I just watched on C-SPAN as the House passed a bill giving the District of Columbia a representative with full voting rights in the House. The Legislation also gives Utah an additional Congressional seat as part of a bi-partisan compromise, thus raising the total number of House members from 435 to 437.
Despite this show of good will and the obvious merits of giving the more than half a million D.C. residents full representation in our government, the majority of Republicans in Congress voted against the bill. Jerks.
The last time this issue came up, they succeeded in defeating it by tying the bill down with an NRA-backed measure to undermine D.C.'s ban on semi-automatic weapons.
I’m not sure what happens next - whether the bill faces a Republican filibuster in the Senate or a veto threat from our illustrious Commander-in-Chief. But hopefully this will mark the long overdue culmination of an effort to grant D.C. citizens their full rights under the Constitution.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Lax gun laws
Today my friend Bill Crawford says:
The question on everyone's mind today is, do stricter gun laws prevent crime?
While I disagree with his answer, I think it is also the wrong question to ask.
This is the question on most people’s minds today:
The Big Question: Is there a link between America's lax gun laws and the high murder rate?
The answer, unfortunately, is yes.
Robert Reich made this astute observation today juxtaposing the easy access to semi-automatic handguns with strict regulation for anti-depressant medications:
I would support a ban on semi-automatic handguns similar to the one they enacted in Australia back in 1996.
There is absolutely no need for anyone in the general public to own a semi-automatic handgun. They are not used for hunting. You don’t need one to defend your house against a burglar. The only thing they are really good for is committing mass murders. At the very minimum, access to these types of weapons should be heavily regulated requiring licensing and extensive background checks so that collectors and sporting enthusiasts might still have access to them, but not so that a mentally deranged college student can walk in on a moment’s notice and walk out with one plus a box of 50 cartridges in under 20 minutes.
The question on everyone's mind today is, do stricter gun laws prevent crime?
While I disagree with his answer, I think it is also the wrong question to ask.
This is the question on most people’s minds today:
The Big Question: Is there a link between America's lax gun laws and the high murder rate?
The answer, unfortunately, is yes.
The massacre at Virginia Tech has, yet again, focused attention on the culture of guns and the ease of obtaining firearms in America, an unending source of amazement to most of the rest of the world. Roughly 29,000 people are killed by firearms every year - 10 times as many as died on September 11, 2001. Of the victims, some 11,000 are murdered, 17,000 use a gun to commit suicide, and almost 1,000 die in accidents. Some sub-statistics are even more disturbing. Every day three children under 19 die from a gun wound. Across the country, roughly 1,000 crimes involving firearms are committed every 24 hours. The rampage of Cho Seung-Hui, the deadliest mass shooting in US history, will merely add one suicide and 33 murders (at the latest count) to these grim totals.
Robert Reich made this astute observation today juxtaposing the easy access to semi-automatic handguns with strict regulation for anti-depressant medications:
In the United States, if you are seriously depressed, you can purchase anti-depressive drugs like Prozac, but only if you have a prescription from a doctor. Anti-depressants are enormously beneficial to millions of people but they are also potentially dangerous if used improperly. So you have to see a doctor and get an assessment before can go to a drug store and purchase one.
But in the United States, in places like Virginia, a seriously depressed or deranged person can walk into a gun store and buy a semi-automatic handgun and a box of ammunition. The only limitation in Virginia is you cannot buy more than one handgun a month and you must present two forms of identification. You don’t need permission from a doctor or counselor or anyone in the business of screening people to make sure they’re fit to have a gun.
We can debate the relative benefits and dangers of anti-depressants and semi-automatic handguns, but if 30,000 Americans were killed each year by anti-depressants, as they are by handguns, it seems likely that anti-depressants would be even more strictly regulated than they are now.
I would support a ban on semi-automatic handguns similar to the one they enacted in Australia back in 1996.
There is absolutely no need for anyone in the general public to own a semi-automatic handgun. They are not used for hunting. You don’t need one to defend your house against a burglar. The only thing they are really good for is committing mass murders. At the very minimum, access to these types of weapons should be heavily regulated requiring licensing and extensive background checks so that collectors and sporting enthusiasts might still have access to them, but not so that a mentally deranged college student can walk in on a moment’s notice and walk out with one plus a box of 50 cartridges in under 20 minutes.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Do you want to fight?
Before I heard about the horrific shootings at Virginia Tech, this is the story that had me upset.
Sounding almost as amused as frustrated, Duncan accused Crawford of having a "personal vendetta" against him and said the veteran referee asked him whether he wanted to fight.
"Before he gave me the two technical fouls, he made a call and I was shaking my head, and he walks down and stares at me," Duncan said. "He says, 'Do you want to fight? Do you want to fight?' I didn't say anything to him there, either."
This ref apparently has a history of these types of incidents and a reputation as being a hot-head. I hope it is not too much to expect that he WILL NOT be officiating any Spurs games during the play-offs.
Sounding almost as amused as frustrated, Duncan accused Crawford of having a "personal vendetta" against him and said the veteran referee asked him whether he wanted to fight.
"Before he gave me the two technical fouls, he made a call and I was shaking my head, and he walks down and stares at me," Duncan said. "He says, 'Do you want to fight? Do you want to fight?' I didn't say anything to him there, either."
This ref apparently has a history of these types of incidents and a reputation as being a hot-head. I hope it is not too much to expect that he WILL NOT be officiating any Spurs games during the play-offs.
Who won in Iraq?
Foreign Policy Magazine’s March/April 2007 issue asks the question “Who Won in Iraq?” and comes up with a Top Ten List of people, nations and ideas that can claim victory. Needless to say, George W. Bush isn’t listed in there anywhere.
1. Iran: After nearly 25 years of wrestling with Saddam Hussein, Iran’s Shiite rulers have the war to thank for their newfound power.
For Iran, the war in Iraq turned out to be a strategic windfall, uprooting Baathism and pacifying a nemesis that had been a thorn in its side.
2. Moqtada al-Sadr: How a radical Shiite cleric became the most powerful man in Iraq.
The Americans would like to see Moqtada off the scene; many moderate Shiite leaders would like to see him dead. Yet Sadr appears unassailable.
3. Al Qaeda: The terrorist network was on life support after Sept. 11 — until a new front opened in Baghdad and revived its mission.
4. Samuel Huntington: The man who envisioned a clash of civilizations looks more prescient than ever.
Paul Wolfowitz has lost. Sam Huntington has won.
5. China: The United States’ missteps in Iraq have given a rising superpower in the East room to grow.
Commitments in Iraq mean the U.S. military now has fewer resources to build up the capabilities to win a potential war with China over Taiwan.
6. Arab Dictators: The Middle East’s strongmen were under pressure to reform. Now, they rest easy.
As the U.S. has become mired in bloody chaos in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have wound up back in Washington’s good graces. But it’s not because they’ve become more democratic.
7. The Price of Oil: The war in Iraq triggered record oil prices, and the region’s petrostates will enjoy the windfall for years to come.
8. The United Nations: Suddenly, the global body’s brand of multilateral diplomacy doesn’t look so bad.
The United Nations is likely to be more effective than the spasmodic interventions of a solitary and inattentive superpower.
9. Old Europe: Four years on, Europe’s naysayers are looking wise beyound their years. But can they do any more than sit back and gloat?
Old Europe’s ambassadors crisscross the globe politely suggesting, “Well, we told you so.”
10. Israel: The war in Iraq eliminated several of Israel’s biggest enemies — even if it made a few new ones along the way.
1. Iran: After nearly 25 years of wrestling with Saddam Hussein, Iran’s Shiite rulers have the war to thank for their newfound power.
For Iran, the war in Iraq turned out to be a strategic windfall, uprooting Baathism and pacifying a nemesis that had been a thorn in its side.
2. Moqtada al-Sadr: How a radical Shiite cleric became the most powerful man in Iraq.
The Americans would like to see Moqtada off the scene; many moderate Shiite leaders would like to see him dead. Yet Sadr appears unassailable.
3. Al Qaeda: The terrorist network was on life support after Sept. 11 — until a new front opened in Baghdad and revived its mission.
4. Samuel Huntington: The man who envisioned a clash of civilizations looks more prescient than ever.
Paul Wolfowitz has lost. Sam Huntington has won.
5. China: The United States’ missteps in Iraq have given a rising superpower in the East room to grow.
Commitments in Iraq mean the U.S. military now has fewer resources to build up the capabilities to win a potential war with China over Taiwan.
6. Arab Dictators: The Middle East’s strongmen were under pressure to reform. Now, they rest easy.
As the U.S. has become mired in bloody chaos in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have wound up back in Washington’s good graces. But it’s not because they’ve become more democratic.
7. The Price of Oil: The war in Iraq triggered record oil prices, and the region’s petrostates will enjoy the windfall for years to come.
8. The United Nations: Suddenly, the global body’s brand of multilateral diplomacy doesn’t look so bad.
The United Nations is likely to be more effective than the spasmodic interventions of a solitary and inattentive superpower.
9. Old Europe: Four years on, Europe’s naysayers are looking wise beyound their years. But can they do any more than sit back and gloat?
Old Europe’s ambassadors crisscross the globe politely suggesting, “Well, we told you so.”
10. Israel: The war in Iraq eliminated several of Israel’s biggest enemies — even if it made a few new ones along the way.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Apology accepted
I was glad to see that the Rutgers team has accepted Don Imus’ apology for his racist and sexist remarks made on his now defunct radio program. It’s too bad that the rest of the country can’t be as forgiving.
This whole mess has left a bitter taste in my mouth as the relentless crusade to tar and feather Imus went overboard in my opinion and has now left him looking more the victim than the perpetrator. I’m disgusted right now with the hypocricy of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, two supposed preachers who can’t seem to find it in their hearts to forgive Imus, but have been quick to beg our forgiveness for their past transgressions.
Rather than healing a wound, Jackson and Sharpton have only succeeded in further inflaming tensions with this vendetta. I think Imus deserved to be taken down a notch or two over this incident. He deserved a swift kick in the butt, a slap upside the head and a stern warning not to do it again. But by forcing his show to be canceled they have effectively set him up as a sacrificial lamb and thus a sympathetic figure.
This whole mess has left a bitter taste in my mouth as the relentless crusade to tar and feather Imus went overboard in my opinion and has now left him looking more the victim than the perpetrator. I’m disgusted right now with the hypocricy of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, two supposed preachers who can’t seem to find it in their hearts to forgive Imus, but have been quick to beg our forgiveness for their past transgressions.
Rather than healing a wound, Jackson and Sharpton have only succeeded in further inflaming tensions with this vendetta. I think Imus deserved to be taken down a notch or two over this incident. He deserved a swift kick in the butt, a slap upside the head and a stern warning not to do it again. But by forcing his show to be canceled they have effectively set him up as a sacrificial lamb and thus a sympathetic figure.
JFK column
This is a column I wrote for the Kerrville Daily Times that was published on Nov. 22, 1993. For my own edification I will be posting my old columns into my blog as time allows.
JFK assassination battle will never end
I’m not one of those people who can recall what I was doing when President John F. Kennedy was shot. That fateful day in our nation’s history took place nearly two years before I was born.
Still it has had a profound, if somewhat delayed, impact on my life. From the time I crawled out of the crib until sometime during my junior year in college I had given no more thought to the assassination of our 35th president than I did to the death of Julius Ceasar. It was just another piece of history.
Then one day, almost innocently, I checked out a documentary video about the assassination from a library. Little did I know that this was a documentary put together by critics of the “official version” of events that day. It was 1986, still several years before the fuss over the 25th and now the 30th anniversary and before the release of Oliver Stone’s film “JFK.”
Sitting down to watch the film I was naive enough to not even realize there was a controversy about what really happened that day. Needless to say, the things the film purported to show me came as quite a shock. Up until that point I had never had any reason to doubt the government. (At the time I was also woefully ignorant about Watergate.) I can still recall having the very strange sensation of being cast out of my safe and sheltered existence. The very neat and tidy little picture of the world that I had in my head had just developed a crack.
I returned to the library that day and checked out every book I could find about the assassination. I read them all, both pro-conspiracy and pro-lone gunman theory. It became almost an obsession for the next several months. If my history books had lied to me about this, what else might they have lied about? What else might they be trying to cover up or keep secret?
I had experienced a loss of faith, a loss of trust and a loss of innocence; much like that which people who were living at the time of the assassination had experienced.
After a while I could see what the defenders of the Warren Commission’s lone gunman theory were trying to do. They were trying to repair that broken picture in my head. They were desperately trying to pick up the pieces and patch things back together, constantly reassuring me that everything was still OK, that things had not gone terribly wrong with the world.
But it was too late. The seeds of doubt had been planted. The preponderance of evidence weighed against the Warren Commission’s neat and tidy version of events. The critics were too relentless, too driven. Some of them, for sure, were off-the-wall, paranoid and fanatical, but many of them were serious. Too serious to be ignored or dismissed. None of them could tell me what really happened that day, but they did a good job of punching holes in the Warren Commission’s official version.
Today the controversy surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy continues to divide our nation into two groups — those who trust and those who doubt. Each year on the anniversary of the assassination it has become a ritual for these two groups to meet on the battlefield of public opinion and duke it out.
The doubters have been winning as of late if recent polls are any indication. They made major gains when the Oliver Stone film was released, but the defenders of the Warren Report are not giving up. This year they are rallying around a new book with the self-important title “Case Closed” that once again attempts to prop up the lone gunman theory. They also have most of the “establishment” media on their side which is holding nothing back in showering praise on the new book and continuing to heap scorn and derision on the “conspiracy theorists” and “assassination buffs.”
It is a battle that will never end. We are no longer dealing with the simple facts of a homicide investigation, but with the tenets of two very different philosophies. Depending on which philosophy a person adopts will affect which evidence they will see as the most valid and which eyewitness testimony is the most credible.
I may not have been around when President Kennedy was shot, but I will always remember when it first affected me. Like a shockwave reverberating forward through time it changed my view of the world and made me more cynical, but perhaps also more realistic.
JFK assassination battle will never end
I’m not one of those people who can recall what I was doing when President John F. Kennedy was shot. That fateful day in our nation’s history took place nearly two years before I was born.
Still it has had a profound, if somewhat delayed, impact on my life. From the time I crawled out of the crib until sometime during my junior year in college I had given no more thought to the assassination of our 35th president than I did to the death of Julius Ceasar. It was just another piece of history.
Then one day, almost innocently, I checked out a documentary video about the assassination from a library. Little did I know that this was a documentary put together by critics of the “official version” of events that day. It was 1986, still several years before the fuss over the 25th and now the 30th anniversary and before the release of Oliver Stone’s film “JFK.”
Sitting down to watch the film I was naive enough to not even realize there was a controversy about what really happened that day. Needless to say, the things the film purported to show me came as quite a shock. Up until that point I had never had any reason to doubt the government. (At the time I was also woefully ignorant about Watergate.) I can still recall having the very strange sensation of being cast out of my safe and sheltered existence. The very neat and tidy little picture of the world that I had in my head had just developed a crack.
I returned to the library that day and checked out every book I could find about the assassination. I read them all, both pro-conspiracy and pro-lone gunman theory. It became almost an obsession for the next several months. If my history books had lied to me about this, what else might they have lied about? What else might they be trying to cover up or keep secret?
I had experienced a loss of faith, a loss of trust and a loss of innocence; much like that which people who were living at the time of the assassination had experienced.
After a while I could see what the defenders of the Warren Commission’s lone gunman theory were trying to do. They were trying to repair that broken picture in my head. They were desperately trying to pick up the pieces and patch things back together, constantly reassuring me that everything was still OK, that things had not gone terribly wrong with the world.
But it was too late. The seeds of doubt had been planted. The preponderance of evidence weighed against the Warren Commission’s neat and tidy version of events. The critics were too relentless, too driven. Some of them, for sure, were off-the-wall, paranoid and fanatical, but many of them were serious. Too serious to be ignored or dismissed. None of them could tell me what really happened that day, but they did a good job of punching holes in the Warren Commission’s official version.
Today the controversy surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy continues to divide our nation into two groups — those who trust and those who doubt. Each year on the anniversary of the assassination it has become a ritual for these two groups to meet on the battlefield of public opinion and duke it out.
The doubters have been winning as of late if recent polls are any indication. They made major gains when the Oliver Stone film was released, but the defenders of the Warren Report are not giving up. This year they are rallying around a new book with the self-important title “Case Closed” that once again attempts to prop up the lone gunman theory. They also have most of the “establishment” media on their side which is holding nothing back in showering praise on the new book and continuing to heap scorn and derision on the “conspiracy theorists” and “assassination buffs.”
It is a battle that will never end. We are no longer dealing with the simple facts of a homicide investigation, but with the tenets of two very different philosophies. Depending on which philosophy a person adopts will affect which evidence they will see as the most valid and which eyewitness testimony is the most credible.
I may not have been around when President Kennedy was shot, but I will always remember when it first affected me. Like a shockwave reverberating forward through time it changed my view of the world and made me more cynical, but perhaps also more realistic.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Political Odyssey Pt. 2
As I noted in Part 1 of my Political Odyssey, I began my political life as a Republican after being raised in a mostly apolitical family.
But during my junior and senior years in college, things began to change rapidly.
The Iran-Contra scandal broke in the fall of 1986 when I was starting my senior year at Texas A&M. Then-President Ronald Reagan at first denied any involvement, but about a week later he reversed course. I remember watching the nationally-televised speech Reagan gave on Nov. 13, 1986, trying to explain what had happened and why. He made it all sound so innocent and stressed that we were only talking about a very small amount of arms sent to Iran, just enough to fit into one cargo plane.
At first I was satisfied with this explanation. I was more than willing to give Uncle Ronnie the benefit of the doubt. But it soon became clear that Reagan had not been honest. We weren’t talking about a “small amount of defensive weapons” that “could easily fit into a single cargo plane.” We were talking about thousands of TOW missiles that took weeks to deliver in multiple shipments:
The full impact of Reagan’s lie took awhile to sink in, but the immediate effect was still jolting. My faith and trust in Reagan the man had been profoundly shaken. This ultimately had the effect of jarring me loose from my ideological underpinnings at that time. I suddenly found myself politically adrift. It was around that time that I decided I needed a better foundation and I turned to my history books to find a new hero. I eventually settled on John F. Kennedy. I began reading books on the Kennedy era including Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Vietnam, Watergate, etc. All the stuff that my history books had glossed over or skipped was suddenly becoming very relevant to me.
Then one weekend when I was home on break I went to the local public library and on a whim I checked out a video documentary about the Kennedy assassination. I was only vaguely aware at the time that there was any controversy surrounding the events of that period and was expecting mostly a historical overview. What I got instead was an eye-opening examination of the contradictions and inconsistencies in the official record that to this day leave unanswered one of the most important questions of the last century. Who shot JFK and why?
That video sparked my interest and I began to seek out as many books on the topic as I could find. I read books on both sides of the conspiracy issue - both pro-Warren Commission and pro-conspiracy theory. There was little question in my mind where the preponderance of the evidence pointed and I ended up siding with the majority of Americans who to this day believe Kennedy was killed as the result of an organized conspiracy. Who was behind that conspiracy is still debatable and I don’t pretend to have any definitive answers, but my suspicions were and still are that a right-wing cabal of anti-Castro Cubans, Mafia bosses and rouge elements in our own government conspired to pull off the crime of the century.
My research into the JFK assassination led me to believe that some of the same elements had conspired to pull off the subsequent assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King as well. I was incensed that THEY could get away with this. Even though I did not know who THEY were, I was nevertheless placing the blame on the right-wing side of the political spectrum and that was shoving me squarely into the left-wing side. It was a strange place to be for an Aggie in the Corps of Cadets but I felt the need to not only learn more about these issues, but to also do something about them.
As I became more and more enamored of JFK, RFK, MLK, etc., I became more and more disenchanted with Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Richard Nixon and the whole cast of characters who were making the news everyday in the growing Iran-Contra scandal.
I had never been to a College Republicans meeting, though I had faithfully supported the Republican ticket in 1984 and 1986. But by 1987 I was going to Aggie Democrats meetings and even got involved with the local chapter of Students Against Apartheid - quite possibly the only member of the Corps to ever be affiliated with the group. And I continued to read all kinds of left-wing political literature of that period much of which still influences my thinking to this day. They include:
“Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media” by Noam Chomsky
“Endless Enemies: The Making of an Unfriendly World” by Jonathan Kwitney
“The Power Game: How Washington Works” by Hedrick Smith
“Rise of the Counter Establishment: From Conservative Ideology to Political Power” by Sidney Blumenthal
“Tales of a New America: The Anxious Liberal's Guide to the Future” by Robert Reich
“The Media Monopoly” by Ben Bagdikian
“On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency” by Mark Hertsgaard
When the 1988 election season rolled around, my politics had done a complete 180’ from 1986 and I was anxious to not only vote for Democrats, but to actively work in their campaigns. When the Democratic primary rolled around I found myself supporting Jesse Jackson just to make a political statement - not because I had any illusions that he could win. After Michael Dukakis emerged as the candidate, I volunteered to work in his campaign in College Station. One of my talents was writing letters to the editor and when I had written all that I was allowed in any given month, I would turn around and ghost write letters for other people to send in.
Alas, all my efforts were for naught as Dukakis went down to defeat against the Willie Horton-fearmongering and shameless flag-exploiting campaign of George Bush the Elder. I was deeply disappointed but rather than turning away from politics I turned my efforts instead toward the state and local arena and supported the full slate of Democrats running for state office in 1990 including Ann Richards for Governor, Bob Bullock for Lt. Gov., Jim Hightower for Ag Commissioner, Garry Maruo for Land Commissioner and John Sharp for Comptroller. I also railed against a local Republican state rep trying to run for the state Senate (he lost) and worked in the campaign of a local attorney trying to win the vacant state rep seat (he lost too).
By the time Ann Richards and her group won, I was newly married and on my way to New England where I would soon get an entirely different perspective on politics.
But during my junior and senior years in college, things began to change rapidly.
The Iran-Contra scandal broke in the fall of 1986 when I was starting my senior year at Texas A&M. Then-President Ronald Reagan at first denied any involvement, but about a week later he reversed course. I remember watching the nationally-televised speech Reagan gave on Nov. 13, 1986, trying to explain what had happened and why. He made it all sound so innocent and stressed that we were only talking about a very small amount of arms sent to Iran, just enough to fit into one cargo plane.
I authorized the transfer of small amounts of defensive weapons and spare parts for defensive systems to Iran. My purpose was to convince Tehran that our negotiators were acting with my authority, to send a signal that the United States was prepared to replace the animosity between us with a new relationship. These modest deliveries, taken together, could easily fit into a single cargo plane.
At first I was satisfied with this explanation. I was more than willing to give Uncle Ronnie the benefit of the doubt. But it soon became clear that Reagan had not been honest. We weren’t talking about a “small amount of defensive weapons” that “could easily fit into a single cargo plane.” We were talking about thousands of TOW missiles that took weeks to deliver in multiple shipments:
In January 1986, North and Secord negotiated on behalf of the United States the sale of 4,000 TOW missiles to Iran. Ghorbanifar agreed to pay $10,000 for each TOW. The terms and conditions negotiated by North and Secord required an initial sale of 1,000 TOW missiles for $10 million, and subsequent sales of an additional 3,000 TOW missiles for $30 million. North falsely informed DoD and the CIA that Secord would receive only $6,000 per TOW, or a total of $6 million. The Defense Department established its price as $3,700 per TOW missile for its sale to the CIA and the price to be paid to the CIA by Secord.
Between February 7 and February 18, 1986, Khashoggi deposited $10 million into the Enterprise's Lake Resources account. On February 10-11, 1986, $3.7 million was transferred from Lake to a CIA account for the weapons. Between February 17 and 27, 1986, 1,000 TOWs were shipped to Iran.
The full impact of Reagan’s lie took awhile to sink in, but the immediate effect was still jolting. My faith and trust in Reagan the man had been profoundly shaken. This ultimately had the effect of jarring me loose from my ideological underpinnings at that time. I suddenly found myself politically adrift. It was around that time that I decided I needed a better foundation and I turned to my history books to find a new hero. I eventually settled on John F. Kennedy. I began reading books on the Kennedy era including Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Vietnam, Watergate, etc. All the stuff that my history books had glossed over or skipped was suddenly becoming very relevant to me.
Then one weekend when I was home on break I went to the local public library and on a whim I checked out a video documentary about the Kennedy assassination. I was only vaguely aware at the time that there was any controversy surrounding the events of that period and was expecting mostly a historical overview. What I got instead was an eye-opening examination of the contradictions and inconsistencies in the official record that to this day leave unanswered one of the most important questions of the last century. Who shot JFK and why?
That video sparked my interest and I began to seek out as many books on the topic as I could find. I read books on both sides of the conspiracy issue - both pro-Warren Commission and pro-conspiracy theory. There was little question in my mind where the preponderance of the evidence pointed and I ended up siding with the majority of Americans who to this day believe Kennedy was killed as the result of an organized conspiracy. Who was behind that conspiracy is still debatable and I don’t pretend to have any definitive answers, but my suspicions were and still are that a right-wing cabal of anti-Castro Cubans, Mafia bosses and rouge elements in our own government conspired to pull off the crime of the century.
My research into the JFK assassination led me to believe that some of the same elements had conspired to pull off the subsequent assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King as well. I was incensed that THEY could get away with this. Even though I did not know who THEY were, I was nevertheless placing the blame on the right-wing side of the political spectrum and that was shoving me squarely into the left-wing side. It was a strange place to be for an Aggie in the Corps of Cadets but I felt the need to not only learn more about these issues, but to also do something about them.
As I became more and more enamored of JFK, RFK, MLK, etc., I became more and more disenchanted with Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Richard Nixon and the whole cast of characters who were making the news everyday in the growing Iran-Contra scandal.
I had never been to a College Republicans meeting, though I had faithfully supported the Republican ticket in 1984 and 1986. But by 1987 I was going to Aggie Democrats meetings and even got involved with the local chapter of Students Against Apartheid - quite possibly the only member of the Corps to ever be affiliated with the group. And I continued to read all kinds of left-wing political literature of that period much of which still influences my thinking to this day. They include:
“Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media” by Noam Chomsky
“Endless Enemies: The Making of an Unfriendly World” by Jonathan Kwitney
“The Power Game: How Washington Works” by Hedrick Smith
“Rise of the Counter Establishment: From Conservative Ideology to Political Power” by Sidney Blumenthal
“Tales of a New America: The Anxious Liberal's Guide to the Future” by Robert Reich
“The Media Monopoly” by Ben Bagdikian
“On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency” by Mark Hertsgaard
When the 1988 election season rolled around, my politics had done a complete 180’ from 1986 and I was anxious to not only vote for Democrats, but to actively work in their campaigns. When the Democratic primary rolled around I found myself supporting Jesse Jackson just to make a political statement - not because I had any illusions that he could win. After Michael Dukakis emerged as the candidate, I volunteered to work in his campaign in College Station. One of my talents was writing letters to the editor and when I had written all that I was allowed in any given month, I would turn around and ghost write letters for other people to send in.
Alas, all my efforts were for naught as Dukakis went down to defeat against the Willie Horton-fearmongering and shameless flag-exploiting campaign of George Bush the Elder. I was deeply disappointed but rather than turning away from politics I turned my efforts instead toward the state and local arena and supported the full slate of Democrats running for state office in 1990 including Ann Richards for Governor, Bob Bullock for Lt. Gov., Jim Hightower for Ag Commissioner, Garry Maruo for Land Commissioner and John Sharp for Comptroller. I also railed against a local Republican state rep trying to run for the state Senate (he lost) and worked in the campaign of a local attorney trying to win the vacant state rep seat (he lost too).
By the time Ann Richards and her group won, I was newly married and on my way to New England where I would soon get an entirely different perspective on politics.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Hidden gems
Remember those songs you used to listen to all the time and now you never seem to hear anymore? I’m talking about those hidden gems on albums that never got released as singles and never had any radio play. Songs that you only know about because you used to listen to the album or cassette constantly. But now you don’t even have a record or cassette player anymore and if you haven’t replaced those albums on CD you probably haven’t heard these songs in years.
Here is a list I put together of hidden gems I still cherish from the early to mid ‘80s:
Dragon Attack - Queen (Play the Game)
Rage in the Cage - J. Geils Band (Freeze Frame)
It’s Your Life - Loverboy (Get Lucky)
I Got the Six - ZZ Top (Eliminator)
Carry Me Away - Rick Springfield (Working Class Dog)
Can’t Stop the World - Go Go’s (Beauty and the Beat)
Don’t Worry Baby - Los Lobos (Will the Wolf Survive)
Too Much Information - The Police (Ghost in the Machine)
I Can’t Take It - Cheap Trick (Next Position Please)
Through Being Cool - Devo (New Traditionalists)
Here is a list I put together of hidden gems I still cherish from the early to mid ‘80s:
Dragon Attack - Queen (Play the Game)
Rage in the Cage - J. Geils Band (Freeze Frame)
It’s Your Life - Loverboy (Get Lucky)
I Got the Six - ZZ Top (Eliminator)
Carry Me Away - Rick Springfield (Working Class Dog)
Can’t Stop the World - Go Go’s (Beauty and the Beat)
Don’t Worry Baby - Los Lobos (Will the Wolf Survive)
Too Much Information - The Police (Ghost in the Machine)
I Can’t Take It - Cheap Trick (Next Position Please)
Through Being Cool - Devo (New Traditionalists)
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Collapse of the Bush Administration
Joe Klein has apparently had enough and goes off on the Bush administration in the latest issue of Time Magazine:
The epic collapse of the Bush Administration.
The three big Bush stories of 2007 — the decision to “surge” in Iraq, the scandalous treatment of wounded veterans at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys for tawdry political reasons — precisely illuminate the three qualities that make this Administration one of the worst in American history: arrogance (the surge), incompetence (Walter Reed) and cynicism (the U.S. Attorneys).
Iraq comes first, as always. From the start, it has been obvious that personal motives have skewed the President’s judgment about the war. Saddam tried to kill his dad; his dad didn’t try hard enough to kill Saddam. There was payback to be had. But never was Bush’s adolescent petulance more obvious than in his decision to ignore the Baker-Hamilton report and move in the exact opposite direction: adding troops and employing counterinsurgency tactics inappropriate to the situation on the ground. “There was no way he was going to accept [its findings] once the press began to portray the report as Daddy’s friends coming to the rescue,” a member of the Baker-Hamilton commission told me. As with Bush’s invasion of Iraq, the decision to surge was made unilaterally, without adequate respect for history or military doctrine. Iraq was invaded with insufficient troops and planning; the surge was attempted with too few troops (especially non-Kurdish, Arabic-speaking Iraqis), a purposely misleading time line (“progress” by September) and, most important, the absence of a reliable Iraqi government.
General David Petraeus has repeatedly said, “A military solution to Iraq is not possible.” Translation: This thing fails unless there is a political deal among the Shi’ites, Sunnis and Kurds. There is no such deal on the horizon, largely because of the President’s aversion to talking to people he doesn’t like. And while some Baghdad neighborhoods may be more peaceful--temporarily--as a result of the increased U.S. military presence, the story two years from now is likely to resemble the recent headlines from Tall ‘Afar: dueling Sunni and Shi’ite massacres have destroyed order in a city famously pacified by counterinsurgency tactics in 2005. Bush’s indifference to reality in Iraq is not an isolated case. It is the modus operandi of his Administration. The indifference of his Environmental Protection Agency to the dangers of carbon dioxide emissions was rejected by the Supreme Court on April 2.
On April 3, the President again accused Democrats of being “more interested in fighting political battles in Washington than providing our troops what they need.” Such demagoguery is particularly outrageous given the Administration’s inability to provide our troops “what they need” at the nation’s premier hospital for veterans. The mold and decrepitude at Walter Reed are likely to be only the beginning of the tragedy, the latest example of incompetence in this Administration. “This is yet another aspect of war planning that wasn’t done properly,” says Paul Rieckhoff of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “The entire VA hospital system is unprepared for the casualties of Iraq, especially the psychiatric casualties. A lot of vets are saying, ‘This is our Katrina moment.’ And they’re right: this Administration governs badly because it doesn’t care very much about governing.”
Compared with Iraq and Walter Reed, the firing of the U.S. Attorneys is a relatively minor matter. It is true that U.S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President, but they are political appointees of a special sort. They are partisans, obviously, but must appear to be above politics--not working to influence elections, for example--if public faith in the impartiality of the justice system is to be maintained. Once again Karl Rove’s operation has corrupted a policy area--like national security--that should be off-limits to political operators.
When Bush came to office--installed by the Supreme Court after receiving fewer votes than Al Gore--I speculated that the new President would have to govern in a bipartisan manner to be successful. He chose the opposite path, and his hyper-partisanship has proved to be a travesty of governance and a comprehensive failure. I’ve tried to be respectful of the man and the office, but the three defining sins of the Bush Administration--arrogance, incompetence, cynicism--are congenital: they’re part of his personality. They’re not likely to change. And it is increasingly difficult to imagine yet another two years of slow bleed with a leader so clearly unfit to lead.
Monday, April 09, 2007
B.C. - R.I.P.
B.C. cartoonist Johnny Hart died the other day at age 76, reportedly while sitting at his desk working on storyboards for future comic strips. I think he might have appreciated that he died on Easter Sunday considering his very aggresive Christian evangelizing through his comic strips during his later years.
I was never a big fan of B.C. but it had the advantage of having always been around. It was a nearly omnipresent comic strip, in every paper I ever read as my family moved around from one place to the next as I was growing up. In recent years it had become an irritant because of the way Hart injected it with his right-wing political views - couched in holier-than-thou Christian Coalition smarminess. But I would often read it just to see what kind of outrageous thing he would say each day, otherwise the strip would have been relegated to the growing pile of gag-a-day, boring, long-past-their-due-date strips that I regularly skip over each day (Marmaduke, Hi and Lois, Snuffy Smith, etc.)
Now that Hart is gone I hope that his strip will be gracefully retired and allow for more room on the static comic pages for some of the fresh, new strips that are hungry for a chance to breakthrough. Unfortunately, the Syndicate may have other plans as this quote from the AP story implies:
Richard Newcombe, founder and president of Creators Syndicate said “B.C.” and “Wizard of Id” would continue. Family members have been helping produce the strips for years, and they have an extensive computer archive of Hart's drawings to work with, he said.
Great! The heart and soul of B.C. is gone, but they’re going to continue cranking out daily strips using rehashed and recycled drawings stored in a computer database. I hope that most newspapers will have the good sense to drop the strip if that is what they are going to pull. There are already far too many “zombie” strips out there that continue to haunt our comics pages long after the original creative talents behind them have departed this world.
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Recess appointment abuse
President Bush made some more “recess appointments” the other day, bypassing the Senate to install several people to positions that they would have otherwise been able to fill.
This is an abuse of the executive power granted in the Constitution. Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution says: “The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.”
But the positions that Bush is filling did not become vacant during the Senate recess. The authors of our Constitution added that provision because back in 1780s the U.S. Congress did not tend to meet for long periods of time. There would be long delays between sessions of Congress, thus government vacancies might go unfilled for lengthy periods during which time the Congress was not around to give its advice and consent. So the recess appointment was created to allow the President to fill those vacancies temporarily.
But times have changed and today the Congress is in session pretty much year around. Therefore, one should assume that the recess appointment provision should rarely be used. But quite to the contrary, it seems to be used with ever increasing frequency as Presidents have struggled with opposition parties controlling the other branches of government.
It is a bipartisan issue with both Republican and Democratic presidents taking advantage of this loophole to bypass their political adversaries in the appointment process. Although presidents all the way back to Washington have used recess appointments, it seems to have really taken off during the Reagan years when Uncle Ronnie bypassed the Democratic Congress repeatedly by making 243 recess appointments. Bill Clinton made 140 such appointments during his two terms.
But Bush Jr. may be the worst of all. Even with a Republican Congress during the first six years of his presidency, Bush has made 167 recess appointments so far.
Lately, he has been very blatant in making in-your-face recess appointments of officials who were already reviewed and rejected by the Senate. That is clearly contrary to the spirit, if not the letter of the law. I truly hope that someone will challenge him on this and get it before the Supreme Court because it is an abuse of power that should not be tolerated from Republican or Democratic presidents.
This is an abuse of the executive power granted in the Constitution. Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution says: “The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.”
But the positions that Bush is filling did not become vacant during the Senate recess. The authors of our Constitution added that provision because back in 1780s the U.S. Congress did not tend to meet for long periods of time. There would be long delays between sessions of Congress, thus government vacancies might go unfilled for lengthy periods during which time the Congress was not around to give its advice and consent. So the recess appointment was created to allow the President to fill those vacancies temporarily.
But times have changed and today the Congress is in session pretty much year around. Therefore, one should assume that the recess appointment provision should rarely be used. But quite to the contrary, it seems to be used with ever increasing frequency as Presidents have struggled with opposition parties controlling the other branches of government.
It is a bipartisan issue with both Republican and Democratic presidents taking advantage of this loophole to bypass their political adversaries in the appointment process. Although presidents all the way back to Washington have used recess appointments, it seems to have really taken off during the Reagan years when Uncle Ronnie bypassed the Democratic Congress repeatedly by making 243 recess appointments. Bill Clinton made 140 such appointments during his two terms.
But Bush Jr. may be the worst of all. Even with a Republican Congress during the first six years of his presidency, Bush has made 167 recess appointments so far.
Lately, he has been very blatant in making in-your-face recess appointments of officials who were already reviewed and rejected by the Senate. That is clearly contrary to the spirit, if not the letter of the law. I truly hope that someone will challenge him on this and get it before the Supreme Court because it is an abuse of power that should not be tolerated from Republican or Democratic presidents.
Money makes the World Go Around...
The financial reports for the 2008 presidential candidates are out and they contain quite a few surprises, not least of which is Barack Obama’s matching nearly dollar for dollar the fundraising strength of Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
Hillary brought in a record-breaking $26 million, but was no doubt surprised to find Obama hot on her heels with $25 million and with a wider contributor base to boot.
That bodes well for Obama. He looks to be in the race for the longhaul.
Meanwhile, the Republican field has been shaken by the surprisingly strong performance by the Flip-Flop King Mitt Romney who raked in a cool $23 million, nearly double that of John McCain, the one time Conventional Wisdom frontrunner.
McCain is clearly in trouble with just $12.5 million in his first campaign fundraising haul. And Rudy Giuliani, the current frontrunner in all the polls, is not doing too much better with just $15 million. To put that in perspective, consider that Giuliani is just barely hanging even with John Edwards who raised $14 million.
So Hillary clearly has the advantage at this point as she is leading in both the money race and in the polls. But Obama is a major factor in the race and isn’t going to go away anytime soon. Meanwhile the Republicans have a mixed bag with a guy raising tons of money but with little poll support, while their frontrunner in the polls is being left in the dust by the Democrats.
Hillary brought in a record-breaking $26 million, but was no doubt surprised to find Obama hot on her heels with $25 million and with a wider contributor base to boot.
That bodes well for Obama. He looks to be in the race for the longhaul.
Meanwhile, the Republican field has been shaken by the surprisingly strong performance by the Flip-Flop King Mitt Romney who raked in a cool $23 million, nearly double that of John McCain, the one time Conventional Wisdom frontrunner.
McCain is clearly in trouble with just $12.5 million in his first campaign fundraising haul. And Rudy Giuliani, the current frontrunner in all the polls, is not doing too much better with just $15 million. To put that in perspective, consider that Giuliani is just barely hanging even with John Edwards who raised $14 million.
So Hillary clearly has the advantage at this point as she is leading in both the money race and in the polls. But Obama is a major factor in the race and isn’t going to go away anytime soon. Meanwhile the Republicans have a mixed bag with a guy raising tons of money but with little poll support, while their frontrunner in the polls is being left in the dust by the Democrats.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Blogroll deletion
It is with great sadness that I must remove
The View From the Nest from my San Antonio blogroll. I do so only because the owner, The Rantin’ Raven, requested it on account of the fact that he inexplicably shut the site down and deleted it entirely. The Ranting Raven’s politics and mine are 100 percent polar opposites, but that did not prevent us from becoming blog buddies. I also had the pleasure of meeting Raven in person, along with his lovely family, at the San Antonio Blogger Bar-B-Q that he helped organize a couple of years ago.
I hope that Raven’s decision to delete his blog was not because he recieved threats or any other kind of nastiness like that. And I hope that he will eventually find his way back to the local blogosphere where he should know that he will be sorely missed.
On a positive note, I want to take this opportunity to note some recent additions to the local blogging community including Intimations of Mortality authored by a local attorney; Walker Report by a councilman from Balcones Heights; and Dig Deeper Texas by a group of civic-minded activists.
The View From the Nest from my San Antonio blogroll. I do so only because the owner, The Rantin’ Raven, requested it on account of the fact that he inexplicably shut the site down and deleted it entirely. The Ranting Raven’s politics and mine are 100 percent polar opposites, but that did not prevent us from becoming blog buddies. I also had the pleasure of meeting Raven in person, along with his lovely family, at the San Antonio Blogger Bar-B-Q that he helped organize a couple of years ago.
I hope that Raven’s decision to delete his blog was not because he recieved threats or any other kind of nastiness like that. And I hope that he will eventually find his way back to the local blogosphere where he should know that he will be sorely missed.
On a positive note, I want to take this opportunity to note some recent additions to the local blogging community including Intimations of Mortality authored by a local attorney; Walker Report by a councilman from Balcones Heights; and Dig Deeper Texas by a group of civic-minded activists.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Great expectations
Baseball season has started again and I’m looking forward to an enjoyable year.
Fortunately, I’m not a Cubs fan like at least one unhappy fellow I know.
I’m not sure how well the Astros will do without some more pitching support now that they have lost Andy Pettite and perhaps Roger Clemens. The first game didn’t go well with Roy Oswalt pitching a good game only to have Brad Lige and another closer lose it in the final innings. But it’s only the first game of the season.
It was kind of a strange start to the season with a lot of unexpected finishes. The Yankees got off to a good start with a 9-5 victory over the Devil Rays (are they supposed to be any good yet?). But the Chicago White Sox lost to the Indians 12-5 and the Boston Red Sox were whooped 7-1 by the hapless Kansas City Royals.
I always like this time of the year when the baseball season is fresh and the basketball season is gearing up for the playoffs. The Spurs have looked really good lately and my level of expectation for their chances in the playoffs has gone up accordingly.
Fortunately, I’m not a Cubs fan like at least one unhappy fellow I know.
I’m not sure how well the Astros will do without some more pitching support now that they have lost Andy Pettite and perhaps Roger Clemens. The first game didn’t go well with Roy Oswalt pitching a good game only to have Brad Lige and another closer lose it in the final innings. But it’s only the first game of the season.
It was kind of a strange start to the season with a lot of unexpected finishes. The Yankees got off to a good start with a 9-5 victory over the Devil Rays (are they supposed to be any good yet?). But the Chicago White Sox lost to the Indians 12-5 and the Boston Red Sox were whooped 7-1 by the hapless Kansas City Royals.
I always like this time of the year when the baseball season is fresh and the basketball season is gearing up for the playoffs. The Spurs have looked really good lately and my level of expectation for their chances in the playoffs has gone up accordingly.
Catching up...
I’ve been out sick for the last couple of days...
Lot of interesting news stories have come out during that time:
High Court Faults EPA Inaction on Emissions
I was pleasantly surprised to see Anthony Kennedy stepping into the pivotal swing role once occupied by Sandra Day O’Connor. It’s nice to think that even after Bush got two of his horrible picks onto the Supreme Court, we can still get good decisions like this one through.
Prosecutor Posts Go To Bush Insiders
The Bush administration has clearly abused their power when it comes to selecting U.S. Attorneys. If the law is such that the U.S. attorneys “serve at the privilege of the president” then I think after this administration that law needs to be changed. Every new president can pick their own people for the U.S. Attorney slots (with Senate approval), but after they are in place the administration needs to back off and let them do their jobs. This nonsense about ranking the attorneys based on their fealty to the Bush administration’s political agenda is unconscionable and should not be tolerated. If we need a new law to keep this kind of abuse from happening in the future then so be it.
How Bogus Letter Became a Case for War
I still want to know who created the phony document and why.
Lot of interesting news stories have come out during that time:
High Court Faults EPA Inaction on Emissions
The Supreme Court rebuked the Bush administration yesterday for refusing to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, siding with environmentalists in the court's first examination of the phenomenon of global warming.
The court ruled 5 to 4 that the Environmental Protection Agency violated the Clean Air Act by improperly declining to regulate new-vehicle emissions standards to control the pollutants that scientists say contribute to global warming.
"EPA has offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority. The agency "identifies nothing suggesting that Congress meant to curtail EPA's power to treat greenhouse gases as air pollutants," the opinion continued.
....
The Natural Resources Defense Council said in a statement that the ruling "repudiates the Bush administration's do-nothing policy on global warming," undermining the government's refusal to view carbon dioxide as an air pollutant subject to EPA regulation.
I was pleasantly surprised to see Anthony Kennedy stepping into the pivotal swing role once occupied by Sandra Day O’Connor. It’s nice to think that even after Bush got two of his horrible picks onto the Supreme Court, we can still get good decisions like this one through.
Prosecutor Posts Go To Bush Insiders
About one-third of the nearly four dozen U.S. attorney's jobs that have changed hands since President Bush began his second term have been filled by the White House and the Justice Department with trusted administration insiders.
The people chosen as chief federal prosecutors on a temporary or permanent basis since early 2005 include 10 senior aides to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, according to an analysis of government records. Several came from the White House or other government agencies. Some lacked experience as prosecutors or had no connection to the districts in which they were sent to work, the records and biographical information show....
No other administration in contemporary times has had such a clear pattern of filling chief prosecutors' jobs with its own staff members, said experts on U.S. attorney's offices. Those experts said the emphasis in appointments traditionally has been on local roots and deference to home-state senators, whose support has been crucial to win confirmation of the nominees.
The pattern from Bush's second term suggests that the dismissals were half of a two-pronged approach: While getting rid of prosecutors who did not adhere closely to administration priorities, such as rigorous pursuit of immigration violations and GOP allegations of voter fraud, White House and Justice officials have seeded federal prosecutors' offices with people on whom they can depend to carry out the administration's agenda.
The Bush administration has clearly abused their power when it comes to selecting U.S. Attorneys. If the law is such that the U.S. attorneys “serve at the privilege of the president” then I think after this administration that law needs to be changed. Every new president can pick their own people for the U.S. Attorney slots (with Senate approval), but after they are in place the administration needs to back off and let them do their jobs. This nonsense about ranking the attorneys based on their fealty to the Bush administration’s political agenda is unconscionable and should not be tolerated. If we need a new law to keep this kind of abuse from happening in the future then so be it.
How Bogus Letter Became a Case for War
Dozens of interviews with current and former intelligence officials and policymakers in the United States, Britain, France and Italy show that the Bush administration disregarded key information available at the time showing that the Iraq-Niger claim was highly questionable.
In February 2002, the CIA received the verbatim text of one of the documents, filled with errors easily identifiable through a simple Internet search, the interviews show. Many low- and mid-level intelligence officials were already skeptical that Iraq was in pursuit of nuclear weapons.
The interviews also showed that France, berated by the Bush administration for opposing the Iraq war, honored a U.S. intelligence request to investigate the uranium claim. It determined that its former colony had not sold uranium to Iraq.
Burba, who had no special expertise in Africa or nuclear technology, was able to quickly unravel the fraud. Yet the claims clung to life within the Bush administration for months, eventually finding their way into the State of the Union address.
I still want to know who created the phony document and why.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Sing me a song
When my son was little we began singing him songs at night before bedtime. My wife would handle the bulk of the singing, but I would get my turn on occasion as well and it soon became apparent that my song repertoire was pathetically shallow. For someone who loves music as much as I do and has such an extensive record/CD collection, I seem to have committed to memory the full lyrics of very few songs. I know about a dozen Christmas carols, but you obviously can’t sing those year round. I also know the standard patriotic anthems (Star Spangled Banner, America the Beautiful), college fight songs (Aggie War Hymn) and an assortment of Mother Goose tunes. But after that it gets to be slim pickings. I know the full lyrics to Hank Williams’ “Lovesick Blues” and The Beatles’ “Rocky Raccoon,” but after that I have just bits and pieces of song fragments in my head. At first you can get away with singing just what you know and then faking the rest, but after awhile the kid starts to catch on and corrects you when you don’t sing it the same way from one night to the next.
So I was thrilled when my inlaws bought me a book a while back with the lyrics to more than 100 classic American folk tunes. I was able to bone up on a number of songs from that collection adding “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” “Camptown Races,” “Home On the Range,” “Blue Tail Fly (Jimmy Crack Corn)” and “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and a number of others to my staple. But I’m still looking for more and recently I began trying to learn some of the Disney classics. When I was little I had the soundtrack to Walt Disney’s “Dumbo” and I recently took that record and transferred it to CD. “Pink Elephants on Parade” and “When I See an Elephant Fly” are both favorites now after my son listened to the record a number of times, but he also began requesting the stork song - “Look Our For Mr. Stork.” So I set out to find the full lyrics recently on the Internet and to my surprise found that they were not available — at least not in English. I did find the lyrics in Japanese. Fortunately, the new Dumbo DVD which I recently purchased has the lyrics transcribed in a special music extra feature, so I copied it down and now for the first time presumably I will make them available on the Internet:
Look Out For Mr. Stork from Disney’s Dumbo (1941)
Look out for Mr. Stork
That persevering chap
To come along and drop
A bundle in your lap
You may be poor or rich
It doesn’t matter which
Millionaires, they get theirs
Like the butcher and the baker
So look out for Mr. Stork
And let me tell you friend
Don’t try to get away
He’ll find you in the end
He’ll spot you out in China
Or he’ll fly to County Cork
So You’d better look out for Mr. Stork.
So I was thrilled when my inlaws bought me a book a while back with the lyrics to more than 100 classic American folk tunes. I was able to bone up on a number of songs from that collection adding “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” “Camptown Races,” “Home On the Range,” “Blue Tail Fly (Jimmy Crack Corn)” and “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and a number of others to my staple. But I’m still looking for more and recently I began trying to learn some of the Disney classics. When I was little I had the soundtrack to Walt Disney’s “Dumbo” and I recently took that record and transferred it to CD. “Pink Elephants on Parade” and “When I See an Elephant Fly” are both favorites now after my son listened to the record a number of times, but he also began requesting the stork song - “Look Our For Mr. Stork.” So I set out to find the full lyrics recently on the Internet and to my surprise found that they were not available — at least not in English. I did find the lyrics in Japanese. Fortunately, the new Dumbo DVD which I recently purchased has the lyrics transcribed in a special music extra feature, so I copied it down and now for the first time presumably I will make them available on the Internet:
Look Out For Mr. Stork from Disney’s Dumbo (1941)
Look out for Mr. Stork
That persevering chap
To come along and drop
A bundle in your lap
You may be poor or rich
It doesn’t matter which
Millionaires, they get theirs
Like the butcher and the baker
So look out for Mr. Stork
And let me tell you friend
Don’t try to get away
He’ll find you in the end
He’ll spot you out in China
Or he’ll fly to County Cork
So You’d better look out for Mr. Stork.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Express-News unbalanced
I’ve touched on this topic before but now I’m going to take a more comprehensive look at the editorial “balance” on the pages of the San Antonio Express-News.
Yesterday (March 26) we had the tag-team of George Will and Austin Bay, two nationally-syndicated hard-right columnists taking on locally-based and non-syndicated Kathy Clay-Little. Will’s topic was about how liberals are all hateful and mean while conservatives are saintly and proper. Bay, to his credit, had a non-partisan column about how Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe is a bad man and applauding recent efforts by neighboring countries to oppose him.
Clay-Little, typical of most local E-N columnists, was focused on a relatively uncontroversial local issue, that being efforts by the local community college to attract more African-American males into its student population.
On Tuesday, we had two more hard-right, nationally syndicated columnists teaming up against a lone, borderline liberal. First up was National Review editor Rich Lowry with yet another anti-Global Warming screed complete with a political cartoon mocking Al Gore. Then we had Mona Charen lauding Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson as the savior of far-right conservatives in 2008.
On the other side is Froma Harrop. Who? Yeah, that’s what I said. She is a syndicated columnist based in Rhode Island. She had a good column about illegal immigration that sympathizes with both the plight of illegal immigrants and the struggles of working-class Americans whose jobs they are taking while placing blame equally on Republicans and Democrats alike.
Do you see a pattern here? So far we have a 2-1 mismatch each day, and that is putting it lightly.
On Wednesday we will have locally-based hard-right columnist Jonathan Gurwitz squaring off against wishy-washy Boston-based Ellen Goodman who only writes a political column once in a blue moon. The rest of the time she is like a cross between Ann Landers and Erma Bombeck, writing about feel-good, non-controversial domestic issues. On Thursday, they will trot out New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd whose sharp tongue can sometimes skewer the right, but not consistently. For some reason, the E-N editors believe that only Northeastern women (Harrop, Goodman, Dowd) can speak for the left. They adamantly refused to run Molly Ivins’ columns while she was alive and did not acknowledge her untimely death to cancer earlier this year.
The one and only hardcore lefty in the lineup - Mansour El-Kikhia is considered highly controversial because of his ethnic background, his Muslim faith and his shrill rants against the Bush administration, which generally raise more hackles among readers than enlightenment. While I have no problem with El-Kikhia’s views being published once a week, I am disappointed that his is often the only voice on the left challenging the hard-right views of the current administration. And as if to provide a direct counter to El-Kikhia, the E-N recently ran out and signed up right-wing military analyst and former NBC talking head Ken Allard to do a regular column. We wouldn’t want people to think that the paper is too liberal, now would we?
Most of the local editorial columnists on the E-N staff — the above-mentioned Kathy Clay-Little, Maria Anglin, Gloria Padilla, Victor Landa, Paula Allen — stick to non-controversial, local issues in their columns. The same goes for editorial page editors Bruce Davidson and Robert Seltzer and Washington correspondent Gary Martin. I can’t remember the last time Davidson wrote a column that I thought was worth reading. Martin’s columns are just collections of news tidbits and updates, void of any actual opinion. Seltzer comes across as an aging liberal who is too timid to express his views very forcefully and tries to couch everything with humor. His latest column from last Sunday very boldly took on Donald Rumsfeld — six months after he left office — and compared him to the Slim Pickens character in “Dr. Strangelove.” Hardy-har-har!
The one bright spot on the editorial page is relatively new columnist Rebecca Chapa who seems to be slowly gaining more confidence about expressing her liberal views in her columns. Last week she actually came out against the War in Iraq — four years into the mess. Of course, if she gets too carried away, the E-N will just have to run out and hire a couple more right-wing scribes to maintain the proper (im)balance.
Next we come to the actual editorials that supposedly represent the consensus view of the paper. These have been consistently pro-Iraq war and pro-Republican over the past four years. The E-N has supported President Bush for election each time and seems to have an unwritten policy of endorsing incumbents and/or Republicans in every race.
They will occassionally take a liberal position on a piece of legislation or a particular social policy, but this is then undercut by their endorsements of politicians who oppose those views come election time. Whether or not they actually see and recognize this inconsistency is a mystery to me.
Yesterday (March 26) we had the tag-team of George Will and Austin Bay, two nationally-syndicated hard-right columnists taking on locally-based and non-syndicated Kathy Clay-Little. Will’s topic was about how liberals are all hateful and mean while conservatives are saintly and proper. Bay, to his credit, had a non-partisan column about how Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe is a bad man and applauding recent efforts by neighboring countries to oppose him.
Clay-Little, typical of most local E-N columnists, was focused on a relatively uncontroversial local issue, that being efforts by the local community college to attract more African-American males into its student population.
On Tuesday, we had two more hard-right, nationally syndicated columnists teaming up against a lone, borderline liberal. First up was National Review editor Rich Lowry with yet another anti-Global Warming screed complete with a political cartoon mocking Al Gore. Then we had Mona Charen lauding Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson as the savior of far-right conservatives in 2008.
On the other side is Froma Harrop. Who? Yeah, that’s what I said. She is a syndicated columnist based in Rhode Island. She had a good column about illegal immigration that sympathizes with both the plight of illegal immigrants and the struggles of working-class Americans whose jobs they are taking while placing blame equally on Republicans and Democrats alike.
Do you see a pattern here? So far we have a 2-1 mismatch each day, and that is putting it lightly.
On Wednesday we will have locally-based hard-right columnist Jonathan Gurwitz squaring off against wishy-washy Boston-based Ellen Goodman who only writes a political column once in a blue moon. The rest of the time she is like a cross between Ann Landers and Erma Bombeck, writing about feel-good, non-controversial domestic issues. On Thursday, they will trot out New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd whose sharp tongue can sometimes skewer the right, but not consistently. For some reason, the E-N editors believe that only Northeastern women (Harrop, Goodman, Dowd) can speak for the left. They adamantly refused to run Molly Ivins’ columns while she was alive and did not acknowledge her untimely death to cancer earlier this year.
The one and only hardcore lefty in the lineup - Mansour El-Kikhia is considered highly controversial because of his ethnic background, his Muslim faith and his shrill rants against the Bush administration, which generally raise more hackles among readers than enlightenment. While I have no problem with El-Kikhia’s views being published once a week, I am disappointed that his is often the only voice on the left challenging the hard-right views of the current administration. And as if to provide a direct counter to El-Kikhia, the E-N recently ran out and signed up right-wing military analyst and former NBC talking head Ken Allard to do a regular column. We wouldn’t want people to think that the paper is too liberal, now would we?
Most of the local editorial columnists on the E-N staff — the above-mentioned Kathy Clay-Little, Maria Anglin, Gloria Padilla, Victor Landa, Paula Allen — stick to non-controversial, local issues in their columns. The same goes for editorial page editors Bruce Davidson and Robert Seltzer and Washington correspondent Gary Martin. I can’t remember the last time Davidson wrote a column that I thought was worth reading. Martin’s columns are just collections of news tidbits and updates, void of any actual opinion. Seltzer comes across as an aging liberal who is too timid to express his views very forcefully and tries to couch everything with humor. His latest column from last Sunday very boldly took on Donald Rumsfeld — six months after he left office — and compared him to the Slim Pickens character in “Dr. Strangelove.” Hardy-har-har!
The one bright spot on the editorial page is relatively new columnist Rebecca Chapa who seems to be slowly gaining more confidence about expressing her liberal views in her columns. Last week she actually came out against the War in Iraq — four years into the mess. Of course, if she gets too carried away, the E-N will just have to run out and hire a couple more right-wing scribes to maintain the proper (im)balance.
Next we come to the actual editorials that supposedly represent the consensus view of the paper. These have been consistently pro-Iraq war and pro-Republican over the past four years. The E-N has supported President Bush for election each time and seems to have an unwritten policy of endorsing incumbents and/or Republicans in every race.
They will occassionally take a liberal position on a piece of legislation or a particular social policy, but this is then undercut by their endorsements of politicians who oppose those views come election time. Whether or not they actually see and recognize this inconsistency is a mystery to me.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Taking the Fifth
This can't be good news for the Bush administration.
How can the U.S. Congress fullfil its oversight responsibilities for the Justice Department if senior members of the Attorney General's staff refuse to testify before the Judiciary Committee? This is outrageous and not just a little problematic for the White House.
The Bush apologists have been claiming that this is all partisan politics and insisting that no crime was committed. If that is true, why would someone Plead the Fifth? What kind of incriminating things were going on at the Justice Department? Maybe it is time to appoint a special prosecutor for this case.
The senior counselor to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales will refuse to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the unfolding U.S. attorneys scandal, invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, her attorneys said today.
Monica M. Goodling -- who is on an indefinite leave of absence from Gonzales's office -- also alleges in a sworn declaration that a "senior Department of Justice official" has admitted he was "not entirely candid" in his Senate testimony and has blamed Goodling and others for not fully briefing him.
How can the U.S. Congress fullfil its oversight responsibilities for the Justice Department if senior members of the Attorney General's staff refuse to testify before the Judiciary Committee? This is outrageous and not just a little problematic for the White House.
The Bush apologists have been claiming that this is all partisan politics and insisting that no crime was committed. If that is true, why would someone Plead the Fifth? What kind of incriminating things were going on at the Justice Department? Maybe it is time to appoint a special prosecutor for this case.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Why do conservatives hate America?
OK, well, not ALL conservatives. But certainly most of the ones who claim to be conservatives today.
But, you say, we thought conservatives were all super-patriots who love their country with every fiber of their being!
You see, it is not their country that they love, it's the symbolism. They love the flag. They love the Star Spangled Banner and the Pledge of Allegiance. They love anything that is Red, White and Blue and songs like "God Bless the USA."
But they hate our government. They hate our Constitution and the Bill of Rights (except for the 2nd Amendment). They despise our social programs such as Social Security and Medicare. They are always running down our public schools, our health care system, our Postal Service, our national media, and so forth. They can't stand most of the people in this country. They always seem to be angry about something. They always have a group of people that they blame for every problem - liberals, minorities, poor people, gays, environmentalists, and so on.
If you listen to conservatives today, the U.S. has the "Can't Do" spirit. We can't educate our kids right, we can't run a postal system properly, we screw up anything we try to do unless it's bombing foreign countries that have annoyed us in some way.
Conservaties today have no faith in the American people to do anything right. The only thing they really trust is the almighty dollar. They believe that big, greedy corporations are the only things that can do anything right, and when they don't they just blame the government for interfering. Or they blame the liberal media for calling it to their attention in the first place.
But, you say, we thought conservatives were all super-patriots who love their country with every fiber of their being!
You see, it is not their country that they love, it's the symbolism. They love the flag. They love the Star Spangled Banner and the Pledge of Allegiance. They love anything that is Red, White and Blue and songs like "God Bless the USA."
But they hate our government. They hate our Constitution and the Bill of Rights (except for the 2nd Amendment). They despise our social programs such as Social Security and Medicare. They are always running down our public schools, our health care system, our Postal Service, our national media, and so forth. They can't stand most of the people in this country. They always seem to be angry about something. They always have a group of people that they blame for every problem - liberals, minorities, poor people, gays, environmentalists, and so on.
If you listen to conservatives today, the U.S. has the "Can't Do" spirit. We can't educate our kids right, we can't run a postal system properly, we screw up anything we try to do unless it's bombing foreign countries that have annoyed us in some way.
Conservaties today have no faith in the American people to do anything right. The only thing they really trust is the almighty dollar. They believe that big, greedy corporations are the only things that can do anything right, and when they don't they just blame the government for interfering. Or they blame the liberal media for calling it to their attention in the first place.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Unprepared and incompetent
Accountability is hell for this worst-of-all administrations.
The U.S. government was unprepared for the extensive nation-building required after it invaded Iraq, and at each juncture where it could have adjusted its efforts, it failed even to understand the problems it faced, according to the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.
In a stinging, wide-ranging assessment of U.S. reconstruction efforts, Stuart W. Bowen Jr. said that in the days after the invasion, the Defense Department had no strategy for restoring either government institutions or infrastructure. And in the years since, other agencies joined the effort without an overall plan and without a structure in place to organize and execute a task of such magnitude.
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