(Image: Troy Page, t r u t h o u t; Adapted: John Niedermeyer, ajagendorf25, stevegarfield, Temari 09, publicenergy)

Not So Funny After All
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Columnist

Thursday 19 November 2009

I've been writing roughly once a week for months now about the insane circus that is today's Republican Party, mostly to make fun of them. It's difficult to do otherwise; how does one write seriously about people like Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and GOP Chairman Michael Steele? Try it sometime: failure is all but guaranteed.

Our most recent example of this phenomenon: Sarah Palin, again. The former Alaska governor and terminal dead weight around Campaign McCain went on with Barbara Walters to push her new book and covered herself in whatever the opposite of glory is. One topic she addressed was the recent cover of Newsweek featuring her wearing a tight red shirt and short-shorts that showed lots of leg. "I found it a wee bit degrading," she said of the cover, which makes you wonder why she chose to pose for it looking like something out of a James Bond scuba-diving scene. You'd also wonder why she had more trouble with the picture than with the giant block-lettered headline that read, "HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE SARAH? SHE'S BAD NEWS FOR THE GOP - AND FOR EVERYBODY ELSE, TOO," but then you'd remember that logic does not apply on Planet Teabag, and move on down the road.

See what I mean? Making fun of these people is like shooting very large fish in a very small barrel. You just can't miss.

The problem, however, is that people like Palin stopped being funny a while ago. The prominence they enjoy in our political discourse is so far out of whack with their abilities and intentions that it vastly exaggerates their influence over a variety of very serious matters that affect each and every one of us. The British have the Monster Raving Loony Party, who are a joke and exert no real influence, and we have the Republican Party, filled with monster raving loonies who exert a tremendous amount of influence because the news media thinks we are a nation of people who like to look at car accidents on the highway, which, by and large, we are. We've been well-trained by 20 years of shock television to mistake clowns and jesters for serious people, and because of that mistake, these people's deranged opinions and deformed ideas get taken seriously.

The recent victories in Virginia and New Jersey cannot mask the fact that the Republican Party is in deep distress. The so-called "Teabaggers," organized by the likes of Glenn Beck around spurious claims that Obama is a noncitizen socialist who wants to kill your grandmother - and really, that's it for them, in a nutshell ... plus, he's black, but don't tell them that, because it gets them upset - are now the most muscular and active bloc of the GOP. They just made a run at the NY-23 House seat and managed to derail a Republican candidate they deemed too liberal. They are preparing to make a run at Florida Gov. Charlie Crist's 2010 Senate campaign, because he accepted Obama's stimulus money to keep his state from sliding into the sea, and has been tagged by the 'Baggers as not being enough of a true conservative. Smart money says the 'Baggers won't limit themselves to Florida and New York, either; they smell blood in the water, and are swimming straight for it.

In the short run, this kind of intra-party warfare does nothing but help the Democrats in 2010, especially if the 'Baggers keep knocking off viable Republicans in the primaries and handing victories to Democrats, which is precisely what happened in the NY-23 race. But then what happens? If the far right manages to completely take over the GOP, then the lunatics will finally be in complete control of the asylum. They will get coverage on every major news network, and they will be mistaken for serious people who should be listened to because, well, they're on television, right?

Internet society, as it grew, spawned something that came to be known as Godwin's Law. Basically, the Law dictates that the longer a discussion grows, the more likely it is that someone will make some sort of comparison or association to Hitler, the Nazis and fascism. It also states that whoever uses these to buttress an argument automatically loses that argument. Ergo, caution must be taken when discussing the Teabagger phenomenon, because they absolutely beg to be compared to Brownshirts and angry, brainwashed crowds with arms extended in grainy pre-war film footage. We aren't there yet, not by a long chalk, but there are far too many examples in history of groups once considered comical becoming powerful over time, and the results have never been pretty. We are not even a year removed from two presidential terms where these exact people represented the ideological core of the government, and the damage they wreaked will take generations to undo.

As digby recently noted on the excellent Hullabaloo blog, "I'm not saying that we should panic. These people are politically weak in their own right. But when I see the liberal gasbags on TV blithely dismissing this as if it's impossible that Americans could ever fall for such lunacy, I feel a little frisson of alarm. I've read too many accounts of people who, 80 or so years ago, complacently made the same assumption. And the whole world found out that under the right circumstances even the most civilized nations can throw in with the crazies."

These people have been dangerous before, all too often, and have the capacity to be dangerous again. If any additional evidence of this is required, look no further than the rally in Washington, DC, being planned by Gary Cass of something called the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission against the new legislation President Obama recently signed to bolster anti-gay hate crime laws. The rally organizers intend to denounce the new law, and then protest it ... by inciting the crowd to commit hate crimes against gay people.

Beyond that are the bumper stickers that have become all the rage, pardon the pun, on the Teabagger circuit. They seem harmless enough; a two-tiered message reads "Pray for Obama" on top, with "Psalm 109:8" below.

Psalm 109 : 8 reads:

May his days be few;
may another take his place of leadership.

Psalm 109 : 9 reads:

May his children be fatherless
and his wife a widow.

No, not so funny after all.

http://www.truthout.org/1119098

Poll: Majority Of Republicans Think Obama Didn't Actually Win 2008 Election -- ACORN Stole It!
Eric Kleefield
TPM.com

The new national poll from Public Policy Polling (D) has an astonishing number about paranoia among the GOP base: Republicans do not think President Obama actually won the 2008 election -- instead, ACORN stole it.

This number goes a long way towards explaining the anger of the Tea Party crowd. They not only think Obama's agenda is against America, but they don't think he was actually the choice of the American people at all! Interestingly, NY-23 Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman is now accusing ACORN of stealing his race, and Fox News personalities have often speculated about ACORN stealing the 2008 Minnesota Senate race for Al Franken.

The poll asked this question: "Do you think that Barack Obama legitimately won the Presidential election last year, or do you think that ACORN stole it for him?" The overall top-line is legitimately won 62%, ACORN stole it 26%. Among Republicans, however, only 27% say Obama actually won the race, with 52% -- an outright majority -- saying that ACORN stole it, and 21% are undecided. Among McCain voters, the breakdown is 31%-49%-20%. By comparison, independents weigh in at 72%-18%-10%, and Democrats are 86%-9%-4%.

Now, the obvious comparison would be that many Democrats felt that George W. Bush didn't legitimately win the 2000 election. But there are some clear differences. First of all, Al Gore empirically won the national popular vote in 2000, and lost in a disputed recount process in Florida. By comparison, John McCain lost the national popular vote by a 53%-46% margin. In order to believe that Obama wasn't the true winner of the 2008 election, one would have to think that ACORN (and perhaps other groups) stuffed ballots to the tune of over 9.5 million votes, Obama's national margin.

PPP communications director Tom Jensen says: "Belief in the ACORN conspiracy theory is even higher among GOP partisans than the birther one, which only 42% of Republicans expressed agreement with on our national survey in September."

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11...

These people are fucking insane.

Today marks the 94th anniversary of labor hero Joe Hill's death by firing squad. (Photo: david_axe / flickr)

The Man Who Didn't Die
By Dick Meister
t r u t h o u t | Report

Thursday 19 November 2009

It's November 19, 1915, in a courtyard of the Utah State Penitentiary in Salt Lake City. Five riflemen take careful aim at a condemned organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Joe Hill, who stands before them straight and stiff and proud.

"Fire!" he shouts defiantly.

The firing squad didn't miss. But Joe Hill, as the folk ballad says, "ain't never died." On this 94th anniversary, he lives on as one of the most enduring and influential of American symbols.

Joe Hill's story is that of a labor martyr framed for murder by viciously anti-labor employer and government forces, a man who never faltered in fighting for the rights of the oppressed, who never faltered in his attempts to bring them together for the collective action essential if they were to overcome their wealthy and powerful oppressors.

His is the story of a man and an organization destroyed by government opposition, yet immensely successful. As historian Joyce Kornbluh noted, the IWW made "an indelible mark on the American labor movement and American society," laying the groundwork for mass unionization, inspiring the formation of groups to protect the civil liberties of dissidents, prompting prison and farm labor reforms, and leaving behind "a genuine heritage ... industrial democracy."

Joe Hill's story is the story of, perhaps, the greatest of all folk poets, whose simple, satirical rhymes set to simple, familiar melodies did so much to focus working people on the common body of ideals needed to forge them into a collective force.

The rest: http://www.truthout.org/1119094

I propose demanding, upon pain of more demanding, that he write a detailed description of the best boxing match he has ever seen.

More ideas, please.

(Image: Lance Page, t r u t h o u t; Adapted: The U.S. Army, Burns!)

The Decision
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Monday 16 November 2009

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your gawd like a soldier.

- Rudyard Kipling

All the presidents in my lifetime share one common characteristic: each one aged rapidly, visibly and dramatically over the course of their administrations. Nixon appeared to be melting by the time he boarded that last helicopter. Ford's stay was brief, but it left its stamp on his face. Carter quickly came to resemble the peanuts he was associated with. Reagan already looked like the eagle from "The Muppet Show" when he took office, but was positively wizened when he left. Bush Sr. became an old man before our very eyes, and Clinton ballooned at first before hardening, wrinkling and whitening. Even George W. Bush, who left a lot of the heavy lifting to the gremlins who staffed his administration, looked like a hickory stick before mercifully departing for the motivational-speaker circuit.

The trend is no different for President Obama. Seeing how they gray has overtaken his hair in less than a year has been like watching time-lapse photography of autumn leaves changing color. The lines have deepened around his eyes and mouth, and the furrows in his brow have deepened and spread. He is still a young and vital man, especially compared to the opponent he vanquished to become president, but there is no doubt that, as usual, the job is taking its toll.

There's no mystery behind the phenomenon, of course. It's the decisions a president has to make, the risk-versus-reward calculations, the body count considerations, the political geometry involved, and all too often, the Hobson's Choices where any decision is going to be wrong and dangerous and potentially calamitous. Every president gets their fair share, and Obama has already endured two full terms worth in ten months, thanks in no small part to the aged men who came before him. The Middle East, national security, civil liberties, international relations, economic catastrophe, environmental peril: These are but a few of the lines on Obama's daily crisis sheet.

The decision looming largest over president Obama at present does not concern health care reform or the economy. He has a call to make soon regarding our present and future role in Afghanistan. What to do about an eight-year war that has accomplished little? This is the largest, and worst, Hobson's Choice Obama has faced, for there are no bloodless and peril-free decisions in this one, no matter how many generals and advisers and pundits pitch in with their opinions.

It is going to be an anguished, agonizing and costly choice no matter what he decides. A family in Massachusetts mourning their son, who died in Afghanistan trying to save another soldier is the distilled essence of this truth. The mother of this fallen soldier, quoted by a local Boston news station, said, "It's time we do something. This has gone on too long. They either need to come home or we need to end it."

There it is. Come home or end it, period. Those are the choices, and either will come with a cost.

Some very pressing points in recent history, along with a number of present day concerns, illuminate the dangers involved in coming home. Beginning in 1978, the US invested itself into making Afghanistan into the USSR's own version of Vietnam by arming, funding and training Afghan "freedom fighters" to attack the Afghan government, which, at the time, was a puppet of the Soviet government. The idea was to trick the Soviets into invading Afghanistan in order to protect their satellite regime there, and it worked when the Soviets invaded in 1979.

Zbignew Brzezinski, President Carter's national security adviser and author of the plan, said in a 1998 interview, "That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Soviets into the Afghan trap. The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam war."

He has since come to regret the sentiment, as well as the operation, for the ones he helped to arm and train became the Taliban, and became al-Qaeda. After the Soviets withdrew in defeat from Afghanistan in 1989, the US did the same, having achieved our geo-strategic goal of undermining the USSR. Afghanistan collapsed into a state of civil war until 1996, after which the Taliban emerged as the dominant force, and the rest is, unfortunately, history. Our involvement and subsequent withdrawal precipitated the creation of the very opponent we face there today, and if we withdraw before having ended what we caused, Afghanistan could easily become a full-fledged narco-state fueled by heroin profits and hatred for the West.

This lesson from the past stands in combination with a serious concern for the present: Pakistan. Afghanistan's closest neighbor is in a state of turmoil, with mass murders and suicide bombings taking place on a daily basis. The government is barely hanging on to power, which puts the state of command and control over their nuclear weapons very much in play. If the US and NATO withdraw, and the chaos in Afghanistan finally overwhelms and topples the regime in Pakistan, we will be faced with the potential of loose nukes in a region that shares borders with nuclear-armed India and China, and the doomsday scenarios that spin off from this are too numerous and ghastly to contemplate.

In saying "end it," that mourning, Massachusetts mother meant "win it." The decision to stay and try to fight the war to some reasonable or meaningful conclusion is, however, fraught with peril. The region is already exploding with violence, which has been bleeding across the border into an unstable, nuclear-armed Pakistan for some time. The Taliban has been making strong inroads in both countries, winning over large swaths of the populace, who have grown weary and furious with the occupying NATO/US forces that have been there for most of a decade now. This has been the bloodiest year for coalition troops in Afghanistan - 288 American soldiers killed out of 468 NATO soldiers killed, with more than 1,800 Americans wounded - a trend that will only continue and increase with the introduction of thousands of more troops.

Finally, there is little actual evidence to suggest an increase in troop presence will make any appreciable difference. We have been there for eight years, and matters have remained the same only in the areas where they have not gotten appreciably worse. Afghanistan is, and has always been, the eater of armies. No amount of technology or troop superiority can overcome the natural advantages held by those who know the ground, and who already know how to defeat a superpower, something many of those fighting us there have already done in their lifetime. We could stay there for another eight years and find ourselves in exactly the same position, or even worse off than before.

These are but a few of the issues the Obama administration must wrestle with in coming to a decision on Afghanistan. It is no wonder the president is aging before our eyes.

http://www.truthout.org/1116094

Busted! GOP Drops Abortion Coverage For RNC Employees
TPM.com

13 November 2009

Faced with the charge of hypocrisy for providing employees health insurance that covers abortion, the Republican National Committee has moved to strike the benefit from their policy.

"Money from our loyal donors should not be used for this purpose," said chairman Michael Steele. "I don't know why this policy existed in the past, but it will not exist under my administration. Consider this issue settled."

With one exception--Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) who voted 'present'--House Republicans voted unanimously for an amendment to health care legislation that forbids women who receive government insurance subsidies from buying policies that cover abortion.

More: http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11...

Straight report: http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politi...

...and it's long overdue and monumentally deserved.

(and no, I'm not announcing that I'm leaving DU)

(assholes)

( )

I came to DU in May of 2001, which means I will be celebrating my 9-year anniversary as a member of this forum in six months. Insane, right?

Like every long-time poster here, I've seen it all. I've been part of the problem sometimes, part of the solution sometimes, and an increasingly informed and motivated bystander in between. This place motivated me to begin the first real, serious political action of my life. I'd worked on campaigns here and there before, stayed as informed as possible, always voted, and gone to the occasional protest, but it wasn't until I met Matcom and several others in the aftermath of 9/11 here that I really rolled up my sleeves and pitched in. I will go to my grave believing we made a difference, and our reports of the actions we took spawned other groups of DUers from all over the country to go out and do the same.

I researched three books and countless articles here. I've met some of the best people I've ever known, and have gotten involved and informed in more ways than ever could have been possible had I not come to this place in May of 2001. DU changed my life, made me a better person, and more importantly, a better citizen of this country and the world.

I'm sure pretty much of you, long-timers and newbies and everyone in between, could share a similar story about this place.

And that is entirely entirely entirely due to the tireless efforts of Skinner, EarlG, Elad, and all the Moderators past and present. Beginning with that dark January day in 2001 when they first unfurled that DemocraticUnderground.com banner along George W. Bush's inaugural route, the Admins and Moderators have worked so hard to make this place what it is. I am sure they feel like schoolmarms locked into a giant classroom with 50,000 demented children sometimes, but they've always been there for this place and for us. Yeah, this joint is batshit crazy, but it's our batshit crazy, and that is all because of them.

Given the mood and mayhem of this place lately, I think it is safe to assume none of the Admins or Mods are having a festive time of it holding this place together. So if you have a story about what DU means to and for you, share it here as a well-deserved thanks to the ones who are always here, making this place better, and keeping the lid on.

Thank you, folks. From my heart.

(Photo Illustration: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted from: Ben Cooper, The U.S. Army)

The New Wall
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Columnist

Thursday 12 November 2009

Mother, do you think they'll drop the bomb?
Mother, do you think they'll like this song?
Mother, do you think they'll try to break my balls?
Mother, should I build the wall?

Mother, should I run for President?
Mother, should I trust the government?
Mother, will they put me in the firing line?
Is it just a waste of time?

- Pink Floyd

My eighteenth birthday fell on November 9, 1989. I woke that morning and came downstairs with three simple tasks to achieve: go to school, eat some birthday cake, and go to the Post Office to register for the Selective Service as required by law. I sat down at the breakfast table, flipped over the copy of the Boston Globe my mother left out, and there it was: a banner headline announcing the fall of the Berlin Wall.

I got all my tasks done that day - school was predictably dull, my friends got me a carrot cake, and the Selective Service registration took all of five minutes - but everything looked and felt somehow different, new, bigger, stranger. I was eighteen for the first time in history, and I had just registered for the draft, which meant that I was officially eligible for military service should the occasion arise, but both of these facts had come against the backdrop of thousands of eager Germans using sledgehammers, picks and their bare hands to smash down an edifice that had come to define the harsh reality of the Cold War for decades.

I was eighteen, and the world had changed beneath my feet. The Cold War was all but over, fears of nuclear annihilation had receded, and from that point on the discussion turned from brinkmanship and superpower stare-downs to peace dividends and military draw-downs. Everything was going to change, of course, because the forty-year global paradigm represented by that wall was literally crumbling before our eyes.

That was then, and this is now, and on balance, matters are exactly as polarized, bloody and costly now as they were then. If you told someone twenty years ago that the year 2009 would look and feel very much like 1989, they would not have believed you, because of course everything was going to change after the end of the Cold War. Yet here we are, right in the middle of the same old madness.

A short refresher on the Cold War: the aftermath of World War II left the US and its European allies in a state of hyper-militarized, nuclear-armed tension with Stalin's hyper-militarized Soviet Union. The map of the world had been scrambled by the war, and the first great postwar contest came when these great powers began growling at each other over how to redraw that map, over who got what, and most importantly, who would get pushed back from the conquests made during the overthrow of the Nazi regime. The Soviets controlled vast swaths of Eastern Europe all the way to Germany, and this did not sit well with the West.

The true beginning of the Cold War can be marked by the transmission of George Kennan's "Long Telegram" in February 1946. Kennan, the US minister-counselor on Moscow, had grown increasingly disturbed by Josef Stalin and what he perceived as an aggressive and dangerous Soviet Union, and prepared a huge document explaining his concerns, which he transmitted to Washington. That document, and the fears it inspired, led to the policy of "containment" regarding the USSR, the establishment of the Truman Doctrine, and the passage of the 1947 National Security Act. Over the next 44 years, until the final dissolution of the USSR in 1991, reality was defined by those policies, and the Cold War raged through dozens of nations, crises and conflicts that combined to radically re-create the world.

Hindsight can all too often become a cheap parlor game, and laying blame is slightly easier than getting out of bed in the morning, but all these decades later, those of us looking back can point to any number of Cold War decisions and tactics that did far more harm than good. Vietnam, our close relationship with Saddam Hussein, the arms sales to Iran, our terrible adventures in South and Central America: the list is long and bloody, and most importantly, profitable.

For many, the core element of the Cold War was the permanent state of fear and conflict that defined the age. George Orwell's "1984" described a world where WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH, and of course, BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU. In other words, the permanent state of conflict during the Cold War was in fact a state of peace, the freedoms surrendered in the process were actually liberating, asking questions or resisting was a sign of dangerous weakness, and finally, we are being watched.

Through it all, a small number of people who controlled what President Eisenhower described as the "military-industrial complex" became fabulously wealthy from the explosion of so-called "defense spending" that was at the heart of the Cold War conflict. The US military, already huge and expensive after WWII, became even more enormous as the years went by, the defense industry supped on trillions of taxpayer dollars under the auspices of making us safe, and through this spending became unimaginably powerful and influential over all aspects of American culture and society. Their influence became so powerful, in fact, that President Eisenhower was compelled to warn the American people during his farewell address:



Eisenhower's warnings went unheeded, the Vietnam War became a 25-year payday for the defense industry, augmented wildly by the race to build tens of thousands of nuclear weapons and the so-called "Star Wars" program, and the Cold War ground on for many years longer than it should have because the money was so good, because the people making that money exerted their awesome influence to make sure the party never ended. Until it did, beginning on that November day I turned eighteen, when the Wall came tumbling down.

Twenty years ago, it looked like everything was going to change. The need to spend countless billions to arm ourselves against an aggressive Soviet foe was gone, leaders started talking about how to spend the "peace dividend" that would come from all the money we didn't have to spend, and all of a sudden, a defense industry that had fattened itself for so long on our tax dollars was looking down the barrel of a brave, new, less-lucrative world.

What happened to that future? Strangely enough, the Cold War happened to that future. The decision to stand with Saddam Hussein against the Iranian regime led to the first Gulf War, and then the second. The decision to arm, train and fund the Afghan mujeheddin led to the establishment of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, which became the catalyst for the new Cold War, a.k.a. the "War on Terror." The use of fear to control the populace and convince them that billions of tax dollars were better spent on bombs and guns than schools and infrastructure, so effective during the Cold War, came back into play with a fearsome vengeance.

Two decades later, the Wall has been rebuilt right under our noses. We are in a permanent state of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and this state of affairs has been transmogrified into the insidious notion that we are safe and at peace because of it. We are expected to surrender our personal liberties to the NSA and other government agencies in order to keep us safe. We are a culture that allows mind-bending fallacies to our national discourse in the name of keeping us strong in the face of yet another terrible foe. We are certainly all being watched, or at least we suspect this is so. And, O my Lord, how the money is rolling in for the same defense industry that was paid so handsomely during the last state of permanent war we were forced to endure.

Everything is different, but nothing has changed.

http://www.truthout.org/1112091

I've seen several posts about DU having "changed," we're "meaner," and certainly filled with "haters."

Mm.

I'm sure it's true, to a degree, but I'm also sure I've seen this before. Many, many, many times. DU is at war with itself. It has done this before, and will do so again. When the wars came before, the place went ballistic on itself and changed because of it; the fireworks motivated some to leave, brought some new people in, and hardened opinions for everyone in between. It's happening again.

My advice is to walk away from the computer for a while; I did not do this myself during a number of previous DU conflicts, and I invariably came to regret it. Barring that, however, simply take it from me: what's happening here right now is an old story oft repeated, albeit with a different headline.

We are what we've always been.

If this bill becomes law, she will never be denied coverage due to her "pre-existing condition."

That's pretty God damned important, so I'm celebrating tonight.

Sorry.

...they call it jihad."

Muslims at Fort Voice Outrage and Ask Questions
By MICHAEL MOSS
Published: November 6, 2009

KILLEEN, Tex. — Leaders of the vibrant Muslim community here expressed outrage on Friday at the shooting rampage being laid to one of their members, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who had become a regular attendee of prayers at the local mosque. But some of the men who had befriended Major Hasan at the mosque said the military should examine the policies that might have caused him to snap.

“When a white guy shoots up a post office, they call that going postal,” said Victor Benjamin II, 30, a former member of the Army. “But when a Muslim does it, they call it jihad. Ultimately it was Brother Nidal’s doing, but the command should be held accountable,” Mr. Benjamin said. “G.I.’s are like any equipment in the Army. When it breaks, those who were in charge of keeping it fit should be held responsible for it.”

The mosque, the Islamic Community of Greater Killeen, sits off Highway 195, near Fort Hood. Major Hasan began attending prayers about two months ago. The mosque has about 75 families who have lived peacefully with their Christian neighbors. “After 9/11, nothing happened here,” said Ajsaf Khan, who owns three convenience stores with his brother, Abdul Khan. “We are very cooperative.”

A mosque leader, Dr. Manzoor Farooqi, a pediatrician, when asked if he feared retribution for the shootings, said he hoped good relations would prevail. Major Hasan was one of about 10 men from Fort Hood who attended prayers in their uniforms, Dr. Farooqi said, and he was shocked to see the major’s face on television identified as that of the gunman. “He is an educated man. A psychiatrist,” he said. “I can’t believe he would do such a stupid thing.”

“I have no words to explain what happened yesterday,” Dr. Farooqi said at Friday afternoon prayers, in which about 40 men were led by the mosque’s imam, Syed Ahmed Ali. “Let’s have a moment of silence to bless those who lost their life."

“The Islamic community strongly condemns this cowardly attack, which was particularly heinous in that it was directed at the all-volunteer army that protects our nation,” Dr. Farooqi said.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/07/us/07mus...

Apartheid.

One set of rights for one group.

Another set of rights for another group.

That's apartheid. The dictionary definition, in fact.

Period.

End of file.

(Photo Illustration: Troy Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted From: ddharmasphere, snapsi42 and dutchlad / flickr)

Good News for the GOP? Not So Much.
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Columnist

Wednesday 04 November 2009

Ever watch "SportsCenter" on ESPN? Pound for pound, it's pretty much the most consistently entertaining program on television, but if you watch enough of it, you really get a sense of the similarities shared between sports reporters and political reporters. ESPN, like CNN, MSNBC and even Fox News, has to fill 24 hours with programming each day. More often than not, there are enough games, events and high-profile arrests in the sports realm to fill the time for ESPN, just as there are usually enough murders, car chases, wars, balloon boys and stories about puppies who found their way home to fill the time for the news channels.

Sometimes, however, both "SportsCenter" and the news networks find themselves seemingly without sufficient content to make the nut. If there's an off-day for most teams during baseball season, for example, ESPN is forced to show the same handful of highlights over and over again, and then has to fill the rest of the time with hardcore analysis of stuff nobody really cares about. Conversely, if one big event happens - Terrell Owens demands a trade to Neptune, for example, or Roger Clemens admits to freebasing pine tar - the entire network focuses like a laser beam on it and leaves everything else on the cutting room floor. The way these events get reported is of a type, as well: One guy says something about it, and she reports on what he said, he reports on what she said, someone else writes an article about what they said, and presto, a consensus is reached because everyone was too lazy to do anything other than report on other people's "reporting."

That is sports journalism in a nutshell, and that is political reporting to a "T." We're all seeing an example of this now that the news networks, as well as quite a number of newspapers, have come together to declare Tuesday's off-season elections in New York, New Jersey and Virginia to be some kind of earth-rattling triumph for the GOP and a devastating defeat for the Obama administration. CNN and Fox have been crowing about a "GOP sweep" thanks to Republican victories in the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, and because Maine passed another virulent piece of anti-gay legislation.

It wasn't just the TV talking heads spouting this line. "The Republican victories in the races for New Jersey and Virginia governors put the party in a stronger position to turn back the political wave President Obama unleashed last year," reported The New York Times on Wednesday morning, "setting the stage for Republicans to raise money, recruit candidates and ride the excitement of an energized base as the party heads into next year's midterm elections.... The results in the New Jersey and Virginia races underscored the difficulties Mr. Obama is having transforming his historic victory a year ago into either a sustained electoral advantage for Democrats or a commanding ideological position over conservatives in legislative battles."

Not to break away from the pack here, but the situation deserves a little more in-depth analysis than what we've gotten so far, which has basically amounted to these news people playing umpire during a close play at the plate. Obama is out because they say so, even though it wasn't the last out, there is plenty of game left to play and the blue team is still way ahead on runs. You can't argue with the ump, though, so that out is officially A Big Deal.

Not so much.

First of all, the Democratic candidate in New Jersey, Jon Corzine, was an unbelievably unpopular incumbent who ran a tragically poor campaign. Corzine's unpopularity vastly predates Obama's impact on the electorate, and was the entire reason he lost. As for Virginia, well, that state has been a tough get for any Democrat for a couple of generations now; Obama's success there in the 2008 presidential election was the exception and not the rule for Democrats historically, and speaking of history, the party that wins the White House has gone on to lose the Virginia governor's office one year later every time since the Carter administration, so we're not into any kind of mold-breaking situation there.

Second of all, these were two statewide elections where Obama was not on the ballot, and there is no national significance whatsoever behind two states out of fifty voting for Republicans. Furthermore, Democrats cleaned up in local elections all across the country, especially in mayoral races, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of breathless reporting on this facet of yesterday's vote coming from the news folks. The umpire made the call, and that's how it goes. Or something.

Speaking of the national picture for the GOP, it is difficult to make a cogent argument that two statewide gubernatorial wins are enough to alter the country's opinion of the party, especially since the country's opinion of Republicans remains monumentally bleak. Just two weeks ago, a Washington Post/ABC News poll reported:



Finally, the idea that yesterday's elections bode well for the Republican Party might make for good television, but that doesn't make it right. The race in New York's 23rd District has far more national import than the other two, and the writing on the wall doesn't make for good reading for the GOP going forward. The election went sideways several weeks ago when moderate Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava came under fire from the high priests of the far right because they deemed her not conservative enough. Ersatz luminaries like Limbaugh, Beck and Palin jumped on board the third-party candidacy of Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman, and the resulting bedlam eventually drove Scozzafava out of the race. Scozzafava stepped aside after endorsing the Democratic candidate, Bill Owens, who went on to win Tuesday's election by a margin of 49-45.

This was a nifty win for the Democrats, because the seat was formerly held by Republican John McHugh, who vacated the seat after he was tapped by President Obama to serve as secretary of the Army. Beyond the pick-up, however, is the fact that the whole national Republican infrastructure has been shaken up thanks to this race. The hard-right GOP base revved itself up and successfully tore down an electable moderate member of their own party. If they get it into their heads to do this in other races come 2010, we could very easily watch the GOP eat itself next year, as its ground troops attack and soften up fellow Republicans, making them ripe pickings for Democratic opponents. The Democrats have been expecting to lose seats in 2010, something that nearly always happens during the first midterms of a new presidency, but open warfare within the GOP could very much mitigate the damage.

Speaking of the NY-23 race, memo to news reporters: the Democrat won. It isn't a "sweep" when the other team wins a game. The news people should ask the sports reporters for a refresher course on athletic terminology. It's probably a good idea to have your facts straight before your broadcasters open their mouths or your printing press puts ink to paper.

A wild idea, I know, but it might be for the best.

http://www.truthout.org/11040910

There's so much tension here!

People are mean!

Or judgmental!

Or contrarian!

Or anti-Democrat!

Or anti-Obama!

Or anti-anti-Democrat!

Or anti-anti-Obama!

...and just kinda generally pissed off.

Good.

I have my opinions, you have yours. They have theirs. We have ours.

Etc.

It's been tense around here of late.

But tension is what the Founders intended. If they wanted this shit to work seamlessly, we'd have no separation of powers/three branches of government/free speech/voting rights/printing presses/TVs/internet...and it'd be a whole lot easier that way.

Thank God/Yahweh/Allah/Buddha/Vishnu/The FSM/etc. it isn't like that.

Me raging against you, you raging against them, them raging against us, us raging against those guys, and all of us motherfucking each other with bull-throated ferocity...

...well...

...maybe it wasn't what DU was originally intended to be, but it surely is what it is today.

And thank God (or whom/whatever) for it.

We don't agree.

We're not supposed to.

Welcome to democracy.

(Photo Illustration: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t, Adapted From: Senate.Gov / wikimedia)

Little Joe
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Columnist

Tuesday 03 November 2009

Senator Joe Lieberman managed to shoehorn himself into the center of the national debate over health care reform last week with his announcement that he would filibuster any health care legislation that contained any kind of a so-called "public option." Lieberman, the erstwhile Democrat turned Independent from Connecticut, went on "Face the Nation" on Sunday to reassert his opposition in no uncertain terms. "I feel so strongly about the creation of another government health insurance entitlement," said the senator. "The government going into the health insurance business - I think it's such a mistake that I would use the power I have as a single senator to stop a final vote." He went on to say that, in his opinion, it is the people pushing for a public option who are standing in the way of progress on reform.

Not content merely to potentially derail an important Democratic piece of legislation the Democratic president has made a central priority, Lieberman went on to announce that he will happily campaign for Republican candidates in the 2010 midterm elections. "There's a hard core of partisan, passionate, hardcore Republicans," said Lieberman in a report by ABC News. "There's a hard core of partisan Democrats on the other side. And in between is the larger group, which is people who really want to see the right thing done, or want something good done for this country and them - and that means, sometimes, the better choice is somebody who's not a Democrat."

Why this man is tolerated by the Democratic caucus in the Senate is an enduring mystery, frankly, and not just because Lieberman is a publicity-hogging fraud, although that is most definitely the case. All he lacks is a big red nose, big red floppy shoes and big red tufts of hair sticking up from his head to complete his image as a clown, but anyone familiar with his record over the last several years doesn't need the props to complete the picture. He made Dick Cheney look like Socrates in the 2000 vice presidential debate. He ran one of the most ridiculous presidential campaigns in modern political history in 2004, failing to win a single primary and eventually finishing seventh behind Kerry, Edwards, Dean, Kucinich, Clark and the Reverend Al Sharpton. He lost his own state in 2006 and bailed on the Democrats, managing to win back his seat only by sucking up huge sums of GOP campaign donations, which he paid back by campaigning for Republican Senator John McCain in the 2008 presidential election and by bashing the Democrats while speaking at the 2008 GOP convention.

The serial list of failures Lieberman has to his name is by no means limited to the campaign trail. During his time in the Senate, he was an active opponent of the kind of financial regulation that would have spared our economy from having to deal with the Enron and Arthur Andersen meltdowns, as well as the calamity we are currently mired in. William Grieder, writing for The Nation in March of 2002, described Lieberman's foul impact in an article titled "Enron Democrats":



The mess he helped create on the economic front is only the tip of the iceberg. He supported the Bush administration's call for offshore oil drilling despite the damage such a program would do to the environment and tourism. He opposed lifting the ruinous Bush administration tax cuts. He supports the privatization of Social Security. He voted to confirm, and later publicly praised, former Bush administration Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. He defended Pastor John Hagee, who called Catholicism "The Great Whore" and said Hitler was a Hunter sent by God to get the Jews to Israel, and later compared Hagee to Moses when he spoke at Hagee's Washington-Israel summit last July. He sponsored the Senate version of the Iraq War Resolution, and supported that catastrophic conflict all the way down the line.

The list goes on, and on, and on, and on.

Enough of this clown. He should be stripped of his Senate chairmanship and sent across the aisle to his boon companions on the right. He should be ignored out of hand on the matter of health care reform, and anything else he decides to address. He has raised being wrong, craven, untrustworthy and useless to the level of high art. Anyone with a full understanding of his record and reputation would know better than to trust him with a job as a crossing guard, and never mind as any kind of a leader on issues of major national and international import. The man is a living, breathing train wreck, and he has no business whatsoever being allowed in the same postal code as the decisions to come that will shape our lives.

For now, he must be endured, because his term is not up until 2012. But he should not be allowed to keep the gift of his chairmanship, he should not be empowered in any way, and when the time comes, the Democratic Party should call down the thunder on any re-election campaign he might endeavor to undertake. Marginalizing Lieberman, and eventually getting rid of him, would be addition by subtraction, and the time to do that particular bit of math is long, long past due.

http://www.truthout.org/1103098