Farewell to the Oligarchs

Thanks for posting Blumenthal.

He writes in the Guardian all the time and it's strange to think I discovered him in a foreign paper.

Along with economists Reich and Krugman, he's someone whose columns I look forward to.

Here's the latest Morford:

How To Endure Disaster Fatigue
Too much death and catastrophe and war? Spirit overloaded? There is one thing you can try

You can take drugs. You can drink heavily. You can numb yourself with any number of whoopers and downers and zappers and nerve calmers, prescription and illegal and everything in between, thus rendering your psycho-emotional system moot and null and void and completely, happily unwilling to give much of a damn.

You can deny. You can reject. You can play dumb. You can ignore the news and shun the headlines and close your eyes to the bloody gruesome photos and go about your work and play in the park with your dog and read only Us Weekly and Boing Boing and pretend that all this horrible global tragedy, these hurricanes and earthquakes and various planetary abuses, the appalling death tolls and severed limbs and blood-drenched streets, they never really happen on the same planet you inhabit.

Sure, you're not stupid: Deep down you know they're swirling like cold fire all around you, but you can't face them directly. You can't acknowledge too much, too deeply, too quickly, lest it burn your karmic tongue and rip you asunder and depress your spirit and make life just miserable as all hell. It's just too much to process.

I know how it is. You might say to yourself, just this month alone: "I cannot take any more, over 35,000 people dead from a massive quake in Pakistan and India and hundreds more buried alive in mudslides in Mexico and Guatemala as a result of Hurricane Stan, still more piles of dead in New Orleans and dozens (hundreds?) dying in unimaginably brutal ways every day in bombings and vicious warfare in Iraq, and that doesn't even include the everyday gunfire and the murders and the rapes and the busload of elderly people bursting into flames in Dallas, and the questions cannot help but emerge: Where to put all this bleak information? How to possibly sort through and find solace and hope? And by the way, what the hell is going on? Why so dark and violent and dour all of a sudden? What is happening to the world?" ...

(click here to read the rest)

(Full URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2005/10/14/notes101405.DTL&nl=fix)

This just in--offensive, but funny:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: CONTACT:
October 14, 2005 Gael Murphy, CodePink

As Karl Roves Makes His Fourth Grand Jury Appearance in the Valerie Plame Case

Activists to Introduce 7’ Tall Karl Rove-Brand Condoms Bearing the Slogan,

“Some Things Should Never Leak”

When: Friday, October 14, 12 Noon*

Where: DC Superior Court, 3rd and Constitution, Washington, DC

What: As White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove makes yet another grand jury appearance in the investigation of the leaking of CIA officer Valerie Plame’s identity, activist groups will introduce the KARL ROVE NEOCONDOM outside the courthouse. This first edition prophylactic is embossed with the face of our President’s Chief Political Strategist (i.e. “Bush’s Brain”) and reads “Some Things Should Never Leak.”

These latex rubbers are the cutting edge in Fundamentalist Christian birth control.

Karl Rove NeoCondoms, like their namesake, leak, so they cannot be viewed as a sinful contraceptive. However, our exhaustive field-testing has proven that Karl’s pudgy face on every wrapper will promote abstinence by functioning as a powerful deterrent to sex.

The Karl Rove NeoCondom is being issued to commemorate Karl’s fourth trip back to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s Grand Jury. Mr. Rove has had difficulty recollecting the role he played in exposing the identity of Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA agent whose husband was critical of Karl’s efforts to “get our war on” in Iraq. Karl will surely maintain his innocence while addressing some tricky issues of testimony-drift.

The Karl Rove NeoCondoms event is being sponsored by CODEPINK: Women for Peace (www.codepinkalert.org), the League of Pissed off Voters (www.indyvoter.org) and the Ruckus Society (www.ruckus.org).

*On the off chance that this is not the day when Karl Rove will be testifying before the Grand Jury, we will be out there anyway.

funny!!

I am happy to hear Anne Garels, broadcasting from inside the Green Zone lately. (NPR)

From a commenter on another blog, A Tiny Revolution ( http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/000642.html ), that linked to our Richard Cohen thread:

"If any more proof were needed that the path to success as a WaPo celebrity columnist lies in being a feckless, cretinous oaf, Cohen can be counted on to supply it on a regular basis."

The poster linked his comment to this article from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology:

Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments

http://www.phule.net/mirrors/unskilled-and-unaware.html

Thorough Timeline on Plame, Miller, and Kelly at the DailyKos.

Go recommend it please.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/10/14/24759/251

"In my Administration," Bush told voters in Pittsburgh in October 2000, "we will ask not only what is legal but what is right, not what the lawyers allow but what the public deserves."

Ah, hubris
NPR story from this morning-- Includes summary of this weeks polls & some tape of Bush handlers' control & scripting of Bush's "conversation" with soldiers in Iraq.

web page w/ audio link: http://tinyurl.com/am5g9

"not what the lawyers allow but what the public deserves"

*shudders

Makes you wanna puke. Juan Cole commentary to follow:

Times reporter in leak probe to be given award next Tuesday
RAW STORY
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Times_reporter_in_leak_probe_to_1013.html

New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who was jailed 85 days for refusing to reveal the source who disclosed the identity of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, is slated to receive a First Amendment Award Tuesday, RAW STORY has learned.

The award is being presented by the Society of Professional Journalists at a conference in Las Vegas. The Society is made up of some 1,100 independent writers.

Miller will speak to participants of the 2005 SPJ Convention & National Journalism Conference at 8:15 a.m. Oct. 18.

The Times reporter will then join a panel discussion titled "The Reporter's Privilege Under Siege." Joining Miller will be Associated Press reporter Josef Hebert, Patricia Hurtado of Newsday and Bruce Sanford of Baker and Hostetler law firm.

SPJ President Irwin Gratz previously lauded Miller's release. The group is pushing for a federal shield law to protect journalists.

"We appreciate the need prosecutors have for information," said President Gratz, "but when that information is extracted from reporters, we all pay a price in the diminished independence of the news media."

Miller's speech is scheduled for 8:15 to 9 a.m. in Grand Ballroom 4 at the Aladdin Hotel and Casino. The panel discussion will follow from 9 to 9:45 a.m.

In a bio, the Society of Professional Journalists says the group, "works to improve and protect journalism. SPJ is dedicated to encouraging the free practice of journalism and stimulating high standards of ethical behavior. Founded in 1909 as Sigma Delta Chi, and based in Indianapolis, SPJ promotes the free flow of information vital to a well-informed public, works to inspire and educate the next generation of journalists, and protects First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and press."

In August, another group changed its mind about granting Miller the "Conscience in the Media" award.

The American Society of Journalists and Authors rejected Miller for the prize "based on its opinion that her entire career, and even her current actions in the Plame/CIA leak case, cast doubt on her credentials for this award."

May have been discussed earlier, but wouldn't the average judge put a gag order on Delay's media blitz?
ie, in the interest of selecting a jury that doesn't already have an opinion about the case(s)...

Judy Miller and the neocons
Arrogance, poor editing, and getting too close to her sources -- not
ideology -- led to her fall.
Juan Cole
Oct. 14, 2005

New York Times reporter Judith Miller testified again on Wednesday before a grand jury regarding allegations that Irving Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, outed an undercover CIA operative in summer of 2003. After spending 85 days in jail for refusing to testify before the grand jury, Miller was released after receiving a personal waiver from Libby -- who turned out to be her confidential source.

Miller's reputation had already been deeply sullied by her inaccurate and one-sided reporting on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction before the war. Questions have swirled about her relationship with the small coterie of neoconservatives, including Libby, who staffed key positions in the Bush administration, and who were allied with Ahmad Chalabi, a corrupt Iraqi expatriate and notorious liar who became Miller's principal source on WMD issues. Suspicions that Miller had crossed an ethical line and grown too close to her sources increased after the waiver letter she received from Libby was disclosed. That letter ended with this bizarre, highly personal passage: "You went into jail in the summer. It is fall now. You will have stories to cover -- Iraqi elections and suicide bombers, biological threats and the Iranian nuclear program. Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work -- and life. Until then, you will remain in my thoughts and prayers. With admiration, Scooter Libby."

More (beware, long read!!)
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/10/14/neocon/

It was never about protecting a source. It was about implicating HERSELF in TREASON

Let Judy Miller get what awards she can.

When we hang her for treason we can use them as her grave marker.

BTW

NO ONE ever answered my question some time ago.

Since Judith Miller was planting stories she knew to be false, and the NY Times let her reporting lead DIRECTLY to the death of our soldiers...

When can we SUE THESE BASTARDS for each and every WRONGFUL DEATH?

Another interesting note on the scandals converging from kos...

Scandal Convergence: DeLay and NH phone jamming

by Elwood Dowd [Subscribe]
Fri Oct 14, 2005 at 06:51:07 AM PDT

In the 2002 election, the GOP hired a consulting firm that used automatic dialers to jam the Democratic 'get out the vote' operation in New Hampshire. Two GOP operatives have pled guilty in the case and a third goes to trial in November.

Today's Boston Globe reports that the money for the illegal phone jamming apparently came from Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff. The consulting firm was paid $15,600 by the state party within weeks of the party receiving $15,000 in contributions from the two.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/10/14/9517/5819

Can ANYONE get a message to Cindy Sheehan??

Tell her she has ONE HELL of a case against both the NY Times and the WaPo AND Fox news for WRONGFUL DEATH.

She could take them ALL on. And she would WIN.

The Bush Years: Outrage,
After Outrage, After Outrage...

Asked to name the Outrage of the Week,
how could anyone possibly choose?

By Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate
10-14-5

AUSTIN, Texas -- On one of those television gong shows that passes for journalism, the panelists used to have to pick an Outrage of the Week. Then, each performer would wax indignant about his or her choice for 60 seconds or so. If someone asked me to name the Outrage of the Week about now, I'd have a coronary. How could anyone possibly choose?

I suppose the frontrunner is the anti-torture amendment. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) proposed an amendment to the defense appropriations bill that would prohibit "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of prisoners in the custody of the U.S. military.

This may strike you as a "goes without saying" proposition--the amendment passed the Senate 90 to 9. The United States has been signing anti-torture treaties under Democrats and Republicans for at least 50 years. But the Bush administration actually managed to find some weasel words to create a loophole in this longstanding commitment to civilized behavior.

According to the Bushies, if the United States is holding a prisoner on foreign soil, our soldiers can still subject him or her to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment--the very forms of torture used by the soldiers who were later prosecuted for their conduct at Abu Ghraib. Does this make any sense, moral or common?

So deeply does President Bush feel our country, despite all its treaty commitments, has a right to torture that he has threatened to veto the bill if it passes. This would be the first time in five years he has ever vetoed anything. Think about it: Five years of stupefying pork, ideological nonsense, dumb administrative ideas, fiscal idiocy, misbegotten energy programs--and the first thing the man vetoes is a bill to pay our soldiers because it carries an amendment saying, once again, that this country does not torture prisoners.

This is the United States of America. It is our country, not George W. Bush's personal property. The United States of America still stands for the rights of man, for freedom, dignity and justice. We do not torture helpless prisoners. Our soldiers are not the Nazi Waffen SS, not the North Vietnamese who tortured McCain and others for years on end, not bestial Argentinean fascists, not the Khmer Rouge.

Remember, we invaded Iraq because Saddam Hussein was such a horrible brute that he tortured people. This is beyond disgusting. The House Republicans, who have no shame, will try to weaken McCain's amendment. They need to hear from decent Republicans all over this country. Don't leave this hideous stain on your party's name. This is not what America stands for. We've had more loathsome and more dangerous enemies than Al Qaeda and managed to defeat them without resorting to torture.

And leading the charge in the House will be Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), that pillar of moral rectitude and Christian mercy. Wait a minute: Didn't DeLay have to step down from his leadership position after he got indicted? Well, yes, but some step-downs are more down than others. There was "The Hammer" in full glory Friday, twisting arms and working the floor on behalf of a real cutie of a bill to benefit the oil companies.

Even Republicans revolted. As Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.) said, "We are enriching people, but we are not doing anything to give the little guy a break." I have become inured to Bush's idea of foreign policy. But the policy does result in some lovely ironies. On Friday, Mohamed ElBaradei, the highly respected head of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, won the Nobel Peace Prize. Quite apart from whether you support Bush or not, ElBaradei and the IAEA deserve the honor--they have been both diligent and effective.

ElBaradei was right when he repeatedly warned the Bush administration that Iraq did not have any weapons of mass destruction and has said the day the United States invaded "was the saddest in my life."

But you know our boy George: not for him the gracious, "Gee, you were right, and we were wrong after all." Nope, after ElBaradei was proved right, Bush tried to have him fired. And the man in charge of carrying out the campaign to have the guy fired for being right? John Bolton, now our ambassador to the United Nations.

Molly Ivins is a syndicated columnist based in Austin, Texas

Posted by: Karen at October 14, 2005 09:23 AM

That is funny.

One common misconception (ah, a pun!) about fundamentalist christians is the falicy that they think it is a sin to use birth control. None I ever met did. And we used it in the Catholic church, too.
My priest told me it was okay. And it was NEVER spoken about in fundamentalist churches. EVER.

I think Mormons might have a problem with it, and in areas where the Bishop and Priest of a Catholic person supports the Pope's position on it, also.

I think the giant condom is funny because of the phalic symbolism in it. Heh heh. That's power, all right!

White House just ELIMINATED half of thier tag along news permits..

We ARE f**king Russia.

That is just distrurbing

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001305846

from the LA Times:
Window Into Miers' Legal Thinking in the 1990s Reflects a Glint of Liberalism

In the early 1990s, lawyer-bashing was all the rage. And Harriet Miers didn't like it one bit.

Then the president of the State Bar of Texas, Miers used her monthly column in the Texas Bar Journal to condemn politicians who were trying to score points by disparaging the legal profession. She suggested the criticism was myopic, and noted that it was coming, by and large, from Republicans.

snip

She called for increased funding for legal services for the poor and suggested that taxes might have to be raised to achieve the notion of "justice for all."

She praised the benefits of diversity, called for measures that would send more minority students to law schools, and said that just because a woman was the head of the state bar did not mean that "all unfair barriers for women have been eradicated."

She was upset that although poverty was rising in Texas, impoverished families received a disproportionately small share of welfare and Medicaid benefits.

And she was an unapologetic defender of her profession, even the oft-maligned "trial lawyer."

more at:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bar14oct14,0,6929851.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Meanwhile look what is brewing in Illinois:

Defending Marriage: Why We Can't Settle For "Civil Unions".

This is a full out assault on the gay rights in Illinois. The talking points are as preposterous as one could imagine. This effort will be used to help keep the Progressives from gaining political ground in this state, especially Henry Hydes open seat in the Congressional Sixth District. The Republican candidate for this district actually makes Henry Hyde look like a liberal.

http://www.illinoisfamily.org/cu_4_05.pdf

new thread (teeheehee)

Posted by: Karen at October 14, 2005 09:23 AM

Oh, Jeez.

I just got home and reread your post, Karen.

I feel so stupid.

THE REASON it is being viewed as a method of birth control is because Karl Rove's picture is on it.

ROFLMAO!!!!

That makes my stupid post all the more nerdy!!!

Ha ha ha ha ha ha..............

(This is classic...)