Month: May 2005

I voted for Gen. Clark in the California primary and still believe he could have beaten George W. Bush – there sure as hell wouldn’t have been a Swift Boat Liars onslaught against him – so I’m glad learn he’s working with the party’s Congressional leadership. Via Carpetbagger:

Roll Call has a really interesting article today (alas, it’s unavailable to non-subscribers) on Wesley Clark and the role he is establishing for himself in Dem policy circles. There’s a lot to this.

“Retired Gen. Wesley Clark has taken a high-profile role, both on and off Capitol Hill, as a Democratic spokesman and foreign policy adviser, stoking speculation that he is planning another national campaign in 2008.

” Clark has emerged as a regular presence on Capitol Hill in the last few months.

” His allies paint him as a ‘go-to guy’ for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) on foreign policy matters, pointing out that he has been repeatedly invited by the duo to address their respective caucuses on the handling of current military situations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

” Jim Manley, a Reid spokesman, noted that Clark is a member of the two leaders’ National Security Advisory Group.

‘“He is someone that Sen. Reid will continue to look to for advice,’ Manley added.”

The implications in the 2008 race are obvious, and the article notes that Clark is continuing to cultivate his relationships with key Dem leaders, including Reps. Charlie Rangel (N.Y.) and Rahm Emanuel (Ill.). Of course, it’s not just beltway activities either — Clark is maintaining a busy speaking schedule with Dems across the country, including a speech next month at the annual Flag Day Dinner of the Manchester City Democratic Committee in New Hampshire.

Those who were with Clark before haven’t lost their enthusiasm. Though I was surprised to see it in print, I think this was a telling remark:

“I’m convinced we would have won with him,” Rangel said.

Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin poses the question nobody is asking: If 15 to 18 people really were killed in Afghan riots sparked by Newsweek’s story about a Koran being flushed down the toilet by U.S. military interrogators in Guantanamo, who are they?

Farah claims to have scoured every available document in Lexis-Nexis, as well as the entire Internet, and talked to an anonymous source (gotta love those) and has been unable to find a single mention of a name of one of the dead anywhere. Indeed, he can find no substantive proof that the riots in fact ocurred.

Then there were riots in Afghanistan, the Far East and the Palestinian Authority – all, the international media reported, connected to the Newsweek story.

Later, many who had first-hand knowledge of the disturbances said they were planned months in advance and had little or no connection to the Newsweek story.

But now there’s a new twist.

Virtually every major news agency in the world has reported without verification that between 15 and 18 Afghanis were killed in the riots.

There’s just one problem. There is no more evidence for these deaths than there is that a U.S. interrogator flushed a Quran down the toilet.

Not a single name of even one victim has been released. No details of the circumstances of the riots were released from any official sources – either U.S. or Afghan.

Who were these victims? Were they rioters killed by police or military forces? Were they innocent victims attacked by fanatics? Were they Afghanis? Were they relief workers?

Farah claims he has queried both U.S. and Afghan official sources for details about “these alleged deaths.” but has been stonewalled, forcing him to rely on that old chestnut, unnamed sources.

Now, some sources inside the U.S. government are saying off the record that they believe the death toll may have been deliberately exaggerated by Islamists – perhaps even some Afghan government officials – who want to make a point about the grievous nature of the supposed Quran desecration.

Hmm, what if there were no dead Afghans ….

His image is all George W. Bush has, so it is imperative that young people be taught not to screw around with it.

Posters that depicted President Bush with a Groucho Marx-style mustache and cigar were ordered torn down at a high school after a student complained.

Theater students, who had created the posters to advertise a satirical play, countered with new posters with a First Amendment message.

Principal Kenny Lee ordered 100 posters removed from the campus of El Camino Real High School in the Woodland Hills area last week on grounds that they promoted smoking and “endorsing one ideology over another.”

“That’s our take on the student speech and conduct,” Lee said.

The school-funded posters advertised the students’ play, “The Complete History of America (Abridged),” which satirizes U.S. history.

A senior who supports the president wrote a complaint letter to the administration, teachers and students said.

“We had one student who was very upset,” Lee said. “If something is bothering a student on campus, we’re going to address it.”

The poster ban infuriated some students.

“It taught us that the First Amendment certainly does not guarantee the right of free speech,” said Jes Shah, 16, a junior in the school drama program.

The principal asked the drama students to come up with new posters. The new designs all feature a silhouette of Bush and a burning cigar, along with inscriptions such as “Free Expression for All (unless you are in high school)” and “What First Amendment?”

“They’re good,” Lee said. “I like the follow-ups.”

Why are conservatives like Tom DeLay so obsessed with their own victimhood? DeLay said the judges who were responsible for Terri Schiavo’s euthanasia would pay for their roles in her death. Why can’t he take responsibility for the threat he made against members of the judicial branch of our government?

U.S. House of Representative Majority Leader Tom DeLay accused NBC on Thursday of slurring his name by including an unflattering reference to him on the NBC police drama “Law & Order: Criminal Intent.”

DeLay’s name surfaced on Wednesday night on the show’s season finale, which centered on the fictional slayings of two judges by suspected right-wing extremists.

In the episode, police are frustrated by a lack of clues, leading one officer to quip, “Maybe we should put out an APB (all-points-bulletin) for somebody in a Tom DeLay T-shirt.”

Editor & Publisher published a report that uses White House press conference transcripts to show Press Secretary Scott McClellan is a (surprise!) liar. McClellan claims that he did not say that people died in the riots in Afganistan following the Newsweek article on abuses of the Koran at Guantanamo, Cuba.

He also claimed that he had never said it did, even though a check of transcripts disputes that. On May 16, for example, he said, “people have lost their lives.” On May 17, he said, “People did lose their lives,” and, “People lost their lives” due to the Newsweek report.

Here is part of the transcript from the latest White House press briefing which shows McClellan in full BS mode:

Q: One other question. Karzai was quite definite in saying that he didn’t believe that the violence in Afghanistan was directly tied to the Newsweek article about Koran desecration. Yet, from this podium, you have made that link. So —

McCLELLAN: Actually, I don’t think you’re actually characterizing what was said accurately.

Q: By whom?

McCLELLAN: As I said last week, and as President Karzai said today, and as General Myers had said previously, the protest may well have been pre-staged. The discredited report was damaging. It was used to incite violence. But those who espouse an ideology of hatred and oppression and murder don’t need an excuse to incite violence. But the reports from the region showed how this story was used to incite violence.

Three crosses were burned last night in Durham, N.C., home of Duke University, and one of the bluest cities in the South. KKK fliers were found on the scene. Pam’s House Blend, which is published in Durham, has the story – go there for details, additional links and photos – but here are the highlights:

A police officer and firefighters arrive at the scene of a cross burning Wednesday night on South Roxboro Street, about a quarter mile from Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway. Mayor Bill Bell can’t recall a cross burning since he moved here in 1968.

Three crosses were burned last night in my progressive hometown, one only a couple of miles away from our house, near a middle-class, suburban subdivision. Some are tying it to the visit of members of the Rotting Cryptkeeper’s church visit to our city to protest the Laramie Project play held at the Durham School of the Arts. The pathetic Phelps family picketed and were overwhelmingly outnumbered by supporters of the play and its performers…

It’s hard to understand what kind of cretins think that they are going to find support for this rat-bastard, cowardly deed — hey you f*ckers, show your faces — but they won’t find it in Durham.

The Hill:

At a time when journalists are under attack for political bias and factual inaccuracy, local celebrity biographer Kitty Kelley isn?t backing down a bit from criticism of her controversial biography of the Bush family, The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty.

In the afterword of a just-issued paperback edition of the hardcover edition published last year — which sold some 715,000 copies — Kelley takes on those who accuse her of portraying the Bushes as a spoiled, dysfunctional family… But she’s especially hard on the mainstream media. “I had broken the personal code of poodles on the Potomac,” she writes. “Do not speak ill of the powerful.”

She notes that CNN’s Larry King refused to interview her after admitting he wanted to keep his friendship with the president’s father, who called her “a liar and smear artist.”

She adds that President Bush “has doghoused the White House press corps so that they are almost totally dependent on scraps tossed over the fence by presidential spokesmen,” who, she said, called TV executives to keep her off the air.

Even though Matt Lauer of NBC agreed to interview her, she said made it clear he didn’t like doing so, while a New York Times reporter asked her if she ever had an abortion or did cocaine, charges she levels against members of the Bush family.

“I was sermonized by Lauer, patronized by CNN’s Aaron Brown, and chastised by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews,” she writes.

Kelley said that writing this book was “the most daunting, probably because I was writing about a sitting president and his quite secretive family in the midst of a contentious presidential campaign. The book is political, but it is not meant to be partisan.”

Companies like Wal-Mart have deflected all responsibility for their employees’ health costs. They keep the mix of part-timers very high, which means they don’t have to offer benefits such as health insurance. But part-time pay is so low that these folks can’t afford insurance. When they get sick, the costs of their healthcare is picked up by the taxpayers.

Wait a minute – isn’t that like a tax that Wal-Mart charges the communities it serves?

Effective solutions to social ills almost always require a partnership between the public and private sectors. Based on what we have seen so far, private companies like Wal-Mart have no intention of voluntarily working on way to get insurance coverage for the portion of the 45 million uninsured Americans who are Wal-Mart “associates.” The time has come for government action.

Writing in The Nation, Liza Featherstone looks at how the public sector is dragging private industry into the debate, whether they like it or not:

More and more states are considering similar legislation, thanks to a growing and coordinated national movement. A pending Pennsylvania bill would require firms with fifty or more workers to provide data on how many workers depend on public assistance for health care. Other states and localities debating Wal-Mart-inspired measures similar to Maryland’s–requiring large companies to ensure workers or contribute to Medicaid– include New Jersey, Georgia, New York City, California, Montana and Connecticut. To keep abreast of these developments, and take action, sign up for updates at www.americansforhealthcare.org.

If Wal-Mart find these bills irksome, and still doesn’t want to provide decent health insurance for its workers, the company should lobby for national health insurance. That’s unlikely, of course, but let’s hope the political battle over Wal-Mart’s benefits at least convinces Americans that our health is too important to be left to the whim of greedy employers.