Month: June 2006

Ok, so this is what happens when I get home from work at 11:30 on a Friday night and find that this space has been vacated by my fellow front pagers. Let this be a lesson to everybody. BooMan mentioned in his intro to the last open thread that he went to a concert tonight. He gave you some BS cover story about going to see the Beach Boy’s dead accordion player, Phil Lesh, but I want you to have a look at the concert he really went to.

How did you feel when you learned the Chinese had built a railroad to Lhasa?

For myself, I was astonished by the sheer engineering prowess of the project. The railroad rises to 16,000 feet above sea level, as high as light aircraft might fly, and enough to make it by far the highest railroad in the world.

Yet I’m also sickened by the thought that one of the world’s last truly unique cultures will be devastated by this project. For the first time in history, outsiders will be free to pour in to this previously remote region and dominate the culture of Tibetans. “Cultural genocide,” the Dalai Lama has called it.

Lest you think this is all too far from Canada for you to be concerned about, the railroad will run using railcars supplied by Canada’s Bombardier Inc. Good news for Canada. Bad news for Tibetans.

Bombardier Inc. is no stranger to, ahem, “co-operation” with governments. Indeed, it seems to make a specialty of it.

In Silent Partners: Taxpayers and the Bankrolling of Bombardier, author Peter Hadekel chronicles Bombardier’s pattern of purchasing government companies at bargain prices, often with government assistance, and later coming back to Ottawa for support to survive.

As for the Chinese, they are said to be currently taking a hardline policy on Tibet under such innocuous-sounding names as “patriotic re-education“.

The railroad opens July 1, 2006.

Oh. And by the way. That’s Canada Day.

(cross-posted at Deny My Freedom and Daily Kos)

All of us in the blogosphere should remember July 27, 2004. Since I wasn’t active in Internet politics outside of lurking at one blog, I didn’t really know too much about Barack Obama aside from the fact that his Republican opponent for the Senate, Jack Ryan, had dropped out of race and that Obama was going to easily win the seat of retiring Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-IL). Network TV wasn’t going to cover Tuesday night of the DNC, so I decided to turn the old TV to PBS and watch the night’s events. To say the least, Obama was electrifying; the speech got a rousing ovation at the convention, and publicity on the convention tended to ignore Teresa Heinz Kerry’s remarks in favor of our new ‘rising star’. Obama had shown a charisma that we hadn’t seen in some Democratic politicians since Bill Clinton, and this part of his keynote address will forever be burned into my memory.

Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us — the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of “anything goes.” Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.

The pundits, the pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an “awesome God” in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

In the end — In the end — In the end, that’s what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope?

Indeed, the speech was hailed widely, and people began speaking of Obama as a future presidential candidate. He may have been the product of a grassroots campaign that pushed him through a crowded Democratic primary, but it was clear that he was headed for bigger and better things. But 18 months into his first term, the grassroots has been largely disappointed in Obama, and as someone who got to see in Philadelphia just how powerful an off-the-cuff speech he could give, I’ve been disappointed as well.

Obama has had a fairly undistinguished voting record in the Senate, and the perceived lack of his using his star power to highlight issues for Democrats can either be attributed to his deference for being the 99th-most senior senator or to the fact that he doesn’t want to ruffle any feathers within the institution. While his vote today for the Oman Free Trade Pact is the most egregious mark against him at this point (as well as his vote for Condoleeza Rice’s nomination to Secretary of State), like Joe Lieberman, it’s his words that do the most damage. It’s not often you hear Obama getting into a verbal tussle with Republicans (his only real scuffle was with John McCain). The words that stand out is Obama’s words on the state of the Democratic Party. Consider this bit from his recent remarks at the Call To Renewal conference:

Democrats, for the most part, have taken the bait. At best, we may try to avoid the conversation about religious values altogether, fearful of offending anyone and claiming that – regardless of our personal beliefs – constitutional principles tie our hands. At worst, some liberals dismiss religion in the public square as inherently irrational or intolerant, insisting on a caricature of religious Americans that paints them as fanatical, or thinking that the very word “Christian” describes one’s political opponents, not people of faith.

[…]

We first need to understand that Americans are a religious people. 90 percent of us believe in God, 70 percent affiliate themselves with an organized religion, 38 percent call themselves committed Christians, and substantially more people believe in angels than do those who believe in evolution.

Why is Obama feeding the standard traditional media’s line about supposed Democratic discomfort about religion? The reason that our party is loathe to talk about religion is because of what the Founding Fathers stated when they wrote the Constitution – there is the whole idea of separation of church and state. Inherently, religion and politics are not supposed to mix. That’s why America is a secular state, Senator Obama, not a religious state, as you claim. Additionally, if a candidate chooses to talk about religion as how it relates to how it shapes their worldview, that’s fine. But it should not have to be a requirement for Democrats to keep their mouths shut about religion unless they are running against an Alan Keyes type, as Obama suggests.

To be fair, Obama does suggest that it’s not authentic for everyone to employ religion:

I am not suggesting that every progressive suddenly latch on to religious terminology. Nothing is more transparent than inauthentic expressions of faith – the politician who shows up at a black church around election time and claps – off rhythm – to the gospel choir.

But what I am suggesting is this – secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryant, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King – indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history – were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. To say that men and women should not inject their “personal morality” into public policy debates is a practical absurdity; our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

I don’t ever recall the so-called ‘secularists’ (who the hell are these people, anyways? I didn’t know they were a powerful interest group), and the Democratic Party in particular, saying that you had to leave religion out of your political life. All we ask is that you don’t take political action in the name of religion.

When one reviews Obama’s comments, though, such as MyDD did back in March, one begins to see a consistent pattern of undermining the Democratic position on various issues, whether it be his ignorance on Feingold’s censure motion or on discussing the use of filibusters. In the end, this is what harms our party the most – by publicly undercutting the party in the frames that the GOP has established, it is setting back progress that we have made. Obama’s proclivities for being a public voice of dissent within the Democratic Party on various issues holds a lot of water given his stature, and it does nothing to improve our standing – except his own, perhaps.

While he’s nowhere near the level that Joe Lieberman is when it comes to cutting our legs out from beneath us, one must remember that Joe only became a vocal critic of Democratic positions in fairly recent times. Their voting records may differ, but the fact is that they both affirm the ‘problems’ that others believe our party has when they speak. If Obama wants to keep the respect of the movement that helped push him on the path towards stardom, he might do well to remember to speak out in support of progressive Democratic positions instead of repeating tired old talking points denigrating the Democratic party.

Jane Monheit

I was out running an errand recently with the radio on when I heard a jazz singer performing a sloooow version of “Tea for Two” (of all things); handled with gentle caresses, even this old chestnut took on a new shine, as the tempo forced you to pay attention to the innocence of the lyrics.  “Who is this?”  I wondered; “She’s pretty good.”  It turned out to be Jane Monheit, one of the new generation of jazz vocalists that I’m not familiar with, so I was inspired to go learn more.  Here’s what I found out…

Jane Monheit was born in 1977 [How depressing – I graduated high school that year!] in Oakdale, NY on Long Island.  She began singing professionally while still in high school; she began to study at the Manhattan School of Music at 17, and earned a Bachelor’s degree in music in 1999.  At the age of 20, as a college senior, she was first runner-up at the 1998 Thelonious Monk Institute Vocal Competition.

She is considered by some to be one of the most promising jazz vocalists of her generation, but others consider her more of a cabaret or Broadway style singer and not really a jazz singer at all.  (In addition to jazz, she has recorded songs from MGM and RKO 1930s-1950s musicals, and some Latin American songs.)  Her classically trained voice has been compared to Ella Fitzgerald, who she considers one of her influences.

Discography (from Wikipedia)

Her debut album Never Never Land was released in October 2000 and became an instant success, remaining on the Billboard Jazz chart for over a year and was voted “Best Debut Recording.”  Her second CD album, Come Dream With Me, was released in May 2001, entering the charts at number 1. Her third album In The Sun was released in October 2002.

Her fourth album Live at the Rainbow Room was released in December 2003. A DVD entitled Live at the Rainbow Room was released to complement the CD.

Her fifth album Taking a Chance on Love was released in September 2004. It rose to the number one spot on Billboard’s traditional jazz chart and entered Billboard’s top 100 pop chart the first week it was released. This album included the song “Somewhere over the Rainbow” which was included on the soundtrack for the film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

The Taking a Chance on Love DVD was released in March 2005 and contains performances from the Brecon Jazz Festival in Wales, UK.  Jane released her sixth album in October 2005; The Season, her first holiday-themed album, debuted in the top 10 on Billboard’s jazz chart. Monheit told jazzreview.com it was inspired by Ella Fitzgerald’s “Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas.”

Jane Monheit appeared on the “Legends of Jazz” PBS series; the interview is available at the website for the series.  Video of Jane in the studio recording is available at her website.  Tour dates from this summer through January 2007 can be found here.

Helping Booman Meet Site Expenses

CabinGirl emailed me this week that she’s going to try to make arrangements for the music featured in Jazz Jam to show up in the ads on the website at the same time – Cool, eh?.  Not only does this make it convenient for you, but each purchase helps Booman, too.  So if you’re curious about something you see here, click and purchase and help Booman pay the bills.  

(((( CabinGirl ))))

Or you can show real love and buy a $25 color bumper sticker at the store (top right corner).

I’ll be at Phil Lesh & Friends tonight. It doesn’t get much more frivolous than that. While I’m gone have some fun, but try not to shoot anyone in the face or start a preemptive war with no exit strategy.

Politics can make strange bedfellows. Growing up, reading anything I could find about spies and the CIA was just one of my many quirky habits. I never imagined that one day I’d have a blog (they didn’t even exist) where a former CIA officer contributed material. As a poltically progressive person, I didn’t think I’d agree with a Republican about so many issues related to our national security. Larry still self-identifies as a Republican. Maybe he needs to see something more from the Democrats, or maybe he thinks it gives him more credibility as a critic to stay with the elephant. I don’t know. I do know that there are a lot of former Republicans that are looking at the carnage in Iraq and switching their affiliations. Larry’s CIA classmate, Jim Marcinkowski, is one example. Both Larry and Jim graduated from The Farm with Valerie Plame Wilson, and they are mighty pissed off about what happened to her. Jim’s running for Congress in Michigan’s 8th district. It’s currently held by Mike Rogers, who is the Major Deputy Whip and he sits on the House Intelligence Committee. That’s the same committee whose former chairman, Porter Goss, said that would investigate the Plame leak if we brought him a blue dress. Jim’s looking for payback and his campaign just got a boost.

Though Jim Marcinkowski, a lawyer and former CIA case worker, still has much to prove — not the least in the area of fundraising — his active early campaign efforts have spurred CQPolitics.com to change its rating on the race to Republican Favored from Safe Republican.

Marcinkowski’s background as a CIA operations officer in Washington, D.C, and in Central America, as well as his employment in a clerical position at the FBI in his younger days, creates one of the most interesting dynamics in the contest: Incumbent Rogers is well-known to 8th District voters as a former FBI special agent who now owns a home construction company.

Marcinkowski says he is an acquaintance of Valerie Plame, the former CIA operative whose identity was leaked, allegedly by a source or sources in the White House, after the Bush administration’s use of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war was publicly questioned by her husband, former Amb. Joseph C. Wilson IV. Marcinkowski has expressed outrage over the violation of Plame’s confidentiality.

If you told me in the 1980’s that I would be asking for the support of a CIA officer stationed in Central America during the contra war, I’d tell you that you were crazy. But, Bush’s own form of craziness has pushed Jim to become a Democrat and me to be more open to former Republicans. Mike Rogers is an odious rubber-stamping scandal enabling bootlicker. He represents everything that is wrong with the current crop in Congress. Jim Marcinkowski can see a traitor when he sees one. He can see what the lies and deceit of the neo-conservatives have done to our intelligence agencies, our military, and our nation’s standing in the world. Even though he isn’t as progressive as I would like him to be on a host of issues, I am fully supporting his run for Congress. If you would like to make a contibution to his campaign you can do it here. I know it will make Larry and Joe Wilson happy. There are 8 more hours in this quarter, and Jim is trying to raise $24,000 today. Chip in a few extra pennies so they know it came from the netroots.

Tomorrow, July 1st, starts the first day of the summer long effort to register new voters and aid Legal Permanent Residents in acquiring citizenship. Sponsored by a coalition of immigrants rights activist groups, the We Are America coalition will kick off “Democracy Summer” with events throughout the country. With the debate over immigration reform raging and emotions flaring, immigrants have been galvanized into action. Two groups in particular that are being targeted by the activists are those who have been living in the U.S. legally for years as permanent residents (green card holders) but have until now felt no pressing need to attain full citizenship, and the children of immigrants aged 18-24 who have not registered to vote.

This comes, as eligible longtime residents who have had green cards for at least five years are applying in record numbers to become citizens.

 According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, naturalization applications in the first three months of the year increased 19 percent over the same period last year. And in March, visitors to the USCIS Web site downloaded a record 162,000 citizenship applications. Some immigrants may be driven by fear, others by a desire for full political participation and still others by a wish to petition for relatives living abroad.

Newsweek

According to a recently released report from the Illinois Coalition For Immigrant and Refugee Rights, the number of new voters from the immigrant community could be as high as 14 million. This number is not lost on the immigration rights activists who see Democracy Summer as a means to organize political action that goes beyond marches and demonstrations and can make a significant impact at the ballot box, particularly in the 2008 races.

“Today We March, Tomorrow We Vote”

The Untapped Power of over 14 Million
Potential New Immigrant Voters in 2008

Executive Summary
As millions of immigrants marched across the U.S. in the historic mobilizations for immigration reform this past spring, they chanted: “Today We March, Tomorrow We Vote”. Skeptics dismissed the marchers, pointing out that neither the undocumented nor legal permanent residents (green card holders) can vote. This report finds that there are 14.25 million potential voters among legal immigrants who are currently eligible to naturalize and the 16 – 24 year old U.S. born children of immigrants. This includes 12.4 million potential new voters who can be eligible to participate in the 2008 elections.

The current Republican-led legislative attacks on immigrants and red-hot anti-immigrant demagoguery sparked the spring 2006 immigrant rights marches and are currently driving record increases in citizenship applications by legal immigrants. They are also likely to drive increases in the registration and voting rates of U.S. born children of immigrants. This could dramatically – and negatively – affect the outcome of the 2008 Presidential election for the Republican Party, as well as Republican prospects in numerous state elections.

Findings and Implications:
There are 14.25 million potential voters among immigrant legal permanent residents (green card holders) who are currently eligible for citizenship and 16 – 24 year oldU.S. born children of immigrants who will be eligible to vote in the 2008 elections.

This number includes:

Nearly nine and a half million immigrants who are currently eligible to naturalize, become U.S. citizens, and vote

Almost two million U.S.-born children of immigrants between the ages of 18 and 24 years who are not currently registered to vote.

The almost two million U.S.-born children of immigrants between the ages of 18 – 24 who are already registered to vote.

Another one million U.S.-born children of immigrants who are not yet voting age, but will reach 18 years of age by the time of the 2008 elections, and will be eligible to register and to vote.

There are over 2.6 million Mexican immigrants who are currently eligible to become U.S. citizens.

Read the complete report “Today We March, Tomorrow We Vote!” from the ILLINOIS COALITION FOR IMMIGRANT AND REFUGEE RIGHTS

“We want to capitalize on that movement energy and translate it into a real political voice for immigrants,” says Deepak Bhargava of the Center for Community Change, one of the We Are America coalition groups, whose goal is to produce 1 million new voters before election day 2006 . The Democracy Summer campaign hopes to offer a nationwide network of citizenship schools to help immigrants with their paperwork, civics classes to promote political participation, and voter registration drives.

If successful, the effort to naturalize perhaps millions of legal residents could have far-reaching political ramifications. Some key swing states could experience seismic shifts in voter demographics. Florida in particular is home to a possible 600,000 newly minted citizens. According to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials these new citizens also tend to vote in much higher percentages than native born Americans.  “Our mission is to make good on the slogan, ‘Today we march, tomorrow we vote’,” says Chung-Wha Hong of the New York Immigration Coalition.

If you interested in helping this effort please check the list of events already scheduled in your area and contact We Are America to lend your services. And remember this effort will go on throughout the summer so if your thinking of organize and event or would like to help in future events in some capacity let the folks at We Are America know.

If immigrant rights advocates are successful in their organizing efforts, come November the newly registered could make the difference between victory and defeat in certain races. Come 2008, a crop of newly naturalized citizens could make their mark on the political landscape. They could very well hold the key to changing the balance of power in some very key states, and set the stage for not only a total reevaluation of the immigration reform issue but also facilitate a shift of political power on a national scale.

From: Migra Matters – Progressive Immigration Reform

The War Tapes, a documentary that shows the Iraq war thorugh the eyes of soldiers, opens today in selected cities. I saw it a few nights ago and highly recommend it. The filmmakers gave cameras to five soldiers from the New Hampshire National Guard and were lucky enough to receive 1,100 hours of footage from three men with very different opinions and backgrounds. Because soldiers, not journalists, were interviewing their fellow soldiers, the footage is very real and very raw. It’ll make you realize just how disconnected the majority of Americans are from the reality on the ground:

“I think if we can get people in to see the film, I think it’s going to change the way people see the war,” said Staff Sgt. Zack Bazzi, a soldier in the film, in a telephone interview from Washington. “There’s a huge gap between the people who are fighting this war and the people who are at home. I think this will be eye-opening for people who have been watching the war at home on TV. It’s not the same.

“Part of the reason is the media. A reporter can be with us, use all the lingo, try to be our buddy,” Bazzi continued. “But still, we look at them and say, ‘You’re the media.'”

As the San Francisco Chronicle points out, this film can’t be tagged as having a liberal or conservative bent. In fact, the filmmakers said they tried to steer clear of bringing their political perspective to the film:

“This isn’t a Michael Moore film, and it isn’t a recruiting film,” says Ward Carroll, editor of Military.com and a 20-year Navy veteran who saw the film. “How can you quarrel with it? It shows the good and the bad. It’s sincere.”

The film shows how partisan politics gets fuzzy in foxholes: Soldiers who voted Republican complain about guarding trucks for Halliburton Co., and a Democratic-voting soldier who reads the Nation re-enlists.

The pro-war talking heads who’ve never been to Iraq (outside the Green Zone) or served in the military should be required to see this documentary. The same goes for anti-war talking heads who’ve never been, but those who get national exposure in the traditional media are few and far between.

The film opens today in Berkeley, CA, Boston, MA, Concord, NY, San Francisco and Washington, DC.

I’m half tempted to set up a blog wholly dedicated to making fun of The New Republic. They are so bad, in a B movie kind of way, that they are actually good. They’re kinda of like the Corey Feldman of political thinking. I can see Lee Seigal ordering pizza in The Burbs as I type this. Not content with calling all us blogofascists, and tackling the thuggery of getting called a wanker, Seigel now attacks those that would dare to wear a baseball cap indoors. We are going to need new words to describe the likes of Seigel, because wankery doesn’t begin to describe the following.

Oh how I hate these things. I didn’t mind them when a few people wore them. Then it served as the rudimentary expression of taste, or as the vague outline of identity. But soon everyone began putting them on their heads. It’s gotten so black kids from the ghetto have to wear them with the bill pulled down over their eyes just so they won’t be mistaken for yuppie bankers.

The baseball cap’s insinuation that life is a game with transparent rules gets to me. Also the insinuation that by wearing a baseball cap in inappropriate situations–like indoors–you have what it takes to break the rules and win the game. And I’m bothered by the herdlike nature of the baseball-cap trend mixed with its affectation of insouciance. The baseball-cap people want to have the lofty cool indifference of an aristocrat, yet their need to have it in the standard approved way makes them anything but cool and indifferent.

But the baseball cap signifies, most of all, a lazily defiant casualness. It’s less insouciant than I-don’t-give-a-shit. I have an inborn antagonism toward any type of hierarchy, but I think natural elegance is the best reply to assigned status, not sloppy rebellion. Wearing your standard-issue baseball cap in a restaurant isn’t a blow for egalitarianism; it’s a hopelessness about the possibility of originality ever to fly in the face of hierarchy. It also gives the impression of someone whose ego is angrily planted on his head. NO, I won’t take it off!When I see someone wearing a baseball cap in a movie theater, I want them to bring back the guillotine.

Give me the egalitarianism of the park, and of a universal light, anytime.

This moron claims to have an inborn antagonism to hierarchy, and yet he disses ghetto kids for how they wear their hats. Anyone who obsesses about other people’s attire to the point of fantasizing about their execution is in desperate need of an intervention. Please don’t let him hit ‘post’ again. I wonder what he thinks about, I don’t know, bolo ties. Do they also signify “a lazily defiant casualness”? I can’t believe this guy gets paid (with benefits) to write on culture. He has no understanding of culture. He certainly has no clue about the blogosphere. And to think he would criticize Markos for his lack of enthusiasm, as a child, for Maoist revolutionaries overrunning his country. But then Seigel, shall I call him Buggsy, can’t even get Markos’s last name correct.

Did I forget to mention he thinks Jon Stewart is destroying democracy by cultivating cynicism about politicians?