A Revolution Of One

Facebook Addict T-Shirt

2009-03-29T23:42:00.000-07:00

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My Sarah Palin Prayer

2008-11-11T07:59:00.000-08:00

Ok, I'm not a pray-er. Some might say I don't have a prayer. But I just saw the Greta Van Susteren interview with Palin and it made me pray the most fervent prayer I have ever prayed in my life. Palin says, in essence, God will open the door for her to the White House (see end of video, Part 3, below and here). We've got to ask God please not to do that. Please pray with me.

Jesus, Lord God Almighty, I beseech thee in the name of all that is holy, please close that door to this imbecilic, unqualified woman. Please don't leave a crack in the door for her. Seal that door shut Lord. Guard that door, O Lord, with your mighty army of angels. Roll the heaviest stone, a stone that cannot be moved by mere mortals Lord, in front of that door to protect this great nation of ours from the showy pretentious religiousity of this woman who would lead our nation down a path of ruin. I humble ask this in the name of your son, our one and only savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Greta Van Susteren Interview of Sarah Palin - Part 3

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This from a blogger in my PJs in my parent's basement. And while I'm praying, will somebody tell Keith Olbermann he needs to vote. I'm a big Keith fan, but not voting makes him look like a hypocrite. Other parts of the interview below.

Greta Van Susteren Interview of Sarah Palin - Part 1

Greta Van Susteren Interview of Sarah Palin - Part 2

Happy Veteran's Day.

GOP Stalwart Caught In Prostitution Sting

2008-07-26T15:14:00.001-07:00

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

New Media Turns Old School Politics Upside Down

2008-04-13T13:04:00.000-07:00

A Revolution of One is host of Carnival of the Liberals #62, posted yesterday, without my contribution, which is a little late, but better late than never. For readers unfamiliar with it, CotL is a by-weekly carnival of liberal bloggers. Every issue the host blog selects and features the ten best posts from all posts submitted. Their badge is in the lower part of the right-hand column of this blog. There's info on who is hosting future carnivals and the designated theme, if the host decides to have a one.

The theme for CotL #62 is New Media. We asked all participants to post on the topic of, or to include, some type of new media. The video above is of a presentation by Lawrence Lessig, Sanford Law professor and CEO of the Creative Commons given at the University of Pennsylvania. Lessig, through Creative Commons is the champion of changes in copyright law that make it easier for new media to be created without breaking the law, topic of the video below. In the first video Lessig gives his reasons for supporting Barack Obama, beyond the fact that they were colleagues at the University of Chicago.

Beyond being an example of how new media is a major factor in this Presidential primary, and the future general election race, it is about the candidate that is entirely, IMAO, a phenomenon of new media. Without it I doubt that this most unlikely candidate for president would be the almost certain nominee of the party. All of the candidates understand and use new media in their campaigns. They all have web sites and blogs and Youtube videos of their speeches, campaign ads, and the ability to contribute to their campaigns online.

But for the Obama campaign a new media political strategy has been key. Before the existence of new media it would have been nearly impossible for someone like Obama to overcome the war chest and old guard party organization of a candidate like Hillary Clinton. But for the other campaigns, their use of new media seems more an adjunct, or add on to the old strategies, more than the essence of their strategy. An article in Rolling Stone in late March describes how the Obama campaign combined techniques of new media, social networking using technology from sites like Facebook, with old school community organizing to outflank the traditional top-down approach of the Clinton campaign.

"They have taken the bottom-up campaign and absolutely perfected it," says Joe Trippi, who masterminded Dean's Internet campaign in 2004. "It's light-years ahead of where we were four years ago. They'll have 100,000 people in a state who have signed up on their Web site and put in their zip code. Now, paid organizers can get in touch with people at the precinct level and help them build the organization bottom up. That's never happened before. It never was possible before...."

"....We're seeing the last time a top-down campaign has a chance to win it," says Trippi. "There won't be another campaign that makes the same mistake the Clintons made of being dependent on big donors and insiders. It's not going to work ever again."

A regular part of Obama's stump speech is to say that change happens from the bottom up and not the top down. New media, created and controlled by the average citizen is inherently grass roots. What the Obama campaign has built is unprecedented. An entirely new type of campaign which will shape every political campaign for the foreseeable future.

Carnival of the Liberals at A Revolution of One

2008-04-12T13:29:00.000-07:00

Welcome to A Revolution of One and the April 11, 2008 edition of Carnival of the Liberals. First I'd like to thank everyone for great submissions. Thanks for making it difficult to pick 10 out of a group of great posts, and for participating in our theme which is New Media. If you haven't hosted yet, eliminating posts is harder than you may think. In some cases it just came down to being on topic, because it was the only way to judge. I'm posting the submissions now, but I haven't quite finished my own post, which will follow shortly.

Also I'm going to submit this post on Digg.com and I'd like to ask you all to digg it to help bring more readers and bloggers to CotL. I apologize to those of you who I didn't get back to about your submission. For some reason I didn't get all the submissions in email. I replied to every one I received, but when I picked them up from the CotL site I found I had twice as many as I got in email. Which was a pleasant surprise.

One quick plug for this site, I am in the middle of an extreme makeover the blog, so please come back in a few days and check it out. Something I probably should not have tried to roll out at the same time as the carnival. But enough of the preliminaries, the posts chosen for this edition are:

In Current Events:
Allen in Fort Worth presents Hillary Clinton, Bosnia, Serbia, Sniper Fire, My Friend Igor, Taking Your Daughter To War Zones, and other stuff like that posted at The Whited Sepulchre, saying, "Youtube videos and blogs are making Hillary Clinton's claims of combat zone experience look ridiculous."Shan Siddiqi presents Perceptions, misconceptions posted at The Optimist's World, saying, "Misconceptions cause wars. To fight war, we must fight these misconceptions and the false perceptions that they create."

Annie presents Oh Bless Us, Everyone! posted at Home of the Brave, saying, "Journalism, campaign reporting and campaign messaging trainwreck. Meanwhile the gist - preventable deaths continue unabated, under-resourced health facilities struggle, and everyone loses."

On Liberalism:
Ebonmuse presents The Keyhole posted at Daylight Atheism, saying, "The explosion of new media has given us access to a vast wealth of information, but sorting through it has for the reliable sources has become ever more difficult."

greensmile presents Re-electing war 2008: tragedy vs pathos posted at The Executioners Thong, saying, "Are you really liberal? That would, I believe, mean you could put aside your ire at obtuse war supporters to understand where they are coming from...and thereby start to rescue them."

In Opinion:
Carole G. McKay presents Hilary, Bill and Noah Webster posted at McKay Today, saying, "Can we take a candid look at how lying to ourselves and others costs us a price we cannot afford?"

omyma presents Blaming Muslims for Terrorism: Blood Sport for the Cheesecake Crowd posted at thinkbridge.

Mike Haubrich presents Early Morning April 4 posted at Tangled Up in Blue Guy, saying, "Forty years after the murder of MLK, the US still has to push for equality."

reallywrong presents Crashing the Gate posted at keep it really wrong.

In Politics:
DWSUWF presents Lets Play Oddball! Televison personality shoots self in head. Reloads. Shoots Obama Campaign. Reloads. Shoots self in head again. posted at Divided We Stand United We Fall, saying, "What do I know? I am just a pissant blogger and Keith Olbermann is a cable news giant. Let me be clear so there is no confusion about the point of this post. Keith Olbermann is not an Obama cheerleader and a sexist pig. He just talks like one."

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of carnival of the liberals using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Technorati tags:

carnival of the liberals, blog carnival.

I enjoyed every single post and look forward to hosting again sometime in the future. Check back for my post on New Media. Thanks again and....

-Fight the Powers.

China's Rep Being Torched in Olympic Flames

2008-04-07T09:23:00.000-07:00

I'm glad to see the Olympic games become a lesson in human rights and their reputation in the world for China. The Bush administration could use the same lesson in foreign policy, but their time is up soon. But I'd like to see more in the headlines about Darfur as well. It seems that the Tibetan monks controversy, which is no less relevant and deserving of headlines than Darfur, is getting all the attention. I hate to see this opportunity to send a message to China about their influence with the Sudanese government and the Darfur crisis pass all the attention going to Tibet and little to Darfur.

The video below is a wide ranging religious one that starts with the Dalai Lama, goes through the spread of Buddhism and Islam, and ends with Barack Obama's church Black

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Liberation Theology on Morning Joe. I don't watch Joe in the morning, but if this kind of discussion happens often I may start. What's not surprising to me is Tucker Carslon's admission that he can't wrap his mind around the mix of his own religion and Buddhism.

MLK Disappointed with Civil Rights Bill

2008-04-05T08:52:00.000-07:00

In this clip Dr. King expresses his dissatisfaction with the Civil Rights Act of 1960 in an interview with Meet the Press on NBC. Check out the chick in the hat and rhinestone specks, Ms. May Craig. She's questioning the tactic of civil disobedience, equating it with randomly deciding which laws to follow and which to break. In doing so she's arguing against breaking laws that are unjust, when the goal of society should be justice. Not blind obedience to any law, just or unjust.

What is actually being said is don't push it. Wait. Justice will come. Don't fight. Don't break laws to get there. The law will get around to you eventually. Your chance at equality will come. But it never comes. You have to push it. British Prime Minister William E. Gladstone said, "Justice delayed is justice denied."

What's ironic is the fact that she was a female journalist, a member of the

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National American Woman Suffrage Association, and must have been the victim of the same kinds of efforts to slow her progress into the male dominated world of journalism. In fact some of the same protest methods were used in the Women's Suffrage Movement. It's an irony that stands out as starkly as the hat on her head.

The Colbert Report: Let the Games Begin

2008-04-05T07:56:00.000-07:00

Again Stephen Colbert displays his mastery of the magnification of the absurd. What would be reductio ad absurdum except that he is mocking the absurd. This time he skewers both the idea of a boycott of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing China this summer and it's critics. A boycott is not likely, but the leaders of several nations are skipping the opening ceremonies or not attending at all and I think it's a good way to send a message to China. Not only about their civil rights abuses of monks in Tibet, but of their support for the Sudanese government responsible for the genocide in Darfur.

Yes They Can

2008-04-05T06:20:00.000-07:00

What's amazing to me is how many hours of cable news coverage of the election you can watch and not hear as much intelligent and thoughtful analysis of what this election means as you did in just a few minutes with these kids. Their opinions of media and what their angle is are already forming. Witnessed in statements like, "the media is trying to take this race thing and turn it to something else." You see they have the impression that the media is focusing on race in a way the candidate is not.

I think it's been a long time since there's been a politician anywhere that has been this inspiring to young people. The other important thing about the video is that it isn't anything any of the campaigns could stage. It is not one of those scripted moments we see constantly. It is real people expressing real feelings because they felt inspired to, not because it's what someone asked them to say. I could say that I hate to repeat a campaign slogan, but I don't when it's real. That's what's meant when Barack says that real change comes from the bottom up. It's true whether the candidate believes it or not. Whether or not it is a slogan.

That's the part of this that the other campaigns don't get. They go on and on about experience and their years in Washington. They try to instill fear that the country might not be safe with someone who isn't the same as what we've always had. Americans have seen the results of what years of experience in the White House brings. It's what they have now and they are tired of it. They want something different. That's why people are registering to vote and contributing to the Obama campaign in unprecedented numbers. Even if the highly unlikely happens and Obama is not the

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nominee and not our next president, this is a phenomenon like we have never seen before on the political landscape. And the Clinton campaign and a couple Saturday Night Live skits have practically brow beaten the press out of saying so. That doesn't matter because the people know it. Even the children know it. No matter what the press says.

The Politicians of Comedy Tour

2008-04-04T22:16:00.000-07:00

I have to give John McCain credit. Comically he comes across better than Hillary Clinton. That's not saying much. For all the actual time spent on issues in these campaigns we could crap can the entire election process and send them on a national comedy tour. Funniest candidate wins.

Or we could go the reality show route, the Political World — Washington DC. Find out what happens when people stop being real,

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and start acting political. There's Big Brother, no wait, the Bush administration's already has that one. We could do Dancing with the Pols. Barack may have a slight advantage there. Very slight. There's American Political Idol. And finally there's Bowling for Leader of the Free World!

Hillary at the Improv

2008-04-04T12:20:00.000-07:00

I hate to admit it, but I find Hillary Clinton so much more human and engaging when she's joking about how big a liar she is. I find it so disarming. Who is advising this campaign, John Lovitz? "Senator, we can neutralize this whole sniper fire controversy very easily. You'll go on Leno and first thing you'll make a joke about it."

It's Hillary Clinton at the Improv. "You know a funny thing happened to me on the way to the Democratic Convention. I lost all my integrity. Isn't that funny?" It's to the point where I'm starting to feel sorry for Clinton supporters. They must spend a lot of time and energy in daily rationalization. It must be exhausting bridging the cognitive dissonance every single day. I'm posting this before I've even watched all of it. I'm finding it hard to even look at her and listen to her.

How Far We've Come: MLK on Speaks on Non-Violent Reistance

2008-04-04T10:27:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you when you're in the middle of the crapstorm of all the stuff that is happening today, it is very easy to forget just how far we've come. Sometimes it takes sitting down and taking a good look at what happened then just to appreciate it. I think in truth it gives you both perspectives. It also shows you how far we haven't come, and that's not in any way to minimize the gains we have made, but to remind us we still have far to go. When you see that many of the situations we are dealing with today are, if not the same in actual substance, are similar in the way we deal with them.

There are still those who will use every rationalization and every other means possible to prevent change and hinder progress. They use the same methods they did then. Focusing on the divisions between peoples of different races, ethnic origins, religions, or economic status and using them to divide us. The struggle is the same, but it has moved to different fronts, which proves there has been progress. Much still needs to be done. On this the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr.

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Martin Luther King, is a good time to remember both.

MSNBC has posted a number of these historical clips on their site and I'll try to post a few more today and over the next couple days.

McHypocrisy

2008-04-04T08:29:00.000-07:00

From the start of the Iraq war whenever I got into a discussion, I won't call them arguments, with a war supporter we obviously never agreed. But the talk would always end with, "but you do support the troops don't you?" They'd tell me, "It's important to support the troops even if you don't support the war." They were parroting politicians, but I always had my suspicions that when Republican chickenhawks used the phrase it was code for, "don't criticize the war for the sake of the troops."

It was their way of blunting criticism with guilt. If you criticize what we're doing the troops will feel bad about their mission and you will be the cause of their failure. Now in retrospect, maybe it was me that undermined the entire war effort. Seriously, I never bought the argument, but I always felt that they meant what they said about supporting the troops. That any obvious lack of support for the needs of the people who put themselves in harms way to protect us would be seen as such hypocrisy it would beggar belief to the point it would undermine all the rest of their arguments.

That was before we found no weapons of mass destruction and no link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. It was also before we found out that many troops didn't have body armor, or armored vehicles, and people were buying their own body armor and sending it to Iraq for family members serving there. Before Rumsfeld made the callous statement that we go to war with the army we have. And I could fill 100 blog posts with the billions in profits made by Halliburton and other contractors, friends of Dick Cheney's who failed to serve the needs of those who serve us. And then there are the stories of vets having to pay for their own phone calls from veterans hospitals that Barack Obama related in one of the Democratic debates. And stories of horrible conditions in veterans hospitals, and of homeless vets and the list goes on and on.

And now this, that John McCain, veteran and former POW, who claims to hate war, while he sounds the drumbeat for war with Iran, has not signed on to this bill that would correct some of the past lack of support for our troops and take care of them into the future. While he makes a case for war with Iran that is flawed and so full of holes you could fly a C-130 airplane through it. The biggest flaw in his argument is lack of understanding, or purposeful confusion, of the difference between Sunni and Shia. That Shia Iran and Sunni Al Qaeda, who hate each other and want to destroy each other, are working together in Iraq against the US. There is simply zero evidence to support that proposition, and zero evidence for the argument that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. Either McCain knows this and is doing the same thing the Bush administration did in the lead up to

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the war in Iraq, or he doesn't know it. Either situation is equally, as put by Pepe Escobar of The Real News in the video below, scary. And together with his lack of support so far for this new GI Bill, is the ultimate in McHypocrisy.

Randi Rhodes On Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton

2008-04-03T14:56:00.000-07:00

Warning: Language

Well I mean, at least she didn't call her a monster. Randi's been suspended by Air America. Their site says this:

New York - Air America has suspended on-air host Randi Rhodes for making inappropriate statements about prominent figures, including Senator Hillary Clinton, at a recent public appearance on behalf of Air America in San Francisco which was sponsored by an Air America affiliate station.

"Air America encourages strong opinions about public affairs but does not condone such abusive, ad hominem language by our Hosts," said chair Charlie Kireker.

Personally, I would have given her a raise. Somebody might actually start listening to Air America again. I will when Randi comes off suspension. Well, if she does. I hope they don't fire her. The comments are over the top, granted. But the right gets away with so much more than the left is allowed to. We are such wimps and we're supposed to be the radicals. Back in the olden days, the 60's and 70's, when I was a youngster, being a radical meant you could say radical things.

Ok, maybe I'm romanticizing it. Hell, she'd probably have been fired back then too. Still I think the Rush Limbaughs, BillO's and Coultergeists get away with a lot more than the left does without their bosses freaking out. Not so long ago O'Reilly said something about going on a "lynching party" against Michelle Obama and not a peep out of his bosses at Faux. No suspension. Nothing. Maher gets away with quite a bit on HBO, but I don't know if he'd get away with something like this. It was pretty harsh.

But I understand Randi's frustration. Clinton's been running a nasty campaign that is fracturing the party at a time when Democrats should be a shoe in for the White House. Nobody would really be against Hillary Clinton staying in the race to this point and beyond if it hadn't been for the negativity, dirty tactics, race baiting, and intimating that John McCain might make a better president than Barack Obama. In fact, several months ago I thought it might be a good thing for them both to run until the convention. But the Clintons' win at all costs tactics are making me wish she'd go away. And making me feel about her pretty much the way Randi expressed. And Bill too. Nobody wants to say things like this. But when you play dirty, that's the way people start to feel. Nobody wants to say it and nobody should. And then again I thank god there's someone with the guts to say it.

In My Language: An Alternative View of Autism

2008-04-03T09:35:00.000-07:00

This is an amazing video. Made by a woman with severe autism, it questions the very foundations of the understanding of this "disease." In fact she questions whether it should be considered a disease at all. She is part of a group of autistic persons who question the standard diagnosis. They are aided by new communication technologies, new media and the internet, and it is doubtful whether, before these innovations were available, anyone would have had any clue that they were able to communicate intelligently (that is intelligently according to our interpretation) at all. Amanda would probably say, and I hesitate to put words in her mouth because she's fully capable of saying what she means, no one would have known she could communicate in our language or mode of communication.

She is at the center of a controversy over how intelligence should be measured in autistic persons, and in that way, possibly just what it means to be intelligent. An article in Wired magazine discusses the competing methodologies and theories for measuring intelligence in people with autism. I find two aspects of Amanda's story intriguing. First as mentioned briefly above, that this technology has made it possible for her to express something people like her have been unable to express. And as importantly that new media has become the vehicle for a nascent liberation movement among people like Amanda. A way for them to express the idea that their way of communicating and interacting with the world is as legitimate as ours and not an aberration to be cured.

Also I find intriguing an aspect that I have not yet seen discussed in relation to her in my half an hours worth of googling the topic, that is whether it has significance in regard to other modes of human perception. Whether you want to refer to those modes as mystic, altered states of consciousness, or alternative means of perception. Could it have any relationship to states of consciousness reported in mystics, medicine men, and shaman around the world? Could it have any significance in regard to psychedelic drug states? It is certainly another way of seeing the world. Autism may not have any relation to those states at all, and I may be talking out my keister here. But I think at least the question is a valid one and something to be explored. Perhaps. Maybe.

Anyway, Amanda has a "non-site" here, expressing her frustration with the number and types of inquiries she's been getting since she became famous. And she became famous via Youtube. She was also interviewed by Dr. Sanjay Gupta on CNN.

It Ain't Easy Being Green

2008-04-02T23:03:00.000-07:00

But it's easier than explaining the green collar economy when your interviewer is Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report. Van Jones tries to tell America how green collar jobs can save both the economy and the environment while Colbert points out that he's got a dome that's a solar cell for a love machine.

Black Men Can't Bowl - White Men Can't Dance

2008-04-02T20:11:00.000-07:00

Jon Stewart reinforces some of America's most ingrained stereotypes in this episode of The Daily Show with help from presidential candidate Barack Obama and current president George W. Bush. And it's all because your president can't dance but your candidate Barack and rolls. Ok, I'm sorry for that. Only people my age or older will get that anyway. A testament to the strength of stereotypes that even in someone so far from stereotypical, Barack Obama, we will strive to find at least one or two. Can play basketball, can't bowl.

But people, it's my job to shatter those stereotypes. I give you the example of my uncle Lorenzo, who is an excellent bowler. When I was a kid he had literally a hundred plus bowling trophies. I can't prove that. I don't have any video, but I'm sure there's a photo. Somewhere. But it's true. He lives in Chicago and he could give Barack a lesson or two. That was really sad.

Flying Penguins?

2008-04-02T17:48:00.000-07:00

Ok, it's the evening of April 2, and I swear this is the last April Fools hoax I will post. But this is a really good one from the BBC. Your first clue that it's a hoax, the narrator is Terry Jones from Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Wal-Mart Relents in Law Suit Against Disabled Worker

2008-04-02T12:24:00.000-07:00

This is a follow-up to this post. I'd like to give Wal-Mart credit. They deserve at least some. They didn't have to do this. But there's some things you shouldn't have to be forced to do. And when you are forced to do them, you could admit to being just a little bit of a jerk. In their case, a corporate bureaucracy of jerks. Not everyone in the company, but the ones making the important decisions. Nobody's perfect. Least of all me. I am, have been, and probably at some point in the future will be a jerk. I admit it. They should too.

Bush Library Looses Domain Name on the Internets

2008-04-02T10:33:00.000-07:00

You'd think a guy who regularly uses the google on the internets would be savvy enough to secure and renew his domain names. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to be the squatter sitting on their domain name. I can see an IRS audit possibly, an NSA phone tap, and maybe a free trip to Gitmo with waterboarding included in their future.

Gmail Custom Time

2008-04-02T09:30:00.000-07:00

Gmail's April Fools joke was pretty good. Didn't see it before I posted yesterday. In fact not until I was on Miller Time and too chill to post it. Also saw some on CNN from the BBC which were good. Flying penguins and a couple others. The Brit press has a tradition of printing hoaxes on April Fools day and they have some great ones. The spaghetti tree is a classic.

Bad! Bad! Big Oil!

2008-04-02T08:13:00.000-07:00

It's an election year and it's time once again for the congressional Big Oil Executives show. Congress hauls a group of big oil executives in front of them, yells at them, makes faces and wags their fingers at them. The executives leave and laugh all the way to the bank. The last show was two years ago, ironically also an election year. They were called before congress due to record prices and oil company mergers and what happened afterward? Two years later they are being called in again because of record profits and because they got 18 billion in tax breaks given to them by a Republican congress and they are giving the consumer no kind of break at all.

It puts me in mind of how, when cops are on the take from drug dealers, they have to occasionally bust somebody or it looks suspicious. So they bust a small fry, or do a big publicity raid and it looks like they're doing their jobs and trying to control drugs. It's all done with a wink and a nod and made into a big production for the media and the TV cameras, but in the end there are just as many drugs on the streets as before.

And this is what will continue to happen as oil companies make obscene profits as the rest of the country faces recession. While we're in a war as the Bush administration and Republicans like to remind us when they want us to make sacrifices, but not when it comes to making their fat cat buddies in the oil industry make equal sacrifices. It's really funny how the conservative mythology revolves around the self-sufficient, pull yourself up by your bootstraps philosophy when it comes to poor people, but the rich are gladly given tax breaks and bailouts.

John McCain is talking tough about what we shouldn't do for "bad actors" (is he talking about She Who Must Not Be Named?) in the current home mortgage crisis which is due to plunge us into the worst recession ever, if not depression. So while Bear Stearns and the rest of the banking industry gets bailed out, the people with the least to start with, and with families to support, get thrown out of their homes and onto the streets. How is that for Republican family values? He's still in favor of those tax breaks for the rich.

And even when these guys have something bad to say about a rich corporate abuser of the public trust, their major focus, their ire and their scorn is always reserved for the little guy who they see as the cause of all our ills. The people who got duped by subprime mortgage lenders, the undocumented worker, the victims of hurricane Katrina who had to find food and clothing the government didn't provide in a time of disaster and were then called looters. They have a blind spot when it comes people like the group of oil executives before congress now.

The last thing I have to say on the subject is amen, right on and you go boooyeee to the truckers who are protesting these obscene prices. The thing is, they really have no choice. As the gentleman said, they will be out of business in a few months if things continue to go they way they are. My cousin is a trucker and we talked just a couple weeks ago about everything I am seeing on the news now. How the gas prices are literally killing these guys. The rates they get paid don't go up as the price of fuel eats into the profits of independent truck drivers.

He's just gotten into the position where he is buying his own truck and working for himself. The real pull yourself up by your bootstraps story. That's what all these independent truckers are. So while congress plays wink and nod with fat cat oil

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executives and does absolutely nothing, these guys go out of business. What they should do is all get together by the thousands and blockade Washington DC. Just make a big ring around it so nothing goes in or out. The million trucker blockade of Washington. Then something might happen.

Michael Mukasey's Bull Pucky

2008-04-01T21:13:00.000-07:00

Did Rachel Maddow say bull pucky on air? Twice? I mean I know it's got to make your blood boil to hear the Bush administration blatantly use 9/11 to justify "shredding the constitution" with rationalizations that are either the most palpable lies imaginable, or a stupefying admission of guilt in the lead up to that tragedy. But to have to listen to language like this in explaining it. Rachel, clean it up.

When I Am King of the Fantasy Blogosphere

2008-04-01T18:30:00.000-07:00

First there was fantasy football, and now there's, fantasy investing. The site Updown.com launched in September last year. It gives anyone who wants to join one million dollars in fantasy cash and allows them to play the stock market online, measuring their success against the S&P 500. Anyone out performing the S&P can earn real cash. The idea puts me in mind of what Jerry Seinfeld said when he heard Kramer was attending a fantasy camp. Remarking that Kramer's whole life is a fantasy camp, he said, "People should plunk down two thousand dollars to live like him for a week: Do nothing, fall ass-backwards into money, mooch food off your neighbors, and have sex without dating! That's a fantasy camp!"

The stock market is in essence business gaming. Gaming is what we used to call gambling. The term gaming can also refer to computer gaming, which means playing actual computer games. And now you can play the real stock market online with fake money and win real money. Which in essence is computer gaming. Hope that wasn't too convoluted. The genius of the site is that it will make real money by harnessing the power of potentially millions of minds to create unbeatable investment advice. Glenn Reynold's Army of Davids applied to the financial world. The theory is, a million heads are better than any one expert's. They share part of the money they make as incentive for people to participate.

In sports progress has taken us from actually physically playing games, to watching other people playing games from the stands, to watching other people watch people playing games on our TV screens, to group fantasizing about playing games on computers. Makes you wonder if one day in the future will we'll evolve into disembodied brains in glass enclosures as depicted in futuristic science fiction movies.

If the trend continues, and it no doubt will, I can't wait for the day I won't actually have to write this blog, because I can make money creating a fantasy blog.

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I'll create a massively viral concept like Virtual People Love Us, or Stuff Imaginary People Like, and I'll rise to the top rank in a fantasy Technorati.com. I'll get a virtual book deal and I'll retire rich. Yes, one day all my dreams will come true. In a fantasy world.

April Fools!

2008-04-01T12:22:00.000-07:00

Instead of using April Fool's Day as an excuse to play juvenile tricks on you, I'm going to instead give you the complete history of the day. The result of my exhaustive research into the topic. In other words googling, watching some Youtube videos, and reading a Wikipedia article. Ok, I couldn't think of anything really good in time. Here's a couple excerpts from Wikipedia , which also includes a list of pranks daunting to the most dedicated of time wasters. It would be like work to read the whole list, which pretty much defeats the purpose of wasting time.

It does have one of my favorite public hoaxes, the Taco Liberty Bell. It also includes a couple of my favorite nerdy hoaxes including one that Alabama changed the value of Pi, and that a company called Signetics developed Write Only Memory. If you're not a nerd you may not get that last one. From Wikipedia.

Europe may have derived its April-fooling from the French. French and Dutch references from 1508 and 1539 respectively describe April Fools' Day jokes and the custom of making them on the first of April. France was one of the first nations to make January 1 officially New Year's Day (which was already celebrated by many), by decree of Charles IX. This was in 1564, even before the 1582 adoption of the Gregorian calendar (See Julian start of the year). Thus the New Year's gifts and visits of felicitation which had been the feature of 1 April became associated with the first day of January, and those who disliked or did not hear about the change were fair game for those wits who amused themselves by sending mock presents and paying calls of pretended ceremony on 1 April. In France the person fooled is known as poisson d'avril (April fish). This has been explained as arising from the fact that in April the sun quits the zodiacal sign of the fish. The French traditionally celebrated this holiday by placing dead fish on the backs of friends. Today, real fish have been replaced with sticky, fish-shaped paper cut-outs that children try to sneak onto the back of their friends' shirts. Candy shops and bakeries also offer fish-shaped sweets for the holiday.

Favorite hoaxes from Wikipedia:

Taco Liberty Bell: In 1996, Taco Bell took out a full-page advertisement in The New York Times announcing that they had purchased the Liberty Bell to "reduce the country's debt" and renamed it the "Taco Liberty Bell." When asked about the sale, White House press secretary Mike McCurry replied tongue-in-cheek that the Lincoln Memorial had also been sold and would henceforth be known as the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial.

Alabama Changes the Value of Pi: The April 1998 newsletter of New Mexicans for Science and Reason contained an article written by physicist Mark Boslough claiming that the Alabama Legislature had voted to change the value of the mathematical constant pi to the "Biblical value" of 3.0. This claim originally appeared as a news story in the 1961 science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein.

Write Only Memory: Signetics advertised Write Only Memory IC databooks in 1972 through the late 1970s.

Oh No He Did'N!

2008-03-31T14:48:00.000-07:00

Did Lou almost call a black woman, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice no less, a cotton picker? Lou Dobbs is trying to put the Daily Show, Saturday Night Live, and Colbert Report out of business by becoming his own satire of himself. Rendering them redundant. In the middle of bloviating about being afraid of addressing the issue of race because you may be accused of saying something insensitive, he almost said something insensitive.

And I used to think Olbermann was only half serious when he called people like Rush Limbaugh and his ilk comedians. And whether they write this stuff themselves, or it's improv, if they are doing this for laughs then it is absolute comic genius. Found this posted on Daily Kos. And one of he comedians there, Deoliver47 posted the video below in the comments. Interesting mash up if you play them both at the same time.

Happy Cesar Chavez Day

2008-03-31T12:55:00.000-07:00

Video description from Youtube:

Cesar Chavez Day: United Farm Workers Co-Founder Dolores Huerta Reflects on the Life and Legacy of the Legendary Labor Activist

"Cesar Estrada Chavez, legendary labor activist, civil rights leader, and founder of the first successful farm workers union would have been 81 years old today. Events are planned across the country to honor his life and legacy. Thousands marched in his memory over the weekend and nine states recognize March 31st as an official holiday. We speak with Dolores Huerta."

http://www.democracynow.org

More at Democracy Now.

Stuff Black People Hate

2008-03-31T11:08:00.000-07:00

At first it may seem derivative of Stuff White People Like (SWPL). The concept certainly is. Frankly, the author, in his own words, does not give a sh*t. Before you dismiss Stuff Black People Hate (SBPH), expecting a clone of other sites of its ilk, check it out. The site is smart, funny, much angrier and a lot less politically correct than SWPL. This post is not in any way an attempt to give black people equal time. A friend forwarded it to me after I posted SWPL and I read it and it was damn funny. So now I'm posting it. That's my criterion period. Not white, black, yellow, brown, green or purple, just funny. Examples of SBPH:

Clubbing - The Bouncer: a bouncer is a large man whose life is utterly meaningless between Sunday and Thursday. But for two glorious nights, this meat popsicle holds the keys to your very soul. He controls your ability to enter the club, and he can ‘bounce’ you out of the club at any time and for virtually any reason. He feels cool because he gets to wear one of those little earpieces like Secret Service agents. If he wants to impress a girl by looking important, he’ll put his finger up to his ear and assume a concerned facial expression so it looks like he’s receiving critical information from a very important person - e.g. “drunk chick vomiting in the third floor bathroom, please respond” from the busboy with questionable immigration status.

Europe - Here are some of the things that suck, with teeth and dry tongue, about various European countries:

1. Spain: pickpockets, pickpockets, and more pickpockets.
2. France: Socialism. Ew.
3. England: bad teeth, bad food, and the constant threat of rain. And Hugh Grant
4. Czech Republic: they will throw you out a window, and they will not give a fuck
5. Portugal: a country full of dudes whining about their lost empire
6. Italy: the mob is their fault
7. Germany: Too easy.
8. Netherlands: for some reason, the Dutch have declared war on Islam

Abraham Lincoln - I’ve met a lot of white people who get pissed off when blacks seem ‘ungrateful’ for the things some of them have done for us. Now, these white people know they can blame Abraham Lincoln. It’s not that we don’t appreciate the things you do, it’s that we don’t trust you. It’s the same sentiment that a girl in a bar has toward a guy that buys her a drink. She appreciates the drink, but she’s pretty sure that his sneaky ass is up to something (and he almost always is).

Spelling and Grammatical Errors - You’d think that when debating some topic, the first thing you’d do in response to getting someone else’s opinion is to examine it for logical errors, invalid assumptions, lies, disingenuous or misleading statements, and other things that actually matter.

This is not the process we black people follow.

Instead, we will read your argument carefully - but the first time we go through it, all we’re doing is looking for is mistakes in your writing. We’re looking for spelling errors, dangling prepositions, sentence fragments, improper semicolon use, and other things that are extremely relevant to your argument. We don’t care that, after observing chimps in the wild for 30 years, you’ve discovered that some have learned to cultivate their own food: you spelled banana ‘bannana’ in your research paper, and therefore, you are only slightly more intelligent than the very creatures you study.

The last one is me at a much younger age. After years

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of working with and around nerds, you learn that intelligence can't be measured purely in language skills, if at all. Though in some cases, such as a certain current president of the United States who shall remain nameless, it can be an indicator.

Al Gore Saves the Planet!

2008-03-31T03:01:00.000-07:00

He's on a renewed campaign to save the planet. The Democratic Party, however, is on it's own. At least for now. Big Al has bigger fish to fry. In this interview with Leslie Stahl on CBS's 60 Minutes, Al, for the 100th time tells the media he's through with politics, and doesn't see himself running for President again. He's still an uncommitted superdelegate and won't say who he's for in the Democratic Primary. More importantly, he and Tipper have donated all the profits from An Inconvenient Truth and his Nobel Peace Prize toward an advertising campaign to stress the importance of doing something now about Global Warming.

If you listen carefully, it's an almost political answer when asked to confirm what one of his lawyers said about the Supreme Court's Decision regarding the 2000 election. He says "it doesn't feel right" to ascribe political motives to the five judges in the majority. I leave you to draw your own conclusion. One of the best quotes of the interview, he chuckles when Stahl tells him that one of the people who don't believe humans are the cause of global warming is the current Vice-President. He asks, "Dick Cheney?" And then goes on to say:

"I think that those people are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view. They’re almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the earth is flat. That demeans them a little bit, but it’s not that far off."

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I'm glad he's saving the planet, but it's too bad we don't have an Al Gore helping to save the Democratic Party from itself. Maybe things will work out and he won't be needed, and that's a good thing because he's busy.

Bill Maher: Hillary Clinton, Get Elected or Lie Trying

2008-03-30T15:12:00.000-07:00

Gotta love Bill. And HBO for having him on and not firing him for what he says the way ABC did. The Hillary comments are just plan harsh, but really funny and true.

Bad Moon Rising: The King of America

2008-03-30T08:41:00.000-07:00

Beyond the pure insanity of a nutty cult leader having the influence that Reverend Moon has, there are so many things so very wrong here I hardly know where to begin. But I'll force myself to start with what's been in the news recently. And I'll do it briefly because, as I've said before, this topic has been discussed to death in the corporate media. And now that I think about it, it's not that it's been discussed so much, but how it's been discussed, as an endless 20 second loop, that's the problem.

If you go back as far as I do, ask yourself when the last time was, or if you don't go back that far, ask yourself if you've ever, heard the Reverend Sun Myung Moon mentioned in the corporate media. I go back far enough to remember the John Belushi skit from the documentary when it first aired on Saturday Night Live. While Reverend Wright sound bites play on and endless loop in the corporate media, a man who has more political influence and is more dangerous than all the religious nut cases you can name combined, and I don't include Wright in that group, is rarely, if ever brought up. In fact, he's only been mentioned recently in the blogosphere from what I've seen, and I watch a lot of CNN and MSNBC. And while that might not be exhaustive coverage of what the media is reporting, googling his name for news stories on him finds only a handful. One by AlterNet, none by major media outlets.

It took a blogger to break the story of his "coronation" by congressmen in a federal building and 3 months for the corporate media to catch up. And that's the other part of this story. It's why what we have right here is so important. Without it all we would have are the sensationalist stories deemed worthy of the attention by the corporate media. The same nonsense, every day, over and over again until we are sick of it. Sandwiched between stories of She Who Must Not be Named (SWMNBN) and Britney freaking Spears.

While a multi-billionaire with the not at all secret goal of undermining democracy and Christianity, buys major influence in the party of the Christian Right and with an ex-president, the media is fixated on the racially incendiary and sensational. These are the kinds of stories and the people who expose them are the people who will have little if any exposure if net neutrality is not protected. And if giant media conglomerates are allowed to continue gobble up local and smaller media outlets as they have been by the FCC. The chances that we will know that the Reverend Sun Myung Moons of the world exist, and that we will be able to force the corporate media to cover them, will be almost nil.

The mainstream media don't deserve even courtesy of the "corporate" qualifier on their name. It gives them too much credit. They should be called, and I'll have to make an exception and name she who must not be named, the Paris Hilton Media, or the Britney Spears Media. Because it characterizes, if not all the content they cover, the style of their coverage, which is anything that can be sensationalized. When they aren't protesting that they hate the fact that they have to cover the latest Britney drama, and they wish they didn't, they are putting a dramatic spin on anything else they cover. Because their goal is to sell soap, and by soap I mean anything that advertisers will pay them to sell. And it's not the selling of soap, but that it is more important to them than informing the public, that makes them no different than a soap opera. Just because they call it news, doesn't make it so.

Yet another aspect of the documentary which touches on recent "news" is the origin of stories, complete propaganda or otherwise totally false, that start with the Moon owned Washington Post and move from there straight into the mouths of Fox News and other right-wing pundits. From there into the Paris Hilton Media (PHM) or if they are don't meet the low standards of credibility to make it that far, they end up as email forwards that at least 10% to 15% of Americans actually believe.

That is why it is important now, essential in fact, that people spread this story. Spread this documentary. That they force it into the PHM. So that we are seeing endless loops of Bush 41 endorsing the Washington Times and that people know that it is owned by Moon. People need to Digg stories about it to the front page of Digg.com, if not this one then the video itself.

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They should forward it to their friends and send links to it to the PHM. Reverend Wright and the preachers who've endorsed John McCain have been held up to much public scrutiny yet are harmless in comparison to Reverend Moon. Moon is actually dangerous and people should know who he is and the power he wields.

Net Neutrality's Quiet Crusader

2008-03-29T07:38:00.000-07:00

There's an article in the Washington Post about Free Press' Ben Scott. Scott is described as "a driving force for 'net neutrality,' a concept that in policy terms has come to mean enforcement of open access online, so cable and telecom operators cannot block or delay content that travels over their networks." Free Press sent out a newsletter yesterday to let people know about the article, and also to tell us how hard it is for an organization that fights for our rights against corporate media, to get this kind of exposure on the front page of the business section of the Washington Post.

So check it out and learn something about the unlikely people who fight to keep the internet open and accessible to everyone equally. And who also fight against media consolidation that squeezes out diversity and competition, so that individuals, small organizations and small companies have access to media that is not filtered or censored by large corporations. The video gives a pretty good synopsis of why net neutrality is important. Monopolistic phone companies, without regulation, would have prevented the internet from happening. If they weren't regulated after the internet started, companies like Google, Facebook and Myspace would never have gotten off the ground. Now we need to continue those protections to make it possible for the next Google or Myspace to develop. Giant corporations like Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon, stifle innovation and competition that benefits all of us, in order to keep more profit for themselves.

Stuff White People Like

2008-03-28T14:47:00.000-07:00

First there was Black People Love Us!, then Rent-a-Negro, and now there is Stuff White People Like. Viral blogs satirizing political correctness/incorrectness. And it's hilarious. My son forwarded the link to me and I've only read a few posts so far, but it is really funny and I will be a regular reader. Stuff White People Like says this about San Francisco.

The City of San Francisco has a very multicultural population that ranges from white to gay to Asian. Within white culture this known as “ideal diversity” for its provision of exotic restaurants while simultaneously preserving property values.

It has a regular feature, White People in the News, where readers email in news stories with stuff white people like in them. Like this one.

By Michelle Quinn
The Los Angeles, Times, March 22, 2008

“Wil Shipley, a Seattle software developer, uses his iPhone at the Whole Foods fish counter to check websites for updates on which seafood is the most environmentally correct to purchase. He quizzes the staff on where and how a fish was caught. Because he carries the Internet with him, “I can be super-picky,” he said.”

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Sent in by Stephen, an English grad student living in Florida, who likes the British site BeThinking.

They get a shout out and a link to their blog for their troubles. And congratulations to blogger Christian Lander, because he just landed a book deal. There is one thing I find disturbing about the blog, there's a list of 92 things white people like and there's a lot of things I like on the list.

coffee
microbreweries
hating corporations
religions their parents don't belong to
wine
St. Patrick's Day
organic foods
San Francisco
Barack Obama....

The list goes on. I'm not sure what it means, but I'm concerned.

Battle of the Party Religious Nut Cases

2008-03-28T06:16:00.000-07:00

Personally, I think the GOP is winning, thank god (pun intended). But then I may be biased. As I've said here before, I'm not one for quoting scripture. But there is one that is o-so apropos.

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?
Matthew 7:3
New International Version

The Republicans, Ok, let's be fair, the Fox News wing of the party started this spitting match. But to me, again, a partial observer, they have a lot more to loose in a head to head comparison of just who has the kookiest religious support. I have said before, this is an aside from the real issues that we should be addressing in this campaign. One is literally blowing up before our eyes as we speak. The surge that was working about a week ago, now isn't.

And there are stories like this one, about a wave of murders, 20 so far, in one of our largest urban areas among African American students. A story which isn't even on the radar this political season for two obvious reasons. Guns and race. You see if you start talking about things like this then Obama supporters will whisper that you are talking about things that will hurt his chances in the fall. If you mention gun control or focus too much on race, we'll lose the red states. So forget I mentioned it. We'll talk again in November.

Now I am not so sure, after the revelations previewed in the new book Bad Moon Rising, by Author John Gorenfeld, that this story is not just as important as some of the others I just mentioned above. And all of this stuff isn't new. There's a post on Daily Kos in which this quote is excerpted from the book:

...the [Unification] church has established a network of affiliated organizations and connections in almost every conservative organization in Washington, including the Heritage Foundation, the largest of the conservative think tanks and an important source of government personnel during the Reagan administration... "Most people are afraid to address the issue because they don't want to publicize the extent of the church's involvement," says Amy Moritz of the Conservative National Center for Public Policy Research. (Source -- U.S. News & World Report, 3/27/89)

This is about a religious cult that has infiltrated a major political party in our country. One that owns a major influential conservative newspaper. And one with the "oft stated goal of destroying both Christianity and representative government." The comments in the Daily Kos post are informative as well.

Moon is a multi-billionaire who pays millions to W's daddy to speak at Unification Church events as well as other Bush family members. His influence reaches far into the Republican Party and conservative movement. The video below is of Moon in the Dirksen Federal building being crowned King of Peace by two congressmen. One of them Democrat Danny Davis of Illinois??? To me Moon is far scarier than the words of Reverend Wright because he is truly

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dangerous to our entire way of life. But then this kind of thing is emotionally driven for a lot of people and as much as I hate to bring it back to race, video of a shouting black man is a lot more dramatic and scary to a certain segment of the American people. Maybe I should let you draw your own conclusions.

Wal-Mart Seeks Worst Public Image Ever

2008-03-27T18:34:00.000-07:00

Wal-Mart made Keith's Worst Persons list again today, that clip is not yet available. This one's from yesterday. Keith is threatening to put them on the list every day until they relent. The clip below is a little fairer to Wal-Mart and gives their side of the story, such as it is. I can't see much good coming out of this for them no matter how they spin it unless they decide to change their minds. They'll get more than $400k worth of ill-will and bad PR from this move. And it isn't as if they didn't already have some PR problems to start with. Makes you wonder what goes on in the legal departments and board rooms of companies like this. Are there people there who are like cartoon evil villains? Scrooge, the Grinch and Cruella De Vil all wrapped into one. Or are they that disconnected from the public perception of their companies? It's hard to fathom how they rationalize this to themselves. One more reason to hate them and a good reason not to buy anything from them.

Breaking News: Siegelman Free Pending Appeal

2008-03-27T18:04:00.000-07:00

Dan Abrams of MSNBC and Crooks and Liars are reporting that former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman will be freed tomorrow pending appeal. The initial 60 Minutes story is here. An indication that the judge in the case believes there were some irregularities in the bribery case that landed the governor in jail. Those irregularities point squarely in the direction of Karl Rove and the US Attorneys scandal. The scandal involves the politicization of the US Attorney General's office and lead to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The Politico is calling it a victory for the blogosphere.

Tables Turned on Hannity: Association with Neo-Nazi Exposed

2008-03-27T10:35:00.000-07:00

I just watched about as much of Sean Hannity and I can stomach in one sitting. In fact I'd be glad never to have to watch another minute. Except that the Fox News commentator and host of Hannity & Colmes, has been one the most vocal stirrers of controversy over Barack Obama's association with Reverend Jeremiah Wright. From what I read, and I don't watch so I admit I wouldn't know, the Wright video clips have essentially run on a constant loop on Hannity's show. In an interview recently he was called out by Malik Shabazz of the New Black Panther Party for his own past association with known Neo-Nazi Hal Turner.

I hate to give too much focus to this stuff here. I think it is a distraction and takes attention away from much more important issues like the war, the economy, health care, Darfur, and many others. Almost every other issue is more important than this stuff. Unfortunately it's the stuff that gets the most attention. I've posted quite a bit Wright stuff lately and I need to balance it out. I'm not going to post the Hannity video, because it focuses on too much that is negative in my opinion and frankly I think this stuff only hurts Barack Obama's campaign. But I couldn't resist posting because Hannity gets bitten by his own guilt by association rhetoric. The video is here if you can stomach it. There's a post at HuffPo with more links. And there's the complete story of Hannity's Soul-Mate of Hate Neo-Nazi Hal Turner at the Nation.

PBS' Frontline: Bush's War

2008-03-27T09:00:00.000-07:00

This PBS Frontline special aired on March 24 and 25. So why am I telling you now? I may be a day late and a dollar short, but through the magic of the Internets, or when it's rerun, the magic of DVR technology, you can see it anytime. It's available anytime online here. Here's the video description from Youtube:

Watch FRONTLINE Bush's War online right now at http://www.pbs.org/frontline/bushswar/

On the 5th anniversary of the Iraq invasion, FRONTLINE presents the definitive documentary analysis of "Bush's War" http://www.pbs.org/frontline/bushswar/

From the horror of 9/11 to the invasion of Iraq; the truth about WMD to the rise of an insurgency; the scandal of Abu Ghraib to the strategy of the surge—for six years, FRONTLINE has revealed the defining stories of the war on terror in meticulous detail, and the political dramas that played out at the highest levels of power and influence.

Now, on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, the full saga unfolds in the two-part FRONTLINE special Bush's War, airing Monday, March 24, from 9 to 11:30 P.M. and Tuesday, March 25, 2008, from 9 to 11 P.M. ET on PBS (check local listings). Veteran producer Michael Kirk ("The Torture Question," "The Dark Side") draws on one of the richest archives in broadcast journalism—more than 40 FRONTLINE reports on the war on terror. Combined with fresh reporting and new interviews, "Bush's War" will be the definitive documentary analysis of one of the most challenging periods in the nation's history.

Following the broadcast: a new TV/Web experience. View the entire "Bush's War" online, integrated with more than 100 video clips of key moments since 9/11, drawn from FRONTLINE's robust online video archive and integrated into a master annotated chronology of the war.

I wish they'd make the whole video available on Youtube, but they only post previews there. It would be nice to be able to embed them here and I think it would increase their exposure. They don't possibly because they want you to visit their site. I think people still would if they could watch the videos on blogs and other sites. I think it would increase their visibility not decrease it. But so far, they don't.

In any case it's an important documentary of one of the most important issues of this election year. Focus on the war is being lost to the economy, except that the war is a major factor in the coming economic recession. And focus is being lost to the nastiness of the Democratic Primary, which is theater and not really important at all. This may be a good time to refocus on it especially in view of John McCain's plans to keep our troops there for 100 years and the drumbeat for war in Iran. And especially today when it looks like the surge strategy that was "working" is threatening to unravel. It looks as if all hell is about to break loose and it won't be good.

NCMR 2008: Media Reform Starts Here

2008-03-27T02:47:00.000-07:00

Video description from Youtube.

The next National Conference for Media Reform will be held in Minneapolis, June 6--8, 2008. Join fellow activists, media makers, educators, journalists, policymakers and concerned citizens in calling for real and lasting changes to our nation's media system.

One of the ways we can help change corporate media, and create and grow new media that informs and empowers us. The Wright controversy is a perfect example of why this kind of reform is needed. More info on the conference at freepress.net.

Bill Moyers Journal: Body of War

2008-03-27T02:05:00.000-07:00

Video description from Youtube:

Bill Moyers interviews former talk show host Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro on the true cost of war and their documentary, Body of War, depicting the moving story of one veteran dealing with the aftermath of war.

With extensive excerpts from the film, the filmmakers talk about Iraq war veteran Tomas Young, who was shot and paralyzed less than a week into his tour of duty. Three years in the making, Body of War tells the poignant tale of the young man's journey from joining the service after 9/11 to fight in Afghanistan, to living with devastating wounds after being deployed to Iraq instead.

The complete Bill Moyers Journal program can be seen on the PBS site. Beyond this young man's both painful and uplifting story, it is an apt story for this election year. The footage of the Bush administration and congress sounding the drumbeat for war in Iraq, and the Republican talking points are going to sound eerily familiar. You could almost loop Iran and Ahmadinejad into the sound in place of Iraq and Saddam and apart from a few younger looking faces, you'd have news footage that could pass for something taped very recently. Especially for one presidential candidate. For another a short clip she'd rather not be reminded of.

Update: What Press Won't Show that Wright Said

2008-03-27T01:37:00.000-07:00

I also posted on Daily Kos and got some comments there about Wright's quoting from, or paraphrasing of, Ambassador Ed Peck. No one has been able to find the actual appearance on Fox that Reverend Wright claims to quote. So there is some dispute that as to whether the words are actually Peck's. I still feel that the sound bite does not reflect Wright's intended meaning. It doesn't come close. The most salient comment I got there was this one:

Simple answer: the truth doesn't sell ads.
Scandal does. Plus, a 5 second sound-bite is easier to put on air than 5 minutes of a sermon.

by skrekk on Wed Mar 26, 2008 at 05:40:23 PM PDT

Sound bite journalism doesn't serve the public at all. It gives us half truths and stirs up controversy that does not help us solve problems. In fact it creates problems. This kind of journalism serves the corporate media, whose motivation is profit, not truth. It creates controversy and spectacle that they can use to draw our attention and while we're there, try to sell us something. Not that selling something in and of itself is bad. We have ads here. But when it comes at the expense of truth and when spectacle is disguised as news in order to do so, it is a corruption of the purpose of the media.

I think corporate media is a more appropriate name for the MSM precisely for those reasons. It's a more accurate reflection of their real purpose and the reason they often fail to serve the public good they purport to serve.

-Fight the powers.

The Colbert Report: The Word - The Gospel of John

2008-03-26T16:34:00.000-07:00

Colbert skillfully draws parallels between the recent Obama religious controversy and John McCain's ties to right-wing religious nut cases Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.

Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Obama's Wright Response

2008-03-26T15:57:00.000-07:00

What the Press Won't Show You That Reverend Wright Said

2008-03-26T09:44:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone when I'm watching TV and I see the media version of what's happening in the world and I see a completely contradictory version of it somewhere else. Or, metaphorically, like Charlton Heston must have felt at the end of the movie Soylent Green when he finally realizes that soylent green is made from people. It's not that I trust the media so unquestioningly that I can't wrap my brain around the fact that their version of what is real is so far from what actually is real, but that I just can't believe that it would be possible to have any remaining shred of credibility or status among the people of this country if you got something so absolutely, incredible wrong so many times. Even if you give people very little credit for paying attention to or caring about what's going on. Or even if you think they are not very smart. It still doesn't make sense.

Just how is it possible that you keep your status as the supposed watchdogs of government, and reliable sources of information from around the world? How can you not be laughed at when you call yourselves, The Most Trusted Name in News, or The Place for Politics, or the best political team on television, or whatever else the various marketing departments dream up for their news organizations? When I watch the in context versions of the sermons of Reverend Jeremiah Wright and contrast them to the endless loops we've been seeing on the networks and cable TV news shows for weeks, they leave me with two views of supposed reality that just do not jibe.

Last night I heard commentators on CNN and MSNBC still speaking as if they had no idea that the loop they play of Wrights comments on 9/11 are in fact a quotation and not his own words. That to me seems like a relevant fact. Even the people I trust to tell me much more of the truth than the the networks generally do, people like Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, are repeating the same mainstream media narrative. And if we extend the conversation to what's happening in the blogosphere, I have not heard Arianna Huffington (though I'm behind reading her posts) put this into perspective. Arguably one of, if not the biggest story of recent weeks, and only one show in the mainstream media has taken the time to actually listen to one of Wrights full sermons and put what was said in perspective. It was CNN's Rich Sanchez and he did a very poor job of it. He continually tried to move the focus back to the prevailing mainstream media narrative of Wright and Trinity United as wild-eyed angry black militants that should scare the crap out of the average American.

This story could have potentially derailed the chances of the only viable African-American candidate for president, ever. Yet no one who calls themselves a journalist took any time to look beyond the surface of 10 and 20 second sound bites. It took Trinity United itself to start their own Youtube channel and blog to start to get the truth out to people. And one of the great ironies of the whole story is that it may bring the church more serious attention than it would have ever gotten even if Obama does become president. I am not a religious person at all and that is not the relevant part of the story to me, but it is interesting.

One personal, but relevant irony for me is that I found the story in context by going to Wikipedia. Yes, Wikipedia, the icon for unreliable information in the mainstream media was where I found that the media was still not correctly attributing the statements made by Wright on 9/11. That they had still not said that Wright was "[Paraphrasing] Edward Peck, former U.S. Chief of Mission in Iraq, former deputy director of the White House Task Force on Terrorism under the Reagan Administration and former U.S. Ambassador to a number of countries." Wikipedia was my source for accurate information that the mainstream press had gotten wrong over and over again.

And to me that is the real story here. That through this very medium, through new new media, the people, both those misrepresented directly and those to whom the truth was misrepresented, have redress. From the editors of Wikipedia who have no motivation except to provide reliable information to people for free. Yes it is vulnerable to corruption, but it is self correcting and those who call it unreliable are no more reliable. And from the people at Trinity United who are just like you and me. Who saw their pastor misrepresented in the media and decided to become their own media and put their own story out so that people could make up their minds based on more than 20 seconds of sound out of entire career.

The career of a man who was a US Marine and served in the US Navy as a hospital Corpsman and who has a commendation from same for treating President Lyndon Johnson when he was hospitalized. The career of a man who traveled to Libya as part of an contingent which included Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan to free United States Navy pilot Lt. Robert Goodman, whose fighter jet had been shot down over Lebanon. And to bring that soldier held prisoner by a terrorist back home to America. I got that from Wikipedia too.

Maybe it is not that the people don't care, or pay attention when our news and view of the world is reduced to the 20 second sound bite, or that they aren't smart enough to understand it when it's not, but that they felt little power to do anything about it. Through new media they are starting to take back that power and the mainstream media should be paying attention. We the people are not only the government, we are the media too.

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Please take the time to comment on this post, whether you agree or disagree. And please take time to pass it on to people who may not have seen Reverend Wright's comments in context. And finally, take time to write the mainstream media, whoever you get your news from and let them know that you are paying attention.

See update here.

-Fight the powers.

Carnival of the Liberals: Call for Submissions

2008-03-25T11:03:00.000-07:00

I guess I should issue a call for submissions seeing as I already have one and I intended to ask for posts around a theme. I wasn't really finished formulating that theme, but I thought I'd better blast something out before more stuff comes in. First, thanks Carol, points for being first. If you've looked at my blog you can see that most posts are accompanied by supporting videos. At first they were mostly from Youtube. Now TV shows, broadcast and cable news, and even movies can be embedded legally on blogs.

In making this post, I'm thinking about why I almost always include video. Maybe it's because I'm too lazy to write all the details. Maybe it's because most people are too lazy to read. Though I can't support it with facts, I think video is more viral than text alone. But I think I can rationalize it better than that. Obviously I enjoy reading and writing or I'd have a vlog and not a blog. This is kind of a hybrid of the two.

I honestly believe there is something extremely powerful about our ability to create our own media and share it around the entire planet in the way the Internet makes possible today. It's a truism that it's changed and is constantly changing our world. From the Abu Ghraib scandal that would never have had the impact it did on our perception of the Iraq war if it weren't for the ability to share those pictures instantly around the planet and to comment on them, through the guy who got tazed at the John Kerry rally who made, "Don't taze me bro!" a catch phrase, to the clips of Barack Obama's former pastor that had the potential to derail the candidacy of an almost certain presidential nominee, we are seeing the impact new media has on our perceptions and our world.

In the case of the latter we are seeing Trinity United Church of Christ answer the media storm created by Reverend Wright by creating it's own Youtube channel and putting out videos with Wright's statements in full context. A topic I plan to post on shortly. It's shocking the difference context makes and more shocking that no one in the MSM made any effort to do so. But it demonstrates the power we have to be our own media. It increases the impact even a single individual can have on the world. To be in effect a revolution of one.

New media has completely changed this year's presidential primary and I believe has made it possible for a new kind of candidate, one who may never have had a chance before, to emerge as the almost certain Democratic nominee. In the video above from a year ago Joe Trippi, the strategist and Internet guru who put together John Dean's surprising rise to leader of the Democratic pack in 2004, talks about the possibilities for this year's race.

So finally, I'd like to ask for submissions that either include, or are on the topic of new media, with special emphasis on video. I'll leave it as broad as possible, but topics could include anything from how new media has affected this years presidential campaign, or the war in Iraq, to citizen journalism around the world. As long as it somehow involves new media in some way. I appreciate this opportunity to host Carnival of the Liberals and I look forward to your submissions.

-Fight the powers.

Pilot Barney Fife: Gun Discharges on Airbus

2008-03-24T14:40:00.000-07:00

DENVER -- Federal authorities are investigating how a pilot's gun accidentally discharged in the cockpit on a US Airways flight from Denver to Charlotte, N.C.

From CNN. Feel safer now with armed pilots on airplanes?

Clinton's Own Fairy Tale: Politico Reports on the Clinton Myth

2008-03-23T06:15:00.000-07:00

Friday Politico.com reported on the myth being perpetuated by the Clinton campaign and the media that she still has a chance at all in this race. Remember back in the South Carolina primary when the press was reporting, mistakenly, that Bill Clinton said Barack Obama's candidacy was a "fairy tale." He may have been misquoted then, but now the same thing could truthfully be said about his wife's candidacy. The Politico article goes on to delve into the reason the Clintons, obviously, and the media continue to spread the narrative that this is still a close race and that Clinton still has a chance.

The article sums up her real chances thusly:

Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency.

Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote — which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle — and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else.

People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet.

As it happens, many people inside Clinton’s campaign live right here on Earth. One important Clinton adviser estimated to Politico privately that she has no more than a 10 percent chance of winning her race against Barack Obama, an appraisal that was echoed by other operatives.

But what is really telling is their analysis of the reasons the MSM want to keep this race on life support.

The Truth About the Surge

2008-03-23T05:45:00.000-07:00

The truth behind the surge strategy in Iraq. Why it appears to be working now and why that peace is fragile. From TheRealNews.com.

O'Reilly's Ambush of Huffington and Olbermann's Response

2008-03-22T11:42:00.000-07:00

I have to say what irks me most in the video above is that Arianna runs from this clown as if she actually has a reason not to talk to him. Making it look to all who swallow O'Reilly's nonsense whole that she is what's being portrayed.

Though Arianna Huffington is in no need of a knight in shining armor to come to her rescue, she's tough enough to rescue her own share of knights, Keith Olberman sure looks like one in the video below.

Fox News Chris Wallace Criticizes Obama Bashing

2008-03-22T11:07:00.000-07:00

Two Fox employees finally wake up and realize who they are working for. Amen to both Chris Wallace and Brian Kilmeade. I have to admit that I would never know what happens on Fox & Friends except through clips like these. I could not stomach watching myself.

Rolling Rock Shoots Logo on Moon with Giant Laser

2008-03-22T09:49:00.000-07:00

As corporately evil as it may sound, it is actually possible though technically challenging to beam a company logo on the moon that would be visible on earth. Anheuser Busch, taking advantage of our willingness to view them as so crass as to actually do something so utterly insulting to the sensibilities of every inhabitant of earth, has created an ad campaign around the idea. By posting on the topic I realize I'm being sucked in by their advertising ploy. However I'd like to take this as an opportunity to state the Inverse Law of Beer Quality. The law goes as follows.

The quality of any beer is inversely proportional to the coolness factor of any advertising for that beer.

That is to say by example if beer company X makes an ad for beer Y and the ad is way super cool, the law states that the quality of beer Y is super crappy. Without mentioning names or dogging any particular brand, let me say that there are several beer companies out there whose advertising is clever and entertaining, occasionally rising to the level of true art. But when it comes to their beer, I'd rather drink an entire pitcher of warm piss.

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I leave you to draw your own conclusions about the Rolling Rock ad campaign featured at Moonvertising.com, where you can leave your own message on the moon. I think it takes a day or so for your message to show up. I challenge you to find mine.

Video: Richardson's Endorsement of Obama

2008-03-21T11:57:00.000-07:00

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Video from MSNBC of Governor Richardson's endorsement of Barack Obama.

Why the US Sees Iran as a Threat

2008-03-21T11:05:00.000-07:00

Real and plausible strategic reasons the Bush administration keeps up the drumbeat for conflict with Iran. As opposed to the neo-con, chickenhawk, politics of fear reasons put forth for the benefit of American public. Not terrorism or WMD. In this video Aijaz Ahmad explores the geopolitical and global economic reasons the US views Iran as a threat. In particular the relationship between dollars and oil and how Iran threatens that relationship.

The video below was posted as a video response to the one above on Youtube and tells us why we should be concerned that military action against Iran may be imminent. Some very good analysis of the situation in Iraq as well.

Spitzer in Sex Addict Therapy: The Modern Confessional

2008-03-21T08:19:00.000-07:00

The Huffington Post has a link to a NY Post story about Eliot Spitzer going into therapy to explore the possibility that he has a sexual addiction. To be honest, I didn't read most of it. Not that I don't feel Eliot's pain. But it's his own private problem, or should be, and personally I've go schtuff to do. OK? It's become the standard reflex of those in the public eye who get their proverbial teat caught in the ringer to issue a statement that they are in therapy and working through their problems. You have to wonder if this is the modern replacement for the confessional. A way to publicly seek absolution for their sins. I could go down a representative list of public figures who screwed up and went into therapy, but I will save us both time because we know who they are and we both have schtuff to do. Ok?

Basically what most of them got caught doing was being human, and doing the kinds of things, not all, but a lot of us would do if we had their money, power and popularity. If we had access to all the luxuries and had to deal with all the stresses and temptations they do, and could get away with what they normally get away with. In the old days they'd probably have gone to a minister or a priest, made a confession, been seen in church regularly, and over time people would get the idea that they had mended their evil ways. Or got smarter and sneakier about hiding what they do.

In the modern age the high priest has been replaced with Dr. Phil. Not everything modern is progress. In Spitzer's case I honestly think the line between old horny guy with enough money

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to buy high priced poon, and sex addict, is a thin one. I have a simple one word definition for sex addict: Guy. It's about as accurate as any clinical definition. But, I haven't done any double-blind studies. In this case those could turn out to be kinda kinky. But what do I know, I'm just a guy.

Governor Bill Richardson Endorses Obama

2008-03-21T05:54:00.000-07:00

New Mexico's Governor Bill Richardson is endorsing Barack Obama for president. From Huffington Post:

"I believe he is the kind of once-in-a-lifetime leader that can bring our nation together and restore America's moral leadership in the world," Richardson said in a statement obtained by the AP. "As a presidential candidate, I know full well Sen. Obama's unique moral ability to inspire the American people to confront our urgent challenges at home and abroad in a spirit of bipartisanship and reconciliation."

Richardson, the nation's only Latino governor is endorsing Obama despite his ties to the Clinton's. He was ambassador to the U.N. and secretary of the Energy Department during the Clinton administration. Richardson will speak at an Obama campaign event today in Portland, Oregon.

Barack Obama's Passport File Breached Illegally

2008-03-20T17:10:00.000-07:00

MSNBC is reporting that two state department contract employees were fired today for accessing the passport file of Barack Obama without a need to. The unwarranted access took place in January of 2008 and tripped a automatic system that notifies supervisors that the file was access. Files are automatically checked, according to the report, to be certain that the access is for a legitimate purpose. The two employees were working for the Bureau of Consular Affairs.

The Obama campaign has demanded to know who access the files and for what purpose and why the access was not reported until now. A similar breach was reported of unwarranted access to Bill Clinton's passport in 1991 when the current president Bush's father was president.

Update:
A third employee is being reported as having been disciplined for the breach in security.

Update:
Keith Olbermann is now reporting the access was made on three separate occasions. The accesses were out of "curiosity". There is no indication that information was used in any way. The passport was accessed on January 9, February 21. The individuals who access it were fired. And again it was accessed on March 14 and that individual was disciplined.

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Andrea Mitchell is suggesting that there should have been some kind of investigation into the access of the passport. That there should not have been any attribution of the reason for accessing it without investigating. How can one trust any reason put forth unless there was an investigation.

Update:
The Inspector General was not aware of the breach until today.

Update from NY Times:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was told of the security breach, which was first reported in The Washington Times on Thursday evening. Mr. McCormack said security measures used to monitor records of high-profile people like Mr. Obama worked properly in the three instances to alert department officials of the breaches.

“This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years,” said Bill Burton, an Obama campaign spokesman.

Patrick F. Kennedy, the under secretary of state for management, said that he and other top officials at the State Department found out about the breach Thursday afternoon, after [State Department spokesman, Sean D.] McCormack received a telephone query from a reporter.

Five Years of War - So

2008-03-20T11:34:00.000-07:00

The vice-president's response to Martha Raddatz is the most telling statement uttered by anyone in the Bush Administration in their seven year reign. In a single word it sums up their attitude toward the opinion of the American people, toward the opinion of the Iraqi people, toward other governments of the world and their people. Indeed at times toward our own military leaders and anyone else who dares voice any opposition to their catastrophically, cataclysmically, failed and flawed polices. So indeed. When you strip away all the rhetoric, all the ever changing rationalizations for the war, all the excuses for failure and continuing in spite of it, what it all boils down to is one big fat so in the face of the entire world.

For nearly the duration of the Bush Presidency, they have shown that they feel no need to be constrained in their policies or actions by the will of the people, by the will of the congress, or by the constitution. From warrantless spying, to extraordinary rendition, to torture of prisoners, to using the US Attorney's Office politically, to no-bid defense contracts to the Vice President's former company, to continuing an endless war that should never have been fought, they have shown complete contempt for anything but their own goals misguided by blind adherence to neo-con philosophy. In essence they are saying to all of us:

Nearly 3992 American soldiers dead.
So.
29314 American soldiers wounded.
So.
89,760 Iraqi civilians dead.
So.
Over 500 billion dollars spent.
So.
A devastated US and Iraqi economy.
So.
$4.00 gasoline.
So.
Reputation of the US destroyed in the Middle East and around the world by torture and rendition scandals.
So.
Civil rights of US citizens violated by warrantless spying.
So.
Osama Bin Laden still at large.
So.

This is indeed the Imperial Presidency. They know what's best for us and it just doesn't matter what 66% of us think. I simply cannot fathom how the American people aren't angrier than they are about the war. Now, on the anniversary of five years of war in Iraq, Dick Cheney has just added insult to injury.

Barack Obama: On Iraq and National Security

2008-03-20T10:25:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama's speech yesterday on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war. Partial text below, the full text can be found here.

Just before America's entry into World War I, President Woodrow Wilson addressed Congress: "It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war," he said. "...But the right is more precious than peace." Wilson's words captured two awesome responsibilities that test any Commander-in-Chief – to never hesitate to defend America, but to never go to war unless you must. War is sometimes necessary, but it has grave consequences, and the judgment to go to war can never be undone.

Five years ago today, President George W. Bush addressed the nation. Bombs had started to rain down on Baghdad. War was necessary, the President said, because the United States could not, "live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder." Recalling the pain of 9/11, he said the price of inaction in Iraq was to meet the threat with "armies of fire fighters and police and doctors on the streets of our cities."

At the time the President uttered those words, there was no hard evidence that Iraq had those stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. There was not any evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks of September 11, or that Iraq had operational ties to the al Qaeda terrorists who carried them out. By launching a war based on faulty premises and bad intelligence, President Bush failed Wilson's test. So did Congress when it voted to give him the authority to wage war.

Five years have gone by since that fateful decision. This war has now lasted longer than World War I, World War II, or the Civil War. Nearly four thousand Americans have given their lives. Thousands more have been wounded. Even under the best case scenarios, this war will cost American taxpayers well over a trillion dollars. And where are we for all of this sacrifice? We are less safe and less able to shape events abroad. We are divided at home, and our alliances around the world have been strained. The threats of a new century have roiled the waters of peace and stability, and yet America remains anchored in Iraq.

History will catalog the reasons why we waged a war that didn't need to be fought, but two stand out. In 2002, when the fateful decisions about Iraq were made, there was a President for whom ideology overrode pragmatism, and there were too many politicians in Washington who spent too little time reading the intelligence reports, and too much time reading public opinion. The lesson of Iraq is that when we are making decisions about matters as grave as war, we need a policy rooted in reason and facts, not ideology and politics. (More).

Full Text of Obama Speech: A More Perfect Union

2008-03-19T00:18:00.000-07:00

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans — the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old — is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know — what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”

“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.
[End of speech text.]

Video and my comments.

McCain Gets Facts Wrong on Iran

2008-03-18T23:30:00.000-07:00

McCain is Worst Person in the world on Countdown with Keith Olbermann.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Financial News

2008-03-18T23:14:00.000-07:00

Advice: Don't get financial advice from Jim Cramer.

Colbert Inteviews My Hero

2008-03-18T22:54:00.000-07:00

Stephen Colbert interviews my hero, Samantha Power on the Colbert Report.

Governor's Gone Wild

2008-03-18T22:29:00.000-07:00

These days it's hard to tell the political coverage from the entertainment news. The new NY governor, David Patterson, admits to a marital affair in his past only a day after taking office. Makes you long for the days when the press would hide this stuff from us. Or wish there was at least one way we were more like the French. Their president divorced his wife and married an Italian supermodel who says she's not into monogamy. And nobody bats an eye. Seems at little more mature, or at least realistic. Personally I like the French. I think they get a lot right that we get wrong. Bill Clinton would never have been impeached by the French. And George Bush would have never been elected in France.

No Third Bush Term

2008-03-18T19:53:00.000-07:00

Found this at Daily Kos.

Barack Obama's Speech: A More Perfect Union

2008-03-18T17:05:00.000-07:00

This is one of America's few remaining chances to live up to the creed it espouses and the principles it holds dear. If it fails to take this chance it will be extremely disappointing. Disappointing before the world and before those who still believe that America can live up to its doctrine and ideology despite past, current and almost certain future failings. Disappointing to those who have invested themselves for the first time, or have reinvested themselves in the process of democracy.

The American electorate has a clear choice here of a politics that on one hand seeks to exploit popular opinion and sentiments, motivate by fear and prejudices, and one on the other that seeks to inspire, challenge, uplift and most importantly to lead. If you could take the essence of Barack Obama, his principles, uplifting tone and inspiration and supplant it in one of the other candidates, and simultaneously supplant their essence in him, I would vote for the candidate with Obama's essence. Whether that candidate is a man, woman, black, white, Asian, Latino, gay or straight. Whether it was Hillary Clinton or bat crap crazy John McCain. That is the question for every American: Can you say that about your candidate? That you would vote for them if their essence could be inspired into anyone else?

That is America's choice and she will show her true essence in making that choice. For those who are so invested in their own particular goals, to see a woman elected, or simply to keep Republicans in power despite what their performance has been to date, or any other goal than simply what is best for the country, shame on you. And for those that are willing to use any tactic, whether lies, fear, prejudice, race, or appeals to any other loyalties, a great and especial shame on you.

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This candidacy of Barack Obama's is one of America's greatest tests and in succeeding or failing will tell the world whether she is in deed a great democracy. Whether she can truly be a more perfect union.

Tracy Morgan on SNL: Barack Gets Equal Time, Finally

2008-03-17T18:47:00.000-07:00

Lorne Michaels has been denying allegations that Saturday Night Live has a pro-Clinton bias. Whether or not it was intentional, there seemed to be one. This response to Tina Fey by Tracy Morgan starts to even the score. Right on Tracy!

-Fight the powers.

Winter Soldier: A Tale of Two Hell's

2008-03-17T13:56:00.000-07:00

In this first video, this Iraqi citizen's comparison of the hell of Sadaam and the hell of the American occupation should tell Americans all we need to know about how Iraqis feel about the war. Both videos are from Winter Soldier, eye witness accounts of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan by the soldiers who served there. Ironically May 15 was the 40th anniversary of the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam. I don't know if Winter Soldier's event was coordinated to coincide with it. I see no mention of that fact on their site.

When you listen to the stories it sounds as if My Lai has happened over and over again in Iraq and Afghanistan. As it did in Vietnam. I don't think Americans have been told everything about the way the war was conducted in Vietnam. Most believe there was only one My Lai. And they certainly don't realize what's happening in the current wars or they would be over. You can see as the soldiers tell the stories how difficult what happened was for them. It's no wonder that so many of them suffer from PTSD, and find it hard to reintegrate into society. And many end up homeless, which should never happen.

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The other irony in looking back at My Lai and comparing it today is that with the embedded press, managed by the military, stories like My Lai are not very likely to be exposed. Except by these soldiers who are brave enough to tell the truth. Every time we hear the phrase, Support the Troops from chickenhawk pundits and politicians who really mean, support the war, we should think of people like this.

St. Patrick Dissed This Year by Catholic Church in England

2008-03-17T12:48:00.000-07:00

The BBC has a story about St. Patrick's Day being canceled because it falls during something called Holy Week. Ireland, not having any of that, moved it up two days and celebrated on the 15th in order to avoid the conflict. The History Channel has more information about St. Patrick's Day than most people have any desire to know. Apparently St. Pat was a real saint and not the dude who invented green beer. Who knew? I'm not Catholic and all I need to know about it is where's the pub?

Shameful Appalling Video: BTW, Happy St. Paddy's Day

2008-03-17T08:53:00.000-07:00

Warning: Material in this video may be offensive to more sensitive viewers.

I find the video above shameful, appalling and insensitive. This woman wasted an entire beer. A green St. Patrick's Day beer. It's alcohol abuse and it's unconscionable. Hope it didn't spoil your day. Erin go Bragh!

-Fight the powers.

Revolutionary Night at the Movies

2008-03-17T07:16:00.001-07:00

You say, "movies on a blog? No way." I say pop a bag of Orville Redenbacher in the nuker and gather around the small screen my children, because it's Revolutionary Night at the Movies and you're in for a treat. This movie is being presented here with limited commercial interruption to recognize the work of actor Paul Giamatti, who plays revolutionary John Adams in the HBO miniseries event of the same name.

Unfortunately our budget is smaller than the tiny rectangle you'll be watching the movie in, so we couldn't get the actual John Adams movie. So like the low budget cable TV networks, we are putting on whatever we can no matter how loose the connection. Hey, it's free. It would cost you $4 bucks on iTunes.

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But that's not all. If you've been here before you may have noticed that we've also added a news feed of top stories from around the world in the right panel just under the new Weather Channel link. By now you're saying to yourself, movies, news, weather, and humorous, insightful and thought provoking commentary, is this a blog or a giant worldwide media mega-conglomerate? No people, it's A Revolution of One. Enjoy. And as always....

-Fight the powers.

Real Time With Bill Maher - Full Episode from March 7, 2008

2008-03-17T06:25:00.000-07:00

In this clip above MSNBC's Morning Joe describes the pressure that MSM journalists are under to go easy on the presidential candidates. The language he uses is telling, that someone from the network will "take them in the back" and say you can't go after Hillary too much. He's revealing more than he realizes.

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You can see a completely legal and HBO authorized full episode of this program on HBO's channel on YouTube. Unlike this unauthorized version above from a thieving bastard on Youtube who goes by the name vericool88. And who'd probably also steal a woman's handbag.

Making History Ugly

2008-03-16T17:23:00.000-07:00

When this Democratic primary season began I was a hardened cynic. Hardened by the past nearly eight years of Democratic party history. By Al Gore laying down when the 2000 general election was stolen from him. And by his not winning by enough to allow it to be stolen. Hardened by John Kerry's allowing himself to be swiftboated out of the 2004 election. And I suspect that election was stolen from him as well. This time without hanging chads or a paper trail. Not to mention that the last Democratic administration ended in impeachment on the basis of an offense that was hardly impeachable, especially in view of what we have now. With impeachment "off the table."

I was always an Obama fan, but I never expected him to be a real viable candidate. Not many people did. I expected that he might win a few primaries. As much as I hate to borrow from Hillary Clinton's campaign rhetoric, I thought he would give some inspiring speeches. I thought he'd get people excited, bring people into the process who had never participated or who haven't in a long time. All of which would give us a better chance to win the general election. Then I expected I would have to swallow hard and vote for Hillary Clinton. And I would have.

I held out hope that someone would save us from the fate of Clinton inevitability. But I never thought it would be Obama. And the reason I could not get excited about her is that after 8 years of Bush, I simply hated the idea of having to vote for someone who sounded like Bush lite. Who voted for the war. Who supported it up and until it got unpopular to do so and still couldn't admit that voting for it was a mistake. Inability to admit to a mistake was a quality that also reminded me of the 8 years I would soon like to forget.

Obama did all the things I thought he would, and a lot more. After our long national nightmare, to hear a Democrat who is actually inspiring, who generates real excitement, who talks about hope and sincerely believes in it. Someone who gets young people fired up and involved, and brought the cynical and apathetic back into the fold. I have to admit that I was starting to actually believe something truly miraculous was happening. And I do honestly mean miraculous. Because in 2003 if someone had said that a black man with a funny first name, and a middle name of Hussein, would be winning the nomination for president at this point in 2008, I would have asked them what they were smoking. And to please don't bogart it, because I want a hit. I mean that only metaphorically of course.

And if another miracle cancels out this one out, and Hillary Clinton is the nominee, Democrats are still poised to make history. Democrats, in fact, are already making history. And that's why all the ugliness of this campaign is all the more disheartening. Even to a cynic like myself. The race baiting, the politics of fear, the dirty tactics and the fact that Senator Clinton has actually endorsed her Republican rival over the person likely to win the Democratic nomination, is almost tragic.

I thought a bit about this post and I wondered if there was someone out there with the ability, and with the influence to appeal to our better natures. This is our chance to make history and we are making it ugly. When we look back on this we may have as much to be ashamed of as we have to be proud of. I was going to write it yesterday and I wondered who and how someone could appeal to our better natures and make this something we will not be ashamed to look back on.

All day yesterday I watched the cable news shows, the best political team in show business, and that other one that I guess is not, show Obama's former pastor over and over again with the most damning sound bite that although it is not defensible, is certainly taken out of its context and chosen for it's incendiary effect. And I had to admit that in the case of Geraldine Ferraro, though I totally disagreed with her and thought her comment was racist, that they did the same thing to her. That what she'd said wasn't as bad, taken in full context as the sound bite. Yet it was played over and over again, just the most damning part.

I never got around to writing about what happened yesterday and when I was thinking about it again this morning it occurred to me that if there was someone who could, or something that could appeal to our better natures, if we had better natures that could so easily be appealed to, it wouldn't have taken until 2008 for an African American and a woman to have a chance to be president. If I think back to when history was made in my lifetime, and I was very young then, too young to realize exactly what was happening, it was not much different than now.

It was when Martin Luther King was doing something that at the time was even more miraculous, desegregating the south. Challenging Jim Crow and racism and making a real difference. He made history, but the whole thing was very ugly and many things happened then that we'd like to forget, and often do forget in the retelling. Somehow by the time a lot of history gets into the books we think of it as all, or at least mostly high minded and civil, but in every case it is absolutely the opposite. Even the history that resulted in this Democracy that we are continuing to improve, there were dirty tricks, and there was back biting, back stabbing and nastiness.

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In fact, earlier in the week I saw a clip of Paul Giamatti in an interview about his role as John Adams in the HBO series which premiere's tonight and he said that Adams was contradictory, and sometimes too truthful and not a very good politician. Which is the PG way of saying he was kind of a dick. Also in the clip below, the show's producer, Tom Hanks talks about the very nastiness I spoke of above when our nations constitution was being drafted. Maybe this is precisely what it takes to make history. And we do it, because it is the right thing and as John Kennedy said of the space race in the early 60's, not because it is easy, but because it is hard.

Revolutionary Quote of the Day: RFK

2008-03-15T09:58:00.000-07:00

"Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not?"

-Robert F. Kennedy

Don't know why I haven't yet made this an RQOTD. It seems an obvious choice. A well known quote, and for good reason. It's a Barack Obama, Audacity of Hope, kind of quote. Although with the recent firestorm over Obama's former pastor's comments, that hope is fading slightly. I will post about it shortly.

I'm not sure I can keep calling this Revolutionary Quote of the Day if I don't post one every day. I missed a few days. Ok, not to cheapen the quote, but searching for it, I found it with this addendum, which I have to admit, is pretty funny:

"Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don't have time for all that."
-George.

Whoever George is.

-Fight the powers.

Oh Tucker, We Hardly Watched Ye - RIP

2008-03-15T07:17:00.000-07:00

Tucker Carlson, cancelled, but not forgotten. Yet. A retrospective of some of the things that almost made MSNBC's Tucker bearable to watch. To give him some credit, he was more civil, reasonable and, what's the word I want to use here...sane, he was more sane than say, a Bill O'Reilly. I did give him some props recently in this post. At least this time his show wasn't killed by Jon Stewart. This time it died of natural causes. But that gives me a chance to show this clip again. I love this clip.

Tucker, 2005 - 2008 RIP (Rerun in Perpetuity).

US Military Bombs OK

2008-03-15T06:15:00.000-07:00

And I don't mean they're capable, I mean they bombed OK. Are the Okies now part of the Axis of Evil? Is Osama hiding in an apartment in Tulsa? Fortunately for the residents of a Tulsa Oklahoma apartment complex, a bomb dropped from a military jet on their building was a dud. I'm not sure which is more frightening, that a bomb fell off, or that the pilot didn't notice what happened until he returned to his base.

I love the way he starts off, "Well, this may sound crazy...." US Air Force spokes general Bud Wyatt assures Okies that, "We don't take off out of Tulsa with live rockets or live missiles." You gotta trust a guy named Bud Wyatt, even when he's speaking for the Air Force. Ok, they dropped one on an apartment building. Mistakes happen. Why do you think they call it training, people? Kind of goes to show how collateral damage happens in Iraq and other places. And that's no joke.

Analyzing the Over Analysis: Maher on Spitzer

2008-03-14T02:31:00.000-07:00

Bill Maher has the best take I've seen so far on the Eliot Spitzer scandal, especially the endless and laughable analysis by so-called experts appearing on news shows. Maher's post on HuffPo is, Spitzer's Trysts: Stop Over-Thinking This. In typical Maher fashion he cuts through all the BS with a machete and gives us the simple unvarnished truth. And it's funny. He says:

I'm going to throw the remote through the TV if one more news twink says something on the order of "When we come back, we'll look into what drives a successful man like Eliot Spitzer to risk it all..."

It's not a long post and it's worth reading.

Factory Pre-Installed Viruses Courtesy of Chinese QC

2008-03-14T01:11:00.000-07:00

Along with toys coated with lead paint for your kids, poisonous food for your pet, and toxic toothpaste for the whole family, you can add electronic devices pre-loaded with viruses from the factory to the fine list of quality products coming out of China. An article from the AP posted on CNN reports that many new electronic devices are being shipped from the factory infected with viruses. The devices include new iPods, digital picture frames, and GPS navigation systems.

The problem appears to be quality control in Chinese factories. Devices may be plugged into computers that are infected for testing and may not be the result of malicious acts. The report goes on to say:

The recent infections may be accidental, but security experts say they point out an avenue of attack that could be exploited by hackers.

"We'll probably see a steady increase over time," said Zulfikar Ramzan, a computer security researcher at Symantec Corp. "The hackers are still in a bit of a testing period; they're trying to figure out if it's really worth it."

Thousands of people whose antivirus software isn't up to date may have been infected without even knowing it, experts warn. And even protective software may not be enough.

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In one case, digital frames sold at Sam's Club contained a previously unknown bug that not only steals online gaming passwords but disables antivirus software, according to security researchers at CA Inc.

Why wait to get your virus from clicking on an attachment from a spammer when you can get it straight from the factory?

The Colbert-Spitzer Connection

2008-03-13T14:49:00.000-07:00

Stephen reveals his connection to the Spitzer scandal with an uncomfortable reference to something called a "Spitzer sandwich." Sound like something that could put you off your lunch.

OK GO for Net Neutrality

2008-03-13T12:14:00.000-07:00

From savetheinternet.org:

This week, Internet rock band OK Go came to Washington to urge Congress to act against all companies that seek to become the Internet’s gatekeepers. Phone and cable companies can try, but they can't shut us out or shut us up. They've shown us why we need Net Neutrality....

Phone and cable companies will try anything to kill Net Neutrality. The best way we can fight back is to restore Net Neutrality as the law of the land. The bipartisan Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008 (HR 5353) does just that.
Read More about OK Go's Support for this Bill
This bill guarantees Net Neutrality by restoring it in the foundation of communications law. It also promises that the public -- not phone and cable companies -- will control the fate of the Internet.

Thanks for your support,
Timothy Karr
Campaign Director
www.freepress.net
SavetheInternet.com

A Clintonian Apology

2008-03-13T07:06:00.000-07:00

This is the very reason the Clinton name is synonymous with a kind of, "depends upon what the meaning of is is", equivocation, hypocrisy and outright lying. She apologizes when she appears before a group of African American publishers. For days she refused, her campaign refused, her surrogates and Geraldine Ferraro refused to apologize. In fact, Ferraro is still refusing. Hillary Clinton has used the tactic of inserting race into the campaign throughout. And she will use it again. She is the Democratic version of the George Bush. Boldly saying exactly the opposite of what you mean and what you know is the truth. Hiding your true motivations. Saying one thing here and another there, depending on who you happen to be standing in front of.

You have to ask why this is the first time she has apologized for what Bill Clinton said way back in South Carolina? It's because she is in front of a group of African American publishers and she has to answer questions and if she doesn't appear contrite they will eat her lunch. That will not make a good sound bite for TV. Every second she of her campaign Hillary Clinton becomes more distasteful. Democrats may be making history, but they are making it ugly.

Friend Me Kristen

2008-03-13T05:31:00.000-07:00

I sent Eliot Spitzer's, or should I say Love Client No. 9's, Kristen a friend request on her Myspace page. So far nada. I gotta guess Ashley Alexandra Dupré been busy the past couple days. I smell a book deal in the works. A recording contract, apparently she's a singer. Appearances on Oprah and the View and the rest of the circuit. Ashley your 15 minutes of fame starts now. Here's an excerpt from her page:

About Ashley Alexandra Dupré
I am all about my music, and my music is all about me… It flows from what I’ve been through, what I’ve seen and how I feel. I live in New York and am on top of the world. Been here since 2004 and I love this city, I love my life here. But, my path has not been easy. When I was 17, I left home. It was my decision and I’ve never looked back. Left my hometown. Left a broken family. Left abuse. Left an older brother who had already split. Left and learned what it was like to have everything, and lose it, again and again. Learned what it was like to wake up one day and have the people you care about most gone. I have been alone. I have abused drugs. I have been broke and homeless. But, I survived, on my own. I am here, in NY because of my music.

That's gosh darn inspiring Ash. She's just 22 years old and I hope she can survive what's going to be a tsunami of attention. Hope she doesn't end up being one of those VH1 Behind the Music stories. There's been speculation that she did not know who Client #9 was. If she can ride this out and if possible, have some fun with it, she may come out the other end relatively unscathed with enough money to retire.

Keith Olbermann's Special Comment on Hillary Clinton's Campaign and Geraldine Ferraro

2008-03-12T19:19:00.000-07:00

Again Keith saying exactly what needs to be said the way it must be said. Not holding back, not mincing words, not fearing the consequences. I just hope those to whom it is directed are listening.

One Last Word On Spitzer: Make Your Walk of Shame Alone

2008-03-12T16:01:00.000-07:00

I should say last word today, because it's obviously not the last word on this scandal. Maybe it should be, at least here, which is all I have control over. But one thing I wanted to mention in the last post, one of the first things that struck me when watching the video of Spitzer as he acknowledged the scandal, and as he resigned, is why on earth do these guys who screw up this way have to drag their poor wives on stage with them? It's merely a show. It's to say, don't be so hard on me. Hey, even my wife who has more reason to be hurt than anyone, is still beside me.

The worst part of what these guys do is what they've done to their families, especially their wives. I don't think it's such a crime, or any reason for most of them to step down politically. But it might be a real good reason for a divorce. And these knuckleheads ought to have to stand before the public on their own and not drag their wives along on their walk of shame. Let the press and the public guess how she feels about him. No matter what it looks like on stage, most of us know what this woman would really like to do to this guy, and what she is probably doing when they aren't in the public eye.

More to Spitzer Story Than Sex Scandal

2008-03-12T14:06:00.000-07:00

Thank you Morning Joe's Joe Scarborough, and Katrina Vanden Huevel of The Nation for someone finally saying something about what Eliot Spitzer accomplished, especially when he was in the Manhattan District Attorney's office and when he was State Attorney General for NY. Instead of simply focusing on the sex and scandal. His problem was a mountain of hubris, making a boatload of enemies, and the obvious hypocrisy in committing the crimes he did, minor as they were. If it were someone else this kind of scandal could, and probably should, have been survivable.

Thank you both also for bringing up the possibility that he may have been targeted by the many enemies he made in his prosecutions of many powerful individuals. For pointing out the obviously unwarranted reasons for the investigation that lead to his downfall. The celebration by the Wall Street slimes who hate him because he put the kind of people behind bars who cheat grandmothers out of their pensions is unseemly to say the least.

On another level I have to say that his is one of those cases in which the fates have way of showing us all that the high and mighty, as well as the low and not so mighty, are flawed and pretty much the same in very many ways. I'm not one for quoting scripture, but as they say, "Pride goeth before the fall."

Dream Ticket Impossible: Nancy Pelosi

2008-03-12T13:29:00.000-07:00

It looks like the the party leadership is paying attention. Now how about telling Clinton to cut the crap? Maybe this is her way of giving her a warning first. I think it's way past time for someone to step in before things get too far out of hand.

All the Scandal That's Fit to Broadcast

2008-03-12T13:11:00.000-07:00

An NBC Today Show three-fer. In Matt Lauer's interview with Barack Obama this morning he covers Geraldine Ferraro's remarks, Hillary's overtures to him to be her veep, and the Eliot Spritzer scandal. It's a cheap headlines hat trick!

Mississippi Primary: Obama is the Projected Winner

2008-03-11T17:20:00.000-07:00

The polls have closed in Mississippi, and Barack Obama is is the projected winner according to CNN and MSNBC.

Next Up, Ferraro, Designated Baiter

2008-03-11T14:53:00.000-07:00

Former Vice Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro emerges from relative obscurity as Hillary Clinton's latest surrogate race baiter. The irony of her statement, that if Barack Obama was a white male, or a woman of any color, he would not be in the position he is now in the race for the Democratic nomination, is not lost on her. She readily admits that when she was tapped for the Vice Presidential nomination in 1984 as Walter Mondale's running mate, she would not have been picked if she was not a woman.

But the differences between you Ms. Ferraro and Mr. Obama go far beyond race. Obama is an eloquent and intelligent figure who inspires the electorate like no figure in recent history has. Because he speaks to the people's overwhelming desire for change. He is swept up in a moment of history and you are a nearly forgotten footnote to history as the first woman to be picked by a major party to run for Vice President because as you readily admit, you happened to be a woman. You said it. I only repeated it.

Hillary seems to have no shortage of surrogates who will step up and sling mud for her. What's telling about these attacks is that these if these people had a candidate with more positives to tout, they wouldn't have to stoop to this level for her. It's really sad to see these formerly respected figures like her and Gloria Steinem, who I respect greatly, sticking their feet in their respective mouths and tarnishing their considerable reputations (at least in Steinem's case) with low brow campaign tactics at a historic time that should be uplifting to all who call themselves Democrats, if not all who call themselves Americans.

Update:

If I had a dollar for every time a racist statement is either proceeded or defended with, "I'm not a racist", I'd be a rich...African American. As if this somehow gives that person an exemption to go ahead and say something that is patently racist. There's obvious reasons she's a Faux News contributor. She's helping to fragment the party. Just admit you said the wrong thing, Ms. Ferraro, and apologize.

And in this quote from the Daily Breeze in Torrance California she defended her first offensive comments with more offensive comments. The second most used tact in defending racist comments, charging reverse racism.

Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let's address reality and the problems we're facing in this world, you're accused of being racist, so you have to shut up,' Ferraro said. 'Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?

This is the kind of thing the party does not need. The party leaders need to intervene now and raise the level of this campaign on both side before this kind of divisive rhetoric torches the party's chances in November.

Big Brother is Listening

2008-03-11T14:18:00.000-07:00

I am becoming more convinced every day that we live in Orwell's 1984 and don't know it, or wouldn't believe it even when presented with evidence we are. What's frightening about this is that not only could it be used by government agencies, the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc., but by any pimply faced hacker who can download the software to do it. The following is from an article on news.com:

Nextel and Samsung handsets and the Motorola Razr are especially vulnerable to software downloads that activate their microphones, said James Atkinson, a counter-surveillance consultant who has worked closely with government agencies. "They can be remotely accessed and made to transmit room audio all the time," he said. "You can do that without having physical access to the phone."

Because modern handsets are miniature computers, downloaded software could modify the usual interface that always displays when a call is in progress. The spyware could then place a call to the FBI and activate the microphone--all without the owner knowing it happened. (The FBI declined to comment on Friday.)

"If a phone has in fact been modified to act as a bug, the only way to counteract that is to either have a bugsweeper follow you around 24-7, which is not practical, or to peel the battery off the phone," Atkinson said. Security-conscious corporate executives routinely remove the batteries from their cell phones, he added.

The article also talks about spying through the OnStar system in cars and through PC cams. Welcome to 1984. Hey Big Brother, can you hear me now?

NY Governor Eliot Spitzer: Love Client #9

2008-03-10T15:30:00.000-07:00

From Huffington Post:

Gov. Eliot Spitzer has been caught on a federal wiretap arranging to meet with a high-priced prostitute at a Washington hotel last month, according to a person briefed on the federal investigation," the New York Times reports in a blockbuster revelation.

There's blood in the water for the MSM. Sex and politics, a major politician going down. This will be in the headlines for weeks no doubt. If only they covered Darfur, the US Attorneys Office scandal and other unsexy stories like they cover this stuff. Not a chance.

Surf Watch: Drunkorexia and the Diseases of Excess

2008-03-10T13:09:00.000-07:00

From the Stuff I Found Randomly Surfing the Internets File:

Drunkorexia is, as the video states, a new non-medical buzzword for the combination of alcoholism and anorexia. Specifically the practice of skipping meals, or reducing calorie intake to compensate for the calories in alcoholic drinks. Or it can mean a diet that completely substitutes liquid calories for the solid non-alcoholic variety. I like the term because it uses the word drunk, which I prefer to alcoholic ("alcoholics go to meetings"). It's described in this NY Times article along with several other medical and non-medical terms for various, no doubt, uniquely American diseases, or at the very least diseases of industrialized nations. They are:

Manorexia is the male version of anorexia. Orthorexia is an obsession with what is perceived as healthy food — eliminating fats and preservatives, for example. But people with this condition can dangerously deprive themselves of needed nutrients.

Diabulimia refers to diabetics who avoid taking insulin, which can cause weight gain, in order to control their weight. Despite the name, the disorder does not typically involve purging.

Binge Eating Disorder refers to obsessive overeating, especially of foods high in salt and sugar, that does not involve excessive exercise or purging to compensate for the high caloric intake.

The thing that I find curious about each of these diseases is that they are conditions that are only possible in a climate of excess. You don't find people in third world populations suffering from anorexia, bulimia or the like. They suffer from actual starvation in many cases. Maybe it could be characterized as the involuntary form of the disease. You certainly don't find many of them, I gotta guess, there are probably no stats on it, barfing up a good meal.

Maybe it demonstrates a need in people for strife. In a land of plenty, in those places in the country where no one has to want for a meal, or for shelter, or for clothing, people find something to have a food crisis over. I wonder just how you would explain the phenomenon in a place where people are starving because they live in an area affected by drought, or are refugees from war, just plain poor? It would surely sound baffling, if not completely insane.

Now I don't at all mean to minimize the suffering of those affected by these modern afflictions. Though I think at times we do go overboard in the characterizing of modern problems as diseases. Something that feeds in to the disease industry in this country. Of creating something that needs to be treated and cured and that makes a healthy profit for someone else. Ancient Romans binged and purged and they called it a party.

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I also realize that these problems in many cases are deep-seated and emotional, a result of childhood trauma and abuse. I'm not saying they are not real. Just somewhat ironic and really hard to explain to people in the world who have problems that are more basic by just a skosh. I'm sure those people are suffering emotional trauma as well. But it wouldn't stop them from enjoying a good meal if they had one.

Revolutionay Quote of the Day: Albert Einstein

2008-03-09T19:24:00.000-07:00

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

-Albert Einstein.

A Case for Torture

2008-03-09T17:05:00.000-07:00

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Precisely the point. We don't do it to our enemies because we don't want it done to our captured soldiers. Unfortunately it's them, and not chickenhawks like Bush & Co., who will suffer the consequences of ignoring the Geneva Conventions. Not to mention, and it's been said a thousand times, torture does not work. Tortured people will do anything to stop the torture, including lie.

Revolutionay Quote of the Day: Gloria Steinem

2008-03-08T19:23:00.000-08:00

From pacifist to terrorist, each person condemns violence - and then adds one cherished case in which it may be justified.

-Gloria Steinem.

Today's RQOTD is from an icon of the feminist movement, author, journalist, founder and publisher of Ms. Magazine, Gloria Steinem. Ms. Steinem was in the news recently for, though I am a fan of hers, I have to admit, an unfair and unwarranted criticism of John McCain's service to our country as a POW. McCain's service to our country should be honored. Not many people could have gone through what he went through and survived to tell the story. I think Ms. Steinem was wrong to minimize it. Now if she had called John McCain bat crap crazy, I'd have no problem with that.

Update:
When I woke up this morning and looked at this quote it seemed vaguely familiar. That's because it's a repeat. I had posted it before.

will.i.am: Obama Tour 2009!

2008-03-08T18:58:00.000-08:00

At this rate, if Obama's elected president, by the time of the inauguration, will.i.am will have a double CD set of Obama campaign songs. Then I guess he'll tour.

3am Wake Up Call for Hillary: Out of the Mouths of Babes

2008-03-08T18:18:00.000-08:00

Ooops! Apparently nobody asked the kids who they'd rather have answering that 3am call at the White House before they all got tucked in snug in their beds. Yes, the little girl in the stock footage of the Clinton 3am red phone campaign ad is a big Obama supporter. You can't pay for that kind of advertising.

Monster: Samantha Power is my New Hero

2008-03-08T14:23:00.000-08:00

I have to admit that I didn't know anything about Samantha Power before she called Hillary Clinton a monster. Although she and the Obama campaign are slightly embarrassed by it, I'm glad she did. Before I say why, I just want to say that the video clip above is not about her remarks. It's from a fund raiser in Boston for the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. I prefer to use it, at least first, to show people that there's more to her than a slip of the tongue about someone who deserved it. It demonstrates why she should be considered a hero, what she said about Hillary notwithstanding.

Also, before I talk about Hillary and the remark, I will say something further about who Samantha Power is. She's a Pulitzer Prize winning author for her book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. She's a professor who works with the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. She's an activist and a strong voice for ending the genocide in Darfur. She's an intelligent woman with a fortunate name, because she is powerful. And from what I can see, at least for me, she's a lot more likable person than Hillary Clinton.

Now I can talk about why she's my hero. She may not have meant to say it. It slipped out. She tried to take it back. Tried to make it off the record, but it was too late. And later she resigned and she apologized. Still, in view of all those things, she said what needed to be said. She was a real human being in a real moment who felt something and said it. She's not the polished, practiced and careful politician who weighs every word that comes out of her mouth. She is someone who is obviously passionate about the things she believes in. She's the anti-Clinton.

Why did it need to be said? Because Hillary Clinton recently crossed the line. Before she crossed the line she had been fighting dirty. Fighting dirty since Barack Obama first surprised her and won the Iowa Caucuses. Both her and her surrogates, including her husband, have race baited, mocked, outright lied and damned Obama with faint praise ("as far as I know").

But when she as much as endorsed the Republican nominee over the leading Democratic candidate in this race, she crossed a political line that should never be crossed. Not only did she give John McCain ammunition against Obama should he become the nominee, words that McCain can attribute to her, a Democrat, but she did so while advancing an argument that she could not win if she by some miracle turns out to be the nominee. She simply does not measure up to John McCain on the argument of experience. But Obama beats them both on the argument of judgment.

What she said is disloyal to the Democratic Party and it shows her to be someone who would rather win than do what's best for the party as a whole. And I am wondering since she said it where have the so-called leaders of the Democratic Party been? Why hasn't anyone, with the possible exceptions of Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow in the press, and those of us who are Obama supporters, cried foul? Even the Obama campaign itself has not reacted as strongly as they should have. That's why what Samantha Power said, needed to be said. Thank god for that slip that made it into the press. While the press and the Obama campaign are coming down on her, I want to be at least one voice out here, and I'm sure I'm not the only one, standing up for her. Amen and right on. Hillary Clinton is a indeed monster and she's hurting the Democrats chance of winning in November.

A lot more of us should stand up for her and we should let the party leadership know that we will not stand for the kind of disloyalty to the party that Hillary Clinton has demonstrated. I said before and will say again, if a miracle occurs and she's the nominee, I would find it very hard to vote for her. Even if she included Barack Obama on the ticket. I would have been happy to see her go on to fight until the convention and would have voted for her if she won. But not after running this kind of race.

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Ok, the clip below is about the remark (I won't call it a gaffe). And I picked it because no matter how wrong he usually is, every once in a while Tucker Carlson gets something right.

CNN: Congolese Woman's Silent Scream is Heard

2008-03-08T13:02:00.000-08:00

This story on CNN highlights the plight of women in the Congo on International Women's Day. Honorata Kizende's story is hard to hear, but it is one that must be heard. It's the story of hundreds of thousands of women in the Congo who have suffered gang rape and sexual slavery at the hands of soldiers fighting in a brutal civil war. According to the story, "An estimated 5.4 million people have died in Congo since 1998."

Zainab Salbi, founder of Women for Women International, speaks eloquently about not only the pain Kizende suffered at the hands of those soldiers, but the greater pain of not being heard.

Kizende, 55, is a spokeswoman for Women for Women International, a 16-year-old group that helps rebuild the lives of women victimized by violent conflict in countries such as Kosovo, Iraq and Colombia.

The group was founded by Zainab Salbi, a 38-year-old Iraqi-American who knows something about brutality. She grew up under Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, where people who spoke out were often murdered.

"My image of the Congolese women is that of a scream," Salbi said. "But there is no sound coming from the scream because the world is not hearing it."

That's because the victims are women, she said.

Too often humanitarian crises on the African continent are all but ignored by the US, the UN and the International Community. There's a story or two on the news, there are words and resolutions, but very little action. Very few troops or resources are committed to end the violence. They simply do not get the same kind of attention that this kind of crisis would if it occurred in Europe or the Middle East or some place considered "strategically" important. That this many people can die, that this many women can be raped and victimized without a hue and cry and demand for action from the world is truly tragic.

Wyoming Caucus Results: Obama Wins

2008-03-08T12:36:00.000-08:00

Interesting fact I just heard while listening to CNN's coverage of the caucus: Part of Wyoming's caucus rules require equal gender representation for delegates. An equal number of men and women. It was the first state the Women's Suffrage Movement emerged from, and was the first state to elect a woman governor according to Jessica Yellin on CNN. This relates in a to my next post.

Who Loves Liberty More: Colbert v. A Legend

2008-03-07T12:39:00.000-08:00

Stephen Colbert and singer/songwriter John Legend throw down over who loves lady liberty the most. More importantly they examine the question, can you get away with telling your lady love what's wrong with her? Does real patriotism mean you love American as she is? Or can you tell her the truth and try to make her better?