9/29 Mike Luckovich cartoon: Will Christie run?
Mike Luckovich
9/29 Mike Luckovich cartoon: Will Christie run?
1. Occupying Wall Street takes its sentiment nearby to a Sotheby's Auction house. Now the protest is widening from the Wall Street greed to the playground of the greedy and their version of eBay:
http://www.truth-out.org/print/6964
2. This article calls into question of where the Tea Party is now. It's kind of faded away. The only thing generating buzz about them is other people talking about them, but they don't seem to be in the room any more. In fact, I have not received any of their online stuff since ...well I kind of played games with them when they came out with their Adopt a School program - where I was to go out and contact my local school and get them to sign up and present their program on the U.S. Constitutions instructional material - and so I went and told them that I went to Pomona College, and other Claremont Colleges, and even contacted some friends at Ivy League schools about getting on board with their program. I guess they were not happy with my reply that all the schools told me to tell the Tea Party to follow Maxine Water's advice to go "straight to hell". I have not heard a peep from them since:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print/38669/
3. To keep the spirit alive and to understand how fragile the 1st Amendment to the Constitution can be, a critical review and maybe a bit of sarcasm is always needed to ensure that we have this freedom:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print/38663/
If you have noticed, I am drawing a bit more from two other resources lately. Because of the time zone from Eastern to Pacific, and other stuff I find that putting this digest together the night before, with finishing touches the next day is best. The NY Times puts out their next day edition at midnight (9PM in California), the Washington Post stumbles in about the same time, and the AJC whenever they get their act together, which i have not been able to figure out yet. Of course the LA Times has great human interest writers, and stuff the papers have not covered, so they get added the next morning. On occasion, other resource pop in when I get a chance to see good stuff.
4. David Brooks. I am baffled here. He says that there is a Limit to Empathy, because too much of it gets us off track in seeing the real picture. Read this and see if you don't get the same feeling that I did. If you remove Empathy from the human experience, you are withdrawing yourself from the sensual experience of feeling others people situation and pain. I don't think normal people are like that:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/opinion/brooks-the-limits-of-empathy.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&pagewanted=print
5. Paul Krugman, arrives on scene. As usual, the Nobel Prize winner has news for the GOP - their fear agenda about what is wrong is ALL WRONG - and they better pay attention to him:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/opinion/krugman-phony-fear-factor.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print
6. This NY Times editorial acknowledges Obama's on-track rhetoric on going after the Republicants and the Republicans - .....finally:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/opinion/an-icy-political-vision.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print
7. Eugene Robinson brings up the subject of the elephant in the room - no pun intended. The Obesity of NJ Gov. Chris Christy. If you saw David Letterman the other night, you can appreciate this - Letterman said "if you cannot call an obese person fat........then the terrorists have won::
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/chris-christies-big-problem/2011/09/29/gIQAAL7J8K_print.html
8. I saw this story on TV yesterday, and I am glad that it can be presented to you in print. Hector Tobar describes a Guatemalan family in La Puente, California, having done everything to attain the American Dream - immigrating to the United States, becoming US Citizens, working in garment factories, and eventually making enough money to buy a home.....well, I'll just let you read it:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0930-tobar-20110930,0,6475392,print.column
9. "Pulpit Freedom Sunday"...ever heard of that? Well it's coming up and this editorial cautions the IRS to enforce the regulation in a consistent manner. If they happened upon the Bible Belt, the IRS agents would have to work over time:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-pulpit-20110929,0,7589749,print.story
--
Juan Matute
"A nickel ain't worth a dime anymore."
-- Yogi Berra
"Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be."
-- William Hazlitt
"Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter because nobody listens."
-- Nick Diamos
"'Tis an ill wind that blows no minds."
-- Malaclypse the Younger
"It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf."
-- H. L. Mencken
Former Vice President Dick Cheney was given a multi-million contract to write a book about his political career. According to Cheney's media hype, the book, called In My Time, will have "heads exploding all over Washington." The Darth Vader of the Bush administration offers no apologies and feels no remorse. But peace activists around the country are stealthily gearing up to visit bookstores [1], grab a stack of books, and deposit them where they belong—the Crime Section.
Here are ten of Cheney's many offenses to inspire you to move Cheney's book, and to insert these bookmarks [2] explaining why the author of In My Time should be "doin' time."
1. Cheney lied; Iraqis and U.S. soldiers died. As Vice President, Cheney lied about (nonexistent) weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein's (nonexistent) ties to the 9/11 attack as a way to justify a war with a country that never attacked us. Thanks to Cheney and company, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and over 4,000 American soldiers perished in a war that should never have been fought.
2. Committing War Crimes in Iraq. During the course of the Iraq war, the Bush/Cheney administration violated the Geneva Conventions by targeting civilians, journalists, hospitals, and ambulances, and using illegal weapons, including white phosphorous, depleted uranium, and a new type of napalm.
3. War profiteering. U.S. taxpayers shelled out about three trillion dollars for the Bush/Cheney wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—a major factor in our nation's present economic meltdown. But Cheney and his cronies at Halliburton made out like bandits, getting billions in contracts for everything from feeding troops in Iraq to constructing the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan to building the infamous Guantanamo prison. Cheney was CEO of Halliburton from 1995-2000, leaving for the VP position with a $20 million retirement package, plus millions in stock options and deferred salary. Before the Iraq War began, Halliburton was 19th on the U.S. Army's list of top contractors; with Cheney's help, by 2003 it was number one—increasing the value of Cheney's stocks by over 3,000%.
4. Violating basic rights. Cheney shares responsibility for holding thousands of prisoners without charges and without the fundamental right to the writ of habeas corpus, and for keeping prisoners hidden from the International Committee of the Red Cross. He sanctioned kidnapping people and simply rendering them to secret overseas prisons. His authorization of the arbitrary detention of Americans, legal residents, and non-Americans--without due process, without charges, and without access to counsel--was in gross violation of U.S. and international law. A fan of indefinite detention in Guantanamo, Cheney writes in his book that he has been "happy to note" that President Obama failed to honor his pledge to close the Guantánamo prison.
5. Advocating torture. Cheney was a prime mover behind the Bush administration's decision to violate the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture and to break with decades of past practice by the U.S. military by supporting "enhanced interrogation techniques." This led to hundreds of documented cases in Iraq and Afghanistan of abuse, torture and homicide. The torture included the practice known as "water-boarding," a form of simulated drowning. After World War II, Japanese soldiers were tried and convicted [3] of war crimes in US courts for water-boarding. The sanctioning of abuses from the top trickled down, as the whole world saw in the photos from Abu Ghraib, becoming a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda and sullying the reputation of our nation.
6. Trying to prolong the Afghan war. Not content with the damage he caused as VP, Cheney continues to encourage more grist for the war machine. In his book he criticizes [4] President Obama's decision to withdraw, by September 2012, the 33,000 additional troops Obama sent to Afghanistan in 2009. He has also cautioned Obama not to pull out all the troops from Afghanistan at the planned date of 2014. "I don't think we need to run for the exits," he told [5] Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace.
7. Abusing executive privilege: Cheney used executive privilege to refuse to comply with over a dozen Congressional subpoenas related to improper firing of Federal attorneys, torture, election violations and exposing—for political retribution--the identity of Valerie Plame, a covert CIA operative working on sensitive WMD proliferation.
8. Spying on us. Cheney was the mastermind behind the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program that spied on thousands, perhaps millions of American citizens on American soil. This massive government interference with personal phone calls and emails was in violation of FISA (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), the Federal Telecommunications Act, and 4th Amendment of the Constitution.
9. Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran. When Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, the company skirted the law against investing in Iran by using a phony offshore subsidiary. Once VP, however, Cheney advocated bombing Iran. "I was probably a bigger advocate of military action than any of my colleagues," Cheney said [6] in response to questions about whether the Bush administration should have launched a pre-emptive attack on Iran's nuclear facilities prior to handing over the White House to Barack Obama. Cheney thinks Obama is too soft on Iran, and has said that the only way for diplomacy with Iran to work is if Obama also threatens to bomb [7] the country. Negotiations are "bound to fail unless we are perceived as very credible" in threatening military action against Iran, he said. It seems that wars with Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, plus drone attacks in Pakistan and Yemen, are not enough to satisfy Cheney's war addiction. But wait, there's more….
10. Favored bombing Syria—and North Korea—instead of negotiating. One of the key anecdotes in Cheney's memoir is his recollection of a session with the National Security Council in 2007, when he advised Bush to bomb a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor site. "After I finished," he writes, "the president asked, 'Does anyone here agree with the vice president?' Not a single hand went up around the room." Luckily, Cheney's advice was dismissed in favor of a diplomatic approach (although the Israelis bombed the site in September 2007). As for North Korea, in his book, Cheney calls former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice naive [8] for trying to forge a nuclear weapons agreement with North Korea.
Enough? Since President Obama is not interested in holding Cheney accountable, the least we can do is show our disgust by dumping his books in the Crime section and inserting this bookmark [9]. And if you happen to be lucky and catch one of Cheney's book signings, bring along a pair of handcuffs.Thoughts on Driving under the influence
As you know some of us have had brushes with the authorities on our way home in recent months. Well, I for one have done something about it. The other night I was out for a dinner and a few drinks with some friends. So, after having far too much vino, and knowing full well I was wasted, I did something I've never done before. I took a bus home. I arrived home safely and without incident, which was a real surprise, as I have never driven a bus before.