Mothers

Imagineone posted this recognition, "Our Children", of this web site for Marine Parents. Here’s the last paragraph quoted from Imagineone.

Why is it that we, as a civilization, still seek resolution to international differences by dressing our children in uniform and sending them off to destroy the enemy in face-to-face battle? Aren’t we sophisticated enough to raise the level of conflict above mass destruction? And what constitutes a win when the repercussions are intangible? The impact on these families is astounding, overwhelming, and on so many levels incomprehensible to those of us who haven’t endured their experience. As a good number of us continue to live untouched by the turbulence in Iraq--thank you, Cynthia and Tracy for a brief, yet sobering glimpse of the personal side of war

Five Marines died in Iraq today.

My Lai

Here is a detailed recount of the My Lai massacre posted by Steve Gilliard on his blog to underline the importance of leadership.

Go to The News Blog

This article and the blog for, that matter, really deserve a look.

Krugman

In "Losing Our Country" (today's New York Times editorial page) Krugman today tells us again what we already know. The ultra rich are getting richer. The middle class is disappearing.

The fact is that working families aren't sharing in the economy's growth, and face growing economic insecurity.

and

It's not a pretty picture - which is why right-wing partisans try so hard to discredit anyone who tries to explain to the public what's going on.

Passing the hat

Howard Dean has been getting a lot of shit from centrist Democrats for being so blunt in his attacks on Republicans. To support Dean Atrios launched a fund raiser, the only support that means anything anymore. He started at 9 PM. Wednesday.

I've been resisting the idea of encouraging people to donate to party orgs for various reasons. But, the Democrat insider attacks on Howard Dean are, frankly, an attack on all of us.

As Bobbi Flekman told us, "money talks and bullshit walks." So, if you're a wee bit unhappy with the way the spoiled brat Dem insiders are behaving, go give Howard Dean a few bucks.
-Atrios 9:00 PM

link

By 6 PM this evening he posted 769 donations for $33633.76. Not bad. And genuine grass roots.

Light

A pinpoint of light at the end of a very long, very dark tunnel

In a hypothetical race against the better known of at least two Democratic Senate hopefuls, the poll showed Santorum apparently trailing state Treasurer Robert P. Casey Jr., 37 percent to 44 percent. Nineteen percent were undecided.

AP, via Pocono Record, near the bottom of a long article on the woes of Act 72, a bill that would pass gambling revenues to participating school districts to help ease property taxes. Few school districts opted in, mainly because the Act also would require large school tax increases to be put to the voters for approval. Approval would not come easily.

Ted Kennedy knows

The Raw Story says Kennedy released this (and more) today.

“The contents of the Downing Street Minutes confirm that the Bush Administration was determined to go to war in Iraq, regardless of whether there was any credible justification for doing so. The Administration distorted and misrepresented the intelligence in its attempt to link Saddam Hussein with the terrorists of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden, and with weapons of mass destruction that Iraq did not have.

"In addition, the Downing Street Minutes also confirm what has long been obvious – that the timing of the war was linked to the 2002 Congressional elections, and that the Administration’s planning for post-war Iraq was incompetent in all its aspects. The current continuing crisis is a direct result of that incompetence.

Everybody knows they lied

Everybody knows they lied us into war but nobody is being held responsible. It is amazing.

Below is a quote from the Mineapolis St Paul StarTribune.

In exchange for our uniformed young people's willingness to offer the gift of their lives, civilian Americans owe them something important: It is our duty to ensure that they never are called to make that sacrifice unless it is truly necessary for the security of the country. In the case of Iraq, the American public has failed them; we did not prevent the Bush administration from spending their blood in an unnecessary war based on contrived concerns about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. President Bush and those around him lied, and the rest of us let them. Harsh? Yes. True? Also yes. Perhaps it happened because Americans, understandably, don't expect untruths from those in power. But that works better as an explanation than as an excuse.

This is from the Minneapolis Star-St.Paul Tribune's Memorial Day editorial.

I found it at American Sedition

Silence encouraged

This is weird.

A Los Alamos lab whistleblower scheduled to testify before Congress was lured to a bar and then badly beaten in an attack his wife and lawyer believe was designed to keep him quiet.

Tommy Hook was treated for a fractured jaw and other injuries, according to his wife, Susan Hook. She said the assailants told him during the attack early Sunday that "if you know what's good for you, you'll keep your mouth shut."

Tommy Hook has a pending lawsuit against the University of California alleging whistleblower retaliation. He had been scheduled to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee later this month about alleged financial irregularities at the nuclear weapons lab....

Link

Tax cuts for the rich

Editorial, today's NYT

The Bush Economy
Published: June 7, 2005

With all of the debate about taxes, the economy and domestic spending, it is hard to imagine anyone supporting the notion of taking money from programs like Medicaid and college-tuition assistance, increasing the tax burden of the vast majority of working Americans, sending the country into crushing debt - and giving the proceeds to people who are so fantastically rich that they don't know what to do with the money they already have. Yet that is just what is happening under the Bush administration. Forget the middle class and the upper-middle class. Even the merely wealthy are being left behind in the dust by the small slice of super-rich Americans.

It's here, though I think it's too little and too late. The Times gave Bush a pass before the elections.

Pays better than the army

A CIA scheme to sponsor trainee spies secretly through US university courses has caused anger among UK academics.

The Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program pays anthropology students, whose names are not disclosed, up to $50,000 (£27,500) a year.

They are expected to use the techniques of "fieldwork" to gather political and cultural details on other countries.

Britain's Association of Social Anthropologists called the scholarships ethically "dangerous" and divisive.

From the BBC

You also get to go to summer camp.

Going, going ......

Kevin Drum has completed a five part series on peak oil, available at the Washington Monthly online. Links to each part, and a sentence or two summary, are here. The series is an excellent look at the problem. His prognosis is rosier than the facts warrant, in my opinion, and certainly far more optimistic than the pictures James Kunstler paints on his blog and in his new book, The Long Emergency. However, both Kunstler and Drum pretty much agree on the diagnosis.

(Don't worry. Thanks largely to working class soldiers and the prerogatives of wealth, there will always be enough oil for Bush and the 145,000 ultra rich. We’ll make do with what trickles down.)

Most of us are livestock

You don't know whether to laugh, cry or spit when you know, and even like, working people who voted for Bush.

From the New York Times

...The share of the nation's income earned by those in this uppermost category has more than doubled since 1980, to 7.4 percent in 2002. The share of income earned by the rest of the top 10 percent rose far less, and the share earned by the bottom 90 percent fell. ...

...The Bush administration tax cuts stand to widen the gap between the hyper-rich and the rest of America. The merely rich, making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, will shoulder a disproportionate share of the tax burden.

President Bush said during the third election debate last October that most of the tax cuts went to low- and middle-income Americans. In fact, most - 53 percent - will go to people with incomes in the top 10 percent over the first 15 years of the cuts, which began in 2001 and would have to be reauthorized in 2010. And more than 15 percent will go just to the top 0.1 percent, those 145,000 taxpayers. ...

To those 145,000 hyper rich we are livestock raised to fight their wars, provide cheap labor and healthy organs for transplants.

What a country.

Aluminum siding

Wolcott opens with these paragraphs

Donald Rumsfeld, whose Steely Resolve more and more resembles aluminum siding, is a man unafraid of confronting the full spectrum of America's enemies from Al Qaeda to Amnesty International. Some say he is too zealous in defending our freedom. Too candid. Too cocksure. Too unwilling to accept counsel and criticism. Too wedded to his overriding vision of military transformation.

Those some sayers are right.

And then quotes from this article that begins with these paragraphs

Wreck It and Run
by William S. Lind
Among the many unhappy developments in American industry in recent decades has been the advent of "wreck it and run" management. A small coterie of senior managers takes over a company and makes a brilliant show of short-term profits while actually driving the business into the ground. They bail out just before it crashes, cashing in their stock options as they go, and leave the employees, ordinary stockholders, and customers holding an empty bag.

It is increasingly clear that under Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. armed forces have also been taken over by "wreck it and run" management. When Rumsfeld leaves office, what will his successor inherit?

The Rumsfeld wreckage listed in the Lind article is impressive.

What a mess these guys are making.

Green tea?

Without medication my cholesterol runs from 240 to 270. With medication, Lescol, it comes down to 185 or so.

Yesterday I got back the results from a Quest Diagnostics battery of tests (I get a copy sent to me) and total cholesterol was 147. Lowest ever.

I can’t account for the drop except to consider green tea. Last winter I had a case of flu and while sick I couldn’t stand the smell or taste of coffee. I gave it up. As I recovered I started drinking green tea and stuck with it. Could it be that replacing a pot or more of coffee with five or six mugs of tea lowered the cholesterol 20 points or more?

Flowers for the liberators

Suicide bombings have surged to become the Iraqi insurgency's weapon of choice, with a staggering 90 attacks accounting for most of last month's 750 deaths at the militants' hands.

Suicide attacks outpaced car bombings almost 2-to-1 in May, according to figures compiled by the U.S. military, The Times and other media outlets. In April, there were 69 suicide attacks, more than in the entire year preceding the June 28, 2004, hand-over of sovereignty.

The frequency of suicide bombings here is unprecedented, exceeding that of Palestinian attacks against Israel and of other militant insurgencies, such as the Chechen rebellion in Russia. Baghdad saw five suicide bombings in a six-hour span Sunday. ...

From the LA Times

Classy

Here’s another reason to laugh your ass off at working people who voted for Bush.

…At some of the busiest airports in the country, including ones in New York City, Miami and Los Angeles, passengers with premium-class tickets or upper-level memberships in airline clubs are now able to cut the line.

When they show their boarding passes and identification these passengers are directed into a separate luxury lane to be screened by Transportation Security Administration employees. …

…At Los Angeles International Airport for example, Transportation Security Administration representatives say that if an airline requests, the agency will provide a dedicated security checkpoint for its luxury lane, or allow them to escort those passengers to the front of the line while economy class passengers creep along behind them. …

From The New York Times via Noutopia

Maybe when you’re standing in a long security check line with your kids in tow, sweating out making a flight, you should just show your “Sportsmen for Bush” bumper sticker (if you can peel it off your rusting truck) and a tax paid security guard will wave you right on through to the front.

Not likely.

Three Dreams

Dream one

I am on a balcony inside a huge hall. The colors are hues of brown. The floor level which stretches to the horizon is crowded with bearded men wearing brimmed black hats and skull caps walking around, apparently aimlessly.

I leave the balcony and enter a small conference room. Inside there are ten, maybe fifteen bearded men, some old, some middle-aged, also wearing skull caps or hats. They are seated on folding chairs, not in rows. Some have pulled their chairs close to each other and are engaged in conversation. They are apparently discussing who is going to be assigned to me. I notice one man, younger than most, balding, with a friendly smile. I hope it is him, I think.

The friendly man gets up from his chair and comes over to me. We speak but I don’t remember what either of us said. We go to a door, walk out into a huge green grassy area. First, the friendly man says, we are going to work on your golf swing.

Dream two

I am in a small room that is apparently a staging area with a small group, ten or twenty others. We are all in military style camouflage clothing. There are small packs on the floor and assault rifles. We put on our packs pick up the rifles and head out the door into a tunnel. The tunnel walls, floor and ceiling are a transparent white fabric. We break into a run. I am in the front running effortlessly. Outside the tunnel, but in another interior, we can see others, apparently friendly, doing things. The actions appear to be some sort of manufacturing but is also military. Some are armed.

The tunnel takes a very sharp turn to the left. I am pleased at the turn. Now they won’t be able to shoot into the tunnel and get us from behind, I think.

As we spill out of the tunnel into a warehouse we are met by Che Guevara. This time Che is being played by Duncan Renaldo who was once the Cisco Kid. Che tells us to get ready. The train will be coming shortly. Sure enough when I look through a crack in the metal warehouse wall I see a train coming. The train arrives and we all begin shooting. Armed men jump off the train and shoot at us and charge the warehouse. People are running and shooting all around. I keep firing and firing, frustrated because I’m not hitting anyone. Then I am alone but for one armed man charging me. I shoot him several times. When the bullets hit they cause little puffs of dust. The man falls. I approach and look at his face. It is grey with grey parchment skin peeling, almost like a mummy’s.

Dream three

In most tug boat dreams the tug leaves the water and climbs through an intricate erector set like structure (or maybe a frame work like a roller coaster’s) that towers above New York Harbor and stretches on into Brooklyn. Or, the tug leaves the harbor and we power through lower Manhattan traffic of both boats and cars. Usually we have some close calls but continue unscathed.

This time the tug stays on the water. I am a deckhand and the captain is a twelve or thirteen year old boy with thick curly brown hair. We are preparing to pick up a large flat decked barge which for some reason is very difficult to handle. Someone from the office is standing on the dock. He is dressed in a suit. I refuse to speak with him. I continue moving lines around making the barge secure to the tug. You’re doing a good job, he says to me.

After a short time underway we enter a huge covered docking area, an interior with calm water. Some ships are in there also, but mostly it is an empty area with wide slips and long, low concrete piers. On one pier a formally dressed singing group, both men and women (like the Manhattan Transfer, only there are more of them) beckons us to come to their pier. We know that is not where we belong and continue on. In a short time we come to another slip. On this dock there is a group of Korean singers dressed in reds and blacks, in clothing cut in the style of Flamenco singers. We know this is where we belong and with a great deal of effort, backing and filling, the captain gets the barge to the dock. The Korean singers and dancers clap their hands, smile and otherwise welcome us joyously.

Insider Self Portrait

Read here Atrios' stunning revisit of the historic Sally Quinn article on the Clinton White House. A self indictment of Washington insiders.

Sensible simplicity

Go to noutopia to read a reminder of how simple and sensible the Scientific Method is; a reminder you can remember and use to head off creationist and intelligent design nonsense.

Also, right below that, on the same page, you can read a sweet little poem by Lew Welch, a beat poet friend of Gary Snyder’s who finally drank too much, got too sad and wandered off into the deep woods and was never found.

Here's the suicide note he left which was found by Gary Snyder:

"I never could make anything work out right and now I'm betraying my friends. I can't make anything out of it - never could. I had great visions but never could bring them together with reality. I used it all up. It's all gone. Don Allen is to be my literary executor- use MSS at Gary's and at Grove Press. I have $2,000 in Nevada City Bank of America - use it to cover my affairs and debts. I don't owe Allen G. anything yet nor my Mother. I went Southwest. Goodbye. Lew Welch."

From this page on the American Museum of Beat Art web page. http://www.beatmuseum.org/index.html

Alterman hits it out of the park

Eric Alterman gets very close to calling the Bush administration by its rightful names.

These same people, acting with unprecedented centralization of power, and secrecy, have taken it upon themselves to suspend the most basic rights enumerated in our constitution, and are carrying out the functional equivalent of a police state on Guantanamo Bay, and at various prisons around the world. It is a police state in which torture is condoned and prisoners are, on occasion, murdered. According to Amnesty International, the United States is operating a “gulag” that “has sought to justify the use of coercive interrogation techniques, the practice of holding 'ghost detainees' (people in unacknowledged incommunicado detention) and the 'rendering' or handing over of prisoners to third countries known to practice torture,” More here.

You really need to go to Alterman's Altercation and read today's entire post, How to lose a country in seven easy steps.