Month: September 2005

Here it is. The obligatory open thread. Have at it.

“Are you sure we should do this, Turd Blossum?”
“Don’t worry sir, you’re gonna be awesome!”
“Hey, why don’t you damn creeps,
Just go talk to your Freeps…”
“Dood… you go to Gitmo or play possum…”

“Um… Karl… I don’t know nothin’ `bout rhymin’…”
“Read the cards, sir… it’s all in the timing.”
“You know, I’ve sure been depressed,
By this domestic unrest,”
“You’ll feel good after liberal sliming…”

(much more!)
“That Brownie’s doin’ a really fine job,
I thought that Blanco and Nagin were slobs…”
“But sir, this looks sort of lame,
After we’ ve called it “blame game”…
“Shut yer pie hole, or go sit on a corn cob!”

“Our guys and gals can’t be charged with `war crimes’,
Alberto’s slicker’n goose shit sometimes!
Now that Miss England’s been tried,
And been convicted stateside,
We’ll round up them dead-enders and fry-em!”

“I’m `posed to rhyme on a big fuckin’ squid?!
Hot damn, there Karl, but you sure like to kid…”
“But it shows you like science;
Smarter than an appliance…”
“Pops ate some once, and then barfed off his lid…”

“I like this story about drugs and God…
This woman gave her meth to this nimrod…
She kept him talkin’ all night,
Showed she and God were real tight,
Why she stopped drugs, though… I thought that was odd…”

“This one here should be a lesson for y’all,
Them tales that they’ve been tellin’ are all tall,
Just don’t believe all you hear,
`Bout all this raping and fear,
`Cause the official hearsay is Karl’s call…”

“Just who invited the damn CPAs?!?
This was `posed to be a no-bid buffet…
This damned Katrina defeat,
Turned into all you can eat,
With place cards worth over two hundred K…”

“Holy shit, sir… Tom DeLay has been charged!”
“Well, Karl, sometimes his cash payment’s too large…”
“No you boob; we’re in a fix,
`Cause Ronnie Earle’s not been nixed!”
“In that case, I think we’ve been overcharged…”

“Your country would like to thank you there, Dood,
Your column has helped change folks’ attitude,
You know this rhyming’s hard work;
You can’t rely on your smirk.
We’re outta’ here. Watch yourself, or you’re screwed

by Pat Lang

BAGHDAD — The top U.S. military intelligence officer in Iraq said Abu Musab Zarqawi and his foreign and Iraqi associates have essentially commandeered the insurgency, becoming the dominant opposition force and the greatest immediate threat to U.S. objectives in the country.

“I think what you really have here is an insurgency that’s been hijacked by a terrorist campaign,” Army Maj. Gen. Richard Zahner said in an interview. “In part, by Zarqawi becoming the face of this thing, he has certainly gotten the funding, the media and, frankly, has allowed other folks to work along in his draft.” WASHPOST

No! No! Zarqawi did not make himself the “face” of the insurgent war in Iraq.

WE did!

By we, I mean all the journalists, spinmasters, sycophantic generals, tourist politicians and deluded Jacobin ideologues who keep insisting that he personifies the Global War on Terror (GWOT) in its Iraq manifestation.

If you read the post at my blog on the “Sunni Insurgency in Iraq,” you will see that it is extremely unlikely that Zarqawi’s “Al-Qa’ida in Iraq” has more than a few thousand people in action. His group is responsible for most of the suicide bombings in the country but the insurgents are mostly other kinds of people, people who have very different goals than Zarqawi.

Continued BELOW:

Zahner’s comment is unfortunate proof that we have not yet overcome our own fantasies in Iraq. Until we do so we have little hope of dealing with the reality that is the war in Iraq.

Personal Blog: Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005 || Bio || CV
Recommended Books || More BooTrib <a href="Posts

Novel: The Butcher’s Cleaver (download free by chapter, PDF format)


“Drinking the Kool-Aid,” Middle East Policy Council Journal, Vol. XI, Summer 2004, No. 2

Some people are taking great joy in the fact that Tom DeLay’s likely replacement as majority leader, David Dreier of California, is rumored to be gay and refuses to deny it.

It’s an interesting situation, but I don’t understand taking joy in it. Although Dreier’s record on gay-issues is mixed-to-poor, he is against the ban-all-gay-marriage amendment. I certainly don’t want to see him denied his rightful promotion because of the bigotry of his compatriots in the GOP house.

If he is denied the position because he won’t deny he is gay, that will be a good time to hammer the GOP for institutional discrimination, but it won’t be a happy development.

Meanwhile, Chris Bowers has an interesting quote about what to expect in a DeLayless House leadership:

David Dreier’s gayness and Californianess could contribute to the ‘complete and total chaos’. Let the dominos fall.

Update [2005-9-28 16:13:12 by BooMan]: They threw Dreier over. They screwed him. I hope the Log Cabin Republicans are taking note of this development. Dreier looks like he’s had his guts ripped out. You look the other way on the GOP gay-bashing and they’ll stab you in back. If this were a public sector job it would be against the law to deny Dreier his promotion. Fucking bastards.

Froggy Bottom Cafe Coffee & Tea under the window, platters of treats on every table Come on in! Newspapers are in their regular spot next to the door Please recommend. May the 4’s be with you

Our regular host for Wednesday seems to be missing so I am posting this today and I want to suggest you all read this diaryabout my idea for a DC Protestor Book…

The Mobile Register has a brilliant investigative report today on lax federal regulation of oil rig moorings.  Reporters Ben Raines and Bill Finch found that some types of rigs are not even required to withstand hurricane force winds.

First, some background – there are two types of rigs in the Gulf of Mexico: fixed and mobile.  Fixed rigs are permanently attached to the sea floor, and they are typically used in water up to 1500 feet.  Mobile rigs are designed to move from one place to another, even though some of them spent their whole working lives in one spot.  Some mobile rigs use extendable legs to stand on the botton, while others float in the water, and are held in place by anchors.  The rigs with legs are called jackups, while the floaters can either be semi-submersibles or tension leg platforms.  (See Wikipedia for a short introduction to various rig types.)  

Throughout this crisis, officials of the Mineral Management Service have claimed that offshore oil platforms were designed to withstand a Category 5 hurricane, but the Mobile Register found that was not true.  

More …
These standards were clearly insufficient after so many rigs were torn loose from their moorings during Hurricane Ivan last year.  But even then, the industry resisted any changes to the regulations.  The current regulations are barely adequate to protect against a big tropical storm, much less a Cat 5 hurricane.  Up till now, no one was really concerned, because there haven’t been many big hurricanes in the western and central gulf in recent decades.  So it was business as usual after everyone finished picking up after Ivan.

Naturally, once reporters started asking questions, everyone clammed up.

In fact, the situation is so bad that the MMS and the Coast Guard cannot even agree on which of them is responsible.  

The only hope I see for stronger regulations is pressure from within the industry.  It appears that a lot of the damage to fixed or jackup platforms may have come from roving semi-subs that tore loose from their moorings.  Of course, the semi-sub owners fiercely dispute that assertion, and no one knows for sure what is happening far out to sea during a hurricane.  Regardless of who is to blame, the industry has lost billions of dollars worth of hardware, not to mention shut-in production and the sheer time it will take to get back in business.  This may be a case of “please stop us before we do it again”.  Where normally regulation adverse companies ask for federal standards to protect themselves from their own cheapness.

(Hat tip to The Oil Drum.  They have comprehensive hurricane damage coverage.)

View the full, original indictment document at The Smoking Gun. (More on Delay)

Chris Matthews (aka “Tweety”) calls it what it is: “Money laundering.”

Update [2005-9-28 15:44:26 by susanhu]: Read this excellent piece from ThinkProgress: “The Truth About Ronnie Earle.” It begins with, “EARLE HAS PROSECUTED FOUR TIMES AS MANY DEMOCRATS AS REPUBLICANS: “Over Earle’s 27-year tenure, his Public Integrity Unit has prosecuted 15 elected officials, including 12 Democrats.” [Los Angeles Times, 5/15/05] …” Read all. (Via The Daou Report)

I found the wording, before the Grand Jury Foreman’s signature, to be interesting.

Representative Barbara Lee has had a proposal before Congress to name the Berkeley Post Office after 94 year-old civil rights pioneer Maudelle Shirek.

Ms. Shirek has been a tireless and unabashed fighter from the progressive left.  The granddaughter of slaves, Ms. Shirek spent sixty years in the Bay Area working on justice issues.  When she was forced, by age requirements, to retire from a senior center she founded, Ms. Shirek ran for Berkeley City Council, was elected and served for the next twenty years, towards the end of which she was criticized by some for ‘moderating’ her views.

Looking at her life achievement, however, Berkeley could find few citizens who represent the city’s values and spirit so well or whose life story is so worthy of tribute.  That won’t stop the GOP from opposing the simple local act of honoring her.
The article from SF Gate spells it out:

Washington — House Republicans rejected an effort Tuesday to name a post office in Berkeley after longtime Berkeley Councilwoman Maudelle Shirek after a conservative lawmaker questioned whether the 94-year-old activist represents American values.

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, has been trying for more than two years to name the city’s main post office on Allston Way for Shirek, a civil rights leader and peace activist who served on the Berkeley City Council for 20 years.

But House Republicans have sought to block the effort, mostly through a whisper campaign about her reported past ties to communist leaders and left-wing causes. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, objected Tuesday to Lee’s proposal and rallied Republicans to defeat the measure in an unusual roll call vote.

Representative Steve King from Iowa opposes naming a post office for Shirek because, out of her lifetime’s work he has pulled out two supposed moments of “anti-Americanism.”  First, Ms. Shirek, according to the whisper campaign, supported “freeing” Mumia Abu-Jamal.  Second, she was…shhhh….associated with the Neibyl-Proctor Socialist Library and Bookstore in Berkeley.  (We’re talking about a bookstore, friends, some five blocks from my house, by the way…and hardly a threat to anyone…unless discussing social justice and socialism is “a threat.”)

When Barabara Lee spoke out and said that this “campaign of innuendo and unsubstantiated ‘concern’ is better suited to the era of Joe McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover than today’s House of Representatives.”  Representative King responded with this riposte:

“I think that if Barbara Lee would read the history of Joe McCarthy, she would realize that he was a hero for America.”

There’s really not much to say in response to that.  And I’m aware that the screaming moderates among us will quake in fear over Ms. Shirek’s ‘advocacy’ for Mumia Abu-Jamal. If you ask me we should ask Rep. King to show us some quotes from Ms. Shirek to back up his claims, this is the best I could find and it doesn’t support King:

“Maudelle is one of the most amazing organizers in the country,” said [Angela] Davis, who was also arrested at the demonstration. “She’s still on the front lines.”

The demonstration was held in support of a fair trial for Abu-Jamal, a black radio journalist who was convicted of killing a police officer 15 years ago.

Shirek’s aide, Mike Berkowitz, said Shirek thinks Abu-Jamal’s pending execution could be likened to a legal lynching.

“She thinks the process was flawed and it’s possible he’s innocent,” he said.

Shirek is especially sensitive to this issue because she remembers the lynching of one of her relatives in Arkansas, Berkowitz added.

Further, this article that mentions her Mumia activism explicitly, (which, let’s get real, she took up in her eighties) makes it clear that in the context of her life’s work, her stance on Mumia could only seem “damning” if you were a hard core right-winger. I mean, there is no doubt upon reading that biography that Ms. Shirek is anything but an admirable American. Quite frankly, I’d rather pay attention to things that Ms. Shirek did over her lifetime of activism, things that she had real control over…like her work on East Bay labor campaigns, AIDS advocacy, senior rights and international outreach for peace and human rights. At the end of the day our answer to this GOP dust up should be this question:

If Congressman King really feels so strongly about the purity of American values, when will he propose that this country take down the names of all the slave holders, segregationists and Jim Crow advocates that we honor on countless signs and monuments throughout this country?

The GOP, including the President, all get up and praise Jesse Helms and build institutes around his name…do any of us think the following statements will stop Jesse Helms from getting a post office named after him?

“All Latins are volatile people. Hence, I was not surprised at the volatile reaction.” – Stated by Helms after Mexicans protested his visit to Mexico in 1986 to investigate allegations of political corruption.

“The University of Negroes and Communists.” – Helms’s name for the The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill during the mid-1960’s, shortly after it began admitting black students. (FAIR 9/1/01, National Review 8/23/01)

“White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races.” – From an attack ad Helms helped create while working on the 1950 campaign of arch-segregationist Democrat Willis Smith against a more moderate Democrat, Frank Porter Graham. Another ad featured photographs Helms himself had doctored to illustrate the allegation that Graham’s wife had danced with a black man. (FAIR 9/1/01, The News and Observer 8/26/01)

“Homosexuals are weak, morally sick wretches.” and    “The New York Times and Washington Post are both infested with homosexuals themselves. Just about every person down there is a homosexual or lesbian.”

(source, Wiki-Jesse Helms)

Clearly, whether it’s Jesse Helms or Joe McCarthy, there is nothing, including outright hypocrisy, that has ever stopped the GOP from honoring, naming and praising their own.  Now they want to stop the city of Berkeley from naming its Post Office for one black woman who more than paid her dues in the struggle for peace and justice??

I’ve titled this piece, in the “Shadow of Sister Souljah: Maudelle Shirek vs. the GOP” because, in addition to bringing your attention to this local story, I think there’s a broader point to be made here.

In my 36 years coming up in this world I’ve met, come to know and worked under many strong black women like Maudelle Shirek, some of them were overtly political, some of them weren’t.  But, I dare say that, in my experience, this country would be better served if a thousand Maudelle Shireks ran our government, our schools, our Army, and our cities rather than politicians like Steve King, Jesse Helms and George W. Bush.

Truth be told, in my experience, African-American women, and women of color in general, know a thing or two about what’s really wrong with this country, and I would say, based on my life experience, that women like Maudelle Shirek and Barbara Lee are more than capable of cutting through the BS that characterizes much of the spouting I read in the political world every day.  In my view, it is a crime and true loss to our nation that there are no women of color on our Senate floor.

Truth be told, when Bill Clinton attacked Lisa Williamson, aka Sister Souljah, whatever the merits of his criticism….he set us all back because he played into the deep racial subtext of this country.  That attack made it “okay” to attack women of color…it emboldened GOP nutjobs like Steve King.  It made it easy for white Democrats to run away from the their black brothers and sisters and demonize leaders like Jesse Jackson or Maudelle Shirek.

You see, everything we do and say has a context.  When Bill Clinton attacked Sister Souljah he validated GOP attacks on people who’ve given their lives and efforts to the cause of justice…he joined forces with the worst our nation has to offer.  It may seem to score us points with the middle, but in the long run the far-right will just kick us further back, and, in the last ten years…they have.  What Clinton should have done was praised a positive example, like Maudelle Shirek, not torn down a negative one and played to the right.  Bill Clinton should have stood up for the unrepresented citizens of Washington D.C. not attacked a straw woman who had little or no real power.

We may or may not succeed in naming this Post Office for a woman who, by all rights, is a local hero. I’m  hoping we do.   What I’m trying to say is that there are thousands of Maudelle Shireks out there today…women of color, of all backgrounds, living and working in this country;  many of them are women of high accomplishment and principle, like Bunnatine Greenhouse and non-voting Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton. (Wiki link.)

It’s high time the Democrats started listening to women of color and investing in their voices and leadership. We need more leaders like Ms. Shirek, and the highest honor the Democratic Party and progressives could give this 94 year-old woman who lives in Berkeley to this day would be to fight to make real the values she fought for her whole life. That, in my view, would be the most fitting tribute to Maudelle Shirek and her life’s work and journey.

This weekend on Meet the Press, Rick Perry, Governor of Texas stated the following:

Mr. Russert: How many deaths have been the result of this hurricane?

Gov. Perry: Well, from the direct impact of the hurricane, it appears at this particular point in time that it’s zero.I know that’s a miraculous number, I mean, the idea that you had a storm of that size come in with that power. Now, I can’t speak over in Louisiana ’cause I haven’t been in contact with their officials. But in the state of Texas, we have not had a death directly associated. Obviously, we had a tragedy up in–just north of Dallas with the mass evacuation that was going on and that freak accident with the truck–or excuse me, the bus that caught fire and those individuals there lost their lives. But it’s been from the standpoint of loss of life–and that’s what you got to look at. We’ll rebuild. We have truly dodged a major bullet here.

Today’s story from the Houston Chronicle, Front page, above the fold:

At least 31 people died in Harris County as a result of circumstances surrounding Hurricane Rita, several of them from heat-related illnesses during the mass evacuation before the storm hit, the medical examiner’s office announced Tuesday.

More than half of those deaths — 17 of the 31 recorded so far — were of people evacuating to safer ground when they suffered some sort of medical distress, said Beverly Begay, chief investigator of the medical examiner’s office. None of the deaths occurred during the storm itself, she said.

The office completed its grim inventory Tuesday and announced the results after identifying all of the dead and notifying their families. The fatalities linked to Rita do not include the 23 Bellaire nursing-home residents who died when their bus caught fire Friday in Dallas County

“Considering around 2.8 million people evacuated within a short amount of time, this is a relatively small, small number,” Begay said.

That was little comfort to David Johnson Chiles, whose 91-year-old mother, Lunabeth Chiles, died Thursday at Cypress Fairbanks Medical Center after her temperature soared to more than 108 degrees inside a vehicle as she was evacuating with him.

“I was devastated, the way I lost my mother,” David Chiles, 56, said Tuesday. “We did as the city officials told us to do, but it cost my mother’s life, and you cannot bring her back.”

The dead ranged in age from 14 months to 92 years. Though the deaths occurred over six days, about a third of the victims died Thursday when the evacuation crush was at its peak, clogging major Houston-area highways.

Nineteen of the 31 victims died or became ill while they were inside vehicles, and seven of the deaths were thought to be potentially heat-related, Begay said. Some had body temperatures ranging from 105 to 112 degrees, the report shows.

No deaths from the “direct impact”, eh, Rick?  Is Rick providing the citizens of this country with solid information?  Or his he just practicing that old Texas art of bullshitting the public?

To my way of thinking, We’ve had 54 citizens from Harris County ALONE die because of hurricane Rita (I’ll include the poor victims of the terrible fire, and why shouldn’t I? they were all residents of Harris County) .

Why can’t Perry just inform us of the facts?  

I call bullshit on Rick Perry.

Archived in my Hurricane Rita diary at Our Word.

In the wake of hurricane Katrina, New Jersey authorities have filed lawsuits against oil companies and station operators for, amongst other things, illegal price increases.  New Jersey law bars more than a single price increase in one day.  In some cases, there were as many as 5.

http://www.state.nj.us/cgi-bin/governor/njnewsline/view_article.pl?id=2744

Acting Governor Richard J. Codey today announced that New Jersey has filed lawsuits against oil companies and independent gas-station operators for price violations during the Hurricane Katrina crisis. …

Oil companies Hess, Motiva Shell, Sunoco and various independent gas-station operators are charged with violating the State Motor Fuels Act and Consumer Fraud Act through their pricing practices.

The violations found at both company-owned and -operated and independently-owned gas stations include multiple price changes occurring during a 24-hour period.

Other alleged violations include:

revising gas prices at the pump more than once every 24 hours;

failing to display signs for motor fuel prices;

failing to maintain books and records;

failing to provide access to books and records;

engaging in Unconscionable Commercial Practices; and

violating advertising regulations.

New Jersey is the first state to act upon the increased gas prices but it is the only state to have a provision blocking multiple increases in one day.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/27/nyregion/27prices.html

New Jersey’s law against multiple-price increases in a single day dates to 1938. An antitrust measure, it was meant to protect small operators from the price wars and predatory pricing engaged in by stations owned by large oil companies.

And this: (Do you feel any sympathy for this owner?)

In interviews, some of the owners of the stations cited by Mr. Harvey said they did not know about the state law against changing prices more than once in a day. Others said they had been scrambling to stay afloat as wholesale prices rose, leaving them no choice but to raise prices. A station owner who was not cited, who said he was aware of the law forbidding multiple price changes in a 24-hour period, said he chose to close rather than break the law.

That owner, Paul Riggins, who operates and supplies more than a dozen stations in South Jersey from Wildwood to Trenton, said that on Sept. 2, “by the time one of our trucks got to the refinery, the wholesale price had risen higher than my pump price, so I closed my Wildwood station down four hours early.”