Chaos, control; chaos, control. You like? You like?
But OJ's ruse puts a whole new ploy in play. Imagine Rumsfeld writing "If I Committed War Crimes, Here's How It Happened." Plenty of juice, but no risk of international prosecutions. Rove could get a ton of dough for "If Bush Had Been Impeached, Here's What For." George Allen would have a monster hit on his hands if he wrote, "If I Were An Asshat, Here I Am."
WHILE the excitement over Nancy Pelosi, most likely to be our first female speaker of the House, is still fresh, and while those of us who care about these things are still bubbling over the election of the highest number of women to Congress in history, I’d like to issue a challenge: Ladies, step up to the plate on behalf of the rest of America’s women — and their families.
This shouldn’t be a radical idea. Ms. Pelosi has, after all, spent months now reminding us that she is not merely a capable leader, not just a whiz-bang political fund-raiser, but, first and foremost, “a mother and a grandmother.”
That’s lovely for her; but if Ms. Pelosi’s experience of motherhood is to have any meaning for the rest of us, or any relevance to her life as a politician, we’ve got to see some follow-through. Because if, as Ms. Pelosi has repeatedly said, she’ll be taking up the speaker’s gavel “on behalf of America’s children,” there’s a lot of work to do. For children can’t thrive if their families are stressed and, at every point on the socioeconomic spectrum now, it seems that American families are cracking at the seams.
The Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law released a study last month noting that “workplace inflexibility, the lack of family supports and workplace bias” are forcing American mothers out of the work force — whether they can really afford to “opt out” or not.
This comes on the heels of news articles showing how working-class moms are putting their youngsters in all-night child care, and how couples are increasingly enduring split-shift work schedules — putting their health and marriages at risk — to avoid the costs and anxieties of day care. All this paints a picture of family life in America that is very grim for all but the very privileged.
For years now, there have been murmurings — and more — from various corners of Congress in favor of change. Representative Lynn Woolsey’s Balancing Act bill, which calls for a wide array of measures to reduce the stresses on working families, has been languishing for years. Senators Christopher Dodd and Ted Kennedy have gestured toward legislation on paid family leave and guaranteed sick leave. There was even a much-overlooked bill introduced in the Senate by Hillary Clinton this summer (and in the House by Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut) to provide low-income parents with subsidies to stay at home and care for their infants themselves.
It’s time to light a fire under these kinds of initiatives. Ms. Pelosi’s current promises — to raise the minimum wage, cut the interest rates on student loans and make some college tuition tax deductible — are a laudable start, but American families, whose needs have been increasingly neglected since the early 1980s, need so much more: quality after-school programs; national standards for child care; voucher programs and tax subsidies to help pay for that care; universal, voluntary public preschool; paid family leave; and incentives for businesses to make part-time and flex-time work financially viable.
In short, we need to make the kind of glorious life that’s enjoyed by upper-middle-class mothers and grandmothers like Ms. Pelosi and her colleagues possible for everyone else.
This isn’t a radical leftist agenda. In fact, there’s no better antidote to the selfish individualism and empty materialism that Americans of all political stripes say is corrupting our country than policies that allow families to spend more, and better, time together.
In recent years, pro-family Democrats were out in the legislative wilderness. Now, there’s simply no excuse for inaction. It’s time to shoot for the moon. Risk a presidential veto. And let the proponents of “family values” show their true colors.
Four people have been indicted on charges of voter fraud in Kansas City, officials said Wednesday.
Investigators said questionable registration forms for new voters were collected by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a group that works to improve minority and low-income communities.
The four indicted -- Kwaim A. Stenson, Dale D. Franklin, Stephanie L. Davis and Brian Gardner -- were employed by ACORN as registration recruiters. They were each charged with two counts.
Federal indictments allege the four turned in false voter registration applications. Prosecutors said the indictments are part of a national investigation.
ACORN and Project Vote recruit and assign workers to low-income and minority neighborhoods to register people to vote.
The Kansas City Election Board told KMBC they found suspicious forms, such as seven applications from one person and an application for a dead man.
[.....]
ACORN officials in Kansas City said they turned in the four people who were indicted.
"We're very happy that they were indicted," said Claudie Harris with ACORN.
Harris said ACORN workers are paid by the hour and not by the number of voter registration cards they turn in. "When you fraudulently defraud this, that gives us a bad name and what we're trying to do a bad name," Harris said.
ACORN officials said the four indicted have been fired.
Electronic voting machines count about 87% of the votes cast in America today. But are they reliable? Are they safe from tampering? From a current congressional hearing to persistent media reports that suggest misuse of data and even outright fraud, concerns over the integrity of electronic voting are growing by the day. And if the voting process is not secure, neither is America's democracy. The timely, cautionary documentary HACKING DEMOCRACY exposes gaping holes in the security of America's electronic voting system.
In the 2000 presidential election, an electronic voting machine recorded minus 16,022 votes for Al Gore in Volusia County, Fla. While fraud was never proven, the faulty tally alerted computer scientists, politicians and everyday citizens to the very real possibility of computer hacking during elections.
In 2002, Seattle grandmother and writer Bev Harris asked officials in her county why they had acquired electronic touch screen systems for their elections. Unsatisfied with their explanation, she set out to learn about electronic voting machines on her own. In the course of her research, which unearthed hundreds of reported incidents of mishandled voting information, Harris stumbled across an "online library" of the Diebold Corporation, discovering a treasure trove of information about the inner-workings of the company's voting system.
Harris brought this proprietary "secret" information to computer security expert Dr. Avi Rubin of Johns Hopkins University, who determined that the software lacked the necessary security features to prevent tampering. Her subsequent investigation took her from the trash cans of Texas to the secretary of state of California and finally to Florida, where a "mini-election" to test the vulnerability of the memory cards used in electronic voting produced alarming results.
And over this weekend, they have found still more remains. And now this week will be spent looking in places that should have already been looked at a thousand times, five years ago.
For all the victims in New York, Mr. Bush, the living and the dead, it is a touch of 9/11 all over again. And the mayor of this city, who called off this search four and a half years ago, is a Republican. The governor, with whom he conferred, is a Republican. The House of Representatives, Republican. The Senate, Republican. The President, Republican. And yet you can claim that you and you alone can protect us from terrorism?
You can't even recover our dead from the battlefield. The battlefield in an American city. When we've given you five years and unlimited funds to do so.
While citing a Military Commissions Act so monstrous that it has now been criticized by even the John Birch Society, you told us, Mr. Bush, quote, "there is nothing we can do to bring back the men and women lost on September 11th, 2001, yet we'll always honor their memory and we will never forget the way they were taken from us." Except of course, for the ones that have been lying under a manhole cover for five years.
Setting aside the fact that your government has done nothing else for those five years but pat itself on the back about terror, while waging pointless war on the wrong enemy in Iraq and waging war on the cherished freedoms in America, just on this subject of counter-terrorism, sir, yours is the least competent government in time of crisis in this country's history.
WASHINGTON - Sen. Barack Obama acknowledged Sunday he was considering a run for president in 2008, backing off previous statements that he would not do so.
The Illinois Democrat said he could no longer stand by the statements he made after his 2004 election and earlier this year that he would serve a full six-year term in Congress. He said he would not make a decision until after the Nov. 7 elections.
[...]
On Sunday, Obama dismissed notions that he might not be ready to run for president because of his limited experience in national politics. He agreed the job requires a “certain soberness and seriousness” and “can’t be something you pursue on the basis of vanity and ambition.”
“I’m not sure anyone is ready to be president before they’re president,” Obama said. “I trust the judgment of the American people."
Having known Obama since the inception of his political career, I have watched his rise closely. We are hardly intimates, but we are certainly warm with each other, and I have been a political contributor and supporter of his. No one in these circumstances would regard himself as unbiased (except perhaps Justice Antonin Scalia). That said, I have many friends whose company I savor whom I would not commend for service in the U.S. Senate. Obama, though, has matured in plain view. He has gone from someone impatient with the legislative process to an effective and respected leader in the Illinois Senate, and from a candidate who once seemed to be getting ahead of himself politically, and whose base in the black community was shaky, to a figure who appeals to voters of all hues.
[...]
Obama's biography is both intriguing and inspiring, an American story for the 21st century. The résumé detail that initially caught wide attention was his election in 1990 as the first African-American president (that is, editor in chief) of the Harvard Law Review, the premier legal academic publication in the United States. Banish any lurking thought of an affirmative-action wind at his back. Exams at Harvard Law School are graded blind, and Obama graduated magna cum laude (also unlike me.) He has taught for many years at the University of Chicago Law School, along with many of the country's preeminent legal scholars.
But academic excellence is only one part of his story. "Dreams From My Father" is a beautifully crafted book, moving and candid, and it belongs on the shelf beside works like James McBride's "The Color of Water" and Greg Williams' "Life on the Color Line" as a tale of living astride America's racial categories. No other figure on the American political scene can claim such broad roots within the human community. Obama is the very face of American diversity.
But tonight the stark question we must face is - why?
Why has the ferocity of your venom against the Democrats, now exceeded the ferocity of your venom against the terrorists?
Why have you chosen to go down in history as the President who made things up?
In less than one month you have gone from a flawed call to unity, to this clarion call to hatred of Americans, by Americans.
If this is not simply the most shameless example of the rhetoric of political hackery, then it would have to be the cry of a leader crumbling under the weight of his own lies.
We have, of course, survived all manner of political hackery, of every shape, size, and party.
We will have to suffer it, for as long as the Republic stands.
But the premise of a President who comes across as a compulsive liar — is nothing less than terrifying.
A President who since 9/11 will not listen, is not listening — and thanks to Bob Woodward's most recent account — evidently has never listened.
A President who since 9/11 so hates or fears other Americans, that he accuses them of advocating deliberate inaction in the face of the enemy.
A President who since 9/11 has savaged the very freedoms he claims to be protecting from attack. Attack by terrorists, or by Democrats, or by both — it is now impossible to find a consistent thread of logic as to who Mr. Bush believes the enemy is.
But if we know one thing for certain about Mr. Bush, it is this:
This President — in his bullying of the Senate last month and in his slandering of the Democrats this month — has shown us that he believes whoever the enemies are — they are hiding themselves inside a dangerous cloak, called the Constitution of the United States of America.
Whatever you think you know about our election systems or Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, this film will make you question further why the news media fails to accurately inform the public. Directed by GNN's Ian Inaba, creator of Eminem's "Mosh" music video, American Blackout critically examines the contemporary tactics used to control our democratic process and silence voices of political dissent.
Many have heard of the alleged voting irregularities that occurred during the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004. Until now, these incidents have gone under- reported and are commonly written-off as insignificant rumors or unintentional mishaps resulting from an overburdened election system.
I am thankful for this school.
I am thankful for my Moms.
To hear him bleat and whine and bully at nearly every opportunity, one would think someone else had been President on September 11th, 2001 — or the nearly eight months that preceded it.
That hardly reflects the honesty nor manliness we expect of the Executive.
But if his own fitness to serve is of no true concern to him, perhaps we should simply sigh and keep our fingers crossed, until a grown-up takes the job three Januarys from now.
Except… for this:
After five years of skirting even the most inarguable of facts — that he was President on 9/11 and he must bear some responsibility for his, and our, unreadiness, Mr. Bush has now moved, unmistakably and without conscience or shame, towards re-writing history, and attempting to make the responsibility, entirely Mr. Clinton’s.
Of course he is not honest enough to do that directly.
As with all the other nefariousness and slime of this, our worst presidency since James Buchanan, he is having it done for him, by proxy.
[...]
But, Mr. Bush, if you are now trying to convince us by proxy that it’s all about the distractions of 1998 and 1999, then you will have to face a startling fact that your minions may have hidden from you.
The distractions of 1998 and 1999, Mr. Bush, were carefully manufactured, and lovingly executed, not by Bill Clinton… but by the same people who got you… elected President.
Thus instead of some commendable acknowledgment that you were even in office on 9/11 and the lost months before it… we have your sleazy and sloppy rewriting of history, designed by somebody who evidently redd the Orwell playbook too quickly.
Thus instead of some explanation for the inertia of your first eight months in office, we are told that you have kept us "safe" ever since — a statement that might range anywhere from Zero, to One Hundred Percent, true.
We have nothing but your word, and your word has long since ceased to mean anything.
And, of course, the one time you have ever given us specifics about what you have kept us safe from, Mr. Bush — you got the name of the supposedly targeted Tower in Los Angeles… wrong.
Thus was it left for the previous President to say what so many of us have felt; what so many of us have given you a pass for in the months and even the years after the attack:
You did not try.
You ignored the evidence gathered by your predecessor.
You ignored the evidence gathered by your own people.
Then, you blamed your predecessor.
That would be the textbook definition… Sir, of cowardice.
Liberal bloggers in New Hampshire busted an aide to Rep. Charles Bass (R-N.H.) who was posing as a liberal blogger on such blogs as Blue Granite, NH-02 Progressive and others. Bass’ office admitted culpability to HOH and said the staffer would be “appropriately disciplined.”
The unnamed aide to Bass — who, like many others in his party, faces a tough re-election fight — was routinely trolling liberal New Hampshire political blogs calling himself “IndyNH” and more commonly IndieNH, pretending to be a progressive.
Finally, after noticing that lots of things he said just didn’t add up, a couple of the bloggers traced IndieNH’s IP address to the House of Representatives.
[...]
The poseur had raised suspicions among liberal bloggers after he pooh-poohed a recent poll showing Bass tied with Hodes and suggested that Democrats should not waste any more time or money on the Hodes race and instead should invest their resources in other races.
“I am going to look at the competitive race list to figure out where to send another mydd.com/netroots donation and maybe help out in other ways,” IndieNH posted. “Maybe CT or NY for me — they are at least close by. Anyone interested in pooling NH efforts for some of those races? Maybe we could even go help out for a few days in buses or something in November?”
After Clawson posted a notice on her site informing IndieNH that he (or she — Clawson wasn’t sure) had been rooted out as a GOP aide in Bass’ office, the postings ceased.
The aide’s job could cease, too. John Billings, a spokesman for Bass, acknowledged that “we have questioned the staff and found that a staffer in this office did indeed post to some blogs under the pseudonym ‘IndieNH.’
First, some basic facts about this usually harmless bacterium: E. coli is abundant in the digestive systems of healthy cattle and humans, and if your potato salad happened to be carrying the average E. coli, the acid in your gut is usually enough to kill it.
But the villain in this outbreak, E. coli O157:H7, is far scarier, at least for humans. Your stomach juices are not strong enough to kill this acid-loving bacterium, which is why it’s more likely than other members of the E. coli family to produce abdominal cramps, diarrhea, fever and, in rare cases, fatal kidney failure.
Where does this particularly virulent strain come from? It’s not found in the intestinal tracts of cattle raised on their natural diet of grass, hay and other fibrous forage. No, O157 thrives in a new — that is, recent in the history of animal diets — biological niche: the unnaturally acidic stomachs of beef and dairy cattle fed on grain, the typical ration on most industrial farms. It’s the infected manure from these grain-fed cattle that contaminates the groundwater and spreads the bacteria to produce, like spinach, growing on neighboring farms.
In 2003, The Journal of Dairy Science noted that up to 80 percent of dairy cattle carry O157. (Fortunately, food safety measures prevent contaminated fecal matter from getting into most of our food most of the time.) Happily, the journal also provided a remedy based on a simple experiment. When cows were switched from a grain diet to hay for only five days, O157 declined 1,000-fold.
This is good news. In a week, we could choke O157 from its favorite home — even if beef cattle were switched to a forage diet just seven days before slaughter, it would greatly reduce cross-contamination by manure of, say, hamburger in meat-packing plants. Such a measure might have prevented the E. coli outbreak that plagued the Jack in the Box fast food chain in 1993.
Unfortunately, it would take more than a week to reduce the contamination of ground water, flood water and rivers — all irrigation sources on spinach farms — by the E-coli-infected manure from cattle farms.
The United States Department of Agriculture does recognize the threat from these huge lagoons of waste, and so pays 75 percent of the cost for a confinement cattle farmer to make manure pits watertight, either by lining them with concrete or building them above ground. But taxpayers are financing a policy that only treats the symptom, not the disease, and at great expense. There remains only one long-term remedy, and it’s still the simplest one: stop feeding grain to cattle.
Last week the organizers of Madrid fashion week, usually an overlooked event in comparison with the major shows in New York, London (this week), Milan and Paris, said they were banning models with a height-to-weight ratio below what the World Health Organization considered normal. In effect, models who weigh less than 125 pounds are prohibited from working the runways. Organizers of the event said they wanted to project “an image of beauty and health.”
Complaints about the idolization of role models who suggest unhealthy lifestyles are culturally endemic. Celebrities like Nicole Richie, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and Mischa Barton have all been subjects of tabloid headlines asking, “Are they too thin?” In all likelihood, the answer is yes, but that does not stop magazines from displaying their pictures or, likewise, designers from casting thin models in their shows.
Under pressure from campaigners, certain local authorities in Spain have taken action. In Andalusia, shops are not allowed to display clothes of continental size 36, size 8 in the UK, or smaller. Antonio Pernas, a designer at the Madrid fashion week says: "We have reached an agreement and I think it's the right thing. The models should not have a negative influence with the young."
Britain's premier fashion event has found itself under siege after health experts and Culture Minister Tessa Jowell suggested it should consider following Madrid which last week announced it would ban too-tiny women from its shows.
Madrid's plan, that has already seen some models rejected for its shows -- aims to ban models with a body mass index (BMI) -- a ratio of height to weight -- of less than 18.
In an effort to diffuse the weight row, organisers the British Fashion Council cancelled a photocall on Sunday, where some of Britain's top models were due to showcase London Fashion Week's shows spanning cult 1960s label Biba to a one-off appearance by Giorgio Armani's younger line Emporio Armani.
Yet, the debate continues to simmer among fashionistas and designers at the five-day event. While most agree eating disorders sparked by the industry need to be addressed, they say the Spanish solution is not the way to do it.
Three cheers for Matt Lauer. He's the first mainstream journalist I know of to directly confront the president over what exactly he has authorized in terms of detainee treatment and torture. Watch the president's body-language. Watch his early aggression. And repeat after me the obvious: We Torture.
