Year: 2005

Condeleeza Rice hit the nail on the head at the Organization of American States meeting in Fort Lauderdale this weekend. According to the South Florida Sun Sentinel,

In a thinly veiled reference to oil-rich Venezuela, which is engaged in escalating tensions with the United States, Rice said the OAS “must insist that leaders who are elected democratically have a responsibility to govern democratically.”

Since our leader wasn’t elected democratically, he has no responsibility to act as if he was. This explains everything.

But really, aren’t people getting sick of this stuff? The United States wants oil so it tells the U.N. or OAS or NATO that the leader of a country that has it is a bad guy. Boom, now the U.S. can go in and take what it wants.

The OAS meeting comes at a time when left-of-center leaders are ascendant in Latin America, having campaigned against old ills–corruption, nepotism, economic inequality– that democracy has failed to cure.

The last time the United States hosted an OAS summit, in 1974, almost half the 23 member states were military dictatorships, whereas all but Cuba have democratic governments in place today. Yet the transition is perceived by many in the hemisphere as a futile experiment in combating poverty. One in three people in Latin America lives on less than $2 a day.

Our hypocrisy is nowhere more evident than in our dealings with Haiti, as Jean-Robert Lafortune, chairman of the Haitian American Grassroots Coalition in Miami, pointed out.

He criticized the United States for denying protective immigration status to Haitians while their country combats chaos in the streets and storm damage.

“As Haiti continues to spiral into insecurity, the Department of Homeland Security continues to apprehend and deport, constantly, Haitian nationals to their homeland,” he said.

We are advocating gathering intelligence (an oxymoron if there ever was one) on our neighbors, just as we are on our own citizens.

The United States is proposing that the OAS…set off early warnings that would avert the kinds of crises that led to the ouster of presidents in Bolivia, Ecuador and Haiti in just three years.

Some Latin American groups, however, have said they’re not keen on a list that would embarrass individual countries. Nor is it clear how the OAS would implement new policies given limited funding and financial strains.

Same old stuff. I can hear Bush saying OAS is ineffective so it’s O.K. to ignore them, and then send John Bolton in to represent us. I cannot wait until 2008.

Hilarious and terrifying Borowitz Report today:

In an appearance on CNN’S “Larry King Live,” former President George H. W. Bush unveiled ambitious plans to extend the Bush dynasty in the White House, indicating that if all goes as planned the Bushes will rule the U.S. until 2090.

When asked if he hoped that his son, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, would run for president in 2008, the former president replied, “Yes, Larry, I think it’s the smart one’s turn.”

…Presidential historian Davis Logden of the University of Minnesota said he sees advantages in such an unprecedented White House dynasty: “It could provide useful continuity to have a Bush in the White House in 2090, because we will most likely still be in Iraq.”

On May 26, racial tensions at Jefferson High School in Los Angeles erupted into a brawl for the third time in six weeks. This time the LAPD was called in but the level of tension was so high they had to use batons and pepper spray to tamp down the violence.

These brawls are the latest incidents in on-going racial conflicts between Latinos and African-Americans in Los Angeles. They have the attention of the city’s mayor-elect, Antonio Villaraigosa, because he is Latino – the first Latino mayor of the city since 1872 – and in his campaign, he promised to be “mayor for all Los Angeles.”

Although he won’t take office until July 1, Villaraigosa went to Jefferson on the day after the violence.

He is reviewing the organization of the mayor’s office to determine if a special office for race and safety issues is needed to work with the Los Angeles Unified School District, which runs the 800-campus system.

“One of the most important responsibilities for the next mayor is to help bring this city together,” said Villaraigosa, 52, the son of a Mexican immigrant. “We cannot allow — in a city as diverse as this one — racial violence in our schools. We’ve got to have a zero tolerance for it.”

(Thanks to PR contributor Judy for the tip.)

MaxSpeak You Listen!:

One wild-ass accusation comes from Ben Stein (subsequently channeled by Peggy Noonan), son of the very wise and liberal Nixon-era economist Herb Stein, to the effect that Felt and the Watergate affair set the stage for the defeat of South Vietnam (sic) and the Cambodian genocide. This after giving credit to Nixon for ending the war in Vietnam.

A very sketchy (corrections welcome) history review: Cambodia was ruled by Prince Sihanouk, who survives to this day and actually has a sort of blog (in French). The North Vietnamese were using Cambodian territory to prosecute their war with the U.S. Nixon responded by bombing Cambodian territory. U.S. college campuses erupted. Sihanouk was deposed in a coup by pro-U.S. Lon Nol, sparking the Khmer insurgency, which eventually prevailed. The Khmers began massacres of their own and of border-region Vietnamese populations, and the victorious Vietnamese Communist government deposed the Khmer. The Communist Chinese supported Khmer guerrilla warfare and invaded Vietnam itself in 1979.

Laying the defeat of the U.S. in Vietnam to Watergate is a huge whopper. The U.S. had already lost but was throwing good money after bad. (Sound familiar?) How can you give credit to Nixon for ending the war, at the same time you blame liberals for losing the war?

Read through to the “Update” and see how the spokesman from Fox pulls the classic conservative ploy – smear the messenger who reveals the bad news.

“O’Reilly’s May numbers dipped below 2 million for the first time in a year,” the Washingtonian’s Harry Jaffe notes. “In October, during the election season, more than 3-million people were tuning in to O’Reilly’s diatribes.” TVNewser first reported this trend last month. CNN says O’Reilly has lost 1,181,000 viewers since October:

October: 3,166,000 / November: 3,080,000 / December: 2,610,000 / January: 2,478,000 / February: 2,391,000 / March: 2,320,000 / April: 2,178,000 / May-to-date: 1,985,000

O’Reilly has also consistently lost viewers each month in the 25-54 demographic, from 951,000 in October to 420,000 in May, a decrease of 531,000 viewers.

But, Jaffe adds, “a Fox flack said his numbers were up from last May.” And, as a Fox insider said last month, “who do you think CNN would rather have at 8pm?”

> Update: 10:14pm: A Fox News spokesperson responds to Jaffe’s story: “Once again Harry proves he’s a CNN toady in using their tired revenue spin which is better known as loser’s lament and by misrepresenting O’Reilly’s ratings…he begrudges everyone’s success, including that of the highest rated show in cable news… as everyone in the Beltway knows, Harry is understandably bitter but we wish him well in overcoming his personal demons.”

Turns out there is a cure for being gay – death. Washington Blade has a great story on how the late Ismail Merchant’s gayness was deleted in his obituaries:

Merchant Ivory Productions is synonymous with films that are rooted in ornate and authentic history. With the death of film producer Ismail Merchant on Wednesday, May 25, however, some major news organizations are rewriting history, or at least omitting some of it.

It is well known that the 44-year relationship between Merchant and James Ivory — who was the director of the duo’s films like Oscar-nominated “Howard’s End,” “Room with a View,” and “Remains of the Day” — was romantic as well as creative.

Of the mainstream news accounts reviewed for this article, only the Los Angeles Times explicitly states that the two were a gay couple.

“In a business where professional marriages last hardly any longer than personal ones,” the L.A. Times writes, “Merchant’s association with the German-born [screenwriter Rita Rawer] Jhabvala and the American Ivory, who was also Merchant’s life partner, spanned more than 40 years and yielded as many movies.”

The New York Times, Associated Press, Reuters and the Washington Post all omitted the fact that Merchant and Ivory were life partners.

The Post obit writer, who included a very old quote in which Merchant said he had a “crush” on an actress, defended omitting Merchant’s relationship with Ivory because he said he could not find definitive proof that they were a couple.

“I feel uncomfortable writing about someone’s personal life unless it’s something they talked about extensively in print,” the Post’s obit writer Adam Bernstein told The Blade. Bernstein pointed out that the Post routinely lists gay partners as survivors in obituaries if the relationship can be proved.

The Blade’s Brian Moylan also points out that a similar “de-gaying” happened recently when Susan Sontag died. Many obituaries glossed over her relationships with women, including famed photographer Annie Liebowitz.

Excellent coverage of Jeb’s delusions of grandeur and delusions in general at Florida Politics. Now that we’ve all had some time to look into the hysterical claims made during the Schiavo fiasco, it appears just barely possible Jeb was…bluffing? Exaggerating? Um…lying? Yes, that’s it — Jeb was lying.

Will the media ask “Jeb!” to explain whether he was lying about “new and compelling allegations of abuse” in advance of the aborted Schiavo snatch and grab mission? After all, “Jeb!” specifically,

“claimed there were new and compelling allegations of abuse or neglect that the state Department of Children and Families had to investigate.”

“…the only allegation in the batch not heard before: A March 7 complaint that accused a nursing assistant at Schiavo’s Pinellas Park hospice of using an “air freshener substance” in her bath water in July, which caused a rash. DCF investigators learned the substance was an aromatherapy oil that the assistant placed in a spray bottle, not in Schiavo’s bath.”

… “Jeb!” better have had something more than “air freshener” complaints when he claimed there was “new and compelling allegations of abuse” as justification for nearly causing a constitutional crisis; recall that, as a result of the need to “save” Schiavo, “‘There were two sets of law enforcement officers facing off, waiting for the other to blink,’ said one official with knowledge of Thursday morning’s activities.”

A note to folks outside Florida. Jeb’s campaign materials consist of red signage with “Jeb!” reversed out in white. That’s all, just “Jeb” with an exclamation point. Seeing this year after year, those of us who live here tend to think of him as “Jeb!” all the time.

Fabulous letter to the editor recently in Florida’s Gainesville Sun in defense of our Constitution and judicial review.

Who would be willing to allow the police to beat confessions out of us or allow us to be tried for crimes without the benefit of legal counsel? Who would vote to return to a day when people of different races could not intermarry, were forced to go to different schools, drink from different fountains and sit separately in public arenas?

The change in such practices has usually come from court decisions before the majority of our country fell in line. Times change and values change, or we would still have slavery.

Our Constitution was adopted to protect the minority because the majority has never needed protection. To the extent that the court system may be considered activist because it does not always vote with the majority of our population as represented by Congress or state legislatures, it is in fact carrying out its mandate from the spirit, if not the precise letter of the Constitution.

The letter was signed by George L. Barnett of Micanopy, which, everyone knows, is the town where the Michael J. Fox film “Doc Hollywood” was filmed. Good going, George!