Wednesday Videos

Yeah Yeah Yeahs ("Down Boy")...


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...Happy Birthday to Lol Creme of 10 C.C. ("The Wall Street Shuffle," from a 1974 appearance with the BBC)...


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...and here is an important video from the John Edwards for President campaign (it is, indeed, up to us, with the Repugs shooting down not just the restoration of habeas corpus but the Webb amendment for deploying our troops - historians will fill volumes one day recording the epic cowardice of our life and times)...


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...and as long as I posted about Charlie Chaplin earlier, here is "Smile" sung wonderfully by Josh Groban, for which Chaplain wrote the music (I can't remember the occasion for this performance - and gosh, could we have had more gratuitous banners for Citigroup getting in the way of the camera shots...God, Katie Couric is such a twit).


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Read The Full Article:
http://liberaldoomsayer.blogspot.com/2007/09/wednesday-videos_19.html

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Federal Judge Rules Tenn. Death Penalty
Unconstitutional

A federal judge in Tennessee has ruled the state's death penalty amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

The protocol "presents a substantial risk of unnecessary pain" and violates inmate Edward Jerome Harbison's constitutional protections, U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger said.

The new protocol, released in April, does not ensure that inmates are properly anesthetized before the lethal injection is administered, Trauger said, which could "result in a terrifying, excruciating death."

For more on how the current cocktail of drugs fails to assure a pain-free death see the Human Rights Watch Report, So Long as They Die and this article submitted to TalkLeft in 2004, You Wouldn't Do a Dog This Way.

For more news coverage of the opinion, see the Stand Down Texas Project.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TalkleftThePoliticsOfCrime/~3/158831051/475

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Oil and Betrayal in Iraq, By George Lakoff

George Lakoff of the The Rockridge Institute examines what Alan Greenspan's admission that "the Iraq war is largely about oil" means for America's troops and for the people of Iraq:

Alan Greenspan should know. It was oil all along. The former head of the Federal Reserve writes in his memoir, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." Greenspan even advised Bush that "taking Saddam Hussein out was essential" to protect oil supplies.

Bookmark/Search this post with: buzzflash | delicious | digg | technorati Technorati Tags: Guest Contribution Lakoff Iraq Oil

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http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/1315

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Senate blocks bill on Soldiers deployment time
limits

This is so screwed up. I mean, really..the Asshat-in-chief said he would veto it, so why the hell didn't everyone who wants our soldiers home VOTE for the damn thing? They had nothing to friggin lose..From WaPo:

The Senate today turned back a measure to require that U.S. troops be given at least as much time at home as they spend on combat tours, shelving an amendment that supporters said was aimed at easing the strain of prolonged military deployments but that opponents argued was intended to undercut the Bush administration's Iraq war policy.

The amendment to a defense programs bill, sponsored by Sen. James Webb (D-Va.) and Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), went down when it failed to receive the 60 votes needed for passage. The vote was 56 to 44. A similar measure offered by Webb in July also fell four votes short of the 60-vote threshold

.

My heart breaks when I see this kind of bs..and my blood pressure goes through the roof. FOUR FUCKING VOTES SHORT. This is a travesty. Keep sending him the same damn bill..keep putting it up there, every month if need be..be as stubborn as the Asshat-in-Chief you nimrods.

Tags: Jim Webb, Troop Deployment Bill


Read The Full Article:
http://ooibc.blogspot.com/2007/09/senate-blocks-bill-on-soldiers.html

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Momentum Difficult To Predict

Via Pollster.com, this bit of information on the 1984 Democratic primary is worth noting:In a[...]

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/OpenLeft-FrontPage/~3/158835461/showDiary.do

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Peter King, Bigoted Jackass

Republican Congressman Peter King, jackass:  

Rep. Peter King: There are "too many mosques in this country"
New York Rep. Peter King, a prominent House Republican, said there are "too many mosques in this country" in a recent interview with Politico.

"There are too many people sympathetic to radical Islam," King said. "We should be looking at them more carefully and finding out how we can infiltrate them."
[...]

When asked to clarify his statement, King did not revise his answer, saying "I think there has been a lack of full cooperation from too many people in the Muslim community."

Congressman King appears to be selective in his desire for the federal government to invade the sanctity of religious worship, as he doesn’t appear to be equally concerned with "infiltrating" non-Muslims'communities and places of worship.  If Peter King were concerned about all religious communities that might be harboring terrorists or fomenting crime and violence, he’d be concerned about the Christian Identity movement and the violent organizations it's inspired, such as the Army of God, whose organizational manual is a "how to for abortion-clinic violence.  There are other groups like the Phineas Priesthood and even small rural churches in the Ozarks like the one that may have influenced Christian extremist terrorist Eric Rudolph.  The Christian ideology of Dominionism is part of a stew of radical ideas that’s helped power the Christian Patriot movement, in which Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and plenty of other lethal terrorists have been deeply involved.  So, if Peter King is really concerned about all forms of religious terrorism, he better call for government "infiltration" of churches.

If we’re going to start "infiltrating" mosques and churches, we shouldn’t leave out adherents to the original of the great monotheistic religions.  Let’s not forget, one of the most toxic influences on Israel politics was radical Jewish cleric Meir Kahane.  Born in New York City, in 1968 Kahane founded a domestic terrorist group known as the Jewish Defense League (JDL), which was still active as recently as 2001, when members tried to blow up a mosque and the office of Arab-American Congressman Darrel Issa.  Kahane moved to Israel in 1971, founded a racist party, became a national figure, and was assassinated in 1991.  (His killer went on to participate in the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.)  The seeds of hate he planted inspired terrorism after his death.  In 1994, a JDL member and emigrant to Israel named Baruch Goldstein shot close to 200 Muslims at the Cave of the Patriarchs in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.  Israel has officially outlawed Kahane's political party, but his followers continue to present a serious threat of Jewish terrorism in Israel, and much like the Irish Republican Army, they receive significant funding from supporters in the United States.
 
So, if Peter King were truly worried about religious terrorism growing here in the US, he would be calling for "infiltration" of not just mosques, but also churches and even synagogues.  But based on his record, it appears that Peter King, well, he just has a thing about Muslims.  As Think Progress points out, this isn’t the first time King has made outrageous accusations about Muslim communities in the US.  Furthermore, from a policy standpoint, it’s not even clear that King’s prescriptions are sound.  In Europe and the UK, mosques have often become hotbeds of anti-Americanism and fertile recruiting grounds for terrorists.  But in Europe, Muslims are much more marginalized and discriminated against, and thus much less integrated in to society than in the US.  American Muslims are more likely to be economically successful than Muslims in the UK, more likely to be afforded full citizenship rights than in Germany or Spain, less likely to be targets of xenophobic political parties than in Denmark or The Netherlands, and far less likely to be residentially segregated and separated from non-Muslims in the society, as is true in most of Europe but especially in France.

We are fortunate that mosques in the U.S. are not the fertile recruiting stations for Jihadis that they are in Europe.  But more braying from jackasses like Peter King and Virgil Goode could create an environment where American Muslims feel more alienated and less invested in the safety and security of all Americans.  If America is not committed to protecting the liberties of all Americans, not all Americans will remain committed to America.
 
Like so many Republicans who prattle on about keeping us safe from terrorism (as they do little to catch Osama bin Laden or protect our ports and continue to support the war in Iraq, which is the best recruitment tool the terrorists have), Peter King is playing on fear.  Shortly after the attack on the U.S. by Al Qaeda, George W. Bush and the Republicans began invoking memories of 9-11 and fears of terrorism to intimidate opposition, silence dissent and garner votes, an approach they've continued right up to today.  Peter King’s cravenness is somewhat more imaginative, since his fear-mongering may lead to a few more sales of his novel Vale of Tears, about a Congressman from Long Island fighting terrorism by...sitting in on meetings or something.  It’s apparently not as compelling as Richard Perle’s Hard Line, with such scintillating prose as "[n]ow, he looked at his marriage in much the same way he had examined the intermediate-range missile question."  It doesn’t appear to tap in to conservatives’ long tradition of bad writing about sex, like Scooter Libby’s The Apprentice, which includes examples of healthy sexual desire such as scenes about a necrophillic "stag" party or training a girl for prostitution by arranging for her to be raped by a bear.  [Man, those Straussians and their weird sexual proclivities!]  It doesn’t even appear to have the kitschy raunchiness of Lynne Cheney’s lesbian novel Sisters.  No, according to one of the reviews on Amazon, it’s a book about meetings.  But King’s novel appears to take a page from the GOP playbook, to th invoke 9-11 and provoke fear.  As one of the local newspapers in his district put it, King "brings the fear of terrorism right to Nassau County in his book, as he describes not only what occurred in New York and Washington during September 11 and after, but the possibility of future terrorism not just in New York City, but that terrorists have come out to the Island."

Peter King is doing the same thing with his calls to "infiltrate" mosques: he’s creating and exploiting fear.  Fear of terrorists, fear of tolerance, fear of protecting Americans’ First Amendment rights.  It’s the basis of Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign, for which King is a prominent advisor.  It’s the basis of the GOP’s entire strategy toward the electorate; toss some of them aside (like Muslims), rely on the dead-enders in the Republican base, and try to fool voters not tied closely to the Democrats by scaring the hell out of them.  That worked for a while, and it will always be a cynical but effective approach with some voters.  But lets hope the fear-mongering is losing its potency, and bigoted jackasses like Peter King are tossed out of office so they can spend more time writing their books.

By the way, if you want a copy of Vale of Tears, prices on Amazon start at the laughably low $1.86.  

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/158815226/048

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Senator Obama: Call for an End to All White
Juries!

AfroSpear's Francis L. Holland and Electronic Village on MSNBC

Senator Barack Obama says that he is the candidate for president who would be most able to bridge divides of color in America. If so, this would be an excellent time for him to prove it. If he steps forward now with new proposals for addressing and ending the systemic injustices that have led thousands of people, Black and white to protest in Jena, Louisiana today, then Barack Obama might be able to capture the imaginations of Americans and provide leadership, showing the way forward. He could create a new consensus for threshold notions of fairness.

This crucial moment in the history of the American Civil Rights Movement will truly tell us much about Barack Obama's modus operandi. If he were elected president, would he feel compelled to mostly ignore debates about skin color in order to avoid disagreeing with white perspectives and thereby being fatally cast as the "Black candidate." Would be bridge divides or simply be the proponent for a "new denial." Can Barack Obama come forward with substantive alternatives to the status quo that about which Blacks and whites as well as Latinos can endorse and feel good?


MSNBC's Brian Williams with positive coverage
of AfroSpear/ColorOfChange efforts.

For example, the Jena, Louisiana criminal panel that convicted Mychal was an all-white jury.

A court-appointed attorney in Bell?s adult trial did not present any evidence or witnesses in his defense before an all white jury convicted him of guilty of second-degree aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit second-degree aggravated battery. Black America Web

Because Blacks, at one time, were forbidden by law to sit on juries, all white juries are an historical symbol of systemic anachronistic injustice, constitued by prosecutors and the courts precisely because they are more likely to be blind to the guilt or innoncence of Black people and to render injustice based on prejudices. All-white juries are not an accident that yield accidental injustice. Instead, they are both a manifestation and factory of prejudice. There is no justification to insist on all-white juries in this day and age.

So, will candidate Barack Obama step forward and propose that every jury be composed of at least one "group juror" who is a representative of the accused's ethnic group? Of course this one juror would still be in the overwhelming minority and would be in no position to single-handedly change or guarantee a fair process or result. The group juror could only act to help review the evidence and pique the conscience, both of the jury and of society.

A new insistence upon ending all-white juries would focus America's attention on the inherent unfairness of a system that so often is so careful NOT to have minority jury participation when convicting and sentencing minorities. In the process of implementing a "group juror" consideration, the new thinking required to end all-white juries would shine a continuous light into an unfair court system and bring constant attention to other forms of injustice, focusing America's attention first on the injustice that is most visible in order to build a political will for a continual effort to end injustices that are more subtle.

The group juror concept is a direct challenge to notions of color-blindness promoted by the Roberts Court in its decision to overturn Brown v. Board of Education. And this proposal would put insistent discriminators on the indefensible defensive.

What, after all, is the great need to maintain the institution of the all-white jury? Would having ONE member of the defendant's color be so injurious to the prospects for justice? In order to make justice truly blind in America, it is time to redefine the term "a jury of one's peers" in the public consciousness to mean a jury that includes at least one member of one's own ethnic group.

Does this mean that an Arab terrorist must have at least one Arab on his jury? Yes it does. And how or why would the presence of one Arab so confound the system that justice could not be served?

Meanwhile, a call by citizens and organizers for an end to all-white juries would be one way of maintaining the public's focus on the most blatantly obvious systemic unfairnesseses. The group juror proposal is a way of asserting the inherent unfairness of a criminal justice process that excludes the participation of Blacks, and this is so even in cases where the defendant's guilt or innocence is unclear, as it always is until a jury has pronounced its sentence.

Of course, many people will insist that this proposal is unconstitutional, that the courts must "ignore the skin color or the defendant" while convicting Black youths at a rate six times higher than whites. These defender of all white juries will insist that maintainance of all-white juries is, in fact, constitutional while the "Group Juror" proposal is not. Yet arguments for that proposition would show the idiocy of all that has transpired in the discussion of skin color since Bakke. Because if all-white juries are truly essential to our Constitution, (and I don't believe they are) then it may explain why there are so many Black people in jail. The group juror proposal is based Constitutional proposition that our society deserves a fair trial to determine each defendant's guilt or innocence.

Advocating for the group juror proposal challenges the assumption that "justice is blind," and that a system run exclusively by whites can be fair to those who are not. This advocacy challenges Americans to concede the inherent fairness of a "jury of one's peers."

As such, the "Group Juror" proposal subtly and obliquely offer a rationale for Obama's own candidacy, which is predicated on the belief that no person should be excluded from service based exclusively on the color of his skin, while no system should systemically ignore or discount the services to democracy and justice that are offered by those who are not white men.

As such, the Group Juror proposal would be a direct challenge to America's history of systemic segregation and discrimination, while those who believe that all-white justice is a good thing would be compelled to step forward and defend that proposition. In any case, if Barack Obama cannot step forward now to show America the way out of this Jena morass, then he may effectively be conceding that he cannot and does not offer something to unite us that his opponents do not.

Read The Full Article:
http://francislholland.blogspot.com/2007/09/obama-call-for-end-to-all-white-jurie
s.html

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Obama: Call for an End to All White Juries!

Senator Barack Obama says that he is the candidate for president who would be most able to bridge divides of color in America. If so, this would be an excellent time for him to prove it. If he steps forward now with a new proposal for addressing the systemic injustices that have led thousands of people, Black and white to protest in Jena, Louisiana today, then Barack Obama might be able to capture the imaginations of Americans and provide leadership, showing the way forward.

But, this crucial moment really will tell us much about Barack Obama's modus operandi. Would he feel compelled to mostly ignore debates about skin color in order to avoid disagreeing with white perspectives and being fatally cast as the "Black candidate." Or, can Barack Obama come forward with substantive alternatives to the status quo about which both Blacks and whites as well as Latinos can endorse and feel good?

For example, the Jena jury criminal panel that convicted Mychal was an all-white jury. All white juries are an historical symbol of systemic injustice, constitued in this way by prosecutors and the courts precisely because they are more likely to be blind to the guilt or innoncence of Black people.

A court-appointed attorney in Bell?s adult trial did not present any evidence or witnesses in his defense before an all white jury convicted him of guilty of second-degree aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit second-degree aggravated battery. Black America Web

Will Barack Obama step forward and propose that every jury be composed of at least one "group juror" who is a representative of the accused's ethnic group? Of course this one juror would still be in the minority and would be in no position to gaurantee a fair process or result. However the insistence upon ending all-white juries would focus attention on the inherent unfairness of a system that so often is careful NOT to have minority jury participation. The new processes and thinking required to end all-white juries would shine a continuous light into an unfair court system and bring constant attention to other forms of injustice, focusing first on the injustice that is most visible in order to build a political will for a continual effort to end injustices that are more subtle.

This proposal would put insistent discriminators an the indefensible defensive. What, after all, is the great need to maintain the institution of the all-white jury? Would having ONE member of the defendants color on the jury be so injurious to the prospects for justice? It is time to redefine the term "a jury of one's peers" to mean a jury that includes at least one member of one's own ethnic group.

Does this mean that an Arab terrorists must have at least one Arab on his jury? Yes it does? Would the presence of one Arab so confound the system that justice could not be served?

Of course, many people will insist that this proposal is unconstitutional, that the courts must "ignore the color or the defendant "while convicting Black youths at a rate six times higher than whites.

The "Group Juror" proposal would challenge the assumption that justice is blind, and that a system run exclusively by whites can be fair to those who are not.

As such, the "Group Juror" proposal would subtly and obliquely offer a rationale for Obama's own candidacy, which is predicated on the belief that no person should be excluded from service based exclusively on the color of his skin, while no system should systemically ignore discount the services to democracy and justice that are offered by those who are not white men.

So, the Group Juror proposal would be a direct challenge to America's history of systemic segregation and discrimination, and those who believe that all-white justice is a good thing would then be compelled to step forward and defend that propisition. Win or lose, it's a discussion that we need to have.


Read The Full Article:
http://francislholland.blogspot.com/2007/09/obama-call-for-end-to-all-white-jurie
s.html

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C&Ls Late Nite Music Club with Terence Blanchard

The new Terence Blanchard album, A Tale of God’s Will, is a sure bet– in case anyone is a bettor at the LNMC– for a Grammy this year (and I was on Grammy committees for years so I know). Aside from being some of the very best orchestral jazz anywhere, the album explores the aftermath [...]

Read The Full Article:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/09/19/cls-late-nite-music-club-with-terence-bl
anchard/

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Late Nite FDL: All Republicans are Little Bitches

Oh, for f*&k’s sake.As Congress considers a series of legislation that would drastically alter the course and direction of the Iraq War, one prominent Republican Senator will be focusing his efforts on condemning the newspaper advertisement of[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/09/19/late-nite-fdl-all-republicans-are-little-bi
tches/

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