.... I just stopped at the Speedway near my friend's house in Grand Blanc (about 50 minutes north of Detroit). I used to live near the station, and on a lovely spring Saturday afternoon like today, it would typically be hopping like an airport. But I guess that $3.97 pg regular on the marquee was like a scarlet letter - there was my car and one other.
I guess more people are enjoying the comforts of home rather than driving to the malls, movies and other diversionary destinations these days.

from HuffPost:




Greg Mitchell
Epidemic Continues: Iraq Vet with PTSD Kills Self, Brother
Posted May 17, 2008 | 10:39 AM (EST)



The epidemic of suicides among veterans of the Iraq war with PTSD has become so common that I sat down to write about two news ones today and end up writing about an even more recent, and shocking, one. It involves a decorated vet who wrote about his PTSD for the Marine Corps Gazette-- and this week killed himself and his brother after a long police chase in Arizona.

Police have discovered no motive for the killings, nor why the brothers earlier in the week may have planned to commit suicide by driving into the Grand Canyon -- Thelma and Louise style.

Staff Sgt. Travis Twiggs, 36, who enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1993 and held the combat action ribbon -- and met President Bush a few weeks ago -- wrote a lengthy article in the January issue of the Marine Corps Gazette detailing his efforts to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder. He loved his country so much he named his son America, The Arizona Republic reports today.

His brother was Willard J. Twiggs, age 38.

"All this violent behavior, him killing his brother, that was not my husband. If the PTSD would have been handled in a correct manner, none of this would have happened," Kellee Twiggs, the wife of Staff Sgt. Travis Twiggs, said. She said he began changing after his second tour of duty in Iraq, and worsened after he returned from his third stint there, when he lost two good friends from his platoon.

"He went and saw a physician's assistant who said that was the severest case of PTSD she'd seen in her life," Kellee Twiggs said, according to published reports. Twiggs had been absent without leave since May 5.

Travis Twiggs was given medications for mood elevation and sleeping to get him calmed down before beginning therapy. But again he was sent back to Iraq "and he was very, very different, angry, agitated, isolated and so forth," upon his return, Kellee Twiggs said, according to the Associated Press. "He was just doing crazy things." .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchel...

Finally, a Bushie being honest.


from ThinkProgress:



Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne: ‘Unfortunately I Have To Follow The Law’»

Yesterday, Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne was challenged by Glenn Beck on CNN about why he listed the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Kempthorne responded:



Kempthorne caught himself and added, “Or fortunately.” After highlighting his record trying to cripple the Endangered Species Act as a Republican senator from Idaho, Kempthorne said with a smirk, “I cannot ignore the law. I have a Constitutional requirement to, uh, uphold the law.” Watch it: http://thinkprogress.org/2008/05/17/kempth... /

from CounterPunch, via AlterNet:



Howard Zinn: Anarchism Shouldn't Be a Dirty Word

By Ziga Vodovnik, CounterPunch. Posted May 17, 2008.

In this interview, Zinn explains why anarchism is often ridiculed as violent and chaotic.



Howard Zinn, 85, is a Professor Emeritus of political science at Boston University. He was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1922 to a poor immigrant family. He realized early in his youth that the promise of the "American Dream", that will come true to all hard-working and diligent people, is just that -- a promise and a dream. During World War II he joined US Air Force and served as a bombardier in the "European Theatre." This proved to be a formative experience that only strengthened his convictions that there is no such thing as a just war. It also revealed, once again, the real face of the socio-economic order, where the suffering and sacrifice of the ordinary people is always used only to higher the profits of the privileged few.

Although Zinn spent his youthful years helping his parents support the family by working in the shipyards, he started with studies at Columbia University after WWII, where he successfully defended his doctoral dissertation in 1958. Later he was appointed as a chairman of the department of history and social sciences at Spelman College, an all-black women's college in Atlanta, GA, where he actively participated in the Civil Rights Movement.

From the onset of the Vietnam War he was active within the emerging anti-war movement, and in the following years only stepped up his involvement in movements aspiring towards another, better world. Zinn is the author of more than 20 books, including A People's History of the United States that is "a brilliant and moving history of the American people from the point of view of those who have been exploited politically and economically and whose plight has been largely omitted from most histories" (Library Journal).

Zinn's most recent book is entitled A Power Governments Cannot Suppress, and is a fascinating collection of essays that Zinn wrote in the last couple of years. Beloved radical historian is still lecturing across the US and around the world, and is, with active participation and support of various progressive social movements continuing his struggle for free and just society.

Ziga Vodovnik: From the 1980s onwards we are witnessing the process of economic globalization getting stronger day after day. Many on the Left are now caught between a "dilemma" -- either to work to reinforce the sovereignty of nation-states as a defensive barrier against the control of foreign and global capital; or to strive towards a non-national alternative to the present form of globalization and that is equally global. What's your opinion about this?

Howard Zinn: I am an anarchist, and according to anarchist principles nation states become obstacles to a true humanistic globalization. In a certain sense the movement towards globalization where capitalists are trying to leap over nation state barriers, creates a kind of opportunity for movement to ignore national barriers, and to bring people together globally, across national lines in opposition to globalization of capital, to create globalization of people, opposed to traditional notion of globalization. In other words to use globalization -- it is nothing wrong with idea of globalization -- in a way that bypasses national boundaries and of course that there is not involved corporate control of the economic decisions that are made about people all over the world.

Ziga Vodovnik: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon once wrote that: "Freedom is the mother, not the daughter of order." Where do you see life after or beyond (nation) states?

Howard Zinn: Beyond the nation states? (laughter) I think what lies beyond the nation states is a world without national boundaries, but also with people organized. But not organized as nations, but people organized as groups, as collectives, without national and any kind of boundaries. Without any kind of borders, passports, visas. None of that! Of collectives of different sizes, depending on the function of the collective, having contacts with one another. You cannot have self-sufficient little collectives, because these collectives have different resources available to them. This is something anarchist theory has not worked out and maybe cannot possibly work out in advance, because it would have to work itself out in practice. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/democracy/85427 /

from HuffPost:




Joe Biden
McCain Has Zero Plan to Get Us Out of Mess President Bush Has Created
Posted May 15, 2008 | 04:19 PM (EST)


John McCain revealed today that he has no plan -- none -- to get us out of the mess the president has created. Senator McCain said that it is important for presidential candidates to "define their objectives and what they plan to achieve not with vague language but with clarity." But especially when it comes to Iraq and Afghanistan, the picture he painted today of where he hopes to be by 2013 is totally divorced from reality and there is zero clarity about how he would get there. It's beyond being vague: John McCain is totally silent about how he would realize his rosy vision for 2013.

It's like saying by 2013, every American will be a millionaire and there will be peace on earth. Wishing will not make it so. The last things Americans need now are empty promises. They need, and our security demands, a concrete plan of action that brings the war in Iraq to an end without leaving chaos behind.

In his speech, Senator McCain says that by 2013, "the Iraq war has been won." How? What's the strategy?

He says "Iraq (will be) a functioning democracy." It certainly isn't now -- what's his place from getting us from here to there?

He says "civil war has been prevented, militias disbanded, the Iraqi security force is professional and competent." But not a word on his strategy to actually prevent civil war, disband the militia or train the security forces.

He says "the government of Iraq is capable of imposing its authority in every province of Iraq." Right now, it can't even impose its authority through all of Baghdad and there is little trust within the government, of the government by the people and no capacity by the government to deliver basic security or services. So how do we get from here to there? Senator McCain is silent. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-biden/mc...

from The Progressive:



Same-Sex Ruling a Cause for Great Celebration
By Matthew Rothschild, May 16, 2008



May 15, 2008, will go down in the history books as a great day in the march for equality.

For on that day, the California Supreme Court recognized the constitutional right of same-sex marriage.

It overturned hoary old arguments about “tradition,” which often is the flimsiest mask for prejudice.

It was 250 years of tradition that kept blacks as slaves.

It was another century of tradition that was invoked to oppose interracial marriage.

It was thousands of years of tradition and religion that reduced women to inferior status.

Just as it was tradition and religion that conspired to oppose gay marriage.

But as the state of Massachusetts has understood, and now as the California Supreme Court has made clear, there is no rational, secular argument for denying same-sex couples the right to marry. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.progressive.org/?q=mag_wx0516b0...

Witnessing Republican Disaster in Mississippi
posted by Max Blumenthal on 05/16/2008 @ 9:10pm




Last weekend, I traveled to Mississippi's first congressional district, a bastion of Republican power that has been home to William Faulkner, Elvis Presley, and the scene of massive riots on the night James Meredith attempted to integrate the University of Mississippi. With the district in the midst of a hotly contested special election campaign, I probed the impact of a million-dollar Republican strategy to attack the insurgent Democratic candidate, Travis Childers, by linking him to Barack Obama and Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

(See one of the GOP ads here): http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmat...


After following Childers on the campaign trail, then attending a rally of his Republican opponent, Greg Davis, it became apparent to me that the GOP's strategy would fail miserably. On Tuesday, the Republicans' worst nightmare came true: Childers defeated Davis by a stunning 8 point margin.

Mississippi's First encompasses a working-class region reeling from the country's economic downturn. Voters there from both parties told me they were more concerned with bread and butter issues like gas and food prices than with whether Obama's supporters fundraised online for Childers, the issue exploited by the national GOP. Childers was the perfect candidate in this environment, running as a pro-life, pro-gun economic populist who opposed free trade and promised to take on big oil. I followed the candidate around a Piggly Wiggly supermarket, watching as he pointed shoppers to the whopping prices of milk and eggs, then indignantly blamed the White House for the price spike.

While the more than a dozen Republican voters I interviewed outside the Greg Davis rally insisted to me that their candidate represented "Mississippi Values" far better than his opponent, a key theme of the Republican attack ads, several complained that the ads had poisoned the campaign, and said they resented the GOP's nationalization of the election. However, Davis was to blame for this negative tone. Though he was a successful mayor of Southaven, a white flight suburb just south of Memphis, and was widely credited for the town's economic revitalization, he allowed Washington Republican groups like Freedom's Watch and the National Republican Campaign Committee to define his campaign, thereby distracting voters from his accomplishments. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmat...

from ThinkProgress:



Washington Post Reporter Complains In Online Chat: ‘Oy, What’s With All The McCain Questions?’»

Earlier today, Washington Post reporter Jonathan Weisman opened up an online chat with readers by saying that “zany things happening on Capitol Hill” and “John McCain has found the end date for our adventure in Iraq.” Weisman then asked readers to “Take it away!”

But after five out of the first 11 questions focused on Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Weisman began to complain. Asked about senior McCain adviser Charlie Black’s lobbying for Ahmed Chalabi, Weisman had enough, complaining, “Oy, what’s with all the McCain questions?“:



Weisman was relieved though, when a reader asked a question comparing President Bush’s “appeasement” shot at Democrats yesterday to Rep. Jim McDermott’s (D-WA) criticism of President Bush while in Baghdad before the Iraq war. Weisman exclaimed: “Ah, thank goodness someone in chatting land is a Republican“:



Weisman, like a lot of the news media at the moment, often appears reluctant to put McCain under tough scrutiny. Last month, in another washingtonpost.com online chat, Weisman stuck up for McCain’s “maverick brand,” claiming without evidence that McCain had “clashed” with President Bush “repeatedly” over the years.


http://thinkprogress.org/2008/05/16/weisma... /

All these people getting booted from their homes will need apartments to move to.



from Bloomberg:


U.S. Builders Broke Ground on Fewest Houses Since '91 (Update3)

By Courtney Schlisserman

May 16 (Bloomberg) -- Construction of U.S. single-family houses in April dropped to the lowest level in 17 years, even as building of condominiums and townhouses rebounded.

Builders broke ground on 692,000 single-family homes at an annual rate, the fewest since January 1991, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. Total housing starts jumped 8.2 percent to 1.032 million as construction of multifamily units rose 36 percent following a 35 percent drop in March.

``There may be signs that we are getting close to a bottom but we don't think we're there yet,'' said Adam York, an economist at Wachovia Corp. in Charlotte, North Carolina. ``The housing market still has a ways to go towards working off its problems.''

Lower prices and other incentives have yet to revive demand for houses, indicating builders will need to come up with even more discounts to attract buyers. Stricter lending rules, job losses and growing pessimism about the economy signal sales will not rebound quickly.

Treasuries dropped in the minute after the release, before retracing some of the losses later. Yields on benchmark 10-year notes rose to 3.85 percent at 9:56 a.m. in New York, from 3.82 percent late yesterday. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=new...

via AlterNet:



U.S. Sergeant Refuses to Go to Iraq: "This Occupation is Unconstitutional and Illegal"

By Karin Zeitvogel, Middle East Online. Posted May 16, 2008.

On Capitol Hill yesterday, an American soldier named Matthis Chiroux publicly announced his refusal to deploy to Iraq.



Matthis Chiroux is the kind of young American U.S. military recruiters love.

"I was from a poor, white family from the south, and I did badly in school," the now 24-year-old said.

"I was 'filet mignon' for recruiters. They started phoning me when I was in 10th grade," or around 16 years old, he added.

Chiroux joined the U.S. army straight out of high school nearly six years ago, and worked his way up from private to sergeant.

He served in Afghanistan, Germany, Japan, and the Philippines and was due to be deployed next month in Iraq.

On Thursday, he refused to go, saying he considers Iraq an illegal war.

"I stand before you today with the strength and clarity and resolve to declare to the military, my government and the world that this soldier will not be deploying to Iraq," Chiroux said in the sun-filled rotunda of a congressional building in Washington.

"My decision is based on my desire to no longer continue violating my core values to support an illegal and unconstitutional occupation… I refuse to participate in the Iraq occupation," he said, as a dozen veterans of the five-year-old Iraq war looked on.

Minutes earlier, Chiroux had cried openly as he listened to former comrades-in-arms testify before members of Congress about the failings of the Iraq war. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/85612 /

from CounterPunch, via AlterNet:



Howard Zinn: Anarchism Shouldn't Be a Dirty Word

By Ziga Vodovnik, CounterPunch. Posted May 17, 2008.

In this interview, Zinn explains why anarchism is often ridiculed as violent and chaotic.



Howard Zinn, 85, is a Professor Emeritus of political science at Boston University. He was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1922 to a poor immigrant family. He realized early in his youth that the promise of the "American Dream", that will come true to all hard-working and diligent people, is just that -- a promise and a dream. During World War II he joined US Air Force and served as a bombardier in the "European Theatre." This proved to be a formative experience that only strengthened his convictions that there is no such thing as a just war. It also revealed, once again, the real face of the socio-economic order, where the suffering and sacrifice of the ordinary people is always used only to higher the profits of the privileged few.

Although Zinn spent his youthful years helping his parents support the family by working in the shipyards, he started with studies at Columbia University after WWII, where he successfully defended his doctoral dissertation in 1958. Later he was appointed as a chairman of the department of history and social sciences at Spelman College, an all-black women's college in Atlanta, GA, where he actively participated in the Civil Rights Movement.

From the onset of the Vietnam War he was active within the emerging anti-war movement, and in the following years only stepped up his involvement in movements aspiring towards another, better world. Zinn is the author of more than 20 books, including A People's History of the United States that is "a brilliant and moving history of the American people from the point of view of those who have been exploited politically and economically and whose plight has been largely omitted from most histories" (Library Journal).

Zinn's most recent book is entitled A Power Governments Cannot Suppress, and is a fascinating collection of essays that Zinn wrote in the last couple of years. Beloved radical historian is still lecturing across the US and around the world, and is, with active participation and support of various progressive social movements continuing his struggle for free and just society.

Ziga Vodovnik: From the 1980s onwards we are witnessing the process of economic globalization getting stronger day after day. Many on the Left are now caught between a "dilemma" -- either to work to reinforce the sovereignty of nation-states as a defensive barrier against the control of foreign and global capital; or to strive towards a non-national alternative to the present form of globalization and that is equally global. What's your opinion about this?

Howard Zinn: I am an anarchist, and according to anarchist principles nation states become obstacles to a true humanistic globalization. In a certain sense the movement towards globalization where capitalists are trying to leap over nation state barriers, creates a kind of opportunity for movement to ignore national barriers, and to bring people together globally, across national lines in opposition to globalization of capital, to create globalization of people, opposed to traditional notion of globalization. In other words to use globalization -- it is nothing wrong with idea of globalization -- in a way that bypasses national boundaries and of course that there is not involved corporate control of the economic decisions that are made about people all over the world.

Ziga Vodovnik: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon once wrote that: "Freedom is the mother, not the daughter of order." Where do you see life after or beyond (nation) states?

Howard Zinn: Beyond the nation states? (laughter) I think what lies beyond the nation states is a world without national boundaries, but also with people organized. But not organized as nations, but people organized as groups, as collectives, without national and any kind of boundaries. Without any kind of borders, passports, visas. None of that! Of collectives of different sizes, depending on the function of the collective, having contacts with one another. You cannot have self-sufficient little collectives, because these collectives have different resources available to them. This is something anarchist theory has not worked out and maybe cannot possibly work out in advance, because it would have to work itself out in practice. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/democracy/85427 /

Reuters, via Yahoo!:



Morgan Stanley cut 1,500 jobs this week: source
Fri May 16, 6:47 PM ET



NEW YORK (Reuters) - Morgan Stanley (MS.N) cut 1,500 jobs this week across its investment banking, trading and asset management businesses, a person familiar with the situation said Friday, a 5 percent reduction of non-broker employees.

Most of the cuts hit employees in the United States and Europe, the source said. A few of the affected employees have not been notified yet.

As reported earlier this month, the second-largest investment bank is taking steps to cut 5 percent of employees across almost every business, excluding the retail brokerage division.

Including this latest round, Morgan Stanley has slashed more than 4,400 mortgage, banking and trading jobs to reduce expenses and weather a period of slowing revenue.

Morgan Stanley had 47,050 employees at the end of February.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080516/bs_nm/...

from Truthdig:



Newsroom Carnage Continues at The Washington Post

Posted on May 16, 2008


This just in: The Washington Post is the latest major newspaper to undergo the apparently inevitable newsroom downsizing process, clearing out 100 more journalists with a “blunt instrument,” as former Post (and former New York Times) writer Sharon Waxman reports in her WaxWord blog. “The Washington Post as I know it has jumped the shark,” Waxman laments.





http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/ite... /

from King 5 News, via MichaelMoore.com:



May 14th, 2008 6:45 pm
Anti-war veterans group banned from Bremerton parade


By Allen Schauffler / KING 5 News

REMERTON, Wash. - They're expecting good weather and big crowds in Bremerton this weekend for the annual Armed Forces Day Parade.

This year organizers expect two dozen bands, 165 entries and nearly 6,000 people on parade.

If the weather heats up, it could draw 40,000 spectators

But one veterans group says they're not invited. The North Olympic Peninsula Veterans for Peace say they're being kept out of the parade this year because of their anti-war stance.

The anti-war group marched last year. This year the Chamber of Commerce sent them a rejection letter.

David Jenkins, who served four years in the Navy, says they have no interest in causing problems on parade day.

"We believe sincerely that we need to find peaceful solutions to all international problems, national problems, local problems," Jenkins said.

But organizers say the group is too political and that's not what the parade is about.

"This is not set up for politics," said Cris Larsen, chairman of the Armed Forces Festival. "Veterans groups are allowed to march and walk, it's the whole idea of the parade was set up 60 years ago to honor all those brave men and women who have served in our armed forces."

Jenkins says his group will be there and be visible Saturday even if they don't march.

Larsen says he'd be glad to sit down and talk and see if they can work out some kind of compromise.

So in this particular battle, maybe there is a chance for peace.


http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestne...

from HuffPost:




Max Blumenthal
Witnessing Republican Disaster In Mississippi (And Beyond)
Posted May 16, 2008 | 09:05 PM (EST)


Last weekend, I traveled to Mississippi's first congressional district, a bastion of Republican power that has been home to William Faulkner, Elvis Presley, and the scene of massive riots on the night James Meredith attempted to integrate the University of Mississippi. With the district in the midst of a hotly contested special election campaign, I probed the impact of a million-dollar Republican strategy to attack the insurgent Democratic candidate, Travis Childers, by linking him to Barack Obama and Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

After following Childers on the campaign trail, then attending a rally of his Republican opponent, Greg Davis, it became clear to me that the GOP's strategy would fail miserably. On Tuesday, the Republicans' worst nightmare came true: Childers defeated Davis by a stunning 8 point margin.

Mississippi's First encompasses a working-class region reeling from the country's economic downturn. Voters there from both parties told me they were more concerned with bread and butter issues like gas and food prices than with whether Obama's supporters fundraised online for Childers, the issue exploited by the national GOP. Childers was the perfect candidate in this environment, running as a pro-life, pro-gun economic populist who opposed free trade and promised to take on big oil. I followed the candidate around a Piggly Wiggly supermarket, watching as he pointed shoppers to the whopping prices of milk and eggs, then indignantly blamed the White House for the price spike.

While the more than a dozen Republican voters I interviewed outside the Greg Davis rally insisted to me that their candidate represented "Mississippi Values" far better than his opponent, a key theme of the Republican attack ads, several complained that the ads had poisoned the campaign, and said they resented the GOP's nationalization of the election. However, Davis was to blame for this negative tone. Though he was a successful mayor of Southaven, a white flight suburb just south of Memphis, and was widely credited for the town's economic revitalization, he allowed Washington Republican groups like Freedom's Watch and the National Republican Campaign Committee to define his campaign, thereby distracting voters from his accomplishments. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenth...