MESSAGE FROM THE WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP FORUM:

Vic and Karen,

Thanks for the update. I hope you two brought the Progressive pledge for them to sign.

The DCP has always been about grassroots locally, so I hope they will join us in this work because each one of us individually holds the key and the more we connect, grow, and multiply, the more we can reach out to those nonvoters they mentioned.

This next Justice is where the Democrats need to be prepared to fight, and to pull out all the stops. A damaged and reeling Dubya can choose a sensible conservative, in the mold of Justice O'Connor, or an extremist in the mold of Janice Brown and Priscilla Owens. If he goes the extremist route, they have to be prepared to filibuster, and completely shut down all non-essential Senate business. Dubya imagined that he had a mandate after the 2004 election, but with an approval rating in the forties, whatever mandate he had is now long gone.

At this time of great suffering and uncertainty, the American people deserve a Justice who can pass by a 100-0 margin in the Senate.

Posted by: Matthew Carnicelli at September 29, 2005 05:47 PM

Matt, I don't think Solomon is on the short list

As we can see by the photos these are not humans but demons...each and every one plotting our mortal demise!

HA HA HA!!!

Someone PLEASE fix the RED-EYE...

Lets hope its not Luttig, Owens, Pickering or Rogers tomorrow or all hell will break lose.

I'm going through my notes from my meeting with Rep. Schwartz (MI).

He is advocating an "inspector general" which would be a totally 'independent' office to oversee the rebuilding of New Orleans.

He has also sent pResident Bush a letter asking for the Davis-Bacon Act to no longer be suppressed after Nov. 18. His Legislative aid implied that no democrats opposed the suppression of the act and that some Republicans have issued a similar letter to the pResident.

I'm researching how much this aid told me was fact and how much was fiction.

SCOOP -- The Philadelphia Inquirer has it (full story registration-restricted). Excerpts:

WASHINGTON - Judith Miller, The New York Times reporter who has been jailed since July 6 for refusing to identify a source, has been released, The Inquirer has learned.

Miller left an Alexandria, Va. jail late this afternoon, a jail official said.

She was released after she had a telephone conversation with the Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, sources said. In that conversation, Libby reaffirmed that he had released Miller from a promise of confidentiality more than a year ago, sources said.

The special prosecutor in the case, Patrick Fitzgerald, has sought to compel Miller to reveal her source to a grand jury investigating whether Bush administration officials leaked the name of a CIA covert officer, Valerie Plame.

It could be immediately determined whether Miller has now agreed to testify.

Since July, Miller had been held in suburban Virginia at the Alexandria Detention Center. According to The Washington Post, her visitors included former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, U.N. ambassador John R. Bolton and former senator Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.).

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/NY_Times_reporter_Judith_Miller_released_0929.html

good update on what's happening in Ohio with Coin-gate and Reform Ohio Now...

http://www.dailykos.com/recommend_list/2005/9/29/173846/901

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

Great post about Delay at the above link. (It also refers to a comprehensive WaPo profile of Delay.)

snip

"No, I think the fundamental basis for DeLay's unprecedented reign of terror has been his phenomenal K Street power base, cultivated over many years through unchecked access-peddling and sheer intimidation. This network serves as part fund-raising juggernaut, part patronage machine, and part political-advocacy operation. And so DeLay commanded the loyalty of House Republicans not just because he's a real Texas sh*tkicker, but because his K Street empire is one of the most fearsome tools in Washington history -- a kind of awe-inspiring political Death Star whose reactor shaft Democrats have never been able to locate."

Guest blogger Michael Crowley at TPM.

At last, I have a chance to log in and catch up on the last few threads.

This is great!

So many issues to read about, gloat over, eh, ur.

So many things are coming at this administration lately.

Every action has a reaction, what goes around comes around.

Would make a great board game right now, wouldn't it? We could spin to see the issue of the day plaguing this adminstration, then read about it and discuss it out loud.

Truth: Yesterday I felt like gloating... and why not, finally something to shake a fist in victory with DeLay.

But today, the MSM is right back at it... cnn.com has these headlines...

Bush's approval rating improves
Roberts sworn in as chief justice
Police officers in looting probe suspended

MSNBC.com has...

HEADLINE: DAMNING EVIDENCE
New Orleans levee reported weak in 1990's

Again, I see the short term attention span of the electorate being played like a fiddle, and once again, it's everybody else's fault but the White House... and people are buying it, cuz they love to be spoonfed that candy.

Who doesn't like candy?

Now, the good hearted intelligent folks who post and read here know the smoke and mirror routine down pat, but it works like a charm to this day on the vast majority of the public at large, and I am just sick to death of it, and disappointed in my fellow citizens beyond comprehension. (present company excluded)

Sorry for the negative vibe today, but my Disgust-o-Meter has redlined.

Can't make my link work, but Crooks and Liars shows that the newest attempt to recruit includes 3 free i-tunes!

Wow...send me to Iraq and give me my free i-tunes! NOT!

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/09/29.html#a5161

Guess What..??

Little judy miller walked tonight.

HEHE

Will testify and name her sources in court tommarrow.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001219261

Posted by: monkey at September 29, 2005 09:10 PM

No problem, primate.

I know just how you feel.

I don't think those folks make for good debate
for Intelligent Design. I just really can't
imagine The Designer leaving out crucial brain
cells like that.

The River of Denial sure has alot of people vacationing there.

(Religious people are not supposed to self-medicate with drugs or alcohol, so many of them must just go on "vacation" status to da River.)

I've heard going to da River is kind of like being on a permanent vacation aboard a cruise ship. Only instead of getting housekeepers and gourmet meals, and on-board entertainment, vacationers on the River of Denial slip into a 24/7 fictional world of make-believe, where their "leaders" tell them everything is hunky dorey, and if they will just fall in line and repeat the mantra, they won't ever have to think for themselves again. All they have to do is agree with everything their leaders say and do and obey them and "walla" everybody lives happily ever after. The cost between a vacation on a cruise ship and a permanent vacation on the River of Denial is significant, however. Those on the cruise ship pay a one time fee in currency. Those on the River of Denial never stop paying, even after they have paid with their autonomy, and freedom to think for, and express, themselves. Because you see, payment to vacation on the River of Denial is your self.

Spoonfed lemming meringue pie.

I Don't Give A Damn For The Same Old Played Out Scenes

Christopher Cooper

Who’s that rapping, rapping at my chamber door? It’s America calling, it seems. And a guy from Switzerland and a few people from Canada and Australia. It’s noon Saturday and the Maine air is warm and wet from our passing backlash of Hurricane Ophelia as she slides off south of Cape Cod. We need the rain.
There is a circuit in my brain that plays pieces of songs appropriate to every moment. I course through life with my secret soundtrack running. Often I blurt out these lyrics to the amusement, annoyance or dismay of my friends, family, co-workers, customers, readers. Today, of course, there is John Fogerty: "Have You Ever Seen The Rain?," but also the darker, sadder, "Who'll Stop The Rain?" Bob said it best: "every distance is not near." John Eddie sums up every event, every life, too: "there's only moving on, and the good and bad that brings." Rain, love, sorrow, loneliness, loss, despair. Stop me. I hear Neil Young tuning up. It never stops.

So I write these little essays for a little newspaper. The Wiscasset Newspaper. Circulation fifteen hundred (correct me, Editor Gibbs, if I’m wildly off the mark). They’d like six hundred words. I try to keep it around twelve hundred. Usually it’s fourteen to sixteen hundred. Sometimes the managing editor complains. Sometimes readers complain. And I wrap scraps of my life story, my childhood, my workplace adventures, the conclusions I reach as I distill experience through the loops and reversals and reconsiderations of time and thought--I wrap these bright, hard seeds in a soft dough of song and poetry and language convolutions built for no other reason than the joy of seeing my words stand in a formation never before built quite like this or that. Some people like it, sometimes.

I write on deadline. Monday night I started around ten o’clock. With time out for Nightline and some of Charley Rose, trips to the bathroom and for the beer that begat the bathroom visits, I finished proofreading about four in the morning and E-mailed the product, securing my twenty-five dollars before I sought sleep for a few hours. Wednesday night I sent a copy to commondreams.org. They published it Thursday, but I didn’t wake my computer Thursday evening, so didn’t see myself there until Friday.

Thursday I left work early to bathe. My partner and I were expected at the home of a recent customer for dinner. He does dinner well; I don’t. I’m not antisocial, but I am, to a degree, and in a way that is much more common than all you normal, regular persons know or understand, probably asocial.

I don’t enjoy parades, weddings, graduations, christenings, prayer meetings, parties or ritual fellowship or fraternity. It’s particularly difficult to do the dinner business when you've been a ridiculously committed vegetarian (nearly vegan) for thirty-five years. "What? No fish?" So I took a little baby to hide behind. My nine month old (cute, smart) grandson gave me cover.

And we all did pretty well. I ate the vegetables, Karter had milk and bread and some slop from a jar. My partner complimented our hosts on their cooking, their home. I held up the baby when it was my turn to participate. Talk over coffee turned, as it must, whenever four liberals (or two liberals, a radical and a social misfit iconoclast) assemble, to the dismay, the disgust, the horror one feels at what our country has become under the control of the rich, religious and ruthless and the abdication or sellout of its conventional opposing party.

We agreed on the conditions. Our hostess said she felt the need to do something beyond complaining, do something more effective than crying. I said I didn’t send money to anybody, I didn’t march or petition. My wife stood on a bridge and witnessed against the war and I commend her for it, but that’s not my style and I doubt any passing motorist changed his mind for her effort. I said I thought the best thing anybody could do was to take what opportunities each life, each day, each human interaction offered to speak a decent, humane, informed truth. Talk to your postmaster, your neighbor, your family. Don’t let the universal default sentiment of "Support The Troops" stand in its surrogate role of "Support The President."

All we have is our voices and our bodies. Few of us will risk our lives for truth or decency, and not just because of fear or lack of strength, but because there is no opportunity for me here on a crumbling country road in Maine to attack Donald Rumsfeld with a fence post or to force Barbara Bush at the point of an electric prod to live for a week with one of the poor black families she thought were enjoying such a good deal in the shelter.

But we can risk our reputations. We can put our comfort on the line. We can say, loudly, in the October sunshine outside the store or post office, "President Bush is stupid, incompetent, uncaring. Condoleeza Rice is a liar. America is reviled the world over for evil done in our name, with our money, with our acquiescence." Our neighbors will object. Many will not listen, others will argue, still others may shun us. But consider my life since that dinner Thursday evening, since I opened my E-mail Friday morning.

I have so far received two hundred, thirteen E-mail messages about my essay Sugar For Sugar, Salt For Salt, Go Down In The Flood, Gonna Be Your Own Fault. Many of the persons writing to me are second or third generation readers; my piece is in heavy rotation on the e-mail forwarding circuit. It landed on some Ozark discussion board where my syntax is being debated as vigorously as my politics. Posters there are defining the mind and heart of this "Cooper" as they find them evidenced by his words.

One reader found me to be "a very sick, disturbed person." But I’ve had two marriage proposals, one request to father a child, at least two suggestions of sexual congress not intended to produce issue. One generous (if incorrect) gentleman called me "The Mark Twain of Maine." Although one fairly full of himself regular on that Ozark board found my characterizations of Barbara Bush "unhelpful," nearly a quarter of my e-mails singled that paragraph out for special praise.

Obviously, this all makes me feel very good. My life has not wound around as pleasant a garden path as I’d tried to lay out for myself for the last several years, and there is an undeniable pleasure, bordering on joy, in receiving accolades for what one says, particularly if you try very hard to say the things that you feel represent yourself as you are. The ego laps long at these waters.

But also in these messages I find the answer to the question I considered at dinner the other night. Trust your heart; enable your voice. The intensity of the frustration so many decent, thoughtful, empathic persons feel and the sadness that descends when there is no productive outlet for these feelings is the foundation of the tremendous response my essay has brought me. There is anger, certainly, at the administration, at the entire Bush family and its cronies, at the limp, lame, laughable Democrats. There is appreciation for my metaphors, for my style, for the source of my title, which two readers so far have connected to its roots in American music. I appreciate that.

Beyond and better than that is the overwhelming feeling of relief expressed by almost every letter writer. I have said what they feel. These are men and women from scores of states, several other countries. Doctors, lawyers, architects, social workers, students (only a few, sadly), retired military men, writers, editors, and mother after mother and grandmothers beyond counting. Grandmothers who use vulgar words and language, apparently sensing it's ok to speak freely and plainly with me. Two hundred, twelve of two hundred, thirteen persons are relieved and delighted and excited and empowered to hear one odd old guy in Maine express the very things they feel.

Shouldn’t they be getting this direct talk from the Democratic party? Shouldn’t the great newspapers of our nation say that the president is a fool, his handlers are corrupt, the moneyed interests that put him in power are dedicated to ruining the nation that was once the best hope of humanity? They should, but they don’t. So clever (a generally very high level of composition and few spelling or grammatical embarrassments in my incoming mail), honest, honorable, caring Americans have to find each other in chatrooms, on posting boards and by forwarding what they discover to friends and family.

In the absence of leadership we keep the country together by holding on to each other electronically. We comfort each other. That’s good and necessary and readers, all rank strangers to me, have comforted and enriched and encouraged me this weekend. But that’s easy. The hard thing is to stand up, to stand out, to be the one in the conversation, the group, the room, the meeting, the organization who says, impolitely, loudly, often: "This is bullshit!" Ask the good grandmothers of America.

I write sometimes about babies and dogs and trees and about the Great Wooden Penis my late friend Austin and I carved out of a pine log for our lady postmaster one cold December night. These are well-received essays and everything in them is true and tells a story and makes it just a little less likely that someone could not find something about my life resonant with his own. But every half dozen columns or so a force moves through me that I cannot resist. I am called, I suppose, to risk offending, to annoy editor or publisher, to plainly say that the emperor and his daddy and his ghastly old mother (yes, America has its evil grandmothers too), his friends, his allies, and the technicians and planners who write the software and set the switches and power the relays that direct the undoing of America under the putative leadership of this little plastic bobble-head president, all these men and women are worse than naked. They have soiled themselves. They smile and shake hands. They pray. But they have corrupted themselves and the filth will splash on us and we do not deserve it, least of all the poorest among us.

I say these things and I am enriched and encouraged by the breadth and depth of the audience desperate for this and more of it. I ask everyone who has written to me to make his or her own loud shout at the crossroads. More than an echo will reward you.

The late Townes Van Zandt said, "There’s the Blues, and there’s 'Zippidy-doo-dah." But there’s the New Orleans Jazz Funeral tradition, too. It’s been hard times and sorrow, to be sure, but maybe, with the war losing popularity, the stagnant stink of the last three weeks still heavy across the land, that grinning idiot face booking television time in a series of incompetent attempts to shift the blame to local officials, we’ve turned the corner. The body is in the ground. We’re turning for home, we can lift our voices, cut loose, let freedom ring.

You must know Bruce Springsteen’s great song, Badlands. It’s a pretty grim description of a troubled existence in a terrible place in a hard time. But it’s also one of the most upbeat, positive, engaging, joyous songs I know. Play it for yourself. You’ll feel better. Then stand up and spit.

For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside

That it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.

I wanna find one face that ain’t looking through me

I wanna find one place, I wanna spit in the face of these Badlands...

From:
http://wiscassetnewspaper.maine.com/2005-09-22/cooper_commentary_2.html

Judith Miller's source was Scooter Libby.

September 30, 2005
Times Reporter Free From Jail; She Will Testify
By DAVID JOHNSTON and DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, Sept. 29 - Judith Miller, the reporter for The New York Times who has been jailed since July 6 for refusing to testify in the C.I.A. leak case, was released Thursday from a Virginia detention center after she and her lawyers reached an agreement with a federal prosecutor in which she would testify before a grand jury investigating the case, the publisher and the executive editor of the paper said.

Ms. Miller was freed after spending more than 12 weeks in jail, during which she refused to cooperate with the inquiry. Her decision to testify was made after she had obtained what she described as a waiver offered "voluntarily and personally" by a source who said she was no longer bound by any pledge of confidentiality she had made to him. Ms. Miller said the source had made clear that he genuinely wanted her to testify.

That source was I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, according to people who have been officially briefed on the case. Ms. Miller met with Mr. Libby on July 8, 2003, and talked with him by telephone later that week, they said.

Discussions between officials and journalists that week that may have disclosed the identity of a Central Intelligence Agency operative, Valerie Wilson, have been a central focus of the investigation.

Ms. Miller said in a statement that she expected to appear before the grand jury on Friday. Ms. Miller was released after she and her lawyers met at the jail with Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the prosecutor in the case, to discuss her testimony.

The publisher of The Times, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., said in a statement that the newspaper supported Ms. Miller's decision, just as it had backed her refusal to testify.

"Judy has been unwavering in her commitment to protect the confidentiality of her source," Mr. Sulzberger said. "We are very pleased that she has finally received a direct and uncoerced waiver, both by phone and in writing, releasing her from any claim of confidentiality and enabling her to testify."

For more than a year, Mr. Fitzgerald has sought testimony from Ms. Miller about conversations she had with Mr. Libby. Her willingness to testify now was in part based on personal assurances given by Mr. Libby this month that he had no objection to her discussing their conversations with the grand jury, according to those officials briefed on the case.

Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation has centered on whether anyone in the Bush administration illegally disclosed to the news media the identity of Ms. Wilson, a C.I.A. employee. The first published reference to Ms. Wilson was in July 2003 in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak, who referred to her by her maiden name, Valerie Plame.

Another important question has been whether officials were truthful in their testimony to investigators and the grand jury.

Ms. Miller never wrote an article about Ms. Wilson. Mr. Fitzgerald has said that obtaining Ms. Miller's testimony was one of the last remaining objectives of his inquiry, and the deal with her suggests that the prosecutor may soon end the long-running investigation. It is unknown whether prosecutors will charge anyone in the Bush administration with wrongdoing.

The agreement that led to Ms. Miller's release followed intense negotiations among her; her lawyer, Robert Bennett; Mr. Libby's lawyer, Joseph Tate; and Mr. Fitzgerald.

The talks began with a telephone call from Mr. Bennett to Mr. Tate in late August. Ms. Miller spoke with Mr. Libby by telephone this month as their lawyers listened, according to people who have been briefed on the case. It was then that Mr. Libby told Ms. Miller that she had his personal and voluntary waiver.

The discussions were at times strained, with Mr. Libby and Mr. Tate's asserting that they communicated their voluntary waiver to another lawyer for Ms. Miller, Floyd Abrams, more than year ago, according to those briefed on the case.

Other people involved in the case have said Ms. Miller did not understand that the waiver had been freely given and did not accept it until she had heard from Mr. Libby directly.

Ms. Miller authorized her lawyers to seek further clarification from Mr. Libby's representatives in late August, after she had been in jail for more than a month. Mr. Libby wrote to Ms. Miller in mid-September saying he believed that her lawyers understood during discussions last year that his waiver was voluntary.

On Sept. 16, Mr. Tate wrote to Mr. Fitzgerald saying his conversations with Mr. Abrams last year were meant to assure Ms. Miller that a broad waiver that Mr. Libby signed in late 2003 was not coerced and applied specifically to Ms. Miller.

On Thursday, Mr. Abrams wrote to Mr. Tate disputing parts of Mr. Tate's account. His letter said although Mr. Tate had said the waiver was voluntary, Mr. Tate had also said any waiver sought as a condition of employment was inherently coercive.

Mr. Tate said in an interview on Thursday, "Her lawyers were provided with a waiver that we said was voluntary more than a year ago." Mr. Abrams would not discuss the question in a brief telephone conversation on Thursday.

As part of the agreement, Mr. Bennett gave Mr. Fitzgerald edited versions of notes taken by Ms. Miller about her conversations with Mr. Libby.

In statements on Thursday, Ms. Miller and executives of The Times did not identify the source who had urged Ms. Miller to testify. Bill Keller, the executive editor, said Mr. Fitzgerald had assured Ms. Miller's lawyer that "he intended to limit his grand jury interrogation so that it would not implicate other sources of hers."

Ms. Miller's lawyers had sought such an assurance as a condition of her testimony.

Mr. Keller said Mr. Fitzgerald cleared the way to an agreement by assuring Ms. Miller and her source that he would not regard a conversation between the two about a possible waiver as an obstruction of justice.

According to someone who has been briefed on Mr. Libby's testimony and who believes that his statements show he did nothing wrong, Ms. Miller asked Mr. Libby during their conversations in July 2003 whether he knew Joseph C. Wilson IV, the former ambassador who wrote an Op-Ed article in The Times on July 6, 2003, criticizing the Bush administration. Ms. Miller's lawyers declined to discuss the conversations.

Mr. Libby said that he did not know Mr. Wilson but that he had heard from the C.I.A. that the former ambassador's wife, an agency employee, might have had a role in arranging a trip that Mr. Wilson took to Africa on behalf of the agency to investigate reports of Iraq's efforts to obtain nuclear material. Mr. Wilson's wife is Ms. Wilson.

Mr. Libby did not know her name or her position at the agency and therefore did not discuss these matters with Ms. Miller, the person who had been briefed on the matter said. Ms. Miller said she believed that the agreement between her lawyers and Mr. Fitzgerald "satisfies my obligation as a reporter to keep faith with my sources."

"I went to jail," she added, "to preserve the time-honored principle that a journalist must respect a promise not to reveal the identity of a confidential source. I chose to take the consequences, 85 days in prison, rather than violate that promise. The principle was more important to uphold than my personal freedom. "

Ms. Miller said she was grateful for the "unwavering support" shown by her husband, family and friends and The Times. She said that she would say nothing more publicly about the case until after her grand jury testimony.

Mr. Fitzgerald declined to comment, a spokesman, Randall Samborn, said.

The case has been the most significant test in decades of whether reporters can refuse to disclose to prosecutors their discussions with confidential sources. Many journalists say those sources would refuse to provide information if their anonymity could not be protected.

At least four other reporters are known to have provided information to Mr. Fitzgerald. But Ms. Miller had until refused to do so. In July, the Supreme Court refused to hear her appeal of a lower court order that she be jailed for contempt for her refusal to testify.

When Mr. Wilson emerged as a critic of the Bush administration in July 2003, administration officials questioned his credibility. The column by Mr. Novak said Mr. Wilson's wife, who worked for the agency, had suggested the trip.

New details about the case have emerged in recent months. Karl Rove, the president's senior political strategist, and Mr. Libby both discussed Ms. Wilson with reporters, according to testimony provided by Matthew Cooper, a Time magazine reporter, and by others.

But neither White House official is known to have mentioned Ms. Wilson by name or to have mentioned her status at the C.I.A.

Mr. Cooper testified in August 2004 about a conversation with Mr. Libby conducted in 2003. But Mr. Cooper had resisted a subpoena to appear before the grand jury to discuss a conversation with Mr. Rove.

In July, after his employer, Time Inc., part of Time-Warner, complied with a subpoena seeking his notes from the period, Mr. Cooper agreed to testify, after seeking and obtaining what he called a specific waiver from Mr. Rove, releasing him from a pledge of confidentiality.

That decision left Ms. Miller alone in resisting the prosecutors' demand to testify. Much about Ms. Miler's role remains unclear. Mr. Keller, the executive editor, has declined to say whether she was assigned to report about Mr. Wilson's trip, whether she tried to write an article about it or whether she ever told editors or colleagues at The Times that she had obtained information about Ms. Wilson's role.

Under the terms of her jailing, Ms. Miller faced incarceration through the duration of the current term of the grand jury hearing the case, and that is due to expire on Oct. 28. Had Ms. Miller continued to resist, lawyers involved in the case said they believed that it was highly likely that Mr. Fitzgerald would have tried to keep her in jail by extending the grand jury term or convening a new grand jury.

Ms. Miller had been housed at the Alexandria Detention Center, a county jail in suburban Virginia. As a federal prisoner, Ms. Miller was an exceptional case. But a spokesman for the sheriff's office, which administers the center, said she had been granted no special privileges.

PLEASE check out the front page today--very important FIVE MINUTES A DAY...

Also--a friend-of-a-friend launched this website yesterday:

http://www.spankthemachine.com/zencart/index.php?main_page=index

Fun for all there--and some very cool t-shirts too.

my newest idea for protest shade (hold two sides on street corner)
what do you all think?

Lies put us there
Incompetence is keeping us there
Tell your representatives
we want a plan to bring troops home

More than 100 killed in 24 hours in Iraq
Fresh attacks slay 9; death toll from Balad strikes rises to 99

The Associated Press
Updated: 7:48 a.m. ET Sept. 30, 2005

BAGHDAD - Sunni-led insurgents killed at least five people in a crowded vegetable market on Friday, the Muslim day of worship, police said. New information also emerged about coordinated suicide and mortar attacks the day before in another mostly Shiite city that left nearly 100 people dead.

Elsewhere, in the southern city of Basra, an Iraqi police convoy was ambushed late Thursday, killing four policemen and wounding one, said police Capt. Mushtaq Khazim.

The new surge of violence before an Oct. 15 referendum on Iraq’s constitution has killed at least 190 people, including 13 U.S. service members, in the past five days.

The insurgents have vowed to wreck the referendum, whose passage is crucial to prospects for starting a withdrawal of American troops.

Al-Qaida in Iraq, the country’s most feared insurgent group, has declared “all-out war” on the Shiite majority that dominates Iraq’s government, and moderate Sunni Arab leaders have urged their community to reject the constitution, saying it will fragment Iraq and leave them weak compared to Shiites and Kurds.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9530709/

Posted by: karen at September 30, 2005 07:59 AM

Just sent this love note to Bill Bennett:

About your recent comments on race and criminal activity:

There are many different types of criminal activity.

While it is true that poor people are statistically more likely to commit violent crimes than rich people, and a larger percentage of poor people are African-American, recent revelations about the Bush Administration and the Republican Congress illustrate that criminal activity is equally rampant among upper-middle class and wealthy Americans, a majority of whom are white. Whether you're Jack Abramoff, a New Orleans resident looting an electronics store, or a zealot in the Republican Party intent on depriving Americans of their constitutional right to a free and fair election in order to impose their completely subjective faith-based agenda on a nation founded by spiritual freethinkers, you're still just a crook up to no good.

The worm, or should I say the snake, is turning on the Republican Revolution. Crooks are crooks, and justice is eventually done - if not in this lifetime, then in the next.

Matthew,

Beatifully articulated. And so deeply true.

I heard that Bill Bennett was up for this years "Bush Family Values" award.

Barbara is lobbying her pearls off.

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Retail gasoline prices posted significant gains Friday, climbing nearly three cents a gallon, according to AAA's daily fuel gauge report.

The national average for regular unleaded gasoline rose to $2.843 a gallon from $2.815 Thursday, according to the travel club. Prices had climbed in the Thursday report by 0.4 cent.

Gasoline prices have retreated since Labor Day, when they crested at $3.057 following Hurricane Katrina. Pump prices have fluctuated after Hurricane Rita hit the Gulf Coast on Saturday.

Rita caused significant damage when it slammed into the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast early Saturday morning with 120 mph winds, although it was less destructive than Hurricane Katrina. While crude oil output was shut by the storm, many Texas refineries were spared, although their output has slowed.

The average cost of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline was $1.916 a year ago, AAA reported.

The publisher of the Lundberg survey, a comparable study of gas prices around the U.S. released Sunday, believed that prices will probably fall another 10 to 20 cents per gallon once refineries shuttered by Katrina and Rita come back online.

(yeah, right)

Wrote the letter from the front page.

As hurricane relief money keeps flooding into Bush's supporters, Congress is seeking oversight.

http://www.columbiatribune.com/2005/Sep/20050929News014.asp

If you're likely to get depressed reading about the incompetence of Katrina, then skip all these links!

It will bring tears to your eyes!

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&q=inspector+general+katrina

HUD chief foresees a 'whiter' Big Easy
By Brian DeBose
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

September 30, 2005

A Bush Cabinet officer predicted this week that New Orleans likely will never again be a majority black city, and several black officials are outraged.

Alphonso R. Jackson, secretary of housing and urban development, during a visit with hurricane victims in Houston, said New Orleans would not reach its pre-Katrina population of "500,000 people for a long time," and "it's not going to be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again."

Rep. Danny K. Davis, Illinois Democrat and a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, quickly took issue.

"Anybody who can make that kind of projection with some degree of certainty or accuracy must have a crystal ball that I can't see or maybe they are more prophetic than any of us can imagine," he said.

Other members of the caucus said the comments by Mr. Jackson, who is black, could be misconstrued as a goal, particularly considering his position of responsibility in the administration.

"I would beg and hope that the secretary, if that is what he is saying, would re-evaluate the situation," said Elijah E. Cummings, Maryland Democrat.

Mr. Jackson, whose remarks were reported by the Houston Chronicle, said New Orleans might reach a population of 375,000 people sometime late next year with a black population of about 40 percent at the highest, down from 67 percent before Hurricane Katrina sent a storm surge that overwhelmed New Orleans levees and flooded 80 percent of the city.

The population of New Orleans before Katrina was a little less than 500,000, surrounded by large, predominantly white suburbs. The largely black Ninth Ward and the predominantly white middle-class Lakeview section near Lake Pontchartrain were overwhelmed by floodwaters.

Mr. Jackson, a former developer and longtime government housing official, said the history of urban reconstruction projects shows that most blacks will not return and others who want to might not have the means or opportunity. His agency will play a critical role in the city's redevelopment through various grant programs, including those for damaged or destroyed properties.

In the storm's aftermath, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rep. Maxine Waters, California Democrat, charged that relocating evacuees across the country was "racist" and designed to move black people, who overwhelmingly vote Democratic, out of Louisiana. The state elected its first Republican senator, David Vitter, in nearly a century in 2004.

Both the preacher and the congresswoman suggested that the residents be housed at the closed England Air Force Base at Alexandria, La., to keep them closer to home.

Rep. Bobby L. Rush, Illinois Democrat, said Alphonso Jackson's remarks and the prospects of real-estate speculators and developers in New Orleans are "foreboding."

more... http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050929-114710-8545r.htm

Posted by: monkey at September 30, 2005 10:00 AM

Monkey,

I remember hearing that people were afraid the white "money guys" were going to go in and 'beautify' the city.

Knock down the old and insert the new look.

It is mid afternoon and just went banking and dog walking with Andree here on Rue des Dames and she told me it was Scooter Libby who leaked

Not surprising considering he is one of the original signers of the Mission at New American Century along with Jeb Bush
Cheney Wolfowitz Richard Perle and all
the rest