Late Afternoon/Early Evening Open Thread

Coming Up on Sunday Kos ...

• If your stereotypical image of a spy is a government agent, either slinking around the back country of Waziristan trying to find somebody who knows where Osama bin Laden is or sitting behind a computer evaluating cryptic cell-phone calls, think again. Spies are doing that all right. And a whole lot more. But they're more likely to be private contractors these days than government employees. As Tim Shorrock writes in Spies for Hire: Inside the Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing, 70% of today's $60 billion intelligence budget goes to private contractors, many of whom have left government jobs at the CIA, NSA, DGIA, or one of the other 13 intelligence agencies and walked back in the door as a private contractor for three times the salary. It's all part of what people inside and outside government are calling the "Intelligence- Industrial Complex." Meteor Blades will take a close look at Shorrock's book and the implications of his findings.
• SusanG will review Larry Bartels' Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age.
• DemFromCT has two posts on deck. In one, he will review recent recommendations that will have profound impact on hospital plans for surge capacity in the event of disasters such as pandemics, wildfires and hurricanes (see Doctors debate who would be allowed to die in pandemic), and how that fits in with health reform. In his second post, he'll look ahead to November and preview Barack Obama and John McCain running in The Past And Future Election.
• Plutonium Page will discuss the nuclear posture of the United States, paying particular attention to Hillary Clinton's recent remark about obliterating Iran and her repeated comparisons of today's foreign policy climate with the Cold War.
• mcjoan will explore how deeply AT&T's tentacles have reached in their fight for telecom amnesty.
• BarbinMD will examine John McCain's decades-long history of helping out land developers in his native Arizona--all of whom just happen to be big campaign contributors.
• DHinMI will discuss how US miscalculations may be a factor in the possible eruption of a full-fledged civil war in Lebanon.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/287173227/08369

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John McCain Typical Republican, McCain Sees
"Evil", Than Shwe: Burma's Stalin, Bracknophobia, Global Warming Hoax, Medical Pot and Sub-Prime Reality.

If this is a Bush speech, you really can't blame him. But, as far as politics goes, what is John McCain really like? From what I can find out, he's your typical narrow-minded, tight-assed Republican. The whole "maverick" thing must be some kind of inside joke. There's hardly any evidence to back it up. Crooks and Liars. com has John McCain?s Top 10 Out-of-Touch Moments. It's just the latest ten really stupid things that John McCain has said. You'd better read it, because I doubt if you'll be hearing or seeing these kind of things on the mainstream media. Excepting, of course, Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Meanwhile, on the same network, Chris Matthews and Tim Russert admit that they're giving John McCain a free ride.

During Tuesday?s Democratic Presidential Primary coverage on MSNBC, Chris
Matthews and Tim Russert both admit to ignoring the countless gaffes and
blunders committed by John McCain.

Meanwhile, on the same network, Morning Joe: Scarborough and Carlson Call The Media?s Love of Obama A ?Ninth Grade Love Affair?. Meanwhile, this image takes most right wingers back to their ninth grade love affairs and they look at their right hand and give it a knowing wink. Some way this was supposed to segue into John McCain's views on women, it didn't. Here they are anyway. McCain on equal pay: ?I don?t think you?re doing anything to help the rights of women.? And from NARAL, their scorecard on McCain and women's rights. Just like most typical Republicans, McCain puts his rich friends before the good of the country. How much more of that can we put up with.

PRESCOTT, Ariz. -- Sen. John McCain championed legislation that will let an Arizona
rancher trade remote grassland and ponderosa pine forest here for acres of
valuable federally owned property that is ready for development, a land swap
that now stands to directly benefit one of his top presidential campaign
fundraisers].

Betts is among a string of donors who have benefited from McCain-engineered
land swaps. In 1994, the senator helped a lobbyist for land developer Del Webb
Corp. pursue an exchange in the Las Vegas area, according to the Center for
Public Integrity. McCain sponsored two bills, in 1991 and 1994, sought by donor
Donald R. Diamond that yielded the developer thousands of acres in trade for
national parkland.

In the late 1990s, McCain promoted a deal in Arizona's Tonto
National Forest involving property part-owned by Great American Life Insurance,
a company run by billionaire Carl H. Lindner Jr., a prolific contributor to
national political parties and presidential candidates.

And his foreign policy, well it looks and sounds a lot like Bush's. He's even starting to use the word "evil". He evens plans to have a war with "evil". Sen. John McCain has evil on his mind.

On Wednesday, he vowed to take the fight to religious persecution, human
trafficking, child pornography and other "evil" if elected. Speaking at Oakland
University in Rochester, Minnesota, CNN
said the event was part of the Arizona' senators efforts to reach out to
conservative voters.

I have to give McCain credit for one thing, there is definitely "evil' in Burma. Big time. From Attytood.

Until now, the thing that Than Shwe had going in his favor that few people
outside Burma were paying attention. Unfortunately it's taken the tragic death
of tens of thousands of his subjects, but that's not true anymore. In the wake
of Saturday's deadly cyclone, Than Shwe and his thug regime are not only
blocking more foreign aid workers -- including
America, which already had relief ships in the region on a training exercise
-- but even went so far as to hijack the
first shipment that reached the country.

There seems to be a bit of "evil" going on in this country, too. Take Family Security Matters, it appears to be a place that folks on the right can go to, in order to get their fears validated. This is there latest slime job on Barack. People actually take this crap serouisly.

Inside Obama?s Psyche

A caller to a radio show recently theorized
that mixed-race individuals like Obama are resentful that while they're
half-white, they always come out black. They can never take advantage of their
white half because while the black community accepts them, the white community
doesn?t.

If this is true, it could be a legitimate reason for
anger ? possibly the same rage that fuels Rev. Wright, given that he is looks to
be of ?mixed? parentage.

Wow, with sources as good as a caller to a radio show, they must be right. Don'cha just love the Right. For all their supposed morality, they sure play fast and loose with the truth. Like global warming, for instance.

New Zealand climate scientists are upset their names have been used by an
American organisation wanting to challenge the increasingly accepted view that
climate change is human induced.

"I object to the implication that my research supports their position ...
they didn't check with me."

He said that he and the other New Zealand scientists all felt their
work had been misinterpreted.
"We say global warming is real."

You can understand the Right's position, all the Left wants to do is legalize pot.

With drug trafficking and violence from international cartels on the rise, "do
you think the DEA's limited resources are best utilized conducting enforcement
raids on individuals and their caregivers who are conducting themselves legally
under California law?" House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., said in a letter to the agency.

Right on, Congressman Conyers. Now for something really important. The sub-prime lending mess hit home while I was cruising the blogs of people I don't know personally, but think of them as friends anyway. Stephen Herron, whose blog is Drinking Liberally in New Milford, has just lost his home. He don't have his hand out, he's found a place to live and he's making the most of a really bad situation. Go wish him well, he's one of us. Have a good weekend. Later

Read The Full Article:
http://lowdownsplace.blogspot.com/2008/05/john-mccain-typical-republican-mccain.h
tml

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McCain to Bush in 2000: Dont Give Me That Sh*t.
And Take Your Hands Off Me.

Four days after Arianna Huffington first reported it, John McCain’s 2000 VoteGate has become the election issue du jour. The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times have all run stories confirming Huffington’s account that in 2000 a still steaming McCain did not vote for George W. Bush, the man who [...]

Read The Full Article:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/05/09/mccain-to-bush-in-2000-dont-give-me-that
-sht-and-take-your-hands-off-me/

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The night I learned which side I was on

© copyright 2008 Michael Prysner.  Party for Socialism and Liberation
Originally Published on Wednesday, November 21, 2007

The all-too-common story of a checkpoint in Iraq

On a cold night in Iraq, two fellow soldiers and I were awakened by our superiors and told to interrogate a prisoner who had just been arrested. Whoever brought in the detainee insisted that it could not wait until morning, so we irritably left the warmth of our sleeping bags and set off into the darkness.
When we arrived at the detention facility, there was a young Lieutenant waiting for us. He brought the prisoner there.

But the prisoner did not get to that facility the way most did-hands bound tightly behind the back with a sandbag over the head.

He arrived on a stretcher. The Lieutenant told us with a sadistic smile that this prisoner tried to flee a traffic checkpoint he was working that night, and he proudly proclaimed that he filled the Iraqi man's car with bullets as he tried to drive away.
The traffic checkpoint was one of thousands that operate daily in Iraq. The road is blocked off, and anyone driving on the road is searched and questioned. We had gotten used to questioning prisoners who were arrested for the slightest suspicion at these checkpoints. Many were arrested for carrying a large amount of cash-a common practice for store owners and vendors. ??According to the Lieutenant, there was a long line of cars waiting to pass through his checkpoint. Towards the end of the line, a car that had been waiting pulled out and turned around, driving away from the checkpoint. This act was proof to the Lieutenant that the driver of the vehicle must be guilty of something and trying to escape, so he raised his rifle and fired into the night.

When I walked in to the cell where he was being kept, it was dark, and I couldn't see him but I could hear him breathing. He was breathing heavily, almost hyperventilating, and his breaths were interrupted by shaking and sobbing. As we followed the sounds, I was able to make out a figure lying on a stretcher against the wall.

We approached the man and clicked on our flashlights. The first thing I saw was the gauze wrapped around his neck, caked in blood, where he had been shot. My first thought was that he was lucky to be alive, but I could tell that he was not thinking the same thing.

I could see streams of tears along the sides of his face, leading to the stretcher that was too small for his large body. He was shaking furiously, his bare feet sticking out from under a thin blanket that was not large enough to cover him. I knew that he was not only shaking from the cold, but from the fear of death, torture, or life in prison. Every Iraqi knows that people get snatched up in the middle of the night; some never seen again, some returning with stories of intense interrogation techniques.

We told our translator to ask him why he had run away. He responded, struggling through gasping breaths and flowing tears. He said he was tired of waiting in the long line in the middle of the night, and decided to just go back home. Nothing suspicious was found in his car.

Instead of making it back home he ended up in that cell, alone in the dark with only blood soaked bandages to keep him warm. This was the price he paid for being impatient.

He cried as he pleaded with us, repeating over and over that he had never done anything wrong. He said he was in pain and begged to be taken to a hospital. I have never seen a man so weakened, terrified, and defeated.

When we left, the Lieutenant was still proudly boasting about his accomplishment. I wondered how many more Iraqis would be wounded or killed by this man, or by the soldiers he commands. This was the example he set for his subordinates in the field.

As I tried to go back to sleep that night, I could think only of the man down the street in a cold cement room with a bullet wound in his neck. I tried to imagine what he felt, how he thought of the U.S. occupation, and how this mission could possibly be conceived of as "liberation" or maintaining "peace and security." I'm sure we were both kept awake that night-me by confusion and frustration, and him by fear and desperation.

The next morning, I was instructed to go back to the detention facility for more interrogations. There was, as always, a constant flow of scared, shaking, and sobbing prisoners. The man I had seen the previous night was a unique case only insomuch as his wounds were visible. ??Through his broken words, his convulsing body, his tears, and his blood, the innocent Iraqi man on the stretcher showed me what every prisoner felt. That night he taught me what the Iraqi people already know; he taught me who the real enemy was.

Read The Full Article:
http://www.BeThink.org/showDiary.do?diaryId=900

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Friday Night at 8: Smashing Idols

Abraham hung out at his father Terah's idol store one day, while Terah was out doing some errand or another.  Abraham wasn't terribly impressed by the idols.  He had some other ideas about what made the world go round.  The story goes that[...]

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Docudharma/~3/287177903/showDiary.do

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Absent Black Fathers

I am just now beginning to understand the extent of this problem. It's not clear to me if it's gotten a lot worse in younger generations, today's teens specifically. For most of my childhood, I presumed that it was solely a problem in desperate situations where boys just didn't know how to take care of their responsibilities, when McDonald's wages from one's after school job wouldn't cut it and instead, they opted to leave the picture, presuming that their children would be better off without them.

This, unfortunately, is not the case though it's the sense I got from my family.


In 6th grade, when telling a friend about my family, she asked where my father was. I informed her that he'd been out of the picture by his choosing mostly since I was 4 years old and entirely absent since I was 7 years old. Her response was something along the lines of "that happens a lot with black people." That is when I decided that my father would be anything brown-ish whenever I had to explain his absence to my group of friends, all from non-broken homes. My father after all wasn't some young kid who accidentally got a girl pregnant. He wasn't poor. He wasn't a high school drop out. He was and still presumably is a very busy physician. I believehe was in his 30s when I was born, making him older than most fathers. This made it all the more difficult to explain his absence. How do I explain that my father lived in a mini mansion within walking distance while I lived in a rat-infested house?

Was I privileged? Absolutely. Wealthy? Not at all.

All through elementary school, I assumed all families were like the Huxtable's and that if my parents hadn't divorced, mine would be as well. I constantly compared my family to those on television. As I grew older, I saw more and more examples of absentee fathers. Uncle Phil on "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air" was Cosby-esque, but Will's father was a dead beat who disappointed him upon entering the picture again. The brown father excuse continued through college. I woke up one day and just accepted the fact that I wasn't responsible. I had nothing to be ashamed of. If people wanted to lump me into a statistic, fine though this phenomenon was rare in my culture. I can think of two other such examples. In one family, the father died when they were very young. In the other, her biological father does not know she exists nor does she know who this man is.

In my culture, we have traditional weddings in addition to the Western ones. The traditional one takes place at the bride's father's ancestral village. This post was inspired by an invitation to one. Since the age of 5, I've always wondered to myself where I'd have mine when that day came. Though I suddenly don't think marriage is in the cards for me (and that's a post for another day), if it does happen, it will be the elope-in-St. Tropez sort of thing.

Part of this acceptance came in realizing that there were other things far more shameful than having an affluent black father who wouldn't send so much as a birthday card.



Tangent:
This whole thing is of course a cycle. Can you be a good father if you haven't had a good model for one in the form of a father, step father, uncle or other loved one? Is it more that fatherless daughters believe that men are unnecessary?

I don't have an answer to this and I don't have a male perspective on this. I'm fortunate to have several positive mother figures, my own mother, maternal grandmother and some aunts included plus a grandfather who did his grandfatherly job.

If you have a good father, call him and thank him. It's not Fathers Day yet but it doesn't need to be a national holiday for you to celebrate him. If your mom did both, don't forget to send her a card and give her a call come Fathers Day.

Read The Full Article:
http://whoseamerica.blogspot.com/2008/05/absent-black-fathers.html

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Fox's Baier misrepresented Gore's comments about
Myanmar cyclone

During the May 8 edition of FoxNews' Special Report, guest host Bret Baier claimed that in an interview on National Public Radio, "Former Vice President Al Gore says global warming is to blame forthe cyclone in Myanmar." Baier subsequentlystated: "But many experts say it is impossible to credibly make such alink. Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics tells Fox,quote, 'It is an alarmist statement, and Vice President Gore wants toconfuse the crowd,' adding, 'There is no[...]

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http://feeds.mediamatters.org/~r/mediamatters/latest/~3/287145966/200805090010

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NY-13: Constituents don't want Fossella to
resign...but the media do

On the heels of the fascinating drunken Vito Fossella love-child scandal (if you can come up with a pithy little term for this scandal, please do, we sure could use one), SurveyUSA has polled NY-13, and finds that voters, by and large, think Fossella should not resign. Voters are mixed on whether he should run for reelection, with Democrats generally feeling he should not, Republicans feeling that he should.

61% of adults from New York’s 13th Congressional District say their U.S. Representative, Republican Vito Fossella, should remain in office, according to an exclusive SurveyUSA poll conducted for WABC-TV in New York. 32% say Fossella should resign.

Both Republicans and Democrats say Fossella should stay put: 66% of Republicans and 55% of Democrats say he should remain in office.

...

Asked if Fossella should run for re-election in the fall, however, numbers shift somewhat: overall, 53% say he should seek re-election; 42% say he should not. Republicans say he should run by a margin of nearly 2-1; Democrats are divided equally on the question. Fully crosstabbed results of the poll are here.

However, Phillip at The Albany Project notes that the local media is adamant that Fossella should resign. From the New York Post:

That Fossella betrayed his wife and family is between him and them. But his betrayal of his constituents was only marginally less egregious.

Vito Fossella needs to just go away.

Now.

The Staten Island Advance and New York Daily News concur.

Whether or not Fossella resigns immediately, he will have a difficult time seeking reelection this fall. He is likely to spend time in jail, and should he seek reelection, he should face a stiff challenge both in the primary and general election.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/287147612/9476

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Missouri House Votes To Disenfranchise 240,000

Missouri lawmakers this week are working to rush legislation that would prevent up to 240,000[...]

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/OpenLeft-FrontPage/~3/287168496/showDiary.do

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Let It Be Fiorina

It seems like there's an awful lot of talk these days about the possibility that Carly Fiorina will be John McCain's running mate this year. Veep Watch: Just Asking... McCain-Fiorina '08? What is true: Folks on the periphery of McCain's world are[...]

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/mydd/~3/287147019/65225

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