May Be Largest Protest In City History

As an Angeleno, what is stunning to me about the photo above is the size of the crowd. We are not a protest-oriented town. The Times doesn’t say it explicitly but I suspect this was the largest protest ever in Los Angeles:

Attendance at the demonstration far surpassed the number of people who protested against the Vietnam War and Proposition 187, a 1994 state initiative that sought to deny public benefits to undocumented migrants but was struck down by the courts. Police said there were no arrests or injuries except for a few cases of exhaustion.

The national Republican Party has apparently learned nothing from the self-inflicted wound that hobbled the California GOP in the 1990s. Under Gov. Pete Wilson, Republicans used immigration as a wedge issue in the 1994 elections by putting Proposition 187 on the ballot.

It passed overwhelmingly, but the blowback was harsh. Prop 187 motivated thousands of Latinos whose families have lived here for generations to register as Democrats. Many of these new Democrats were culturally conservative Catholics, who would have been ripe for the picking by the GOP.

The immigration issue sent California Republicans into the political wilderness, where they will wander for 40 years, at least.

As a Democrat, I hope the GOP follows through on its plan to “nationalize” the immigration issue this year. Let them reap the whirlwind.

Credit: The Boy Wonder

Has Bush Fatigue got you down?

Feeling blue? Tired of blubbering, “Why won’t they make him go away?!”

Radical Russ at Pam’s House Blend has a must-read post titled,”Peeling Away The Base,” that will positively brighten your day.

First of all, there’s the map (click it to see it full scale) that shows, in shades of blue, how the epidemic of Bush hater-itis is affecting every state. (The bluer the state, the greater the hate, as Johnnie Cochran might have said.)

Look at South Carolina! That was “Bush country.” Look at Florida. He’s even hated in his home state of Texas.

It’s called “Schadenfreude,” my friends. Savor the moment.

Russ also offers a litany of prominent Republicans in full lather against their own party:

• A rightwing blogger quits the GOP: “My 20 year affair with the Republican party is coming to an end.”
• Professional homophobe Tony Perkins rails against Bush’s war: “How can we congratulate ourselves for liberating Afghanistan from the rule of jihadists only to be ruled by radical Islamists who kill Christians?”
• Rancor breaches the ranks of the House GOP, who “were all over Karl [Rove at a recent Republican conclave] on immigration and spending,” said Rep. Tom Tancredo, Colorado Republican and [anti-immigrant nutcase].

Russ concludes: “Ah, I love the smell of Republican Bush-bashing in the morning. It smells like… victory!”

It is one of the basic rules of politics that when your opponents are charging you with something heinous, you should never acknowledge the charges — especially if they are true. That’s why it was remarkable that Vice President Dick Cheney said this at a fundraiser in Orlando today:

“The leaders of the Democratic party have stepped into the debate not with a positive message but with a slogan proclaiming that the administration is dangerously incompetent.

Au contraire, Dick. We are positive you are incompetent.

The Veep also opened his remarks with a soupcon of humor:

“I got back to the White House and (the president had) heard about it. He said, ‘Dick, I’m 38 percent in the polls and you shot the only trial lawyer who supports me,'” Cheney said.

Family Values: First of all, his name is Dirk — but his last name is Kempthorne, not Digler, and he was the governor of Idaho until this week, when President Bush nominated him to be the next Secretary of the Interior.

But when Kempthorne was a U.S. senator, he had a reputation. If it is true, he made Bill Clinton look like a school boy. According to 43rd State Blues: Democracy for Idaho, it is widely rumored that:

• While he was philandering in D.C., he was married, of course — but he also had a full-time girlfriend from back home who worked in his office
• He and the girlfriend had a child
• When his senate career ended, his wife insisted that he give up the girlfriends, all of them, and move back to Idaho
• They moved back, but at least one girlfriend, the one with the child, returned to Idaho too

Did I need to mention that Kempthorne is a Republican?

Scientists have been hoping for a while now that they would uncover evidence that the H5N1 avian influenza virus is less virulent than has been thought, and that mild human cases of the illness have been going undetected in countries where the virus has been passed from birds to humans. That appears not to be the case, according to a report coming out of Cambodia:

New data from Cambodia presented at an international conference Monday, March 20, 2006, suggest mild or symptomless human cases of H5N1 avian flu may not be occurring. Many have hoped that the world is overestimating the virulence of the H5N1 virus, based on an assumption the disease surveillance systems in affected countries might not be sensitive enough to pick up mild infections.

But if the work presented at the International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases is borne out by additional larger studies, it would suggest the current case fatality rate of roughly 54 percent might indeed be close to reality.

Lead researcher Dr. Philippe Buchy of the Institut Pasteur in Phnom Penh put a positive spin on his findings. “In our experience, it seems that the virus still has difficulty jumping from avian to humans,” he said in an interview.

But the head of the influenza branch at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control said the findings have both positive and negative implications. “You can look at it in the way that it’s encouraging, because it means that the virus is not jumping to humans very readily. And that of course is very important, and that’s a positive thing,” said Dr. Nancy Cox.

“But on the other side of the coin, it means that the case fatality rate is still very high. And that is a negative thing.” Cox said it will be important to do this type of work on a larger scale, to get a more definitive picture of whether mild or asymptomatic H5N1 human cases are occurring. She said some larger studies are planned.
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