Month: September 2005

Warning: This diary includes profanity-laden quotations from an adult Web site and descriptions of adult content.

To avoid paying a $10 donation to ogle nude women at an adult Web site, it appears that American soldiers have agreed to trade photos from their personal collections of images of horribly mutilated Iraqi corpses. Yes, for a lousy ten bucks, it seems that some of our men in uniform are allegedly selling the last remaining shreds of dignity of their fellow human beings.

The Associated Press summarized the findings of the Army’s preliminary investigation into the matter:

After an initial look at complaints about U.S. soldiers posting photos of Iraq war dead on an Internet site, Army investigators concluded they had too little evidence to pursue criminal charges.

So much for that quaint Geneva Convention! Can you imagine Americans shrugging and looking the other way while pictures of the mutilated bodies of their sons and daughters were displayed on a foreign pornographic Web site?

A close, albeit sickening, look at the subject Web site immediately revealed a few important points. It seems relatively easy to track down the individuals that posted the images. Some users appear to not only have made no attempt to cover their tracks, but have provided a clearly marked trail. In addition to the disturbing photos of gore, the adult site also features many photos of our men in uniform comporting themselves in ways that seem extremely unbecoming of the uniform.

Until I took a few moments to look at the site, I did not fully grasp the absolute monstrosity of juxtaposing pornography with sensationalistic, grisly images of the remains of someone’s father/brother/son. The Army needs to be prevented from sweeping this one under the rug. Allowing the culture — widespread or isolated — that produced this disgraceful display to continue will only serve to bring more shame and dishonor on our country.

The Specifics of the Deal: Trading Images of Death for Images of Sex

The webmaster of www.nowthatsfuckedup.com summarizes the special offer made available to military patrons:

If you are a U.S. Soldier stationed in Iraq, Afghanistan, or any other combat area and would like free SUPPORTER access for the site, you can post real pictures you or your buddies have taken while you have been deployed.

This section is for the gory ones so that people who do not wish to see that kind of stuff can just not go in here. I also do not want already published pictures that were taken by news people. This is supposed to be an area where we can see pictures posted by the solders themselves.

Just post your pics like you normally would and when I see them I will approve you for free access to the wife and g/f area. There have only been a few people cheat from this but I do now know what kind of pics to expect from the guys over there. So please do not waste my time if you are not a military person by just posting iraq pics you found on CNN or something.

Keep up the good work over there guys, we love seeing your pics.

Uploading pictures of the dead grants a serviceman a full 90 days of access to the Amateur Wife and Girlfriend Forum where members are encouraged to post photos of their naked wife or girlfriend.

The uploaded images of the Iraqi corpses and body parts are displayed on a page built with the adult site’s standard template. Chillingly, in lieu of a caption, textual advertisements for porn web sites are displayed beneath each image of death.  Here are just a few examples of the words used to honor the Iraqi dead:

See My Wifes Huge Tits
A little peek at one of my naughty little wife when she got horny and the camera was handy.

TEENS FUCKED IN THEIR SLEEP(!)
SWEET DREAMS BITCHES! HOT TEEN GIRLS GETTING FUCKED WHILE THEY SLEEP- VERY PRETTY GIRLS RAMMED HARD!

My Girl FUCKS 4 GUYS
My girlfriend fucks 4 of my buddies at the same time! Watch her take cock like a champ

Crack Whore Confessions
Real Prostitutes get naked and tell their Fucked Up Stories!

Enormously Giant Black Cocks
Fucking and Ruining tight white pussys

To make the presentation even more disrespectful, each member comment includes a ranking that accompanies the user name. Here is a depiction of the default ranking:

Yes, each page of horrifying images of corpses is accompanied by comments where each begins, “I’m Just Here to Masturbate.”

The Images of User I_AM_LONG

I arbitrarily selected a single user to investigate how soldiers were using the Web site. As of late Thursday evening, 23,935 users have viewed the extremely gruesome photos I_AM_LONG submitted less than a week ago on Saturday, September 24. (View only with great caution! These are extremely disturbing images of mutilated corpses.) Similarly graphic photos posted by some other users have been viewed more than 100,000 times.

In another section of the site, I_AM_LONG has also posted general photos that include images of what appear to be he and his friends cavorting.  He opens his post with the comment:

Hey, I just got in from Iraq, and my friend showed me this site, it’s awsome! [sic] I really want access, so i’m going to post my pictures from Iraq here, I’m also going to put some in the gory section. This site is awsome, [sic] I love that it is allowing us a place to post our stuff from overseas so everyone can see it!

The majority of solo portraits in the series are of a same individual who I assume is probably I_AM_LONG. In one head and shoulders portrait, the non-Caucasian subject appears in uniform wearing a homemade hat emblazoned with a Nazi swastika and the slogan “White Power”. It is difficult to imagine the circumstances that resulted in this photograph and why any soldier would elect to post it on the internet.

In another image, three uniformed soldiers pose with their pants and underwear at their ankles and their genitals discretely covered by their armor or helmets.

An image entitled WhatPortaJohn.jpg depicts one soldier who appears to be directing a stream of urine towards a sleeping soldier while a third soldier looks on. The urinating soldier’s surname is prominently emblazoned on a rear pants pocket.

An image labeled FullMoonTonight.jpg depicts a soldier dropping his trousers and pointing his posterior in the direction of a sleeping soldier’s face.

These images are reminiscent of cliché drunken fraternity pranks. In that respect, I guess the images shouldn’t be that surprising. After all, these young men appear to be of college age. However, the setting is missing the alcohol. And any sense of judgement is glaringly absent. Why take easily identifiable photographs of you and your buddies in uniform engaging in such activities and post them on an internet porn site? Do you suppose any of these soldiers had the privilege of receiving any cultural training in the rigorous modesty standards of the country in which they are serving?

Identifying I_AM_LONG

In case the Army is unable to identify I_AM_LONG from the many photos of the subject and his buddies in the various locations they were stationed, there is another major clue.  One of the comments referencing a second thread states:

this is the post I put up for I_AM_LONG while he was still overseas

This user who posted the comment very conveniently includes a link to his personal web site that leads to a street address and telephone number.

Beastiality, Blow-up Dolls and Breasts

Unlike the photos of death, the majority of general photos from soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are fairly mundane. However, a quick scan of a few contributed posts reveals a number of images that Karen Hughes, our newly anointed Middle East PR guru, would have quite a challenge defending.

User muteelfdisorder posted a self-portrait that features full frontal nudity and depicts a simulated act of bestiality with a seemingly disinterested, tethered donkey. The introduction to this remarkable photo series states:

This is a donkey my unit bought from a local guy near Kandahar, Afghanistan. If I don’t deserve access for these I don’t know who does!

elbambino remains fully clothed in his uniform as he poses with a blow-up sex doll.

And, I don’t believe this is the image that the Army wants to convey of its female soldiers.

The Military Needs to Take Action

I greatly respect the courage and dedication of the men and women serving in our military. However, I am appalled by the apparent lack of leadership that has contributed to the disgraceful spectacle on display at  the rather aptly named www.nowthatsfuckedup.com.

Military leaders need to ensure that all soldiers understand the immorality (and illegality) of taking trophy photos of the dead and posting them on the internet. There should be a policy of zero tolerance policy for such behavior.

The leadership should also make it clear that publicly posting photos of oneself or fellow soldiers engaged in activities that would be commonly perceived as lewd or immoral by the residents of the country where they are stationed is not only inappropriate but potentially extremely damaging to the mission.

Technical Note: Clicking on hyperlinks to jpg images at the subject Web site may result in the display of a 403-Forbidden error message. If you encounter this error, you may still view the image. In Internet Explorer, right click on the hyperlink and select Properties. Copy the URL for the image to the address window of your browser.

Cross posted at ePluribus Media and Daily Kos.

Below are Actions Needed NOW to Help Make This Administration Accountable:

The First Needed Action

The Second Needed Action

by Col. W. Patrick Lang (Ret.)

MILES O’BRIEN: You know, General, I’ve got to say, I’m having a hard time seeing the signs of success. We don’t have much evidence that the Iraqis are stepping up to the plate. The U.S. is having to provide whatever security there is. We’re approaching now 2,000 fatalities, lost U.S. men and women, and I see what I see are an increase spate of violence and I see a country on the cusp of civil war. How is that success?

[Gen. RICHARD] MYERS: Well I think there’s nobody that thinks they’re on the cusp of civil war.

MILES O’BRIEN: Really?

MYERS: The Shia community no, of course not, Miles. The Shia community is not at war. The violent Sunni extremists. There are four provinces in Iraq and the city of Baghdad, a very important place, obviously, where the violence occurs. It does not occur in the rest of the country. There has been we’ve had elections. That is progress. We’re going to have a we have a draft constitution. That is progress. We have a constitutional referendum coming up. Even the Sunnis I mean, we’re talking about 80 or 90 percent of the Iraqi population, according to polls, say they’re going to vote in the constitutional referendum and then they’ll vote in the national elections that follow in a couple of months. That is progress.”

“Just like our troops did in 1776. I hope you’ve read the book.” (CNN Transcript, 09/30/05)

I guess he hasn’t heard of Basra.

The Book?

What book? Does this mean he has read just ONE book about the American Revolution?

Rumsfeld said the other day that this man was probably the greatest chairman of the Joint Chiefs in history. Assuming that he would include service chiefs before 1947 in his list of candidates, does that mean he thinks this towering intellect in blue is a greater man than George C. Marshall? Marshall was Chief of Staff of the US Army in WWII. It numbered 12,000,000 in the Ground, Air and Service Forces after he built it to that size. He was Secretary of State. He was Secretary of Defense. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Myers is greater than him?

If you read through the transcript cited, you perceive a man who never really understood what the situation is in the Middle East, a man who always said YES to the boss, a man who has made his way by being pleasant.

George Marshall was not especially pleasant. Winston Churchill once … Continued BELOW:
Winston Churchill once pressed him for months over the idea of opening a front in the Balkans. Marshall resisted. FDR backed him, as he always did. At a meeting in London of the Combined Chiefs of Staff (where Churchill was FDR’s equal), Churchill harangued him for hours over this with the expectation that he would eventually wear Marshall down. Marshall listened and listened, and listened. Finally, Churchill said, “So, you agree?”

Marshall said, “No. You can do what you please, but not one American soldier is going to die on that god damned beach.” That was the end of that.

There are many books which describe George Marshall’s life. Myers should have read a few of those.

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
 

(Cross-posted at Daily Kos, My Left Wing, and my blog.)

[editor’s note, by RenaRF] This is in response to Barack Obama’s diary at Daily Kos earlier today.  I was almost crying when I typed it.

Dear Senator Obama,

Thank you so much for your thoughtful post this morning.  My reply to you, contained within this diary, is solely my own thoughts and impressions and is intended to provide some insight for you.  I have a deep and abiding regard for your character and it is to that which I appeal.

In no way do I mean to criticize you or attack you, though the overall tone of my following response may be interpreted that way.  My issues with your post are multiple, the most acute ones being related to the fact that I think you are viewing and responding to symptoms and not considering the root causes.

And so I’ll begin.
I think the defining statement of your letter was this:

…win the right to appoint [judges] by recpaturing the presidency and the Senate.  And I don’t believe we get there by vilifying good allies, with a lifetime record of battling for progressive causes, over one vote or position.

That excerpt says two important things:  First, it tells us that we simply must be focused on taking back control of the executive and legislative branches.  We are in violent accord on that issue, though I will foreshadow that we disagree dramatically on what needs to be done to make that occur.  Second, it immediately chastisizes those of us who have stepped up and criticized Democratic senators who voted to confirm John Roberts.  I will ask you to consider this: What if the criticism you reference is really a broad metaphor for an across-the-board abandonment of progressive values on the part of Democrats?  Please keep that question with you as you read this, because I would submit to you that it’s not just about the Roberts nomination.

Senator, we haven’t forgotten all the efforts made by Democrats on everything but the Roberts nomination.  My mother raised me with a variety of truisms, one of which is particularly apt for this particular discussion: you reap what you sow.  If Democrats portray weakness as a party, Democrats will be labelled and branded as weak.  Coming back and gently, articulately criticizing us for actually calling the Democratic party weak reminds me a bit of a situation with my now 20-year old stepson.  In going through his room, I found something which allowed me to catch him in a lie.  When confronted with that lie, he was angry that I had gone through his room.  He totally missed the fact that he had lied and that I had a right to be disappointed in him.  The methods employed in proving the lie are irrelevant.  I don’t find decrying criticism from your own camp entirely dissimilar.

As I stated in a comment to your diary, the definition of insanity is doing what you’ve always done yet somehow expecting different results.  Democrats have striven for congeniality in their approach to opposing the majority and have been repeatedly and squarely defeated in that tactic.  Nowhere have I seen a cohesive and unified “calling out” of the opposition on their tactics.  Coming back to common sense truisms, Senator, I would say that the only way to deal with a bully is to stand up to that bully.  When the bully knows that he can intimidate you and muscle you to achieve his end goals, he will do so.  Fighting back is the only thing he understands and Democrats have not been fighting back in any meaningful way against the bullying tactics of the majority party.  For example:

• Where is a coordinated and public admonishment on the part of Democrats for the lies and deceptions perpetrated by the majority party in going to war in Iraq?
• Where is a coordinated and public demand on the part of Democrats for accountability on
  • the Downing Street Memo?
  • the outing of Valeria Plame?
  • the assertion that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger?
  • the billions of dollars missing from efforts in Iraq?
  • the policy that condones torture?
• Where were unified Democratic legislators simply screaming at the tops of their lungs about all the unnecessary deaths in the wake of hurricane Katrina?
• Where is a unified Democratic voice yelling for the resignation of Tom Delay?
• Where is a unified Democratic voice demanding a full accounting of the Able Danger fiasco?

The above list doesn’t even approach being exhaustive – I’m sure what little I have provided gives you a flavor for the generalized frustration progressives across the country are experiencing.  “Calling out” Democratic Senators on the issue of John Roberts is the result of an accumulated sense that the Democratic party is, at the least, ineffective and, at worst, irrelevant and obsolete.  Espousing ideas that issue a call for comity further speeds the certainty of irrelevance.  Our hopes and our hearts die with every capitulation – each of which is one of the 1,000 cuts that will eventually spell our death.

Ask yourself this: why is it that the vast majority of progressives who frequent Daily Kos are able to sum up the Republican party’s platform in six words?  Strong Military.  Lower Taxes.  Family Values.  Yet this pool of often brilliant thinkers can’t do the same for our own party.  It’s not because we don’t agree with a platform that has been put forward – it’s that the Democratic message itself is contrary and lacks unity.  Don’t ask us to rally around the party if you can’t provide us with the words we need to issue the cry.  You can’t have the support if you’re not willing to do the work required to put it in place.

Most importantly, we’re tired of getting punched.  EVERY DAY brings a new item that we hold as absolutely imperative that we find has been sacrificed on the altar of “statesmanship”.  It’s not time to make nice with the majority party.  It’s the time to get angry and knock them out.  They haven’t hesitated to do so with us and yet we’ve stood there, taking it, hoping that their eventual missteps would spell their own demise.

Well it hasn’t, Senator Obama.  It hasn’t.  The Republican party has shown time and time again its resilience in the face of consequences associated with their policies and actions.  They take the heat – they stick to the script and to the plan – they ride it out – and it works.  It works because no one is standing over them kicking them in the face when they try to get back up.  It’s not enough that the Democratic party start building frames of its own (and I see precious little of that type of activity) – we have to simultaneously obliterate the frames within which the Republicans operate.  Nothing short of a full assault will do and we’re running out of time and influence with which to do it.  I hope that it isn’t already too late.

Senator Obama, I do see great promise from you.  You are a skilled and inspiring orator and one of the best chances we have as we move into the future.  Hence my near-hysterical reaction to your letter, a letter which seemed to me to say the same tired old things and promote the same losing tactics.  More importantly, I’m dumbfounded by your lack of anger at the way you and other Democrats are simply kicked around by the Republican party.  They are humiliating you while you try to straighten your tie.  They’re punching you in the face while you try to shake their hand.  I realize that one-on-one relationships with opposing party members are not like that – but the end result is that you wind up beaten bloody and left to die while they walk away laughing.

I’m pretty moderate as far as this site goes and yet I’m ready to take to the streets and do what the Democratic party won’t or cant – it’s that important – and I’m frankly shocked that you don’t see it.

Hope springs eternal but it IS fading, Senator.  It’s sad when average people are willing to be more courageous and daring than our elected leaders.

LEAD, damnit.  Stop telling us why we’re wrong and lead.

Respectfully,

RenaRF

First in an occasional series

Sub-title: Why the US government sucks so badly, and what (I believe) can and should be done about it.

Good day all. Please pardon my presumptuousness in posting a diary – or more precisely, launching an ongoing series of diaries – on only my second day here, but the fact is that I’ve been participating in various left-wing blogs for a number of years now, so it’s not as if I’m a total newbie to all this. Merely a newbie to this particular little corner of cyberspace, which may be meaningful to some, but seems like a fairly marginal distinction to me. And I find myself already feeling quite at home on this blog, and believe that a majority of readers here will be interested in and sympathetic to what I have to say.

At any rate, my purpose in posting this has nothing to do with any love I have for beating my own drum, or getting up on a soapbox, because in fact I tend to be a rather reticent fellow, who is naturally more comfortable in the role of passive listener (or reader), as opposed to active pontificator. But I am now determined to step out of that more familiar role and do some pontificating – perhaps quite a bit – because I truly believe there is a sensibility and perspective on the issue alluded to above that hasn’t been adequately examined or discussed, and which deserves to be.

Whether my take on all this is any better or more insightful than anyone else’s is of course something that each reader will ultimately have to decide for him or herself. But at the very least, my perspective is different. And as someone who’s felt increasingly frustrated and dismayed at the staleness and repetitiveness of the ongoing and seemingly endless debate between the ‘pragmatists’ and the ‘idealists’, it seems to me that some fresh and (dare I say) original thinking is long overdue.

Now I must confess one of my pet Internet peeves is blog diaries and op-ed articles that run on and on and on… maybe it’s just me, but I don’t believe the Web really lends itself to excessively verbose and lengthy articles – it’s just something about reading material on the computer screen that to my mind favors the crisply written and (relatively) bite-size essay much more so than the forty paragraph, 3000 word opus. So for today, I will just content myself with this brief introduction, and conclude with laying out the basic, underlying theme I will be attempting to flesh out and expand upon in future installments.

My analysis of the political situation in the US is based on one fundamental, guiding belief: If the ultimate purpose of government is to protect the interests and serve the needs of the ordinary citizen, then American-style democracy does not work. And the fact is, that it cannot work, and it will not work – not in the present, and not in the future. And that’s mainly because it never was intended to work that way. To make oneself into a better game player – which seems to be the pragmatists’ solution – only works in cases where the game is beatable. Which, unfortunately, this one isn’t.

For common folk to get a fair shake from our political system, as presently constituted, would be comparable to my winning a chess game against Gary Kasparov (generally considered the greatest chess player ever) – in a game in which he was playing with the full compliment of pieces, while I was limited to just a king and a pawn. Truly, a camel could pass through the eye of a needle a lot more easily. The harsh reality is that what we have in America is a rigged game, one in which (to mix metaphors) the deck is hopelessly – and I do mean hopelessly – stacked against the average person. At least, that is, whenever his or her interests happen to come into conflict with those of the monied elite, which happens to be the case far more often than not.

A third party, I regret to say, is most definitely not the answer. For better or worse, the two-party system is more or less baked into the cake. Our system was expressly designed to reward coalition building and consensus, and to punish factionalism and fragmentation. Unfortunately, it was also designed to ensure that the wealthy have a virtual monopoly on political power. And that is the reality that we have to focus on, and find a way to alter. Which I’m convinced is possible to accomplish – that is something I truly believe in my soul.

For a little inspiration, think Great Britain, circa 1215. Or for a more recent example, think South Africa, circa 1994. Certainly there was a point in time when the monarchy of King John and the Afrikaner apartheid regime must have seemed just as daunting and just as unassailable to those whom they oppressed as the American moneyocracy does to us today. And yet ultimately both of them crumbled and fell – perhaps for the same reason that a flower somehow manages to find a way to push through a slab of concrete. There is some ineffable quality of the human spirit that will never accept or acquiesce to the oppressor’s boot permanently planted on its neck. Like the flower, it will keep pushing – relentlessly, tirelessly and indefatigably – until it finally and inevitably breaks through.

That is the history of human civilization, in a nutshell, up to now. So why should we expect the future to be any different? All we have to do is find the weak point in the concrete that will ultimately yield to our efforts. A formidable task, to be sure, but far from an impossible one. As Niccolo Machiavelli (a much misunderstood idealist) once wrote: Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great. Perhaps a bit of an oversimplification, but still a good thought to hold onto. So please keep the faith, and keep on fighting.

Thanks for reading – more later.

Oops. Here’s an example of DeLay obfuscating:

And DeLay’s lawyer hardly has his back:

Are we splitting hairs here, dude?

Invite, subpoena, what’s the difference?

[promoted by BooMan]

RAW STORY reported this through The Washington Times.  I guess if the lawn jockey says it, it’s straight from his bosses’ lips:

 Alphonso R. Jackson, secretary of housing and urban development, during a visit with hurricane victims in Houston, said New Orleans would not reach its pre-Katrina population of “500,000 people for a long time,” and “it’s not going to be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again.”

    Rep. Danny K. Davis, Illinois Democrat and a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, quickly took issue.

    “Anybody who can make that kind of projection with some degree of certainty or accuracy must have a crystal ball that I can’t see or maybe they are more prophetic than any of us can imagine,” he said.

    Other members of the caucus said the comments by Mr. Jackson, who is black, could be misconstrued as a goal, particularly considering his position of responsibility in the administration.

Hell, they are COUNTING ON THAT GOAL.

And Nagin won’t have to worry about being turned out of office for his part in the Katrina debacle if he plays his cards right.

Furthermore, Jackson (no relation to Jesse) is a former housing developer with ties to the industry.  He cannot be blind to the windfall to speculators and developers because of Katrina. No doubt, as a black Republican, he and Nagin are in cahoots.

Some of you might remember one of my diaries, one taken from a Salon article on DailyKos that showed the Reverend Jesse Jackson and Representative Maxine Waters trying to get evacuees to safety closer to home, preferably to nearby England Air Force Base in Alexandria.  But that didn’t happen.  Now,

Rep. Bobby L. Rush, Illinois Democrat, said Alphonso Jackson’s remarks and the prospects of real-estate speculators and developers in New Orleans are “foreboding.”

    “Gentrification is a demon that is looming on the landscape, and we have to be aware of it and vigilant. … Right now, I don’t know if the resistance to it is strong enough,” Mr. Rush said.

    He said a history of forced removal of blacks from their homes and property cannot be ignored as the reconstruction moves forward.

    Two weeks after Katrina, the Congressional Black Caucus issued an eight-point action plan that calls for residents to get the first right of return to the area, that New Orleans residents get first choice of construction jobs and rebuilding contracts and that voting rights be protected.

    Many evacuees from the Ninth Ward will likely never be able to return, Mr. Jackson said. He told Mayor C. Ray Nagin that it would be a mistake to rebuild that part of town, the lowest-lying section and prone to flooding.

Not with earthenwork, concrete and metal levees, you mean.  Why not create a series of levees whereby people can live in relative safety as do the Dutch?  But I guess, that is too expensive for black people who have traditionally voted Democrat.

Go ahead, ask ten people you know what PNAC is all about. Ask them to name the PNAC folks who are running this country.  Do Cheney, Rummy, Wolfowitz, Perle, Jeb, Feith, Libby, Armitage, Bennet, Bork, Woolsey, and Khalilzad, the new ambassador to Iraq come to mind….along with lots of other really big power brokers?  My guess is that most people have no clue.  And now, the daddy of them all is out to break the 9/11 ijnquiry. Wonder why.  Then read this through to the end……

Why?  It’s all connected to what really happened on 9/11…
Facts, not theory….. you decide:

http://tvnewslies.org/html/kristol_clear.html

The real story about Tom DeLay’s indictment in Texas goes far beyond the corrupt acts of a single individual. DeLay’s intervention in Texas state legislative elections was part of a concerted, nationwide Republican plan to control our government through political gerrymandering at the expense of black and Hispanic voters. I observed this process first hand as the expert witness for Democrats in the court cases challenging Republican congressional gerrymandering, not only in Texas, but also in Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, and Michigan.

By pumping money into state legislative races in Texas, DeLay engineered Republican control in 2002 over a previously divided state legislature. He then guided Texas lawmakers into breaking precedent by rewriting mid-decade an established congressional redistricting plan. The DeLay plan thwarted the will of voters by drawing districts to guarantee Republican victories and take over five Democratic seats. To this end, DeLay and his allies cynically and knowingly destroyed the voting rights of millions of African-Americans and Hispanics in Texas.

In the Dallas County area, the plan demolished a 60.5 percent minority district and scattered its voters into five Anglo-dominated, Republican districts in which they have no chance to influence the outcomes of elections. In southwest Texas, DeLay’s plan removed some 90,000 Hispanics from Congressional District 23 to ensure that it would elect a Republican opposed by Hispanic voters. His plan dismantled seven other congressional districts across Texas in which African-American and Hispanic voters critically influenced election outcomes, submerging these voters into heavily Republican districts in which they have no influence.

The big corporate interests behind Tom DeLay knew full well what they bought in Texas. They bought our government. Absent DeLay’s gerrymandering, the Democrats, not Republicans, would have picked up congressional seats nationally in 2004, putting Democrats in a much better position to regain control of Congress next year.

To change these practices in our country I am running as a Democrat for Senator from Maryland. This race matters to the entire nation as Republicans have targeted Maryland’s open seat to help keep their majority in 2006. Check out the ideas on my website: www.allanlichtman.com.

HUD chief foresees a ‘whiter’ Big Easy 

A Bush Cabinet officer predicted this week that New Orleans likely will never again be a majority black city, and several black officials are outraged.

    Alphonso R. Jackson, secretary of housing and urban development, during a visit with hurricane victims in Houston, said New Orleans would not reach its pre-Katrina population of “500,000 people for a long time,” and “it’s not going to be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again.”

The article goes on to say that most blacks may not want to or “have the means” to return.

Means? like the deeds/titles to their destroyed homes? proof of address if they rented?
 oh, yeah, they’ll import blacks for Mardi Gras and for other tourists attractions, but then, they get returned to their “gated” communitied far away on “surplus gov’t land”…
As a reminder: Cheney voted AGAINST sanctioning South Africa.
can Bush be any different?