October 2006 Archives

I'm in Kansas City for a couple of days for work. I took an early flight, so I arrived here around 12:30pm. With all afternoon to myself, I decided to drive to Independence, MO, and visit the Harry S. Truman Presidential Museum and Library. Visting the JFK Library in Boston last year inspired me to visit other presidential libraries when I get the chance.

Like other museums of its type, the Truman Library takes the visitor on a trip back in time to HST's presidential years. Starting with the end of World War II through the US involvement in the Korean War, the exhibits show the many facets of President Truman. One particular display really struck home with me, though.

In the section on the Korean War there is a Purple Heart medal on display, in its original presentation case. Next to the medal is a letter addressed by the father of a young man who was killed in that war. Clearly bitter over the loss of his son, Mr. William Banning wrote President Truman, enclosing the medal awarded to his son posthumously.

Here is the text of the letter:

Nursery Rd. New Cannan Conn.

Mr. Truman

As you have been directly responsible for the loss of our son's life in Korea, you might just as well keep this emblem on display in your trophy room, as a memory of one of your historic deeds.

Our major regret at this time is that your daughter was not there to receive the same treatment as our son received in Korea.

Singed (sic)
William Banning

A card posted next to the display states that the medal and letter were found in Mr. Truman's desk at the Library when it was cleaned out after his death in 1972.

Mr. Truman kept that letter and medal with him after leaving the White House, taking it back to Independence with him when the library opened in 1957. Clearly it made a significant impression on him. This man, who was a veteran of World War I, a Freemason, Judge, United States Senator and Vice President of the United States. As President, he made the decision to drop two atomic bombs on Japan, began the Cold War struggle with the Berlin Airlift, struggled to convert the US economy from its wartime footing back to peacetime productivity, integrated the US Armed Forces, and, finally, turned the Cold War "hot" by invading the Korean peninsula. I'm not going to judge his deeds and decisions--that process continues to this day. What's important is that this man spent almost twenty years with that Purple Heart and letter in his desk.

While looking at the exhibit, it's no surprise that my mind drifted to consider what the current occupant of the Oval Office would do with a medal sent to him by the father of a soldier killed in Iraq. Without resorting to the numerous snarky comments I could make here, the logical conclusion I came to was that he'd most likely never see it.

Truman's staff would never have considered for a moment that they should withhold such an item from their boss.

Harry S. Truman was far from a perfect man. Still, he was a man of honor.

It's truly a shame we can't say the same for the current occupant of the White House.

Because Amanda told me to...and because it's fun to make these people look even more like the idiots they are.

Bombz away!

I haven’t done this in awhile, but the cause is good. From Lindsay, I found this attempt by MyDD to Google Bomb some stories about sleazy Republicans. This is something everyone can help in, whether your traffic is high or low. Copy and past this HTML into a post. This is how Google bombing works.

–AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl
–AZ-01: Rick Renzi
–AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth
–CA-04: John Doolittle
–CA-11: Richard Pombo
–CA-50: Brian Bilbray
–CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave
–CO-05: Doug Lamborn
–CO-07: Rick O’Donnell
–CT-04: Christopher Shays
–FL-13: Vernon Buchanan
–FL-16: Joe Negron
–FL-22: Clay Shaw
–ID-01: Bill Sali
–IL-06: Peter Roskam
–IL-10: Mark Kirk
–IL-14: Dennis Hastert
–IN-02: Chris Chocola
–IN-08: John Hostettler
–IA-01: Mike Whalen
–KS-02: Jim Ryun
–KY-03: Anne Northup
–KY-04: Geoff Davis
–MD-Sen: Michael Steele
–MN-01: Gil Gutknecht
–MN-06: Michele Bachmann
–MO-Sen: Jim Talent
–MT-Sen: Conrad Burns
–NV-03: Jon Porter
–NH-02: Charlie Bass
–NJ-07: Mike Ferguson
–NM-01: Heather Wilson
–NY-03: Peter King
–NY-20: John Sweeney
–NY-26: Tom Reynolds
–NY-29: Randy Kuhl
–NC-08: Robin Hayes
–NC-11: Charles Taylor
–OH-01: Steve Chabot
–OH-02: Jean Schmidt
–OH-15: Deborah Pryce
–OH-18: Joy Padgett
–PA-04: Melissa Hart
–PA-07: Curt Weldon
–PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick
–PA-10: Don Sherwood
–RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee
–TN-Sen: Bob Corker
–VA-Sen: George Allen
–VA-10: Frank Wolf
–WA-Sen: Mike McGavick
–WA-08: Dave Reichert

Bankers are just evil.

"It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" premiered on CBS.

The NPR link has the clip of Charlie Brown trying to kick the football.

Amanda at Pandagon sums up the reaction to Michael J. Fox's support for Claire McCaskill's Senate campaign in Missouri:

What makes them mad is that you’re making a good argument they can’t trump with noise and bullshit and lies. It’s considered mean and unfair and a violation of the unspoken premise that even the people that are getting screwed over by the Republicans (that would be most of us) have some abstract obligation to help them win elections.

[via Pandagon]

I'm worried that we're moving into a scorched-earth phase on part of the GOP. That's going to be really nasty.

so, Stewart puts him on the "seat of heat," asking him to do a "slug-line" for the Bush Administration, since Rich had been the theater critic for the Gray Old Lady for years. His answer:

"The most senesless play I've seen since Cats."

How dare you, Frank, I like Cats...

:-)

as a member of the first TV generation, I fully understand and appreciate the value of the television clip and sound bite. They've been a part of my life since I watched "Romper Room." It's fun to re-hash them and gloat when someone with whom I agree makes a slam-dunk comment to a talking head with whom I disagree.

It's nice to hear about those moments, and it was very nice when Crooks and Liars started making those moments, as well as other video clips, available so we could all see them.

With the advent of YouTube.com, however, everyone now seems to be getting into the same game as Crooks and Liars. Here are two examples, from Pandagon and Blogactive.

On Pandagon, Pam re-posts a clip from this weekend's edition of "The McGlaughlin Group" that features an exchange between writer/actor/producer Laurence O'Donnell (West Wing and now HuffPo), and crazy ol' Pat Buchanan. Pam's lede into the clip:

"The truth, uttered on The McLaughlin Group by O'Donnell, via Blogactive."

Then you see the YouTube clip. If you can see YouTube videos from wherever you are, and that's not a given. Many employers block access to YouTube, since it really doesn't have a lot of business value.

After the clip, Pam concludes with:

"Pat Buchanan's reaction is priceless."

But does she describe that reaction? No, she's finished phoning in this post and moves on.

Now, Pam Spaulding is capable of some good analysis, but she's just dumbed down Pandagon a notch here. OK, maybe she's just passing on the link and someone else has offered a better description. She says she got this from Blogactive, so I followed the link there to see what they had to say. Turns out they have even less to contribute than Pam:

"FINALLY, THE MSM IS GETTING IT!!!!!!"

Getting what???

Here's what they're talking about. O'Donnell starts on the subject of gays-in-the-closet in the House of Representative, both CongressCritters and their staffers. There's been some good writing on this subject in wake of the Foley scandal (and this article by Pam is a good example), and now the subject is even filtering into Mad John's realm. O'Donnell is simply telling the truth here, but Buchanan acts as if he's been personally assaulted. He's got that reputation as an Irish-Catholic brawler, someone who doesn't take shit from anyone. When this Hollywood Librul goes off on his party, the party of Nixon and Reagan, he is outraged, saying, "Are you saying that gays are covering up this whole thing inside the Republican Party?"

Buchanan's face is indeed priceless. Pat takes it as personally as if O'Donnell looked him in the eye and called him a fudge-packing fag. He's ready to come across the set and take a swing at him.

Is this significant? In many ways, yes. Buchanan represents both the party's Old Guard and it's religious wingnut faction. If Foley's perversions contribute to the Republicans losing power in November, there is going to be total civil war within the party. It's clear that Buchanan's had it up to here with Teh Eebil Queers, but they're so entrenched in Republican establishment that it's going to take a putsch of major proportions to remove them. Pat knows this and is lashing out at whomever he can in anger.

Maf54 (8:08:31 PM): Get a ruler and measure it for me

via Salon's War Room...

Bush lies about everything... :-)

I'm not surprised that Holy Cross chose to re-locate their Ninth Ward school to Gentilly rather than to out in Kenner, for several reasons:

They're a New Orleans tradition. Holy Cross' roots are in Da Nint'. The school's board had been considering a move from that neighborhood even before the storm, and the amount it will cost to re-build the existing campus made staying even more untenable.

It's cheaper. The site HC had been considering in Kenner is owned by the Jefferson Parish School Board, who wanted $2.5million for the 20-acre parcel of land. The Gentilly site is the former campus of Redeemer-Seton High School, combined with the site of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Church/School. Both schools and the church were totalled in the storm, when the London Avenue Canal flooded the area with 10+ feet of water. The Gentilly site is owned by the Archdiocese of New Orleans. While the terms of the deal between HC and the Archdiocese were not made public, it's a sure bet that they're much more advantageous to Holy Cross.

The alumni didn't want Holy Cross to be "Another Rummel." While HC started out as a neighborhood Catholic school for Da Nint', it expanded its base down into Arabi and Chalmette over the years. As white flight sent many of the school's families to Metairie and Kenner, HC was one of the first Catholic high schools to offer school bus service from Jefferson Parish back to the city. While they didn't want to live in the city for a multitude of reasons, they recognized that sending their boys back to Holy Cross had a lot of benefits. Moving the school to Kenner would totally sever that connection and turn their families into total suburbanites. That may fly in Sugar Land, TX, or in Alpharetta, GA, but it's not acceptable to many New Orleanians.

Politics. The money was just one aspect of the deal with the Jefferson Parish School Board. The politics of this deal were dicey as well. The board approved the sale on a 5-4 vote. The west bank members of the JPSB were opposed to the deal, arguing that they should hold onto the property and sell it when it becomes more valuable. Both the public school administration and the teacher's union were adamantly opposed to the sale. In spite of the fact that almost every pol in Kenner supported the deal, HC would have to do business with the school system on this, and that would be an uphill battle every step of the way.

Congrats to Holy Cross and best wishes for the future. I'll save some of my thoughts on the impact of the move on Gentilly and high schools in the city for tomorrow.

LA-02

When discussing the CongressCritters from this region, we always begin with LA-02, the seat of the late T. Hale Boggs, then held by his widow (and now former Ambassador to the Vatican under Clinton) Lindy Boggs. The current occupant of this seat, William Jefferson (D), was under seige at the time of Hurricane Katrina, but sexual perversion has pushed his simple economic dishonesty aside.

Had the $90K found in Jefferson's freezer by the FBI been the worst of Congressional deeds this fall, it's possible that his primary opponent, Karen Carter (D), would be doing better. Still, the biggest hurdle that Carter and the rest of the field of 12 challengers face is that they didn't fire up the campaign engines until the FBI began to zero in on Jefferson. Jefferson's influence is legendary in the city--almost every federal appointment from Louisiana during the Clinton years (including his former law partner, then US Attorney, now Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan) has ties to Jefferson. He was Clinton's go-to man in Louisiana and was instrumental in delivering the state to the Big Dog in both elections. When Jefferson's FBI woes came to light, the players on the scene took a wait-and-see attitude, hoping the incumbent would be indicited. Since he hasn't, he's still the odds-on favorite.

State Representative Carter is the leader of the pack chasing Jefferson. Neither side has released any polling data to the public on this race, which indicates that the incumbent most likely has a strong lead, but still needs to stay under the radar. Jefferson was endorsed over the weekend by second-term New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, but even that kiss-of-death blessing won't stop his re-election.

Either way, this is a safe Dem seat. The Republican candidates in this race have no chance whatsoever.

LA-01

This district is the ideological mirror image of LA-02. It's the "white flight" region of metro New Orleans, consisting of the east bank of Jefferson Parish and most of St. Tammany Parish. The voters here are classic southern-strategy Republicans, and Republican incumbent Bobby Jindal is extremely popular. In the post-Katrina political environment, many people in this district sport "Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Jindal" bumper stickers, a direct shot at LA Governor Kathleen Blanco (D). Jindal's status as a freshman has insulated him from the Foley scandal. He has two Democratic opponents, David Gereighty and Stacey Tallitsch, but neither have the financial resources to hang the national troubles of the GOP on Jindal.

Because Jindal is likely to challenge Blanco for the governor's mansion once again in 2007, most of the Jefferson Parish political establishment is sticking with him this year. The prospect of a governor from Metairie is more attractive to Dem pols in the suburbs than the prospect of a Dem CongressCritter. LA-01 is rated "safe Republican" by most analysts and even Foley won't change that.

LA-03

This is the battleground of Southern Louisiana. Consisting of Cajun Country, the mouth of the river, and St. Bernard Parish (lower suburban New Orleans), the district is approximately 60-40 Democrat/Republican. This seat was held for 24 years by Billy Tauzin, who started out Democrat and became a "Reagan Republican." Retiring in 2004 for health reasons (prostate cancer) and so he could cash in as a lobbyist for the pharma industry, Tauzin ran his son, Billy III, for the open seat. The younger Tauzin lost a very close race to Charlie Melancon, a Dem from Napoleonville.

Melancon is being challenged this year by the second runner-up in his 2004 victory, state Sen. Craig Romero (R-New Iberia). Romero might have had a chance to sway the voters of the district had it not been for the hurricanes.

When Hurricane Katrina struck and FEMA and the White House fumbled, Melancon was on top of things, doing whatever he could and using what little influence he had to bring aid to Southeast Louisiana. People on the bayou have long memories, and what Bush did to them won't be forgotten soon. Additionally, the Catholic diocese of Houma-Thibodaux was hit hard by the pedophile-priest scandals of the 80s and 90s, so the Foley scandal is not playing well down the bayou. This has pushed LA-03 from "leaning Democrat" to "likely Democrat." There's no way Romero can run away from the national GOP, even though he has a large warchest to blow in the last 30 days.

but DemFromCT on DailyKos does:

And as for dumping the GOP over Foley-Hastert-Reynolds rather than Iraq, well, if you can't get Capone for murder and racketeering, get him for tax evasion. Either way, he winds up behind bars.

This is a crucial moment for the Democratic Party. If the only people criticizing the Dems for cashing in on Foley are biased press assholes like Howard Fineman, the Republican implosion can continue unchecked.

The full article is a good commentary on crisis management, but there's another point here that's important to remember for the future:

But he [Hastert] won't, he didn't and he can't. There is no leadership in House leadership, they're afraid to unleash the long knives in the House, everyone behind Hastert in rank (and I mean everyone) is tainted, and Republicans don't know the meaning of the term accountability. They are so far in over their heads they don't even understand how screwed they are (but the Newsweek poll helps to put it in perspective).

Agreed that the Rethug leadership is tainted. The Gingrich revolution is officially dead. It's at the point where the only people who aren't toxic are insignificant backbenchers and freshmen. When this is over, however, it's going to be on them to rebuild the GOP. What will be interesting to see is if those backbenchers and freshmen will be able to shake off the yoke of the Kooky Kristian Krazies. Perhaps then we Dems can actually go back to talking to these people.

did I mention that the Democratic Party has BLACK candidates running for office? If the Dems take over, it's going to be hard to put them BLACK people in their place...

 

Democrats keep acting as if they are dealing with honorable men and women across the aisle in Congress. Instead, they need to behave as if all that exists over there is a hellscape of pedophiles and torturers. And act accordingly.

[via The Rude Pundit]

It's not just on-line drama and the isolated stalker, but now also identity theft:

Many adult users of social network sites such as MySpace and Facebook expose themselves to risk from identity thieves and hackers, according to a new US study.

The focus of concerns over social networking sites has so far focused on incidents where online predators have used the sites to "groom" potential child victims for abuse. A new study by the US National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) and enterprise software firm CA looks at online behavior and the possibility of cyber-crime threats such as fraud, identity theft, computer spyware and viruses tied in with the use of social networking sites.
...
"Those who frequent these sites should be aware the data they share may make them prey for online attacks. Giving out a social security number, paired with a birthday and name, could provide enough ammunition for criminals to hack into financial records and compromise users' personal information," warns Ron Texeria, executive director of NCSA.

Now this makes sense, we worry more about our kids than ourselves:

On a more positive note, the survey found that that parents are taking safety precautions with their children. Of the parents that know their kids use social networking sites, 64 percent monitor their children's profiles and 49 percent have restricted their profile so that it can only be seen by their friends. Many adults have discussed safety precautions with their children, highlighting the risk from online predators.

It seems adults are more diligent about informing their offspring about malware risks than guarding against online attacks themselves. The survey reports that 72 percent of adults have spoke to their children about watching out for malicious software and 64 percent have discussed how to watch out for fraudsters trying to steal money.

now we just need to look out for ourselves...

via Wren:

Withcraft or fantasy? Education officer hears about Harry Potter

ATLANTA A woman who maintains that the Harry Potter books are an attempt to indoctrinate children into witchcraft is pressing her case for the second time to have them banned from school libraries.

Laura Mallory, a mother of four from the Atlanta suburb of Loganville, told a Georgia Board of Education officer on Tuesday that the books by British author J.K. Rowling, sought to indoctrinate children as Wiccans, or practitioners of religious witchcraft and that the books are harmful to children who are unable to differentiate between reality and fantasy.

The children, she said, try to imitate Harry Potter and cast spells on classmates.

"They're not educationally suitable and have been shown to be harmful to some kids," Mallory said. She argued that teachers do not assign other religious books like the Bible as student reading.

When even the government of Gwinnett County thinks you're a wingnut, though, that should give one pause:

Victoria Sweeny, an attorney representing the Gwinnett County Board of Education in Atlanta's eastern suburbs, which had ruled against her in May, said that if schools were to remove all books containing reference to witches, they would have to ban mainstays like "Macbeth" and "Cinderella." "There's a mountain of evidence for keeping Harry Potter," she said, adding that the books don't support any particular religion but present instead universal themes of friendship and overcoming adversity. Sweeny said parents, teachers and scholars have found them a good tool to stimulate children's imagination and encourage them to read.

That doesn't deter the wingnut, of course. Potter is still Teh Eebil:

Referring to the recent rash of deadly assaults at schools, Mallory said books that promote evil — as she claims the Potter ones do — help foster the kind of culture where school shootings happen. That would not happen if students instead read the Bible, Mallory said.

Her attitude does make me wonder, though--what if more students really did practice witchcraft in school? Most kids aren't angry, hateful wackos. They just want to make it through the day/week/semester/adolesence. My guess is that if they were taught real witchcraft, there would be a lot of banishings done and protection spells cast in your average high school.

UPDATE: Via LJ's dark_christian community, I found a link to an eyewitness account of the hearing.

In light of the current GOP implosion ongoing in the House of Representatives, it's important to look a few moves ahead on the chessboard. While I'm all for keeping the pressure on every blessed Republican CongressCritter to denounce not only Foley but the House Leadership as well, we need to be mindful of what the neo-con nuts in Cheney's office might be doing now to correct the situation.

What scares the bejeebus out of me is that they're probably dusting off the invasion plans for Iran.

I'm currently reading Vali Nasr's book, The Shia Revival, and his descripiton of the behavior of Iranian Army during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s is worth noting here:

Convinced of the religious significance of their sacrifice, the volunteers launched human-wave attacks by eht tens of thousands. Empty-handed, they confounded the Iraqi army's conventional tactics by using their bodies to set off mines and even to swarm Iraqi tanks or overrun Iraqi gun positions. Young Iranian men died by the hundreds of thousands, but in the end they forced Saddam's army off their soil. Pure willingness to die had matched the military superiority of the Iraqi army. The volunteers fought for nation but for faith--or perhaps it would be better to say that they made no distinction between the two. They were sentinels of the Twelfth Imam, and to them the war was a spiritual as well as a physical fight.

When I read this paragraph, I was shaken by two historical parallels. The first goes back to American History classes in grammar school, when teachers told us that Truman used atomic weapons against Japan in World War II because a conventional attack would encounter such fierce resistance that it would take a year and cost a million American lives.

The second parallel was from my college years. We used to play a lot of board wargames in those days (late 1970s), and several of them had the theme of a Soviet invasion of Europe. These games always forced the NATO player into the decision of whether or not to use chemical or nuclear weapons against the Warsaw Pact. Faced with overwhelming offensive forces, a few tactical nukes would slow down the Soviet onslaught. There were usually no strategic consequences to using battlefield nukes--the player could use them without the concern of nuclear escalation.

If the Iranians resisted the Iraqis with that much passion, just imagine how they'll behave against the army of the "Great Satan." It sounds like the sort of campaign that will take a long time and cost many, many American lives. If the Iranians were to turn and attack into Afghanistan or into Iraq, they may turn loose the faithful in the same manner.

For a neocon looking down at the Risk board, a nuclear option against Iran looks pretty good. After all, it's the best way to preempt waves of bodies coming at your troops. But the real world isn't a board wargame. Use of nuclear weapons has both regional and global consequences. If we nuke Iranians, will Pakistan turn a blind eye to the plight of a mostly-Shia army, or will pan-Islamic sentiments overcome them? How will other nuclear powers such as China react to our use of nukes?

If you think these madmen in the Bush Administration didn't think through the consequences of overthrowing the government of Iraq, the notion of them trying to wag-the-dog in Iran just to shake off FoleyGate should scare you to death.

NORML has a new movement for the fall election season:

Project VoteSmart

Crooks and Liars is right, Rolling Stone is out on the front edge of political writing.

This article just made me resolve to subscribe to RS.

No need for excerpts or comments to set this one up. Just go read it.

all those good Batists from East Texas will be coming over to Shreveport/Boissier for more than blackjack now:

Oct. 2 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Supreme Court refused to question a Texas law that bars the sale of dildos and other ``obscene devices,'' turning away an appeal by a store clerk facing prosecution.

The justices made no comment in rejecting the appeal, which argued that the law violated a constitutional right to sexual privacy. The court last year turned down a similar challenge to an Alabama law.

Texas is one of a handful of states that ban sexual devices. Courts have upheld laws in Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas and struck down restrictions in Colorado, Kansas and Louisiana.

Texas bans the manufacture, sale, distribution and promotion of ``devices including a dildo or artificial vagina, designed or marked as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.''

This decision is good for Louisiana, to be sure...

it's interesting that ABC News is so far out in front on the Foley scandal. OK, I know sex sells, and the "common man" loves to see the mighty fall. Still, for all the trouble that Disney/ABC went through to put on "The Path to 9/11," you would think they'd want to reinforce that massive Republican campaign contribution by downplaying Foley. But there they are, with revelation after revelation. You'd think they were deliberately trying to act like journalists...

Former Senator Don Riegle (D-MI) just spanked some female "Republican Strategist" on Faux News. His tactic? Give her NO time to get in the last word. The bubble-headed bleach-blonde on FNC was trying to shift back to the republican, but Riegle just didn't let up, pounding the GOP talking points. By the time they could cut to the Republican (Edwina somebody), all she had time for was one sentence, "Their entire strategy is to blame Bush.")

priceless!