bankruptcy court. And the GOP is interpreting this amendment as a pro-choice amendment, because quite a few anti-abortion rabble rousers have been convicted (and received civil fines) for such things as burning abortion clinics, threatening and harassing clinic workers, violating restraining orders, maintaining "hit lists" on abortion providing doctors, and the actual murder of doctors. That's how the GOP is casting Schumer's amendment in an attempt to defeat is.

The end game is that if Schumer's amendment passes (which, in an ideal world it should), the bankruptcy bill is essentially dead. Many GOP senators will vote against the bankruptcy bill simply because of the pro-choice implications if the Schumer amendment is attached.

Here's an urgent shout out to every one of ASZ's readers to pick up the phone today (this morning, if possible), and contact BOTH of the Senators from your state, regardless of their party or pro/con view of the amendment. Avoid discussion of the bankruptcy bill itself. The conversation on the Schumer amendment should be cast thusly:

If this amendment fails, it is a clear indication that Republicans are pro-crime.

Forget the abortion end of it. Failing to pass the Schumer amendment would mean that crooks such as Jeffrey Skilling of Enron could discharge any civil judgments levied against him personally for his con job at Enron, and the millions / billions lost to shareholders and Enron employee pensions. And that's just wrong.

Again, if the Schumer amendment fails, THE GOP IS PRO-CRIME.

Please make the calls today, the earlier the better, and if you can, contact both your Senator's local and Washington, DC offices. Click here for all senatorial office contact information.

Lastly, leave a comment below after you've made the contact, and let us know what the staffer you talked to said.

Update, 11:30AM: Spoke to Sen. Corzine's office a few minutes ago - the bill is expected to receive a cloture vote this afternoon, which means that the GOP is going to try and preempt a potential filibuster by Chuck Schumer (D-NY). The bottom line - make those calls at lunchtime. It's that important. Make your voice known, as useless as it may seem:

1. Say your name, and that you're one of Sen. X's constituents.
2. Ask what the Senator's position is on the bankruptcy bill.
3. Express your opposition, and state this is a terribly anti-family bill.
4. Express your SUPPORT for the Schumer admendment.

It's that easy. Quick, cheap, and easy. Make your voice heard.

Update, 2:15PM EST - Hmmm. This is turning into almost a live blogging event. Anyway, the Schumer Amendment failed, 46 - 53. Cloture vote is scheduled almost immediately. If you can make another call, please get in touch with your Senator again quickly, urging a vote of "NO" on cloture of this bill.

(Apologies to any pedants who picked up the earlier typos; I was rushing to get this posted.)

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Hero of the Day!

And if it were up to me, Ms. Ann Long should get a full ride to the Columbia Journalism School.

Ann Long wrote an article in the December 17 issue of The Oracle, the student newspaper at Troy High School in Fullerton, CA. Hey, they've even won awards! Ann's article was about gay teens and profiled three of her fellow students. She worked on the article in concert with her academic advisor, but after publication the school decided she'd broken one of the rules. You see, there's a California state law that says one can't ask about sexual orientation, and a host of other things. At least that's the excuse the school is giving for firing Ms. Long from her Editor position, in a story from PEN.

The California law in question, from the Student Press Law Center:

Section 51513 of the California Education Code reads, "No test, questionnaire, survey, or examination containing any questions about the pupil’s personal beliefs or practices in sex, family life, morality, and religion…shall be administered to any pupil in kindergarten or grades 1 to 12…unless the parent or guardian of the pupil is notified in writing."

Of course, the law hasn't been applied that way before, and according to experts, including an official with the California Board of Education, it was never intended to be used to that end:

A representative for the California Department of Education said that section 51513 has not been cited before in cases involving student newspapers.

"It applies, we believe, to tests and questionnaires that the district asks the students to answer," said Tina Jung, an information officer for the state department of education.

Mark Child, director of the Journalism Education Association’s Southern California chapter, said he is "well-versed" in the law and does not believe section 51513 is applicable to Long’s situation.

"I am unaware of anything that says you necessarily need to get a parent’s consent before you cover the student [in a student newspaper] from the standpoint of sexual orientation or preference, religious preference or anything like that," Child said.

The executive director of the Student Press Law Center, Mark Goodman, also says section 51513 was wrongly applied.

"This law has nothing to do with students talking to other students," Goodman said.

"In fact, other sections of the California Education Code specifically protect the free press and free expression rights of students," Goodman added, referring to sections 48907 and 48950, which limit school officials’ ability to censor or punish students for their expression.

The ACLU also weighs in.

It certainly doesn't shock ASZ readers that the hatred Right Wing Christian Clerics hold for gays and lesbians trickles down into the doings of folks who normally would do the right thing. Think for a moment. California is a blue state, and Fullerton is a university town. Yet they still look to twist whatever regulation they can find to punish a young woman writing an article about tolerance and understanding?

Someone give this young woman a scholarship, and then tell the Principal of that school to SHUT THE FUCK UP!

Sgrena: An Interesting Theory

We don't use the "t" word around ASZ anymore when discussing hypotheses and potential conspiracies - because nothing's far-fetched with the Bush cabal. So when an article from Watching the Watchers.org came to my attention, my immediate reaction was to reach for my "t" word hat.

But what the hell. I'm not going to put it on tonight. Judge for yourself. Here's a snippet to whet your appetite:

...Clearly, if Negroponte thought that Sgrena had evidence, such as film, photos, or documents, that might expose US war crimes (such a chemical warfare or mass murder in Fallujah), one can rest assured that he was not about to let her leave Iraq without a thorough search. However, because Italian troops, the press, and diplomats were waiting her arrival at the airport, an involuntary search there would have been problematic for diplomatic reasons...

The entire article is worth a read, if only because this whole incident is so clouded in mystery, non-denial denials, and a lot of the old "bullshit shuffle". Yesterday, Sgrena herself indicated that she was not at liberty to tell the entire story - yet.

This story will continue to percolate - and with the (apparently) U.S. friendly fire killing of a coalition soldier from Bulgaria on Friday, the heat will continue to be turned up on the Bush administration for answers -- answers that don't reside with the troops who pulled the trigger in either incident.

Mr. Santorum's Own Poll

Evidently Mr. Santorum recently took a poll on his web site concerning who supported personal accounts as part of a reworking of the Social Security system. Hey, go look at his site and you WON'T find the results, which are there on the left side of this post. And I suppose you can understand why you won't see those results, given what they are.

But you'll find the results at the site of one of his challengers, who had the foresight to make a screen capture. Chuck Pennacchio seems to get it. His staff not only had the foresight to watch how the poll at Rick Santorum's site was going (completely gives the lie to the rosey picture Santorum paints of his reception, by the way), but they have the same screen capture on their site. They also are pretty forward about connecting with Pennsylvania bloggers, and that's another good sign. Note on their front page that they've had a conference call with bloggers, and they're actively recruiting bloggers on another page, even offering the Pennacchio banner for web sites. I'm personally not interested in taking sides in this race as yet, but I'm impressed by Pennacchio's organization so far.

Of course, with a good deal less snarkiness, Attytood commented on the phenomenon of this missing poll this morning, and I thank him for his heads up on this issue. I suppose it is stretching it to expect the Daily News Reporter Will Bunch to be at all snarky on his web site, even though he represents the People Paper. Heck, I wanted a comment about how gutless Santorum is.

Santorum certainly has the chutzpuh to use public funds to home school his kids even though he didn't live in the district where he used tens of thousands of funds for that home schooling. But Santorum doesn't have the stones to give us the results of a poll from HIS VERY OWN WEB SITE! Instead, he waxes lyricxal about the wonderful reception he's getting around the state on the subject of Social Security reform. No, even that is a lie, as Santorum has been greeted by hecklers at nearly every stop on his Town-hall speaking tour, including one in Warminster, a Philly suburb. I heard also from a witness at Drexel University that Santorum was received by a raucus crowd against his proposal -- she told me the report by the Daily Pennsylvanian understated the protest a great deal. Hey, maybe the results of Santorum's own online poll tells us the truth.

Would that Rick Santorum trusted us with the truth, that his view isn't even supported by those who visit his web site.

Bush Administration Signals Continued UN "Irrelevancy"

Where in the hell do they keep digging these guys up? I mean, really - is there some kind of medical transfer apparatus in the basement of the White House that implants the assholiness gene in every one of these people??

Individual Profile | John Bolton:

John Bolton , George W. Bush's undersecretary of State for arms control and international security, is the administration's designated treaty killer. Since his nomination (which was opposed by Secretary of State Colin Powell), Bolton's reputation as a rabid opponent of international agreements and loose-lipped critic of foreign regimes has become the stuff of legend, at times hampering the State Department's ability to undertake negotiations...

And George Bush was kind enough to nominate Mr. Bolton this morning as the U.S.'s new ambassador to the United Nations. Another "my way or the highway" kind of guy. You have to admit., he fits this administration's international diplomacy modus operandi perfectly.

Judd Legum of American Progress forwards the following philosophical quip from Bolton:

Bolton has harshly disparaged the United Nations in the past. In 1994, for example, he charged, "There's no such thing as the United Nations," saying that ‘'If the U.N. secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference.'' Four years later, he attacked the international body again, saying, "many Republicans in Congress - and perhaps a majority - not only do not care about losing the General Assembly vote but actually see it as a ‘make my day' outcome. Indeed, once the vote is lost, and the adverse consequences predicted by the U.N.'s supporters begin to occur, this will simply provide further evidence to many why nothing more should be paid to the U.N. system."

Where do they continue to find guys like this?

The Old, the Young and the Wise

I ran across these three stories, and all have a bearing on either the Administration or the Right Wing Christian Clerics they listen to. Indeed, the last has a bearing on media, I suppose.

First is the recruitment of a 76 year old to rejoin the National Guard. Bob Kotterman is the man's name:

Kotterman is 76.

He's a cancer survivor with diabetes and a bad eye. "Too old to chase girls anymore," he said yesterday.

He was discharged from the National Guard in 1949. He was only in 18 months. His job: running the movie projector. "I ran films about people getting gonorrhea and syphilis, that kind of stuff," Kotterman said.

Sure, later it notes that this may have been the result of a prank by a friend of Mr. Kotterman, but it sure looks stupid. If this is the military we went to war with shouldn't someone in the Administration have wondered whether it was ready for this war?

Perhaps more serious is the Christian school in Schaumberg, IL that is requiring corporal punishment. Little Chandler Fallaw, just six years old, was acting up in class. He chewed gum. He talked in class. And the school decided that his mother had the choice of suspension of spanking. She chose to pull him out of the school, and good for her, too.

"We don't believe corporal punishment is overboard," said Randy Thaxton, administrator for the Schaumburg Christian School.

He says parents are never forced to spank kids, but if bad behavior escalates they may be given a choice between suspension or spanking.

"It's an opportunity for them to make progress in the behavior of their child in a Bible-based situation. In other words, the Bible supports what we are asking the parents to do there."

Schaumberg is soccer Mom country. I can only wish this is a sign that soccer Moms are beginning to reject the Right Wingding party line on at least some things.

Finally, Matt Drudge leads off alarmingly concerning Warren Buffet's recent opinion concerning deficit spending and the trade deficit. MAKES BILLIONS BETTING AGAINST DOLLAR... he says, but links to a mild article that hardly features Buffet's investment strategies except in context with the dire issues he comments about. Looks like Drudge got a memo from Mr. Rove, huh?

Surely Buffet's actual quotes should be leading this story, given his record over the years at wisdom concerning investments and also the state the Bush Administration is driving our country to. What state is that? Alabama?

Mr Buffett stepped up his warning about the US trade deficit and the need to finance it with foreign investment, devoting more than two full pages of the annual report to the topic.

“This force-feeding of American wealth to the rest of the world is now proceeding at the rate of $1.8bn daily, an increase of 20 per cent since I wrote you last year,” he said. “Consequently, other countries and their citizens now own a net of about $3,000bn of the US”

In particular, he warned that this meant a sizeable portion of what US citizens earned in future would have to be paid to foreign landlords.

“A country that is now aspiring to an “Ownership Society” will not find happiness in – and I’ll use hyperbole here for emphasis – a “Sharecropper’s Society,” added Mr Buffett. “But that’s precisely where our trade policies, supported by Republicans and Democrats alike, are taking us.”

End of post. Time to spit.

The Media and Sex Scandals

Interesting that this story of a corporate sex scandal gets more ink in a single day than that of a gay hooker in the White House has received in nearly a month:

Boeing Ousts CEO Due to Relationship:

CHICAGO - Boeing Co. on Monday said its board forced out president and chief executive officer Harry Stonecipher because of a relationship the married, 68-year-old Stonecipher had with a female executive at the company...

I wonder why?

How Disinformation Happens

There's a ton of news on the Guliana Sgrena front this morning, and if I have a bit of time later I'll synopsize. But one interesting thing I've noticed over the last two days is that wingnut bloggers are figuratively tearing apart the Italian journalist. If you want to soil your keyboard, go ahead and hit some of the "usual suspect" blogs. However, I thought I'd bring one particularly egregious rabble rousing wingnut posting to the attention of Left Blogistan.

The Little Goebbels Fascists jumped on a photo yesterday that was purportedly Guliana Sgrena's car:

Anyone who's been following the fallout from this incident can agree that there's been a lot of back-and-forth over the last few days regarding the veracity of the attack on Sgrena's "convoy". One fact that isn't in any dispute is that quite a few rounds were fired at the vehicle in which Sgrena and her rescuers were riding.

Does that stop someone like Charles at LGF from using critical thinking skills when viewing the picture to the left? Of course not. Charles was pointed to the picture in an AP story by one of his loyal flying monkeys -- and then ran with it like the wind. The collective response of the fascists was predictable:

#10 SkippyMoment 3/6/2005 01:24PM PST

A US military armored vehicle fired on that car with 400 rounds? Right, then we are either terrible marksmen and couldn't hit the broadside of a barn with an MX missle, or there was an invisible forcefield around that car.

I suspect this woman was overcome with hysteria, applied the new math where one US bullet equals a hundred, or she's got her own political ax to grind.

#11 Captain Hate 3/6/2005 01:25PM PST

Maybe they were nerf bullets like the nerf torpedos on the USS Dhimmi Carter.

#12 Charles 3/6/2005 01:26PM PST

zombie: that screenshot is also from the AP video; there's a closeup of the car immediately following the section from which you got your picture.

#13 Dave Ray 3/6/2005 01:26PM PST

They're not magic bullets! Their special secret Zionist bullets that make holes that can only be seen through special moonbat glasses while wearing regulation tinfoil hat!

...and that line of commenting goes on for another 400+ comments. LGF has been particularly vitrolic in its response to the Sgrena incident - and basically pining the blame for the "tragedy" on her.

Well, surprise, surprise. After whipping the natives into a froth, it turns out that the car shown in the photo was not Sgrena's ride out of Baghdad. In fact, with about 2 milliseconds of critical thought, even I could have figured that out. Would an Italian agent have been moving a hostage out of harms way in a beat up sedan like the one pictures? No. "Official" transport is done in armored SUV's, and Charles should have been able to figure that out. In fact, I've blogged about it before.

And again, one thing about which there is no dispute - lotsa bullets were fired. It's pretty obvious that the car in the photo to the left was not involved in any kind of firefight.

To Charles' credit, he did have the good sense to post a retraction a bit later in the day. But it won't stop him from jumping the gun again in the future. The wingnuts have always understood that the first story out of the gate wins - right or wrong - and that later retractions are pretty much meaningless in terms of influencing opinion.

I leave you with this: ask yourself why LGF has blogged almost non-stop about the Guliana Sgrena shooting since it happened, while the "lefty" blogs have pretty much let the story develop without drawing any judgements. Kind of like my earlier posting on the Copt Christians and faux Islamic jihad in New Jersey.

It's so easy to jump to conclusions. It's a whole lot harder pull back once you've made the leap.

Hearts that Scream Love at the World...

Counting the Cost

On the heath Lear asks Gloucester: "How do you see the world?" And Gloucester, who is blind, answers: "I see it feelingly.'"

Bill Moyers: "The news is not good these days. But as a journalist I know the news is never the end of the story. The news can be the truth that sets us free not only to feel but to fight for the future we want. The will to fight is the antidote to despair, the cure for cynicism, and the answer to those faces looking back at me from those photographs on my desk. We must match the science of human health to what the ancient Israelites called hochma—the science of the heart, the capacity to see and feel and then to act as if the future depended on us.
Believe me, it does."

Paul Simon: "Oh... Peace like a river ran through the city,
Long past the midnight curfew we sat starry-eyed, oh we were satisfied."

The above image is of a painting that was done for me on my birthday in 1990. I've read all the "news" today. I have no wisdom or insight to impart to anyone. I have my heart. My many hearts. You can Google all the "news". I'm here to tell you that there is something more for us to do. There is something incredible for us yet to do. And you know... I'm using "us" specifically, because I've never believed in an "us" beyond human beings....It goes far beyond democrats and republicans... leftists and rightists... progressives and regressives. We as a culture just haven't quite gotten it yet though. Pity. It could be to our ultimate demise. I am counting the cost.



My dear friend, Yvonne Le Barr painted this for me (where are you Yvonne?) ... I was Kate of the heart then and now ... the rock heart, the glass heart, the shell heart, the candy heart... the crash and burn heart... She said I was the heart that screamed love at the world.

I dont' know if I was or still am. I know that the world hurts my heart these days... I know that what I read in the "news" is completely illogical. Business as usual on the crazy-making Happy Planet. I also know about a lot of things you'll never see on CNN or the network news.

Remember this?

Thanks to a couple hot tips from the comments on the Eschaton post questioning the legality of the federal government's new Homeland Propaganda division, here's some old hypocrisy brought to focus in the new light, dug up your's truly.

Reno Is Now Probing Clinton's Fund-Raising

By Roberto Suro and John F. Harris
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 21, 1997;
Page A01

The Justice Department announced yesterday that it has taken the first step in a process that could lead to the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate allegations that President Clinton made illegal 1996 fund-raising telephone calls from the White House.

As if you could stomach any more...

Justice Dept. to Probe Gore Fund Calls

By Roberto Suro and Lena H. Sun
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 4, 1997;
Page A01

The Justice Department announced yesterday that it has launched a review of Vice President Gore's solicitation of campaign contributions by telephone from his White House office to determine if they warrant a full-scale investigation that could lead to appointment of an independent counsel.

The main accusations being levelled at both Clinton and Gore in these cases was that they were violating the Hatch Act and USC Section 18 §607. The Hatch Act is intended to prohibit federal employees from engaging in partisan political activity. The second law is a prohibition of the use of federal property for political candidates campaign solicitations.

In the cases of Clinton and Gore, the complaints based on the Hatch Acts are easily disposed due to the fact that it allows political candidates running for election to engage in partisan actions. It was intended to address the issue of non-elected federal employees engaging in such activity. Think Porter Goss.

While Gore did indeed use the White House to place calls, he did so using a DNC credit card. Thus, it was a minor violation of the law, but did not cost the taxpayers, which is what the law was intended to ward against.

So, tell me now, who is going to work in Bush's propaganda division? Are they going to be unpaid volunteers? Where are they going to work from? Are they going to solicit funds? Are they going to use email and/or telephones?

It is pretty clear that this administration pays little regard to laws that it finds inconvenient, so I think we all know the answers to my questions.

The internal, taxpayer-funded campaigning is backed up by television advertisements, grass-roots organizing and lobbying from business and other groups that support the Bush plan.

Under Clinton, at least some efforts at accountability were present (with Reno investigating at the behest of the Republicans). Don't count on that in this administration.

Its time to get crankin', folks. Contact your senators and let them know how you feel about your taxdollars being used to pay for Bush's advertising campaign to destroy your Social Security system.

Enjoy Your $2 Gasoline

Back off or suffer oil shock: Tehran
Venezuela threatens to cut off oil to U.S.
Fears over oil supplies

Care to see just how bad things are getting with Venezuela's relations with the U.S.? Click here.

Bush drove Harken Energy into the ground. Now he's drillin' a "dry hole" in the international community, on your dime. And it's going to cost you dearly.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday

Lots of stuff happening on the homefront, and not a lot of time for insightful and hard hitting commentary today (from me, anyway). ;-)

So, let us know what's up on your scrap of the planet.

Unveiling the Homeland Ministry of Propaganda

Is there anyone who can possibly explain the difference between the following images and this?

The only difference I can think of is that in North Korea and the Soviet Union, propaganda was a legal, legitimate function of the government.

I realize that there are federal funding efforts to outside organizations that could probably be accurately described as propaganda efforts to some extent. An example of this, if my knowledge is correct, is the flow of funds from the Department of Health and Human Services to Planned Parenthood.

However, there is one very substantial and utterly critical difference between the Planned Parenthood funding and Bush's new Ministry of Propaganda, and that is that the former funding, from taxpayer dollars, is regulated by law and not left entirely to the discretion of one man and his advisors.

It would be foolish to believe that the White House is unaware of the thin legal ice on which it is now treading. Combine that with the fact that the GOP has the power to push nearly any bill it wishes through Congress currently, especially those that could be legitimately deemed essential to the party, and one comes to the conclusion that Bush is feeling quite isolated. And now, like a cornered animal, he has chosen not give up, but to fight even more viciously, and dirtier than before.

If the Ministry of Propaganda is able to stand without public cry and corresponding legal challenge, we've taken yet another step into pseudo-fascism.

As far as I am concerned, this is definitely impeachment-worthy material. Spread the word wherever else your travels in the blogosphere take you.

On a slightly related note, does the terminology of "Homeland Security" concern anyone else, especially with the Soviet "Your Motherland Calls", Chinese "Strengthen the Motherland" and Nazi "We Stand for Honor and the Fatherland" slogans in the past?

They Don't Even Bother to Translate from Old German Anymore

Bush Sets Up Social Security War Room

..."The uber purpose is to centralize and coordinate the administration's public affairs and communication activities," said chief Treasury spokesman Rob Nichols. "Standing up this office demonstrates how important fixing Social Security is."

In der Tat.

Atrios has more, questioning the legality of such an office.

Giuliana Sgrena Update

In comments to the previous post on the shooting of Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena in Iraq yesterday, reader maxcrat pointed to an updated Reuters story on the incident:

ROME (Reuters) - Freed Italian hostage Giuliana Sgrena described on Saturday how U.S. forces sprayed her car with bullets as it neared safety in Iraq, wounding her and killing the man who had secured her release moments earlier.

U.S. forces opened fire as the car carrying Sgrena neared Baghdad airport on Friday after she was released by the militants who had held her captive for more than a month.

..."It wasn't a checkpoint, but a patrol which shot as soon as it had lit us up with a spotlight. We had no idea where the shots were coming from."

This entire episode continues to smell like yesterday's diapers.

I opined last night that this international incident could be a tipping point in the U.S.'s continued occupation of Iraq. It's not going to go over well in the EU, and it's not going to go away easy. If nothing else, this incident is comparable to the Madrid bombing last year, in that it has the very real possibility of influencing the upcoming Italian elections.

Was the incident a "hit"? Speculation is, quite naturally, running rampant. Certainly, the circumstances surrounding the shooting beg a lot of questions.

Eason Jordan was not available for comment.

Update: Francesca's LWC has been tracking various international accounts of this story.

New Jersey Holy War on Hold

Back in January, a family of four was murdered in northern New Jersey. Under normal circumstances, this story would have warranted a two minute report on New York television stations, and then maybe a 30 second update when the perps were captured. But this one was different.

The family in question was of the Coptic Christian religion, "Christian" being the operative word. Early on, there were reports of members of this family being targeted for death because of some anti-Islamic postings on an internet message board by the father of the family.

Ok, so we have two loaded terms. Christian. Islamic.

Wingnuts put 2 + 2 together and came up with eleventeen. Here's a couple of the headlines from back then:

CBN News - Jihad in Jersey City?
Coptic Christian Family in NJ Slaughtered by Islamic Radicals
Fatal wounds of New Jersey family suggest religious motive
New Jersey: an Islamic murder of Coptic Christians?

Yes, there was a lot of gnashing of teeth in Wingnutville. Islamofacists had murdered a Christian family on our shores! Even Fox News got into the act (surprise, surprise):

JERSEY CITY, N.J. — A funeral procession for two parents and their two daughters found brutally slain in their home last week drew hundreds of mourners Monday and some in the crowd blamed the deaths on simmering religious tensions in the family's native Egypt...

...After revelations over the weekend that Hossam Armanious was active on an Internet chat site devoted to Coptic Christianity (search), Monir Dowoud, president of the American Coptic Association (search), told 200 people outside the family's church on Sunday that "Muslim terrorists" were responsible.

However, further down (below the fold) in the same article, the following paragraph, which received little notice in Wingnutville, appears:

Police have said that there were no signs of forced entry at the home, where the four bodies were found bound and gagged early Friday. Authorities said robbery remained a possible motive because no cash or jewelry were found in the home. Guy Gregory, first assistant Hudson County prosecutor, said the wallet of Hossam Armanious was found empty.

So, nearly two months have passed. A Google search finds that this heretofore unsolved murder was still a hot topic in whipping up anti-Islamic fervor on wingnut blogs, Christian bulletin boards and even "respectable" news sites. But then yesterday came this:

JERSEY CITY, N.J. - The upstairs neighbor of an Egyptian Christian family found slain in their home in January was charged along with another man Friday in the killings, and authorities said the motive was robbery, not religious fanaticism, as some had feared...

Later today when I have a moment, I'm going to take a trip through some of the boards and news sites that posted the original article as proof that there is a holy war in progress in the Garden State.

I'm guessing that I'll find no retractions.

(Tip o' the hat to Mithras for the heads up.)

It's hard to even blog this...

U.S. Forces Wound Freed Hostage in Iraq:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - American troops fired on a car rushing Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena to freedom on Friday after a month in captivity, killing the Italian intelligence officer who helped negotiate her release and wounding the reporter in another friendly-fire tragedy at a U.S. checkpoint...

As hard as this may be to digest right now, this may actually be the tipping point...

Stay tuned. This is bigger than you know.

Open Chat Invitation - 9PM EST

We'll give the new chatroom a whirl tonight. While you can hop in at any time, at 9PM we'll be discussing the stories of the day or wherever the discussion leads. When we get the bugs worked out, we'll start scheduling discussions on specific topics. You can suggest future topics in chat, or email us and we'll get the word out ahead of time.

For those of you coming in through and IRC client, here's the info:

Server: rawforce.irchat.tv
Channel: #all_spin_zone

Admin Note

We've set up a chat room, Zonebot Chat. Let us know what you think. Click on the button below, or the one about 1/2 way down on the left menu.



Since this is an IRC chat room, those of you with IRC clients can get to the chatroom thusly:

server: irc.irchat.tv
channel: #all_spin_zone

Update, 3/4/05, 2:30PM - If there's enough interest, we'll schedule regular chats on specific topics in the future.

Or, just hang out. ;-)

Update, 3:10PM - there was a broken link in the button above, and it's been fixed. Thanks for hanging in - beta testers rock! ;-) I'll get it right, eventually.

Pennsylvania and Philadelphia Good News

First, Aryan Nations is moving from our nice Blue state to be nearer Westboro Baptist Church. Yup, it made the papers:

KANSAS CITY, Kan. - A white supremacist and anti-Semitic group that had been operating out of Pennsylvania says it has shifted its base to Kansas.

One of its leaders, August B. Kreis III, of Sebring, Florida, told The Kansas City Star that the Aryan Nations organization had chosen Kansas City, Kan., as a new headquarters because of its central location. He said that its national director, Charles J. Juba, had recently relocated to the Kansas City metropolitan area from Pennsylvania, aiming to enlist new members.

The organization now lists its address as a post office box in Kansas City, Kan., replacing an earlier listing in Leola, Pa. - a small town just east of Lancaster. . .

In 2002, Juba, Kreis and a third man joined together to replace Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler, whose health was declining. After Butler's death in 2004, Kreis took over a faction of the group he called the "true Aryan Nations." Another faction calling itself the real Aryan Nations moved to Alabama last year.

Indeed, the other faction of the group moved to the Red state of Alabama last year. Oh, I might be a little tongue in cheek here, but these folks are truly bad and I really do feel safer with them nearly a thousand miles away.

The other good news? The Eagles re-signed Jeremiah Trotter! Woohoo!

Hey, it's a Friday, a guy's got to find stuff to celebrate, doesn't he?

Bend Over, Grab Your Ankles, Insert Gas Nozzle

Yikes!!:

Gasoline prices could rocket 24 cents a gallon the next few days, as stations across the USA scramble to keep up with big jumps in the prices of oil and wholesale gas, a veteran energy-price analyst forecast Thursday...

The Latest Shot in the War of the 49th Parallel

One of the lead stories we've been following this week is Dominatrix-of-State Condi Rice's snubbing of our hoser friends in the Great White North. Our prior reportage can be found here and here.

And now, in the spirit of "one-upsmanship", a former Canadian Foreign Minister lobs a verbal missile back south of the 49th (this one's been kicking around the web in the past 24 hours - it was first raised on Kos, but the article wasn't online). Looks like Winnipeg Free Press opened up their normally closed subscription area for this one:

Axworthy fires back at U.S.; Open Letter to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. I particularly enjoyed this passage of Axworthy's letter:

...Coming to Ottawa might also expose you to a parliamentary system that has a thing called question period every day, where those in the executive are held accountable by an opposition for their actions, and where demands for public debate on important topics such a missile defence can be made openly.

You might also notice that it's a system in which the governing party's caucus members are not afraid to tell their leader that their constituents don't want to follow the ideological, perhaps teleological, fantasies of Canada's continental co-inhabitant. And that this leader actually listens to such representations.

Your boss did not avail himself of a similar opportunity to visit our House of Commons during his visit, fearing, it seems, that there might be some signs of dissent. He preferred to issue his diktat on missile defence in front of a highly controlled, pre-selected audience.

Such control-freak antics may work in the virtual one-party state that now prevails in Washington. But in Canada we have a residual belief that politicians should be subject to a few checks and balances, an idea that your country once espoused before the days of empire.

If you want to have us consider your proposals and positions, present them in a proper way, through serious discussion across the table in our cabinet room, as your previous president did when he visited Ottawa. And don't embarrass our prime minister by lobbing a verbal missile at him while he sits on a public stage, with no chance to respond...

Ooh, I get all warm and fuzzy just reading that passage again and again.

And, our Canuckistan bureau chief RossK of Gazetteer points to some audio from Axworthy that should be online shortly...

Sometimes, the Good Guys Win

I've been following this story for a couple of days - the immigration case of a well respected Boston school system teacher, who had worked his way up through the system, was teaching in a Boston high school, and was facing deportation today for a mistake he made in the "year that everything changed".

Yesterday, interspersed among the shill reporting for the Bush administration on NPR, I heard a low-key report regarding Obain Attouoman's plight. What struck me was not Attouoman's situation (hundreds of immigrants are deported on a monthly basis for not meeting timeframes or green card criteria), but INS's attitude -- which in a nutshell was "well, we can't be making exceptions for everybody. We have procedures." The snarkiness of the INS spokesperson literally dripped through the radio.

On the eve of Attouoman's deportation, John Kerry stepped up to the plate and sponsored a bill in the Senate to block the deportation. The Boston teacher now has a two year reprieve, and hopefully he'll now be able to successfully plead his asylum case (which seems pretty cut and dried to me).

Since the election, I've bashed John Kerry (and his campaign and the DNC) rather relentlessly, but I'm willing to give props where props are due. What puzzles me is why Attouoman was left swinging in the wind for so long. Until this story received national notice, it appeared that no politician cared enough investigate. In fact, Attouoman spent three months in jail because no politician cared enough to listen.

This is a story of extreme injustice that has a happy ending. But for each Obain Attouoman, there are thousands of equally deserving stories that don't get a hearing. A cookbook process for dealing with immigration issues, coupled with an overworked (and snarky) bureaucracy, doesn't really serve the huddled masses yearning to be free.

Beloved Teacher Facing Deportation Wins Reprieve

GOP Votes Against Fair Elections

From the BradBlog:

Jesse Lee over at the Stakeholder has some news about today's "Motion to Commit" on the House floor (discussed briefly in this earlier item):

House GOP Votes Against Fair Allocation of Machines and Poll Workers

In another astounding display of political hubris, today every single Republican voted against a Conyers-Waters amendment to provide that states provide a minimum required number of functioning and accurate voting machines and poll workers for all precincts.

The purpose of the amendment was simple, and one would have thought, non-controversial - to avoid the misallocation of voting machines and poll workers that led to lines of ten hours or more in the Ohio presidential election and disenfranchised tens of thousands of thousands of minority voters. (The amendment was offered in the context of an arcane continuity bill, providing for expedited elections in the event of an attack on Congress...)

Any questions on where Republicans now stand in regards to fair elections?

Brad has been doing some very important work on voting rights on his blog and on VelvetRevolution.us.

Conyers Forces Election Reform on House Floor

On the Simple and Unsimple Joys of Fitting

Dance shoes, that is...
Fitting dance shoes. It's one of the things I "do" in the most recent incarnation of my job schlepping the boulders up my pharoah's personal pyramid... in order to have health insurance and a few bucks to rub together. Sometimes it's mind-numbing, but there are some moments that stand out for me as you might imagine.

So I'm going to try via my everyday to sow a few innocuous seeds, as the seed sower in the photo (left) is "obviously" doing.

I was mostly on the computer in my job with the multi-store dancewear chain in southern California for the first 18 months. Advertising and PR. But not anymore. Anymore they can't afford the monthly four-color glossy newsletter I created. So I'm out on the floor now, earning my buck three-eighty. Fitting shoes (among other things). Fitting shoes is actually something that I'm starting to think about as sort of a Zen discipline. It's all koans to me these days, and stinky, mangled feet everywhere. I don't know how the poets have missed such a goldmine for all these years. It's here every day for me.

I don't just hand them a box of shoes and say, "Go to it". I actually do a professional fitting. And I see and touch peoples' feet and listen to them, and observe them. One thing: most people don't really know their shoe size. This seems like a terrible disconnect to me. How can one NOT know their shoe size? Beyond all that though (and here's the Zen part of it) I get to talk to people about more than just their dance shoes. Hell. I get to do hour-long pointe shoe fittings, and get to interact with parents and their children all day long, and watch the parents mostly all pay for their purchases with plastic. Then there are those who never get off their cel phones while in the store. Sometimes when the store is empty and I'm doing something mindless, I cry quietly.

Yesterday I got to sit on the floor next to 70-something Beejay and her 60-something friend, who still dance up a storm in front of audiences on a regular basis. They are faithful customers. It was a hoot. As I eased myself down on the floor with my bum knee, I called myself a kvetching curmudgeon... and they laughed. I wondered at that moment as I often do if I would live as long as them. I wonder about that a lot. They've got almost 20 years on me. And I don't feel enough energy in me to make it that far. Maybe that will change. Something will change, of this I am sure.

So I was thinking last night at 2 AM Pacific about what I could possibly blog about in our ever-increasingly bizarro world. What could I say that means anything to all the hip political types that frequent ASZ? And of course I was stumped, and had to fall back to a slice of life. In the blogzome we vote with comments, good and bad.

I wonder.... What do you recite to yourself as you're trudging up the side of the local pyramid? Would you like to do something else, and what would that something else be?

Just wonderin'.

For the unitiated: Pointe Shoes

" Pointe shoes work on the same principles as an artificial limb. In essence, a pointe shoe is a prosthetic extension added to your leg which allows you to dance on your toes. Just like an artificial leg, a pointe shoe must be exactingly fitted to evenly disperse weight and pressure over the contact surface (in this case your foot). “When properly fitted,” explains Fern, “a pointe shoe will support your weight with little or no pain or pressure and will move like it’s a part of your foot.”"

A Cowboy, Baby - Femiphobia and the Rightwing

Sometimes you come across items that are just BEGGING to be linked together.

Photo borrowed from Francesca's Liberal Wingnut Corner
Stephen J. Ducat Dissects "Anxious Masculinity,"
Making Sense of America's Strutting, in a Psychoanalytic Kind of Way

...
BuzzFlash: You discuss “anxious masculinity” as exhibited by right wing America, the Bush Administration, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and George Bush. Why "anxious?" Is it that their masculinity has got to be constantly reproven?

Stephen J. Ducat: Yes. In fact, the kind of hyper-masculine strutting that we see on display by right wingers is a defense. It’s a defense against this anxious masculinity, against this fear of the feminine. In a culture in which it’s so important to deny the feminine in men, masculinity becomes a really brittle achievement. It’s quite Sisyphean--you know, you can never quite get there. You’re always having to prove it.

Part of the reason is that this type of masculinity is defined largely in terms of domination. The problem is that domination--either in a personal or a global context---can never be a permanent condition. It’s a relational state. It’s dependent on having somebody in a subordinate position. That means you could be manly today, but you’re not going to be manly tomorrow unless you’ve got somebody to push around and control, whether that is an abused wife or another country. So this kind of masculinity is really brittle.

BuzzFlash: Then peace is a threat to anxious masculinity?

Stephen J. Ducat: It’s a threat because of its link to the feminine. In fact, I have a chapter on the 19th Century, when there was enormous debate about whether the U.S. should embark on the Spanish-American and Philippine-American wars. In a number of editorial cartoons, peace itself was personified as female.
...
BuzzFlash: To cooperate, then, is to give up one’s masculine prerogative to assert oneself as a male leader?

Stephen J. Ducat: Absolutely. In the world they live in, you’re either a top or a bottom. Mutuality, democracy, equality--that makes no sense to them.

BuzzFlash: Well, as Jon Stewart said recently in the context of the John Gannon/Jeff Guckert scandal in Washington, if you’re on top, you’re not gay. That may explain the inner circle acceptance of gays within the Republican Party, in spite of the gay-bashing national political line they give to their followers.

Stephen J. Ducat: The Republican homosexuals are not only honorary heterosexuals; they become honorary homophobes, as the most recent scandal illustrated.
...

Well, you get the idea. Cowboy, baby.

I May Retire from Blogging and Other Miscellaney

...because Frank Rich (in a piece dated for this coming Sunday's New York Times) covers, in one article, everything that pisses me off about the state of "managing the media". I'm not even going to post a snippet here - go read - it's that good. (No, I'm not really going to retire from blogging on ASZ, because it's in my blood and I'd just have to do it someplace else. Some people are addicted to crack. I'm addicted to blog.)

Also, in case you've been following the test by Fishbowl DC of how easy it is to get a White House press room day pass, White House Gaggle Watch - Day 3 is now up. (If you haven't been keeping up, you can click through to day 1 and 2 from the Day 3 page.)

Sail on...

Education and Freedom

There's some positives out there, really there are.

Phi Beta Kappa, the premiere organization promoting academic excellence on college campuses, has rejected the formation of a chapter on George Mason University's campus. Evidently this is a direct result of George Mason's cancelling an appearance by Michael Moore just before election day. The Washington Post reports:

George Mason University Prof. Marion Deshmukh was feeling good last fall as she finished the school's 177-page application seeking to establish a chapter of the prestigious Phi Beta Kappa honor society. The university, growing in size and reputation, counted two Nobel laureates among its faculty, new majors had been added and the library's collection had grown to more than 1 million volumes.

But the very day Deshmukh delivered the application, George Mason got some unwanted attention: Leaders of the state university in Fairfax County, under pressure from conservative Virginia lawmakers, withdrew a speaking offer to liberal filmmaker Michael Moore, the outspoken director of "Fahrenheit 9/11." The controversial cancellation of an event scheduled days before the presidential election made headlines nationwide.

University President Alan G. Merten said it was Moore's $35,000 fee, to be paid with state funds, that prompted the university to pull out, not opposition to the filmmaker's rhetoric. But Phi Beta Kappa officials apparently were not convinced: The organization, citing concerns about academic freedom, promptly rejected George Mason's application, according to university professors involved in the process.

In addition to this action, there's some anti-war stirring amongst high school students in Minnesota. Seems the students wanted to do some counter-recruiting when the military came to Kennedy High School in Bloomington. They even joined Youth Against War and Racism. After some wrangling inspired by the American Legion having a talk with the Principal of the High School, the kids are now alright, and they are gathering a much larger crowd than the military recruiters.

What I had forgotten is that No Child Left Behind has a provision that gives the military complete access to all high school student records and the right to recruit on campuses nationwide. Many organizations are active on this issue, including the American Friends Service Committee, Mother Jones, and Michael Cervantes with Veterans for Peace.

Yes, there is hope.

Shutting Down the Blogzome?

MyDD is on the story, and it isn't pretty. Seems there is a provision in McCain-Feingold that could have repercussions concerning blogging.

Not much comment now for me. I'm off on errands and such.

Caption the Image

Welcome to Another Episode of "As the Odometer Turns"

1500.

Doc noted the other day that the situation in Iraq seems to be fading into so much background noise. White noise. Hum. Or, ho-hum, depending on your POV.

125 Iraqis killed in a single bomb blast? Hell, there were 11 whole comments on that thread (below). Does it make any difference if I post the headlines from icasualties.org every single morning? Maybe I'll start doing that.

So, what is it that's muting the outrage anymore? I opined in the comments to Doc's original thread on the "forgotten war" that it seems like there's a threshold for daily outrage, and I pegged the AMERICAN body count at 10 per incident (or per day) before the news was any more than a crawl at the bottom of the Fox News screen. The brown folks? Shoot, they can be slaughtered by the hundreds and it doesn't register a blip on Blitzer's beard. "The last gasp", etc. etc. etc.

Or are we simply beyond our capacity for outrage?

Join us in June for another episode of "As the Odometer Turns".

When MS-GOP and Wingnut Women Collide

To: connected@msnbc.com
From: Richard Cranium
Subject: RE: your piece this evening regarding women bloggers

Did Ron or Monica or anyone on the production team of Connected Coast to Coast bother to actually read either blog associated with the women bloggers (LaShawn Barber and Robin Burk) featured on C2C this afternoon? If so, it would have been quickly clear that both of these women are among the most racist, homophobic, vitrolic bloggers (and that's not necessarily the "b" word I would have used in impolite company) on the web - which means they have a natural built in constituency.

That you played pattycake with these two examples of exceptional intolerance, who tried to pass themselves off as cookie ladies, tells me a lot about your show, its production values, and editorial content. The next time you decide to portray women political bloggers as KKK Moms, please let me know and I'll forward you a few names of token progressive women bloggers for balance.

Personal to Ron: I can not believe you let these women off the hook without a single challenge. You obviously didn't know who you were talking to. Do a little homework next time.

Personal to Monica: I'm bettin' you had a nice little chuckle with Ann Coulter after that hatchet piece.

Personal to the entire C2C team: I'm deadly serious when I say you didn't do your homework on this one, and you should do some serious soul searching. You lost at least one viewer today (and I might be the only one you had).

Best of luck without me.

Richard

Immigration and Ankle Bracelets

Is it spring yet? Back in January the Department of Homeland Security let slip a little tidbit involving using RFID tags as a trial method of immigration control/tracking. Tag 'Em and Bag 'Em immigration. The trials weren't supposed to start til this spring and continue thru July. Somebody forgot to read that memo.

Electronic Anklets Track Asylum Seekers in U.S.
Morning Edition, March 2, 2005 · The Department of Homeland Security is experimenting with a controversial new method to keep better track of immigrants who are applying to remain in the United States. It is requiring aliens in eight cities to wear electronic monitors 24 hours a day.

The ankle bracelets are the same monitors that some rapists and other convicted criminals have to wear on parole. But the government's pilot project is putting monitors on aliens who have never been accused of a crime.

So far, the Department of Homeland Security has put electronic monitors on more than 1,700 immigrants. Victor Cerda, director of Detention and Removal Operations at Homeland Security, says the anklets will help prevent tens of thousands of immigrants who are ordered to leave the country each year from "absconding" -- going into hiding to avoid deportation.

But critics say Cerda and other Homeland Security officials have exaggerated the extent of the problem. They point to a Justice Department study that put part of the blame on immigration officials, saying they'd failed to keep adequate records to track aliens.

Are the anklets removable? And if they aren't, exactly what is the justification for treating immigrants like convicts?

While monitoring a few tags on a screen may seem easier and more cost effective now
what happens when everyone coming into the country is tagged, and the "wrong" people that are already citizens are tagged, and students are tagged? How many people will it take to monitor all the tags? And when it becomes millions of people being tracked every day, every hour how cost effective will that be? And who will be watching?

Every step you take, every move you make

InCom kills deal to require students to wear RFID tags

Counterpoint: Curb The RFID Secrecy

Business, government using more radio tags

Readin', Writin', 'Rithmetic & Rockets

Hey, I'm not talking rocket science here. No - real rockets - in schools - in Arizona. Bill would allow guns in schools, anywhere

PHOENIX - The House of Representatives voted Tuesday to let people carry weapons - including guns, grenades, rockets, mines and sawed-off shotguns - into schools, polling places and nuclear plants if they claim they're only trying to protect themselves.

Yeah, I never know when I'm gonna hafta break out my rockets and hand grenades for self-protection, the sales at the grocery store can be brutal!

The vote on the legislation came after Rep. Ben Miranda, D-Phoenix, pointed out it would bar prosecution of those who want to bring a weapon into the House or Senate. Despite that, lawmakers gave it preliminary approval on a 30-16 margin.

Hmmmm..... So are they also going to be sporting rockets, hand grenades, mines and sawed-off shotguns in case some of their disgruntled constituents decide to show up armed? That could be interesting, a new "Shoot out at the OK Corral".

But what's in House Bill 2666 surprised even Rep. Doug Quelland, R-Phoenix, who introduced the legislation and shepherded it through the House. He said he had no idea the legislation, crafted by constituents he wouldn't identify, was so broad that it would provide a catchall exemption in the state's weapons laws.

And that folks is why these fuckers should have to READ, UNDERSTAND and DISCUSS exactly what the legislation they are bringing and voting on and at times implementing says and what it's impact on society will be. And if the parties bringing the legislation can't or won't be identified then a second, third, and fourth look at the legislation is needed BEFORE it is passed.

Sibel Edmonds Testimony Now Online

As reported last night, Sibel Edmonds testified today before the House Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations (wow, that's a mouthful). Here's the link to the .pdf file of Edmonds' testimony - I probably won't get a chance to review it until later this evening, so feel free to have at it and post your impressions in the comments. I'll try and update this thread a bit later.

Sibel Edmonds Congressional Testimony - 3/2/05

Update, 11:30PM - Well, it does look like Edmonds might have gained a couple of converts on the committee. RossK from Gazetteer notes in the comments that the AP picked up the story earlier today.

Common Ground in the Culture Wars - Pt II

A couple of weeks back, I blogged about some suggestions from Jeff Jarvis of the conservative BuzzMachine. At the time I said that I didn't agree with Jarvis on much of anything, but the suggestions he put forth highlighted a common complaint on both sides of the moonbat / wingnut divide: neither side feels the mainstream media is doing its job.

In another posting, I recognized another right wing blog, Outside the Beltway, for much the same reason - not because I agree with Jeff Joyner day in and out, but that we had a common complaint. In this particular case, both OTB and ASZ were targeting the USANext slime job on AARP.

And now, crap - lightning has struck twice. While I don't agree with the slant of one of Joyner's recent postings, I agree with the substance to the extent that he correctly dissects the role that bloggers play in the "new media":

...Few bloggers are reporters, let alone possessed of the skills and resources to traipse halfway around the world and cover news stories for months on end. While there are notable exceptions, most bloggers have day jobs. To the extent bloggers are going to cover the story live and bypass the MSM, it'll be local folks in Beirut, Gaza, and other places where the news is unfolding. Internet cafes are increasingly ubiquitous.

The rest of us can certainly piggyback on the work of professional journalists and scholars, highlighting news that gets less attention than, say, Michael Jackson's chimp, and draw interesting conclusions. That's a not insignificant contribution, incidentally, but it's not the same as heading out to change the world.

The blogs-as-media debate continues to rage. One of the principal arguments against bloggers-as-journalists is that most bloggers truly aren't journalists, in the sense that bloggers don't go out and mine for a story. And that's true. Bloggers are more the antithesis of the (as Atrios puts it) punditocracy. But I think more to the point (and to tie it into our ongoing blogistan organizational theory series), it's about the community nature and synergy of blogs. That's where a lot of learned people who are analyzing this kind of thing are missing the point. In its best incarnations (Kos, AMERICAblog), blogging becomes a cross between Vermont-style participatory democracy and investigative journalism.

So to answer Joyner's central question: "Can Bloggers Promote Freedom?" -- I think the answer is clearly yes. If the word "promote" is interpreted or interchanged with "influence". If "freedom" is not interpreted as advancing imperialistic aspirations, but self-determination. The jazz great Miles Davis said in his autobiography, "Knowledge is freedom; ignorance is slavery." Blogging on either side of the aisle opens that window of freedom just a little bit wider, if for no other reason than it shines the light in places that light doesn't normally reach.

This is What Democracy Looks Like

Anyone that's ever driven over the Massachusetts or New York borders into Vermont can tell you that it's a, well, interesting place. There is no other state in America quite like Vermont. I mean that as an extreme compliment, in a Bob-and-Joanna (Newhart) quirky kind of way.

Here's a great way to think about Vermont - the Kurdistan of the United States. While it is 1/50th of a bigger whole, it operates as almost an autonomous state. The dual concepts of free thinking and local governance, via Town Meeting, is the foundation for this autonomy.

It's heartening, then, to see that over the past couple of days a state that is truly (in the main) conservative has, at the grassroots level, voted overwhelmingly to pass resolutions, town by town, condemning the war in Iraq and calling for an immediate return of Vermont's National Guard troops.

Hey, it's a start. "Trends" begin with less.    From the San Francisco Chronicle:

On Town Meeting Day, a venerable New England tradition that dates to the 17th century and has been hailed as a paradigm of representative democracy, voters in 52 Vermont towns, more than one-fifth of the state's 246 municipalities, became perhaps the first in the country to participate in a formal referendum on U.S. involvement in Iraq.

By Tuesday evening -- it snowed all day long -- 38 of the 52 towns had passed a version of a resolution that asked state legislators to study the local impact of Guard deployments, the congressional delegation to reassert state authority over National Guard units, and the federal government to bring U.S. troops home from the war. Three defeated it and three tabled it, while other towns had not yet tallied their votes...

Democracy Now! has more.

Town-by-town results.

What is a Town Meeting?

Oh, and the title of this posting? From my memory banks.

Social Security Phaseout - Officially DOA?

Reading between the lines of a story in this morning's Washington Post, I think it's safe to say that any push in the near term for Social Security "reform", as a prelude to phaseout, is dead. The GOP touched the third rail, and in this past week's recess meetings in home states, congress members were given an earful.

Eschaton points to a couple of polls released yesterday that very clearly show that as details of Plan Bush from Outer Space have become known, public support has been dropping at a rate approaching terminal velocity. Then, comes this story from WaPo:

Social Security Vote May Be Delayed :

The Senate's top Republican said yesterday that President Bush's bid to restructure Social Security may have to wait until next year and might not involve the individual accounts the White House has been pushing hard.

...That a politician as closely allied to the White House as Frist would even raise the possibility of putting off the proposal until next year -- possibly dooming it -- was an unexpected blow to the administration...

The Democrat leadership siezed on this issue, and even in the face of a lot of media blustering about "compromise", made it clear that anyone, GOP or Democrat, supporting BushCo tinkering with Social Security would wear that support like a hair shirt in the 2006 midterm elections.

Now, it's up to the Dems to make it stick. Make no mistake about it, SS is still a sticky issue - while a lot of pols on both sides of the aisle were cagey about support / nonsupport of Plan Bush, quite a few cast their lot very early on with President Bush. Come 2006, it's time to remind voters in those districts that their congresscritter wanted to put Grandma Millie on the street. And that's how it has to be framed.

At this point, Bill Frist and Denny Hastert simply want this issue to go away. Social Security has become a 500 pound political anvil around the neck of their majority in both the House and Senate. Believe me, they know the demographics around this issue, and they are scared to death right now. That's why Frist had to drive the equivalent of a stake through the heart of this plan today, as opposed to letting the debate continue to fester for months or even become fleshed out. He and Hastert do not, under any circumstances, want their membership to be forced to, on record, pick a side in this fight.

I want to make one thing crystal clear - no matter what you hear in the MSM in the next days and weeks regarding the death of Social Security phaseout, it is not a dead issue. Maybe dormant for a year or two, but not dead.

And one last thing - the reason this idea has been blown out of the political stratosphere is not because of any serious work that the MSM has done in actually analyzing what few pieces of the plan were actually available. A few mainstreamers like Paul Krugman took this plan apart and showed it for the smoke-and-mirrors-rich-get-richer boondoggle that it is/was. But it was bloggers, in particular Josh Marshall and Duncan Black, who latched onto the Social Security phaseout issue and made it their life's work to expose the charade.

That's the story I'd like to read tomorrow morning.

Sibel Edmonds - Breaking News - Congressional Testimony 3/2/05

Just received the following press release from Sibel via Allan Duncan - no link yet, but I expect it will be up on the ACLU website first thing in the morning. I'll check CSPAN schedules on 3/2/05 for any TV coverage:

FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds to Testify Before Congress for First Time Wednesday

Edmonds Set to Speak at House Hearing on Excessive Classification

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 1, 2005

WASHINGTON - Sibel Edmonds, who was fired after exposing national security concerns at the FBI, will testify before Congress for the first time Wednesday.

Edmonds, a former Middle Eastern language specialist for the FBI, will share her story with members of the House Committee on Government Reform's Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations. The hearing will focus on the emerging threats of over-classification and pseudo-classification. Edmonds will testify about the government's excessive use of classification to cover up its own misconduct in her case. The hearing will be at 1 p.m. at the Rayburn House Office Building, in room 2154...

Condi to Canada - "Drop Dead"

A quick followup on a previous thread - CFRA Radio (Ottawa) reports that:

U-S Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is reportedly so upset over Canada's decision to stay out of the missile defence program that she is skipping a planned trip to Canada.

Rice has cancelled her April visit to Ottawa.

A senior state department official says the cancellation is a direct consequence of Prime Minister Paul Martin's decision to say "no" to missile defence...

How unbelievably believably small and unstatesman-like of the U.S. Secretary of State. Actually, this state-level smallness has Maximum Leader's fingerprints all over it.

Note to our Canuckistan friends - we're sorry. We really are. You don't know how sorry.

Look at the bright side. At least the Thug-in-Chief hasn't threatened to send Negroponte to straighten things out.

Yet.

(via Crooks and Liars)

Blogzome Auxiliarry Discussion Thread

We're going to stretch the limits of the comment box relatively soon, so I thought I'd try to kick this off.

This conversation has been going on for a while, and a decent definition of "Blogzome" can be found at Joseph's (JLo's) site www.publicorgtheory.com. Our most recent thread in discussing it is in "The Blogzome: One Proposal for Use-Value." But we've also discussed the topic in sukabi's "Rebuilding the Foundation," in my own "Rapping and Bloggrolling," and in "Org Theory and Blogging." Joseph (JLo) has a few other threads that will help people catch up with how this chaotic and interesting discussion has gone. Go ahead and ask him.

Good luck, peoples. Fire away! I'll be back later!

The Inconvenient Search for WMD

Talk about turning a blind eye. Allan Duncan, via Sibel Edmonds, pointed me to this article on the A.Q. Kahn nuclear-weapons-for-cash ring, which was published in this past Sunday's LA Times. I've blogged before about the U.S.'s coddling of Pakistan, with full knowledge that activities such as described in this article were going on right under our collective noses - this is stuff that wasn't "conjecture" as Saddam's non-existent WMDs turned out to be.

From A High-Risk Nuclear Stakeout:

...Interviews with current and former government officials and intelligence agents and outside experts in Washington, Europe and the Middle East reveal a lengthy pattern of watching and waiting when it came to Khan and his illicit network.

The trail dated back more than 20 years as Khan went from a secretive procurer of technology for Pakistan's atomic weapons program, which he headed, to history's biggest independent seller of nuclear weapons equipment and expertise.

For most of those years, Khan's primary customers were Iran and North Korea.

The Bush administration wasn't alone in it's failure to stop Kahn's nuke ring. But even after declaring Iran and North Korea as part of the "Axis of Evil", and lying to the world about non-existent WMD in Iraq, Kahn continued to ply his trade.

BushCo knew this stuff. Yet they threw a red herring at us, because chasing Kahn and his connections wasn't politically "convenient". Even today, we're not being told the full scope of Kahn's illegal activities. Still, having received a summary slap on the wrist by the Pakistani government, Kahn is a free man, with the full sanction and knowledge of the Bush administration.

Admin Note

Just a reminder for Philly Pholk - Drinking Liberally tonight (and every Tuesday) at Ten Stone, 21st and South St., 6PM to whenever we've had enough of each other. The food's good; the company is better. Mother Jones published a recent article on the "Drinking Liberally" phenomena - and in reading it, I don't know quite how the Philly group would mix in with the rest of the cities hosting a DL chapter. Both the "geezer" and "snowboarder" demographic seem to be well represented.

Hope to see you there!

Brownshirts on the March

From Rorschach at No Capital, without comment:

Immigrant Hunt, Part II

They're spreading like locusts, these racist fucks. First Denton, now my own Austin. They're showing up tomorrow, at UT:

Well, the YCT (Young Conservatives of Texas) are at it again. This time they've organized a so-called'Immigrant Hunt' for this Wednesday, March 2nd on theWest Mall on campus-- they have reserved the space from 11:00am-1:00pm. They recently organized a similar event at the University of North Texas and appear to be emboldened by the post-9-11 anti-immigrant climate.They plan to wear color-coded anti-immigrant shirts and 'hunt for immigrants' who will be YCT-ers dressed in brown for Latina/os, yellow for Asians, etc. and offer rewards.

A counter-demonstration is planned by a multi-ethnic coalition of student organizations in response at the same time. Folks are asking for a huge turnout, and that people wear black shirts and white bandanas if possible, and bring signs and chants-- some folks will be linking hands in silent protest, others will be vocal and hold signs and pass out flyers outlining a progressive position on immigration. Please pass this information along to all your listserves. Thanks.

Padilla - Judge Gets One Right

I was thinking of tying this into the Human Rights thread below, but figured this item deserved a post of its own.

Holden at First Draft blogs a nice summary of yesterday's court decision in favor of Jose Padilla. I expect the Bush administration to appeal to its last breath, even if it takes an "aye" vote from Scalia to overturn this decision.

Let it be known far and wide that I am not defending dirtbag Jose Padilla. I'm defending constitutional principals that are not subject to willy nilly executive branch interpretation to fit the boogeyman of the day.

Either charge him and give him his day in court, or let him free. There's no middle ground for an American citizen in America.

The Bush-appointed judge got it right.

First Draft - Set Padilla Free

The Splinter in America's Eye

What a difference a year makes. Just over 12 months ago, the Abu Ghraib scandal was just starting to break. Almost concurrently, the U.S. State Department was scheduled to release its annual report on human rights violations around the world. This really crappy timing resulted in State delaying the release of the report by a few months. When the report was in fact released, it was sort of snuck out the back door. A brief puff of smoke emanated from the West Wing of the White House, and then the report was summarily forgotten.

In the past year, we've become aware of a culture of U.S. government sanctioned abuse and torture that has grown, rather than decreased in scope. Guantanamo Bay. Camp Bucca. Abu Ghraib. And we're not even hearing about the "outsourcing" of torture / in other remote U.S.-franchised (and/or owner-operated) gulags hidden around the world in places such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Diego Garcia, and Afghanistan.

For cripes sake, the lead proponent of the Bush administration torture doctrine was just confirmed as Attorney General, and another of the principles was just confirmed as Secretary of Homeland Security.

So it's rather unsurprising that the 2005 model of the annual U.S. State Department report on human rights is being quietly rolled out today, with little fanfare. The report covers the usual suspects (Cuba, Sudan, Iran, and...gasp...Russia, among others), while citing Iraq and Afghanistan as bastions of democracy.

Here are links to the introductory remarks by State Department bureaucrats, as well as the complete report:

Introductory remarks - press conference
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, 2004

And, lest you Canucks think you get off the hook (you abusers, you), check this out. Heh.

Lastly, without looking, here's a pop quiz - which country garnered the following recognition:

The Government's human rights record remained poor overall with continuing serious problems, despite some progress. Citizens did not have the right to change their government. Security forces continued to abuse detainees and prisoners, arbitrarily arrest, and hold persons in incommunicado detention. There were cases in which Mutawwa'in continued to intimidate, abuse, and detain citizens and foreigners. Most trials were closed, and defendants usually appeared before judges without legal counsel. Security forces arrested and detained reformers, some of whom continued at year's end to seek an open trial. The Government reportedly infringed on individuals' privacy rights. The Government continued to restrict freedoms of speech and press, assembly, association, religion, and movement. There was widespread public perception that corruption by some members of the royal family and in the executive branch of the Government was a serious problem. There was little government transparency, especially notable in official budgets, and with no laws providing the right to access government information. The Government continued to discriminate against women, ethnic and religious minorities and to impose strict limitations on worker rights.

(Hint - the U.S. Royal Family has pretty close ties to this country. In fact, we all do.)

The Blogzome: One Proposal for Use-Value

First, I'd like to thank Joseph Logan from publicorgtheory.com for his nice tribute concerning this coined term. I would defer to Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari as inspiration, as they use the rhizome as a theoretical construct quite effectively in "A Thousand Plateaus," but I am suitably honored nonetheless. Here's his definition, which I'll leave it to you all to tinker with:

Main Entry: blog·zome
Pronunciation: 'bläg-"zOm
Function: noun
Etymology: Combination of New Latin rhizomat-, rhizoma, from Greek rhizOmat-, rhizOma: mass of roots, from rhizoun to cause to take root; and New Internet blog, from Web log, an on-line diary compiled by one or more persons having something to say. Inspired by the erudite SpinDentist from AllSpinZone.

: an emergent form of organization comprising relatively like-minded Web logs ("blogs") often enriched by diversity and independence of thought. Loose organization and evolving form promotes shifting leadership and organizational flexibility.
- blog·zo·mic /bläg-'zO-mik, -'zä-/ adjective

I want to extend this conversation in another direction in an attempt to plot out some use-value even for this concept of the blogzome that is marked by multiplicity, unpredicability, freedom and independence. But first we must undertake to describe a problem for which the blogzome is a potential cure.

Let's imagine another structure from contemporary philosophy, the "Differend" from the work of the same name by Jean-Francois Lyotard. A "differend" situation is one where two entities cannot interact, much less converse. The speak different languages so much and their foundational principles are so opposed as to prevent discussion. Holocaust deniers versus those who believe in history are the example Lyotard uses, and those of us who believe in history simply shake our heads, unable to communicate with those who deny truth and history. We see them as willfully denying because of hate or perhaps some inner psychological need.

Are we in a differend situation in our current political discourse? I would argue that several issue that distinguish progressive and right-wing politics in the US at least vie for this dubious honor. The gay issue, the issue concerning choice, even the issues concerning the wing ding definitions of "liberal" and "conservative" seem, at least on first glance, to resemble a differend situation. How often have you talked to conservatives and asked them about their own core values, of small and less intrusive government, pointed out the Republican practices that belie these founding principles, and gotten denial in return. Yes, our current political discourse certainly seems to be wholly infected by a differend situation where we, the good guys, cannot understand the foundational values of the right-wing, much less understand them enough for compromise on these issues.

The differend is a fortress built from a foundation of a rationality the rest of us reject. Indeed, we do not call it rationality over here on the progressive side of the argument. It is as if on some molecular level that foundation cannot be penetrated. In the case of gay issues, that foundation appears to be two-fold, a combination of an inner sense of fear of sexuality often described in terms of disgust, and backed by a reading of scripture that is unassailable by its nature. "God said," after all, is a hard construct with which to argue without imputing a more powerful God. It matters not which came first, the disgust concerning homosexuality or the scripture; the combination of the two makes it impossible for the two sides to converse. And there you have the construct of the classic wedge issue, the Republicans appeal to and nurture those feelings not based on rationality in order to drive their constituents. Yes, I believe it is cynical ont he part of the leadership, that they use wedge "differend" issues without themselves believing, but that does not lessen the fact that the wedge works with much of their core supporters.

I will posit now that these differend issues are the most important walls to tear down in US political discourse, or, failing that, we should expose Republicans for their cynical use of wedge differend issues. How to do that against issues with such strong and alien foundations? Rhizomes/blogzomes are strong.

Blogzomes work like rhizomes not just in that they are unpredictable, not just in that there is no identifiable center, and not just their edges are ragged and one is never sure where they will expand next. Think of rhizome roots. They rise even against the cracks in sidewalks, even interrupt and expose basement floors. They strangle other plants, a patch of wild strawberries has been known to choke off other plant life nearby.

How to tear down the wedge/differend issues? The Blogzome needs to send shoots out underground and through the air to tear apart the cynical use of wedge/differend issues, for while Blogzomes have powerful roots, they still cannot penetrate foundations made of material made of faith or emotion. Left Blogistan is nothing if not wholly steeped in rationality, after all. We are members of the "reality-based community." Those roots and shoots should reach out and show those who base their views on emotion and faith that the Republicans who encourage them to do so, who aid and abet their rejection of rationality, are using them to such a degree that their stances on such issues as gay rights and choice are often worked up to such a degree as to constitute a fetishization of the texts of faith, of the bible. These folks have been encouraged by the Republicans to worship golden calves masquerading as "faith" at the expense of loving others.

I'm going to close here because this post is exceedingly long. But I'll let it stand as the latest entry in trying to "theorize" Left Blogistan. Hopefully it works towards a "praxis" as well.