Big Ketchup - Part 2

Naked Protest - 600 bare all on a melting glacier.

Guardian:

If the US declares an arm of the Iranian state a terrorist organisation (and under the Bush doctrine, those who harbour terrorists are as guilty of terrorism as the terrorists themselves) what chance does Washington have of prising influential Iranian opinion away from the belief that the bomb is the best insurance policy against outside attack?

Bye, bye Baghdad - a self-confessed overpaid contractor has become zombiefied in the lost war in Iraq.

The Portrait House for Humanity.

Should President Obama Stack the Supreme Court?

Another call for an Islamic Reformation - NYT Magazine - The Politics of God.

In local politics, I still think this is odd, New Pasadena City Council majority defunds mayor's Executive Assistant position. This is an example for our Democratic Congress - purse strings equals power.

In local weather - our house was four inches from flooding. Pasadena floods from Erin.

Are you a real liberal? Get working.

On Iraq. CNN - Iraqi interpreter: 'Now I have no future'

On Nuclear War. The Atlantic: Why America’s growing nuclear supremacy may make war with China more likely. Our increasingly accurate and powerful weapons almost seem designed for a first strike.

Now that's a conspiracy theory. MajestyTwelve: UFO reports are a government plan to confuse the public, like the fake moon landings, as they prepare the New World Order. Your only defense is to join an armed militia group.

LAT - Ronald Brownstein: GOP moderates and mavericks face poor prospects in 2008 election.

Centrist Democrats aren't immune to these trends.... This difference is rooted in the fact that the Democrats today are much more of a coalition party than the Republicans: Polls show that only about half of Democratic voters consider themselves liberals, while three-fourths or more of Republicans call themselves conservatives. That means to win elections, Democrats depend more than Republicans on the votes of moderates -- which compels them to accept more dissent from party orthodoxy.

Russia, China and allies play war game. Play out how to counter the U.S. in central Asia.

Jamison Foser: Mass media relies on misleading anecdotes, refuses to correct errors. The Padilla case illustrates the mass media failures.

The Texas Observer: Eating Local Isn’t Always the Greenest Option.

David Sirota: How to End the War. Make the GOP decide between protecting our borders or occupying Iraq.

On Blue Dogs and Bush Dogs.

The new pentagon supported Christian homoerotic art.

The Chavez's - GOP fundraising as a family business. They seemed to mainly provide for their affluent lifestyle, with little toward their causes.

WP - How the Fight for Vast New Spying Powers Was Won. Dems were played and folded.

Bush, Congress could collide on Iran - will Dems stand up?

WP: Obama's Rise was a Series of Fortunate Events

Utah mine had warnings and 'bumps' early this year.

Guantánamo man's family release 'torture' dossier. Detailed timeline of US supervised torture.

Rove's Effort to Promote the President and His Allies Using Tax Dollars Was Unprecedented in Its Reach

'The Argument' by Matt Bai. How progressives should ally with WalMart and free traders and how the new left is all (only?) about aggressive tactics. WTF? The NDN and DLC will love this book.

Reaction - Lots of BS. A simple lack of fact-checking. Even before it was hard to take Matt seriously. Yet again in June. The labor blog:

I could address the problems with this argument -- e.g., the complete absence of any discussion of power or unions -- but I have a simpler solution. I'm sure the New York Times could find a very smart writer in India or China who could crank out the same argument for one fifth the salary. Maybe then the Matt Bai's of this world would spend less time showing how clever they are in saying "Wal-Mart's not to blame" and more time talking about how we fight our way out of this hole. And if not, at least I'd save a little money on my Times subscription.

NYT Eight American NCO's in Iraq:

To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched.

NYT - After Foreclosure, a Big Tax Bill From the I.R.S.

Conservatives now discuss how to win in Iraq - by leaving.

Greenwald on The truth behind the Pollack-O'Hanlon trip to Iraq. Recently he takes on the "Democratic" foreign policy establishment and the use of the labels Pacifist and Imperialist.

KPFT dissent, Texas style. Some very odd Chron reporting as they struggle to avoid admitting that KPFT is the only liberal news radio outlet in Houston. Update.

Family values?

Impeach Perry. (This reminds me of some old hippy bringing out his buttons - Impeach LBJ, Impeach Nixon, Impeach Ford, Impeach Clinton, Impeach Bush....)

Idiotic writer suing over bad reviews. Stuart Pivar! You’re a crackpot! This is similar to another $1 billion threat involving a "literary agent" vulture. There are other vultures out there for writers. Writers Beware. Yew Gotta Larf - poetry(?) contest. The Castration of Sam McGee.

FoxNews wants war with Iran - video.

When staying alive means going bankrupt - America's health insurance system scam.

I have much more to go on this series as I keep getting distracted and mixing in more current stuff.

Texas Round-Up 6

Here is your Texas Progressive Alliance Blog Round-Up for the week of August 20, 2007. This week's installment is brought to you Vince from Capitol Annex.

Krazypuppy at Texas Kaos keeps track of What You Will Not Find at Laura Bush's Library.

I think my best last week was on The American Fascists, sometimes using that word is not a sign that an online argument has gone on too long. (I didn't submit it to others as it was not Texas specific enough.)

TXSharon at BlueDaze asks, "Would you make Osama Bin Ladin director of Homeland Security?" If the answer is no, read about who wants to protect our water in Barnett Shale: Devon wants to conserve our water? Like hell!

Hal at Half Empty sees vultures flocking to pick over the bones of Tom DeLay's old seat.

Texas Toad at North Texas Liberal exposes the hypocrisy of chickenhawk Republicans taking shots at Rick Noriega.

Vince at Capitol Annex tells us about the coming storm surrounding implementation of religious viewpoint "anti-discrimination" policies in Texas schools to comply with a bill recently passed by the Texas Legislature.

WcNews at Eye On Williamson points out the hypocrisy in sentencing in recent child molestation cases in Williamson County.

PDiddle at Brains and Eggs fries up a double order of e-Slate voting woes: an advance of the meeting over security issues with Houston Mayor Bill White and the Harris County (Republican) clerk; and the disappointing results of that meeting, including the news that the TDP lawsuit over "emphasis voting" was dismissed.

Captain Kroc at McBlogger suggests the incumbent in the Travis County Tax Assessor-Collector race is using a page or two from Turd Blossom's playbook.

Boadicea at StopCornyn tells us about John Cornyn's Badge Of Fiscal Irresponsibility.

CouldBeTrue at South Texas Chisme exposes another Republican minority district suppression scam - using immigration raids to minimize population counts for the 2010 census.

Kuff at Off the Kuff asks "How many felonies could you commit with an oyster?"

Glenn Smith at Burnt Orange Report gives a "political type's" perspective on the media's fascination with Karl Rove.

From Bay Area Houston, The TRCC. The most expensive worthless Commission in Texas The homebuilders praise is like a terrorist praising Homeland Secutiry.

Also, don't forget to check out these other great Texas Progressive Alliance blogs: People's Republic of Seabrook, Three Wise Men, Musings, In The Pink Texas, Who's Playin?, Feet To The Fire, Winding Road In Urban Area, Common Sense, B & B , The Agonist, Texas Truth Serum.

Why Karl Rove Left?

Jeff Gannon, fake conservative white house reporter/gay escort, has a book coming out. Does the son of a cover-boy for Piercing Fans International Quarterly play a featured role in how Gannon got his White House press pass without vetting?

What brings this on is the tangently related post in Boing Boing: “I’m The Proud Owner Of Karl Rove’s Father’s Solid Gold Cock Ring.”

Karl Rove's father was proud of his adorned and decorated cock. Karl Rove has been called both proud of his father and adept of keeping his father's gay S&M piercing lifestyle secret. He has also been discreet about his own atheism and former mistress while wooing the hard core Christian church vote.

Very not safe for work - includes photos of Karl's Dad package: Cannonfire, Sadly No, and Corrente wire. The original article has more. Jesus' General prays that Karl Rove be given back his father's cock ring, in the name of God.

Bill Moyers on Karl Rove: “Rove is riding out of Dodge City as the posse rides in.”

More on his lying, spinning complicit mass media Texas grand almost farewell tour.

Merv was also being remembered this weekend for being a semi-closeted gay.

Tags: Karl Rove, hypocrisy, gay, secrets, psychology, piercings, NSFW

Big Ketchup - Part 1

I have just been posting very interesting stuff on the desktop and it is time to clean up!

The White House was using the Commerce, Treasury and other departments to boost GOP campaigns. Your tax dollars at work.

POLITICAL MELTDOWN IN IRAQ - Iran wins. Not that I haven't been saying that for years.

THE OSTRICH PAPERS: It Will Take ALL Decent Citizens to Save America - David Brin. How to have civil conversations with conservatives about what the GOP is doing and how to get back to the rule of law.

Profane Minutemen kill illegal on video. Isn't that like, very illegal? (If not a fake.)

Run on banks starting in California. Mortgages collapsing leading to bank bankruptcy worries.

Conservative betrayed. Major GOP figures set up website to warn against Bush and many GOP candidates like Thompson. A little late.

Krugman - Workouts, not bailouts. Will the fed rescue financiers after ignoring hard-working Americans?

Declaring Iranian Republican Guards terrorists makes no sense, except as an excuse to attack Iran.

Warren Buffett makes the pitch for Obama while also endorsing Hillary.

Get Digital Inspiration suggests Robert Nagle the Houston technical writer.

I tried out the Pappa John's Internet pizza ordering site. At the very end it tells you they will send an email as a confirmation. I get no email. No call. I have lots of other calls and stuff I'm doing. Finally over an hour later we get a call saying your pizzas have been ready for an hour. She had called when they were done and someone was on the phone and it rolled over to our voicemail. She has no idea why it says they are supposed to email, maybe it was when the site was new.

Oops, I got called in to work. To be continued...

Chris Hedges: American Fascists - The Christian Right and the War on America

Google Video. The book.

In American Fascists, Chris Hedges, veteran journalist and author of the National Book Award finalist War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, challenges the Christian Right's religious legitimacy and argues that at its core it is a mass movement fueled by unbridled nationalism and a hatred for the open society.

The right radical religious political movement in the main is a religion and politics of despair. This is similar to the Fascist and Nazi movements in Europe as noted by several studies.

Hedges, who grew up in rural parishes in upstate New York where his father was a Presbyterian pastor, attacks the movement as someone steeped in the Bible and Christian tradition. He points to the hundreds of senators and members of Congress who have earned between 80 and 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian Right advocacy groups as one of many signs that the movement is burrowing deep inside the American government to subvert it.

The positions of many churches and many GOP politicians have been taken wholesale from the John Birch Society, positions the GOP rejected in the 60's and 70's.

The movement's call to dismantle the wall between church and state and the intolerance it preaches against all who do not conform to its warped vision of a Christian America are pumped into tens of millions of American homes through Christian television and radio stations, as well as reinforced through the curriculum in Christian schools. The movement's yearning for apocalyptic violence and its assault on dispassionate, intellectual inquiry are laying the foundation for a new, frightening America.

This is a movement of intolerance which cannot be reasoned with. They view Islam and secularists as Satanic. They believe we are at the End of Days and all who oppose them will be swept away to eternal punishment. How do you argue with people who so completely reject opposing viewpoints they not only deny them legitimacy but believe holders of differing views should be eternally punished? These radical right Christians also comprise a frightening percentage of the voters in this country. In 2004 22 percent of voters identified themselves as evangelical Christians.

American Fascists, which includes interviews and coverage of events such as pro-life rallies and weeklong classes on conversion techniques, examines the movement's origins, its driving motivations and its dark ideological underpinnings. Hedges argues that the movement currently resembles the young fascist movements in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and '30s, movements that often masked the full extent of their drive for totalitarianism and were willing to make concessions until they achieved unrivaled power. The Christian Right, like these early fascist movements, does not openly call for dictatorship, nor does it use physical violence to suppress opposition. In short, the movement is not yet revolutionary. But the ideological architecture of a Christian fascism is being cemented in place. The movement has roused its followers to a fever pitch of despair and fury. All it will take, Hedges writes, is one more national crisis on the order of September 11 for the Christian Right to make a concerted drive to destroy American democracy. The movement awaits a crisis. At that moment they will reveal themselves for what they truly are -- the American heirs to fascism.

Like the Nazi movement's alliances, the current American Fascist short term goals are supported by groups in a very uneasy alliance. Corporations, churches of differing denominations, millenarists, small businessmen, social conservatives, traditional conservatives, have all signed on to a party and leaders pledged or beholden to an unChristian, unAmerican, undemocratic agenda. It is surprising the allies the leaders of the Domionist churches have made in pursuing political agendas and power when privately they remain anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish, for example.

Hedges issues a potent, impassioned warning. We face an imminent threat. His book reminds us of the dangers liberal, democratic societies face when they tolerate the intolerant.

Twenty-five years ago Chris Hedges was warned by an influential elderly divinity school professor to watch for what the radical Christian right would do to homosexuals. In Germany, homosexuals were the first victims of the rise of the Nazi party, even before the Jews. In 2004, despite already having laws prohibiting the practice, 11 states enacted further laws against same-sex marriages. Why? To demonstrate strength and mobilization in thwarting "the homosexual and liberal activist judges agenda." The Christian family and even the American Nation was under threat. Just as Hitler rallied the Germans against similar "threats" to the people, family, and nation.

See also Chris Hedge's interviews with combat veterans of The Other War published in The Nation.

Sara at Orcinus, who also keeps up with our radical right extremists, noticed that someone who wants to be the next Southern Baptist Convention president has issued a fatwa against people who noted he broke the law again. Dr. Wiley S. Drake keeps endorsing candidates using his church position and authority. He called upon his followers to curse those who report his transgressions.

On the topic of America's new incipient Fascists see also David Neiwert - The Rise of Pseudo-Fascism (pdf) and Rush, Newspeak and Fascism: An Exegesis (pdf) or illustrated html.

Reuters: Texas will almost certainly hit the grim total of 400 executions this month, far ahead of any other state, testament to the influence of the state's conservative evangelical Christians and its cultural mix of Old South and Wild West.

Tags: Chris Hedges, religion, theocracy, fascism, radical right, Dominionism, Southern Baptists, Iraq, Texas, veterans

Flash - US Healthcare is not the best in the world

In fact our system of health care ranks pretty low. Is that just Michael Moore and people who contacted him saying this? No, it's The New York Times.

Seven years ago, the World Health Organization made the first major effort to rank the health systems of 191 nations. France and Italy took the top two spots; the United States was a dismal 37th. More recently, the highly regarded Commonwealth Fund has pioneered in comparing the United States with other advanced nations through surveys of patients and doctors and analysis of other data. Its latest report, issued in May, ranked the United States last or next-to-last compared with five other nations — Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and the United Kingdom — on most measures of performance, including quality of care and access to it. Other comparative studies also put the United States in a relatively bad light.

What can you do? Email Congress. P.S. - let Canadians tell you about those Canadian waiting times.

Watching SiCKO, Malke felt "just really embarrassed." When her mother-in-law in India got lung cancer, treatment to full recovery cost less than $800. She wonders why the richest nation on earth does not do as well.

"When I worked at Humana, people would get angry and say, 'Something has to be done, something has to change.' And I'd think, 'Are you going to do anything? Are you angry enough?'"

Tags: Sicko, heath care, medicine, NYT

Karl Rove, Adviser to President Bush, to Quit - washingtonpost.com

Another one bites the dust.

The Word from Rudy

“Freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.”

I had the link from my brother but Digby reminded me of this 1984ish quote in it.

Who was voted most likely to succeed in solving the climate crisis?

Captain America is Dead

With Bush's and the GOP's corruption of American values, Captain America no longer has a place.

Long live Captain America. (That really looks like the hands of Prince Namor and Bucky so is this a flashback series or Captain America in the super hero afterlife?)

Captain America Movie Next From Marvel After Hulk! Many, many comic book movies coming.

Tags: Captain America, movies

Texas Round-Up 5

It’s Monday, and that means it is time for this weeks Texas Progressive Alliance’s statewide round up. Matt Glazer over at Burnt Orange Report is giving Vince a break this week and has the best of the left from over a dozen progressive blogs.

Charles Kuffner at Off the Kuff is suffering from a little Kinky fatigue.

Gary at Easter Lemming Liberal News has a local digest this time: In the event of a WMD attack our librarians will be sent in.

McBlogger special correspondent and legal counsel, Harry Balczak, enjoys a trip to the AFL-CIO Democratic Presidential debate...and interviews the candidates!

North Texas Liberal reports on the rumor that Tarrant County Democratic Party Chairman Art Brender and Ft. Worth City Council Member Wendy Davis are going to square off for a chance to face unpopular Sen. Kim Brimer, R-District 10, in 2008.

Marc also shows us the Democrats have set their sights on SDD-10 and Tarrant County Democrats have reason to be optimistic.

Matt Glazer at Burnt Orange Report is working for change. Bloggers and activists across the state have launch TexBlog PAC to usher in a new majority—a Democratic Majority.

What do Republicans do when whistleblowers reveal their evil secrets? South Texas Chisme let’s us know they go after the whistleblowers, of course. Fixing the problem? Not an option. TYC goes after employees who report to the Texas legislature or to newspapers.

Stace Medellin from DosCentavos is added to the Texas Kaos family.  But never fear, DosCentavos will still be around for your reading pleasure!  Stace begins his association with TK on Monday, August 13!

Speaking of TexasKaos, this week the Presidential candidates sat down and answered questions from the LGBT community on Logo. Texas Kaos'contributor Refinish69 writes just how far the LGBT rights fight has come in his post, GLBT History was Made Tonight & My Part in That History.

Stop Cornyn highlights John Cornyn’s low lights. Sad thing is just how many bad votes he has made just this past week.

"Republicans For Rick Noriega?" Half Empty explores the origins of this movement.  

Musings reports on Rick Noriega's visit to The Lake – firedoglake, that is!

WCNews at Eye on Williamson asks What Did Senator Carona Expect? After caving to Ric Williamson during the legislative session Sen. John Carona can't believe Williamson isn't showing courtesy to him.  

Vince at Capitol Annex brings us news about protesters--who happened to have been paid operatives hired through a temporary agency—who tried to make noise at a fundraiser for Texas Supreme Court candidate Susan Criss.

Who's more corrupt, Republicans or Democrats? Find out at Bluedaze, with TXsharon's Corruption in Government: Comprehensive List. Hint: Republicans = 204 – Democrats = 3.

John Coby at Bay Area Houston simply calls the Republican Texas Ethics Commissioners incompetent after the disclosures of millions in undisclosed campaign expenditures.

PDiddie at Brains and Eggs wrote the tongue-in-cheek advance of the Democratic presidential front-runner's visit to the Bayou City with The Nutcracker comes to H-Town.

Steve at WhosPlayin? takes Congressman Michael Burgess (R - Lewisville) to task for fear-mongering about the trace amounts of mercury in energy-saving compact fluorescent bulbs.

Tags: Texas, liberal news, progressive news, bloggers

Engines of Economic Growth

Ian Welsh of The Agonist has a short great post in FireDogLake on economics and the current situation with China and the United States. A simple illustration of Econ 101. The short answer - massive currency intervention is preventing a natural job creating feedback loop from occuring. The comments have some good points too.

The era of globalization is winding down, for all you don’t hear people saying so. And tariffs aren’t always a bad thing, especially since many countries are effectively employing trade subsidies (mind you, so does the US, especially in agricultural goods).

I support free trade (but not free capital flows), but we don’t have free trade right now, we have very managed trade that calls itself free....

...NAFTA subsidized large-scale international investment in agriculture and manufacturing in Mexico. Little folks got creamed. Their choice has been to compete for a limited number of jobs in border manufacturing plants or heading north.

Ian and I also agree on John Edwards.

At this point I really have no idea why more progressives aren't aligning behind Edwards. He's electable. He's staking out progressive positions. He doesn't want to expand the army. He talks about the poor and middle class all the time. He's put out the best health care plan of the big 3. Hilary will rule as a conservative Democrat - anyone who thinks otherwise simply hasn't paid attention. Obama seems to be trending the same way.

Tags: economy, foreign policy, China, trade, John Edwards

How a ‘Good War’ in Afghanistan Went Bad - NYT

The short answer is the numbskull Bush administration.

Keep Up with Iowa today. - UPDATE with Results

The Fix -- Chris Cillizza's Politics Blog on washingtonpost.com

The Trail - Another WP blog.

Iowa Politics Strawpoll Blog.

NYT Blog - The Caucus

One of the The Atlantic Online blogs. The Atlantic is a great magazine, and knows what to do online - have blogs, provide some free content and sell subscriptions.

**** Here are the results from the Iowa GOP straw poll ****

1. Romney: 4516 (31.5) Not overwhelming but enough.
2. Huckabee: 2587 (18.1) Big Mo for Huckabee
3. Brownback: 2192 (15.3) Big disappointment.
4. Tancredo: 1961 (13.7) Anti-immigrant yahoos have limited appeal.
5. Paul: 1305 (9.1) Barely OK. Strong, loud, and few supporters.
6. T. Thompson: 1039 (7.3) Should be out of the race.
7. F. Thompson: 203 (1.4) Did not campaign
8. Giuliani: 183 (1.3) "
9. Hunter: 174 (1.2) " Sorry, seemed like he didn't campaign.
10. McCain: 101 (1) "
11. Cox: 41 (.1) " Another that should bite the bullet.

14,302 ballots cast - pretty low turnout. From The Fix.

Tags: 2008, Iowa, GOP, blogs

Free Kenneth Foster

The state of Texas is going to kill a man who did not commit murder, and they admit it. Texas is the only state which can assign the death penalty against someone who was with a murderer but did not participate in a crime.

The nineteen-year-old Foster was driving a car with three passengers. One of the passengers got out and got in a fight with someone and shot and killed him, claiming self-defense. Because Kenneth Foster drove the car he was charged under Texas law as an equal participant and sentenced to die. If you drove a car and your passenger got out and killed someone and you knew nothing about it should you be executed? Foster was convicted under the Texas "law of parties," even though he never participated in, intended for or anticipated a murder.

The Nation:

The crazy thing about this case is that no one argues that Foster killed the victim. As the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's award-winning columnist Bob Ray Sanders wrote, the case "is further proof of how cruel, capricious, unjust and utterly insane our death penalty laws have become....Because of this tainted system, whether you believe in capital punishment or not, a man who did not plan or commit a murder will die August 30 unless somebody -- a judge, the Board of Pardons and Paroles and/or the governor-- has the heart and the guts to stop it."

Bob Ray Sanders:

"I've never tried to portray myself as an angel," Foster told me on a recent visit to Death Row. "I take responsibility. I was a follower. I was a fool for being there."

He added: "We're not saying I never did anything wrong; for this case, I did nothing wrong. I didn't conspire, I didn't participate, and I didn't plan."

Mauriceo Brown was executed for this crime on July 19, 2006. Foster's execution is set for Aug. 30.

Tags: Kenneth Foster

Bobby Kennedy was on the trail of those who killed his brother

Chasing Assassins by Matthew Stevenson - The Texas Observer

Kerry and Reagan and the JFK conspiracy discussion.

In 1967 Jim Garrison began investigating the activities of Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans. Ochsner told a friend that he feared Garrison would order his arrest and the seizure of INCA's corporate records. Ed Butler took these records to California where William Frawley arranged for them to be hidden. Ronald Reagan, the governor of California refused all of Garrison's extradition requests. Frawley had previously helped fund Reagan's political campaigns in California....

I know for a fact that Kerry in the course of his Iran-Contra committee investigations asked hard questions of appropriate people about the events of 11/22/63. Further I spoke with his head aide on this subject and know that Kerry was firmly of the opinion that it was a conspiracy and when I spoke with his aide he suggested we talk outside, as the office is "obviously bugged".

Don't call it conspiracy - our national security apparatus brought Kennedy down. David Talbot:

I think there's such enduring fascination with this because it's still the biggest mystery in American political history. Americans know, in their hearts, that something very dark happened in Dallas, and they haven't been given the full truth. Polls consistently show that upwards of 75-80% of the American people don't believe the Warren report.

But people say, "Oh, we'll never know the truth. There are so many theories out there." But in truth, we know more than we think. And a respectable body of opinion by the best researchers has really coalesced around one theory of this crime, and it happens to be what Bobby Kennedy thought. He believed that the plot against JFK grew out of the CIA's shadowy operation against Fidel Castro. It was an operation that brought together the CIA, the Mafia and militant Cuban exiles. And that, I believe, is where the conspiracy came from.

The House Select Committee on Assassinations, which I think is the best governmental investigation into Dallas, also came to similar conclusions in the late 1970s. Anthony Summer, a very good Irish investigative journalist who worked for the BBC came to similar conclusions in his book, The Kennedy Conspiracy. Jeff Morley of the Washington Post, who I think is the best working journalist on this beat in America, is also looking in the same direction.

New research shows JFK bullet analysis fatally flawed.

The CIA killed JFK: Perhaps next time Americans vote for a President, they’ll ask for his or her connections to the CIA first.

I should read the new massive tome about how Oswald acted alone. Each time I read one of these books or see a documentary I find more evidence that he could not have. In a few years when it goes for a few dollars maybe.

Tags: JFK, Bobby Kennedy, conspiracy theories

Hillary: the Sane Republican Choice?

Andrew Sullivan makes this argument that he notes other leading conservative media are also making - Hillary is OK. There is some evidence that the GOP base has already moved beyond that as the Democratic Obama is running ahead of McCain in a poll of Iowa Republicans.

Meanwhile, John Edwards gets bolder.

Rolling Stone: John Edwards - The Real Liberal.

Added - my brother reminds me I haven't posted anything lately on how bad Rudy is. I am thinking that will get out, there are enough reporters in New York he can't pull a Dubya. I am more convinced that the GOP will designate Romney as their sacrificial lamb this year and please the Mormons, who are probably their most loyal constituents. There are several things about that religion which makes it a breeding ground for authoritarians. I have many other links my brother has sent me. Maybe some day.... Eric Alterman thinks that prickly Rudy and his dysfunctional family might be the most entertaining president, until Rudy goes postal and started bombing some country.

Tags: 2008, Hillary Clinton, Obama, Edwards, McCain

A General Mourns his West Point Daughter

"In my view, there are situations in the world the U.S. cannot resolve militarily or otherwise. Vietnam was one of them. Iraq is another. Neither war was ours to win and both were theirs to lose. . . . We always have been very poor at making distinctions between military and political victories and losses and prone to supporting the losing side on Civil Wars — except for our own."

Tags: Iraq, war, family

Cheney urging military strikes on Iran

The Penguin of Death has a new heart and needs new blood.

Raw Story: Fears of war with Iran grow as PR campaign heats up again.

Fear & Ignorance leaves the American People Vulnerable -

A smaller-scale "punitive" raid on Quds bases in Iran would almost certainly be acceptable to the American public. After all, the United States has launched such raids repeatedly over the years, all over the world, under Democrats and Republicans, with widespread public support. From Reagan's bold strike on Moamar Gadafy's two-year-old daughter to Bill Clinton's brave destruction of a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan (not to mention his continual bombardment of Iraq throughout his term) to Bush's noble bombing of refugees in Somalia this year, the American people have always stood ready to applaud (or ignore) quick punches at countries with which they are not at war. (We're leaving out here the larger-scale "incursions" and "pre-dawn vertical insertions" like Panama, Somalia (in the "Black Hawk Down" days), Grenada, Haiti, etc. – all of which were pretty acceptable too, come to think of it. As was the aggression in Iraq, of course, in its early days.)

How did America get in this awful shape where virtually unchecked tyrants curtail liberties and push war? - FEAR and The Politics of Heaven.

Tags: Iran, war, strike, Cheney

Paul Krugman is Scared

Meltdown in housing bubble as buyers disappearing. Two large cash injections by Fed already today to stop the market collapse. Now three.

But when liquidity dries up, the normal tools of policy lose much of their effectiveness. Reducing the cost of money doesn’t do much for borrowers if nobody is willing to make loans. Ensuring that banks have plenty of cash doesn’t do much if the cash stays in the banks’ vaults.

Added: Even Second Life has had a run on a virtual bank.

Texas Kaos discussion.

Brad DeLong - not the problems the Fed was meant to solve. Intellectually stimulating. Fed buying mortgages!?

WSJ blog - economists react to frenzy.

Radicals - LaRouche - "the tip of the iceberg." World Socialist Website - A surprisingly informed wrap-up.

The Underlying Fear - Danielle Reed - Dow Jones/Associated Press - the worst is yet to come as many new homebuyers will get "hammered" this year and next.

Tags: Paul Krugman, economy, collapse, banks, funds, housing

In the Event of a WMD Attack Our Librarians will be sent in

In the event of disaster Harris County has already planned for our first line of defense - our librarians. A recent notice has some librarians concerned. In the event of an emergency they will work 12 hour shifts as assigned in the county providing information to residents. There was a stipulation that if a riot occurred at their assigned location police will take over for them.

Personally, I believe the county has received warning of a possible future zombie outbreak and believes that librarians are most prepared to shush panicked crowds and provide guidance on preparations on how to handle the living dead.

In other local news:

Nueces County Christian camp counselors are facing charges of tieing a 15-year-old girl to a van and dragging her after she was unable to keep up. I think their motto was "We make sure your kids don't get left behind, but we make no promises about all of her skin."

Thieves are stealing toilets, lawnmowers, and a George Foreman Grill in Montgomery County. I think I would look in the trailers out by Cut and Shoot.

Our eight weeks of moonsoon with rain every day seem officially over and we have moved into the August permanent high. The heat index may be over 108 degrees for this weekend and hit 100 real degrees F. Two lanes of the West Loop Freeway are closed after buckling from the heat. Hot news, folks in parts of Harris County can't drink the water without boiling it first.

Our local Taliban trial delayed. Our Christian Talibani continue dumbing down Texas and refusing to hold funerals for homosexuals.

I have been to busy lately to do much blogging - I even really had planned to be elsewhere now instead of giving you a Texas local news roundup.

Tags: Texas, Houston, Harris County, local, liberal news, librarians, Talibani, zombies, hot

War Supporter admits he was wrong In NYT

But can't help snarling at the "dirty hippies" who happened to be right as Tom Tomorrow notes. Getting Iraq Wrong. Ignatieff opinions haven't really changed that much. Why do we listen to him again?

The Dem candidates at YearlyKos

Thanks to Drudge Retort at drudge.com - the good one.

Texas Round-Up 4

It's Monday, and that means it is time once again for the Texas Progressive Alliance Weekly Blog Round-Up, where we review the best in Texas blogging from our various member blogs. This week's installment is brought to you by Vince at Capitol Annex.

TxSharon at BlueDaze brings us an interesting story about drilling companies in Wise County getting caught lying about water usage. Sometimes, the truth just slips out as it did when an oil field worker told TXsharon the truth about water usage in Barnett Shale drilling: Depleting and polluting our water in Wise County, Texas.

Texas Toad at North Texas Liberal asks "Will There Be Mercy For Kenneth Foster?"

John C. at Bay Area Houston Blog tells us about the newest corporation and industry to exploit the Federal Arbitration Act -- Comcast, in Another Consumer Scam: Comcast Arbitration.

If you want pictures of Rick Noriega at YearlyKos, Charles at Off The Kuff has them here.

McBlogger at McBlogger looks at the mortgage industry brouhaha and decides the sky isn't falling after all.

Easter Lemming does another of his Liberal News Digest's from progressive media. There really is a liberal news media, if you know where to look outside the mass media.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson posts regarding Williamson County County Attorney Jana Duty filing a brief with AG Greg Abbott regarding whether County Judge and Commissioners can use outside counsel without the County Attorney's consent. County Attorney Asks AG Abbott For Opinion On Hiring Of Outside Legal Counsel.

Hal at Half Empty points out that if you want quality education don't come to school bond issue meetings with box cutters.

Vince at Capitol Annex takes a look at the briefs filed before the Attorney General in the opinion request on the power of the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

M. Eddie Rodriguez points to a press release from Mikal Watts, a Democrat exploring a Senate race against John Cornyn, that notes that Cornyn's votes this week against expanding SCHIP puts him on the far-right fringe of his party at Stop Cornyn.

And...Several Texas bloggers were also represented at Yearly Kos in Chicago, and did some great liveblogging. Here are some samples: Burnt Orange Report;

Muse from Musings was liveblogging all over the place, including at her blog where she bings us the ePluribus interview with Rick Noriega; Markos of DailyKos' special endorsement of Rick Noriega; a session on female bloggers; liveblogging of the the presidential forum;

and at Capitol Annex where she blogged more on the female blogger session here, the MSN-blog panel (also here, here, and here);

and on the Local Blogging Round-Table at Bay Area Houston.

And, don’t forget about these other Texas Progressive Alliance Members: Three Wise Men, In The Pink Texas, Marc’s Miscellany, Common Sense, The Agonist, People’s Republic of Seabrook, B and B, Brains and Eggs, Texas Kaos, Feet To The Fire, and Who’s Playin’.

Tags: Texas, bloggers, liberal news, progressive news, Texas Progressive Alliance

State Of Minnesota Too Polite To Ask For Federal Funding

Another example from two years ago from the prescient The Onion. Perry had this.

Drudge's Movie Guy

I kept wondering why Drudge Report always used a formerly obscure movie site for his weekend movie information. Then I read a review of a movie by Scott Holleran on that site - a right-wing rant against SiCKO. What a sicko reviewer. I am not the only one who thinks so. Vicious, unprofessional review greets 'Sicko' debut. Now I understands what attracted Matt and it wasn't entirely Scott's pretty face.

Uncle Jimmy also read some of Scott's reviews: Scott Holleran You Loathesome Little Man.

Scott seems to provoke strong profane reactions - WHAT THE F*** IS WRONG WITH SCOTT HOLLERAN?

SiCKO is Michael Moore's best film and a must see. Contrary to Scott's rant, Michael Moore documented every fact in his film.

I am off to see a movie, which brought this on. I happen to be near the lowest price current film multi-cinema near Houston. They just raised their price to $3.25 for all movies before 6 PM everyday.

Tags: Scott Holleran, movies

Bluedaze.: Corruption in Government: Comprehensive List

Sharon makes a list of recent corruption cases. My, one party really dominates, doesn't it?

Tags: GOP, corruption

Some Democrats caved to Mr. 26% approval

Fear is the only thing our little tinhorn has and it works, even on some Democrats.

Greenwald:

I also asked Dodd why Democrats repeatedly engage in the same self-destructive behavior -- refusing to take a hard-core principled stance against the administration, and instead capitulating just enough to look like losers, but -- despite the capitulation -- still allowing the vote to be used against them. As always (see e.g., Iraq War Authorization, warrantless eavesdropping, Military Commissions Act), they capitulate in order to prevent the vote from being used against them, even though it ends up being used against them anyway because so many of them vote (with futility) against it, but do so without ever fighting for, explaining or defending their position.

I also asked him why, when they were in the minority, the Democrats were so afraid to filibuster anything, even something as drastic as the Military Commissions Act or the Alito nomination, whereas the Republicans run around filibustering everything they can find and don't care at all about being called "obstructionist." Why are the Republicans so aggressive with using their minority tools to block all Democratic initiatives whereas Democrats failed to filibuster for years?

Texas House wall of shame:

Henry Cuellar (28th Texas)
Chet Edwards (17th Texas)
Nick Lampson (23rd Texas)
Ciro Rodriguez (23rd Texas)

Should I curse them or feel sorry for them? I don't expect any better from the scared yellow-bellied liberty-denying GOP.

Here are the Dem Senators who would rather give up liberty than - what? - lose an election?, be called weak on national security?

The following Democrats voted to make Bush's wiretap program possibly constitutional again after GOP judges said it wasn't:

Evan Bayh (Indiana); Tom Carper (Delaware); Bob Casey (Pennsylvania); Kent Conrad (North Dakota); Dianne Feinstein (California); Daniel Inouye (Hawai‘i); Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota); Mary Landrieu (Louisiana); Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas); Claire McCaskill (Missouri); Barbara Mikulski (Maryland); Bill Nelson (Florida); Ben Nelson (Nebraska); Mark Pryor (Arkansas); Ken Salazar (Colorado); Jim Webb (Virginia).

Both lists were from Daily Kos.

Tags: Texas, wire tapping, Constitution, Democrats

Bloggers Give Clinton a Mixed Reception

I would say a better than expected reception. From what I can tell so far this is also a better than expected news account from the WP.

Kos Poll, pre-convention: Edwards - 36%, Obama - 27%, Clinton - 9%.

La Times:

"It seemed like she was just waiting for someone to take a shot at her today. With this crowd, there was no way she was going to win … unless she called for an outright ban on lobbyist contributions," said Keir Murray, a Houston-based public affairs consultant who writes about politics at Houtopia.com. "But I give her credit for coming here and appearing before what's not her crowd. All in all, I would say it was a positive for her."

McClatchy newspapers:

The Democratic Party is growing more liberal for the first time in a generation.

It’s more antiwar than at any time since 1972. Support is growing for such traditionally liberal values as using the federal government to help the poor. And 40 percent of Democrats now call themselves liberal, the highest in more than three decades and twice the low-water mark recorded as the conservative Reagan revolution swept the country in the early 1980s.

Roger Simon at Politico saw a Clinton victory at YearlyKos. Hillary was charming, tough and smart.

“Don’t tell anybody, but I actually read blogs,” she said. “Don’t share that.”

The audience laughed.

“Sometimes I say, ‘Oh, come on.’ But sometimes I agree,” she said. “So I really appreciate not just the fighting words and your standing up and being counted, but the substance of the blogging that you do.”

This is expected, a Republican slanted AP story. I know it plays to their base but why do conservatives always charge that the AP is liberal? Can't they read? I just had to look (and change the link) to see if it was written by Republican Ron Fournier or Nedra Pickler. It's Ron. His revised post leads with a dig at Hillary, the first lead was digs at liberal bloggers and Democratic candidates.

Tags: Hillary Clinton, 2008, YearlyKos

Local blogs are key to future of politics

The San Francisco Chronicle had this so it didn't make the previous non-mainstream news roundup. You can debate if a couple of the sources of the previous post are really alternative news media.

Liberal News - from the real liberal media

A collection of news links from new media.

Citizen News Sites are fastest growing. NowPublic.com - Crowd Covered Media. NowPublic- Politics. Digg - Politics. Liberal BuzzFlash.

Test scores improvements slow under No Child Left Behind, gauged by states/federal assessment. From EurekAlert - breaking science news.

Mike Gravel's Non-Profit national citizen referendum center. From Mother Jones. Allow citizens to make laws through popular votes, the next step in federal government?

Medical and Insurance lobbyists deny the truth about Medical bankruptcy crisis. From TPM Cafe.

IFC Indy Media Sex Series concludes tonight. From IFC news.

BBC documents - Commonwealth rigged elections in Nigeria, the right-wing coup attempt in America in 1933 - BBC radio new document series.

Was the bridge collapse simply part of the tax-cut death toll? Are Republicans deliberately defunding American infrastructure. Collapsing Bridges vs. War in Iraq. From cursor.org and Alternet.org and Consortium News.

Conservatives react to proposal to stack the Supreme Court under an Obama/Clinton/Edwards/Richardson administration. - Easter Lemming Liberal News.

Democrats cave to President on National Security wiretapping after Bush administration "didn't move the goal post; they moved the stadium." If you call abroad the NSA will listen in. From Talking Points Memo. "I Have No Words.... for the FISA expansion the Senate gave the president, except to say that we now have someone vastly more powerful than a king running the country." - The Agonist.

Can one Republican reporter bring down a Democratic Presidential candidate? John Solomon is trying to find out. From Alternet.org.

Pedro Gonzalez's Family Demands Answers from Pasadena Texas Police (audio). (Photos of protest.) The police reported he had died in his cell. A witness comes forward, isn't that the guy I saw police kicking and beating while offering no resistance and called 9/11 about? Meanwhile, protests grow about the racist town of Jena. Six black teens facing 60 years for responding to racism. Houston Indy Media and Democracy Now.

Pakistani Protests against Obama; Clinton leaves Nukes on the Table; Tancredo an Inspiration to the Criminally Insane that They, Too, Could run for President - Juan Cole

Hillary Clinton disappointing, or not, at Yearly Kos Blogger Convention. First reports from bloggers coming in now.

Rudy Giuliani is running for DittoHead-in-Chief. - Digby's Hullabaloo.

Iraqi Maliki Government, with mounting resignations, may be on last legs. - AntiWar.com

California decertifies major e-voting machines after they badly fail security tests. The credit crunch has arrived - no new junk bonds last week, mortgages and credit rules tightening, businesses and individuals will be less able to borrow money, recession likely. - Daily Kos.

UPDATE: Unions are turning to audio podcasts of general news for workers and their families.

Cindy Sheehan: The other war..... On MichaelMoore.com.

MSM vs. Bloggers - Internet forcing reporters to respond. - Salon.com

Tags: liberal news, progressive news, alternative news, new media, people's news

Back to Patriarchy

Under a proposed Ohio law male partners could force women to give birth. In a Republican bid to "give fathers a voice" no women would be allowed to have an abortion without written permission from the potential father. In the event a father is undetermined DNA tests would be run.

Tags: abortion, authoritarianism, patriarchy

Have You Considered This, Michael Moore? - Wonkette

Mitt Romney praises the free health clinics set up in Lebanon by Hezbollah.

Iraq and Kuwaiti Contractors get First Class Hooker

Nothing is too good for our mercenaries looking to spend some of our taxpayer money. Tori, a highly rated hooker, is going to be in the Green Zone and Kuwait to help relieve the tension. R&R.... American style. I expected something like this in The Onion, but no, it appears to be true.

YouTube - TV pioneer Tom Snyder interviews Dennis Kucinich at Tony's

RIP Tom Synder.

We filed a brief

The Texas Progressive Alliance, a confederation of more than 50 Texas bloggers and Internet activists representing many of Texas' most prominent blogs, this morning filed a brief with the Texas Attorney General's office in relation to Request for Opinion No. RQ-0589-GA, pertaining to the authority of the Office of Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives.

The initial request for the opinion relating to the power of the Speaker was made June 18, 2007 by Texas State Representatives Jim Keffer and Byron Cook following the close of the 80th Texas Legislature which ended with House Speaker Tom Craddick (R-Midland) refusing to recognize House members for a Motion to Vacate the Chair claiming his office was above the precedents and rules of the House and was instead only subject to impeachment pursuant to the Texas Constitution.

Initially, the Attorney General's office invited only 29 individuals and organizations to submit briefs in connection with the Opinion Request. However, the process was later opened to all interested parties.

"Once the door was opened, we felt we would be remiss in not submitting a brief," said Vince Leibowitz of CapitolAnnex.com, Chair of the Texas Progressive Alliance. "As bloggers and citizen journalists, we all covered this process. We all examined the rules, the Texas Constitution, and case law and offered our opinions on this on our websites. We offered our opinions and shared with our world our collective shock at Speaker Craddick's actions, and felt this was a prime opportunity to interject some of our ideas on this process," Leibowitz continued.

The Alliance's brief addressed each of the four questions posed in Reps. Keffer's and Cook's opinion request, and brought to the attention of the OAG's opinion committee other information as well.

A key issue in the debate over the speaker's power concerns whether or not the Speaker of the House of Representatives is a legislative officer or a "statewide" officer, subject only to impeachment. Though precedent (including the removal of a speaker over a century ago) clearly show the Speaker is a legislative officer, Speaker Craddick's attorneys and others contend that he is, in fact, a statewide officer subject to impeachment provisions in the state constitution.

In its brief, the Alliance addressed what kind of absurd results Speaker Craddick's position would bring:

It appears as though Speaker Craddick interprets the omission of the position of Speaker of the House of Representatives as creating some ambiguity with regard to the status of the position which does not exist. See TEX. CONST. art 15 §§ 2 and 7; TEX. ATTNY. GEN. OP. 0-898 (1939, G. MANN); and In re Texas Senate 36 S.W.3d at 120-1 as cited in notes 11, 12 of the KEFFER REQUEST.

Should you find, however, in light of these precedents, that there remains such an ambiguity, other precedents address manners of appropriate interpretation. When construing an ambiguous statute, a court should avoid adopting an interpretation that would lead to absurd results. Boykin v. State, 818 S.W.2d 782, 785-86 (TEX. CRIM. APP. 1991). In such a case, a court may presume that the Legislature did not intend for its efforts to lead to illogical consequences. Id. Although the present matter presents questions of constitutional rather that statutory interpretation and concerns an Attorney General’s Opinion as opposed to a court ruling, the same principle applies. Craddick asserts that under the Texas Constitution, the Speaker of the House is a “statewide” officer who can be removed from office only by impeachment. If accepted, Craddick’s interpretation of the relevantprovisions would create the possibility of an absurd result.

Under the Texas Constitution, the House can expel a representative with the consent of two-thirds of House members. See TEX. CONST. art III, § 11. Thus, the House of Representatives alone could expel the member who happens to be serving as Speaker. That person would no longer be a member of the House, but if one follows the reasoning set forth in the Craddick Brief, that person would still be the Speaker. Thus, the presiding officer of the House would be a person who is no longer a member of the House.

This would be an absurd result, and the possibility of this absurd result demonstrates that the drafters of our Constitution did not hold Craddick’s view.

In addition to addressing the four questions posed by the requesters, the Alliance also addressed concerns relating to a brief filed by House Parliamentarian Terry Keel, a former State Representative and attorney who was appointed parliamentarian following the resignation of Parliamentarian Denise Davis after Speaker Craddick issued his ruling on motions to vacate the chair during the 80th Legislature.

"Regardless of whether or not Mr. Keel is serving as both parliamentarian and Special Counsel as Denise Davis did during her distinguished tenure, the position of Parliamentarian has been, historically, a position which advises all members of the house even though it is appointed by the Speaker. Speaker Craddick has already attempted to use the guise of attorney-client privilege to make confidential much of Mrs. Davis advice when she was parliamentarian because she was also a licensed attorney. We believe that because Mr. Keel, who is also a licensed attorney, may have a significant conflict of interest. In his brief, he supported most of Speaker Craddick's arguments. Yet, the Parliamentarian serves all members of the House, many of whom disagree strongly with Speaker Craddick's assessment of this situation," Leibowitz said. "We believe Mr. Keel should recuse himself from this situation; his position represents all members of the House, but his brief is in tune with Speaker Craddick note, measure, and verse. Clearly, there may be some issues covered under the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct [for attorneys] which deserve closer attention," Leibowitz said.

In its brief, the TPA noted:

Regardless of whether Mr. Keel now serves as a special counselor, it is clear that Speaker Craddick has now tailored the position of Parliamentarian and instructed the Parliamentarian to act such that the parliamentarian speaks for the Speaker and is his representative. This places Mr. Keel in direct conflict with his other clients, the remaining 149 members of the Texas House of Representatives.

Obviously, Mr. Keel is placed in this unique position of conflict because of his status as a lawyer, which is not a requirement for serving as Parliamentarian in either chamber of the Texas Legislature, though it has become a custom in recent years. However, it does not overshadow the fact that the Parliamentarian has, by longstanding custom and past practice, represented the House of Representatives and not the Speaker[.]

The Alliance sincerely hopes that the OAG’s Opinion Committee will look at the precedents in this case and issue a fair ruling, Leibowitz noted.

***The Texas Progressive Alliance is a confederation of more than 50 bloggers and Internet activists. It was founded in 2006 and includes many of Texas' most prominent blogs and bloggers.***

Tags: Texas, bloggers, TPA, Speaker, Attorney General

YearlyKos Convention: Building a Netroots Nation

Video feeds. I guess a lot of people and organizations didn't get O'Reilly's message to not sponsor or attend a convention for those who “traffic in hate.” They might have been laughing too hard at Mr. Pot.

I shouldn't laugh, anyone who causes Democratic Senators to grow balls and a backbone serves a useful purpose.

Tags: O'Reilly, Yearly Kos

First Armed Robots on Patrol in Iraq

Skynet learns combat and how to kill its masters.

Tags: robots, Iraq, Skynet, Terminator, SF

"I Can't Stand This President But

the people I represent don't want to impeach this clown." Video.

Yet.

Tags: impeach

Kenneth Foster, Jr. is scheduled to die

His crime is for being with a murderer. Texas is one of the very few states that gives the death penalty for someone at the scene of the crime who wasn't involved. Here a friend of the victim, Sean-Paul Kelley, remembers him but says this execution is wrong and he will try to help stop it.

The report on the state of Texas death penalty system:

In this report, we have assembled an unprecedented volume of objective evidence that raises profound questions about the fairness of how and when the death penalty is applied. We articulate the scope and breadth of the underlying problems, and offer preliminary recommendations for change. We confirm the critical need for a thorough investigation of every capital case, and we show that all too often, such an investigation either does not take place, or takes place too late for the courts to consider it. In short, we lay bare a system in desperate need of reform. We urge all who are committed to justice to read our report thoughtfully. It compels the conclusion, reached by increasing numbers of Americans, that our current method of enforcing the death penalty does violence to the ideal of basic fairness that is supposed to be the foundation of our criminal justice system.

Now and then the conservative U.S. Supreme Court corrects one of the many gross abuses in Texas. They recently ruled, in a 5-4 decision, that Texas could not execute an insane person. That marks the fifth time the Supreme Court has reversed a Texas death penalty since last October. The Supreme Court’s ruling also drew attention once more to the shoddy standards of capital justice here in Texas. We account for more than a third of national executions and have routinely ignored international standards in sending prisoners to the death chamber.

Did you know?
Texas' death penalty law prevents judges and lawyers from telling jurors one key point: if just one juror decides the defendant is not a "future danger" the defendant will receive a sentence of life without parole.

Tags: Texas, death penalty

No-sex programmes 'not working'

The British looked at American abstinence sex education programs as they are being proposed for across the pond. No surprise, they found none of the programs "had an impact on the age at which individuals lost their virginity, whether they had unprotected sex, the number of sexual partners, the rates of sexually transmitted diseases or the number of pregnancies." They also found that programs that encouraged condom use greatly reduced the risk of AIDS.

"But abstinence-only programmes don't work because they provide no safety net for those young people who do have a sexual relationship - and research shows that many do."

Tags: sex education, abstinence, virginity pledges, condoms

Mike Savage Finds Me Out

I confess, I caused Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts epileptic seizure, just as he suspected. Blame my uncontrollable mutant mind rays of justice.

However, I was the lone mind rayer, there was no conspiracy. That would be nuts.

YearlyKos- Dean Announces National Election Protection Project

But, sputters Washington Post editor E. J. Dionne Jr., Kos is just Rush Limbaugh for the Left.

I Now Pronounce You Dick and Larry - Jon Stewert Video

Clinton woos the outsourcers

Indian businessmen outsourcing jobs become Clinton key funders while a New York Indian startup she lauded cannot confirm any American hires.

Right Wing Nut Online Idiot Squad is Wrong Again

TNR reconfirms nearly all details of the formerly anonymous soldier's stories. Shamed right-wing nuts lead by Ace of Spades, among many others, spin more furiously. The one wrong detail is significant, the story is correct, the location is wrong, but overall by my count it is another swing and a foul ball by the usual collection of idiots. This ended up mainly demonstrated the right blogger's lack of military knowledge and experience and their ability to raise a hue and cry over nothing.

I more and more think of this is like German reporting on their soldiers during WW2. They had to be portrayed as perfect God-fearing Aryans who were kind to strangers but deadly in war. The Republican right has adopted the same stance toward our soldiers, they don't cuss, drank, or behave in any way that doesn't uphold God, Mom, and Apple Pie and our spreading democracy to the brown heathens. Anyone who says otherwise is a lying traitor. A curious warped vision that. Like I said before, most seem not only to have they never been to war they have never read anything but sanitized books on war.

PS, talk about low credibility. Here is who the right turned to for debunking a real soldier - a gay porn star facing charges of fraud. RADAR, of course, has more. A lot of conservatives seem to love posing.

Tags: soldiers, TNR, right bloggers, war propaganda

That Flash - August 6, 1945

Obama's 'nucular' kerfuffle with the press brought this to mind.

from Hiroshima-Nagasaki: A Pictorial Record of the Atomic Destruction (1978).

How could I ever forget that flash of light!
In a moment, thirty thousand people ceased to be,
The cries of fifty thousand killed
At the bottom of crushing darkness;

Through yellow smoke whirling into light,
Buildings split, bridges collapsed,
Crowded trams burnt as they rolled about
Hiroshima, all full of boundless heaps of embers.

Soon after, skin dangling like rags;
With hands on breasts;
Treading upon the broken brains;
Wearing shreds of burn cloth round their loins;
There came numberless lines of the naked,
all crying.
Bodies on the parade ground,
scattered like jumbled stone images of Jizo;
Crowds in piles by the river banks,
loaded upon rafts fastened to the shore,
Turned by and by into corpses
under the scorching sun;
in the midst of flame
tossing against the evening sky,
Round about the street where mother and
brother were trapped alive under the fallen house
The fire-flood shifted on.
On beds of filth along the Armory floor,
Heaps, and God knew who they were?
Heaps of schoolgirls lying in refuse
Pot-bellied, one-eyed,
with half their skin peeled off bald.

The sun shone, and nothing moved
But the buzzing flies in the metal basins
Reeking with stagnant ordure.

How can I forget that stillness
Prevailing over the city of three hundred thousands?

Amidst that calm,
How can I forget the entreaties
Of departed wife and child
Through their orbs of eyes,
Cutting through our minds and souls?

- by Mitsuyoshi Toge, a Catholic poet who was in his home town of Hiroshima when the bomb dropped. He was 24 when the flash occurred. Toge died at age 36.

Remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki in your prayers.
Sojourners blog God's Politics had this.

Tags: history, Hiroshima, atomic bomb, poetry

Edwards running against the Media

While Hillary Clinton quietly acknowledges the huge problem of most of the So-Called-Liberal-Media being in reality a Republican-Noise-Machine, Edwards campaign has made this issue a fund-raising strength on the Internet.

All of the Democratic candidates have come in for their share of biased media articles that translate into silly talking points for conservative radio and TV clowns. Even Obama has the false AP story putting Drudge and fellow travelers on his case today for stating the obvious, using nuclear weapons to go after terrorists is insane and not on the table. The idiotic clowns will play this up creating a false story that "Obama will never use nuclear weapons."

The Republicans use this tactic of attention getting headlines with a lack of substance behind it counting on half the people only getting the headlines. Then these false headline talking points are transformed into a narrative that reporters or the right-wing pundits will continue when similar stories come up. So on a basis of false stories in the media Al Gore was transformed into a habitual liar for the 2000 campaign.

It is Edwards who now has made the attacks on him a campaign issue and takes this campaign mostly to the Internet where the new alternatives to mass media reside. In addition to his Hair video created for the YouTube debate, the campaign has also responded to attacks from The New York Times reporters and other main stream media.

Under the heading "Haircuts and hatchet jobs," Edwards aide Jonathan Prince wrote supporters about the threat the "Washington establishment" feels from Edwards and added a cutting postscript about an article the campaign found unfair.

"Last week, The New York Times ran a story suggesting that it was wrong for John to have spent the last three years raising awareness of poverty and advocating for solutions. As if there's any way to draw attention to poverty without publicity! And to make matters worse, the reporter just refused to even talk with any of the people who benefited," he wrote. "So we really need your help to get our message out; please, give what you can today."

Elizabeth Edwards has delivered her own criticism of mainstream media outlets, most recently differing strongly with a Slate story in that site's comments section.

John Edwards isn't the only Democrat using perceived media transgressions to raise money. Clinton's top adviser on women's issues, Ann Lewis, last week sent an e-mail to supporters in response to a Washington Post article examining the issue of Clinton's chest.

"Would you believe that The Washington Post wrote a 746-word article on Hillary's cleavage?" she asked. "Now, I've seen some off-topic press coverage, but talking about body parts? That is grossly inappropriate."

The e-mail asked supporters to "take a stand" by giving money.

Media criticism by Democratic campaigns fits neatly with the current focus among some influential liberal thinkers on criticizing the establishment media.

So bloggers who point out that the mass mainstream media is now often a Republican dominated corporate protection racket are "influential liberal thinkers." Wow, it must be true, even the National Review is bleating over our vast power over Democratic politicians, while the right Internet and pundits are directed and coordinated from DC and the White House. I can live with my and fellow left bloggers vast influence, are conservatives happy that everything they see and hear is coordinated in secret meetings and daily faxes and emails out of Washington?

Way to go Edwards, let's try to knock the wheels off of the Noise Machine train.

Tags: SCLM, MSM, RNM, Edwards

Greenwald - A new low for mindless war propaganda by our national media

When it comes to the Iraq War, Mike O'Hanlon and Ken Pollack are rank pro-war propagandists whose differences with Bill Kristol, Fred Kagan and National Review are microscopic. Indeed, this year, O'Hanlon and Fred Kagan jointly authored a Grand Plan (.pdf) for a wild expansion of the U.S. military in order to support the new wars they undoubtedly are envisioning together. It is more surprising -- and more newsworthy -- that the sun rose this morning than it is that O'Hanlon and Pollack have announced that the Surge is Succeeding.

Tags: SCLM, MSM, O'Hanlon, Pollack, Greenwald

Now Home Depot Surrenders in the War Against the Fox

But funny, they now claim they were unaware they were advertising on Bill O'Reilly's show. That is not what they emailed people a couple of weeks ago.

Thank you for contacting The Home Depot Customer Care.

We appreciate you taking the time to forward your concerns regarding The Home Depot's sponsorship of Bill O' Reilly's show on FOX.

Advantage is still Lowes. Also, we are not targetting just O'Reilly but Fox News as a whole. Although O'Reilly is just disgusting.