Just a quick...

...rant before I go to work. Condi just told Katie Couric that freedom is on the march. Twice. She said it twice! She also talked about Muslim extremism in "that region" and how that really hit home on 9/11. Shit, woman, do you ever fucking learn? People aren't buying it anymore. Check Fucky McFucker's approval ratings. With any luck, he'll be on the march soon, along with the rest of you clowns.

Oh, and thanks, assholes. Now I'm going to be late.

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Rant: Stupid fucking wingnuts

Apologies for the lame-ass title, but I'm pissed.

Why does this not surprise me?

A Pentagon investigation into complaints that evangelical Christians at the Air Force Academy have bullied Jews and cadets of other faiths found no overt discrimination, but "certainly insensitivity," military officials said Wednesday.

Jewish cadets are called Christ-killers and told the Holocaust is revenge for Jesus' death, and that's not considered discrimination? Not to mention the proseletyzing.

My God, what is happening to us? Between shit like this and faith-based initiatives and fucking ugly concrete slabs in courthouses and people kvetching about God being removed from public life, we are...oh fuck, I don't know what we are. I know too many of us are ignorant, fearful, narrow-minded bigots. I know I'm weary. I mean, goddammit, dismissing this kind of hate speech as mere insensitivity is way beyond insensitive. Why must we continue to institutionalize racism and bigotry?

And the next person who whines about Christian persecution is going to get a fucking earful from me. Yes, real persecution exists, but not in this country - not for Christians. You fundies have fucking everything, but that still isn't enough. You want to take over public television, you want to impose your moronic "values" on everyone, you want to protect the sanctity of marriage -- all the while asserting your dominion over animals.

Finally, and this is a minor point, you have bad taste. You suck. Especially you abstinence-only types. I hear you suck a lot.

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Funny

J is the one of the funniest people I know, and I don't say that just because she's my daughter. Much of what she says I can't repeat - not that it's profane, but it is disgusting.

Some things, though, are worth repeating. Tonight J was watching the Katie Couric interview with runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks and pretty much thinking the whole thing was stupid. Then she tells me that the next time she fakes her own kidnapping, she's going to tell the police that some upper middle class white bitches took her. You know, to even things out a bit.

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In case you missed Dana Milbank's screed...

...about the Downing Street Memo, here it is. As a columnist, Milbank is free to be as biased as he wishes, but this is over the top:

In the Capitol basement yesterday, long-suffering House Democrats took a trip to the land of make-believe.

They pretended a small conference room was the Judiciary Committee hearing room, draping white linens over folding tables to make them look like witness tables and bringing in cardboard name tags and extra flags to make the whole thing look official.

In an opinion piece, it's helpful to present the other side, to avoid appearing completely desperate and Coulteresque. No such luck here. More hyperbole - and shitty writing - follows.

John Conyers is a much better writer. This is his very pointed and dignified repsonse.

And here is the response from the Washington Post ombudsman.

Here's Milbank's view: "While you have been within your rights as ombudsman over the past five years to attempt to excise any trace of colorful or provocative writing from the Post, you are out of bounds in asserting that a columnist cannot identify as 'wingnuts' a group whose followers have long been harassing this and other reporters and their families with hateful, obscene and sometimes anti-Semitic speech." (Me: Shit, what an asshole.)

I have a different view. The July 23 memo is important because it is an official document produced at the highest level of government of the most important U.S. ally. Its authenticity has not been disputed. Whatever some people said or wrote three years ago, there has never been -- except for this memo -- any official, authoritative claim or confirmation that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." Blair denied that at the news conference. But could the secret minutes of such a meeting be wrong? Maybe there's a different interpretation, or maybe "fixed" means something different in British-speak.

Or maybe Blair could produce the former intelligence chief, and the note-taker, for a news conference or open parliamentary session and let reporters or legislators ask for an elaboration on the assessments in the memo.

Thanks, WaPo ombudsman, for showing us Milbank's dickiness and for stating that the Downing Street Memo is authentic. I just have one minor objection. "Fixed" means there what it means here.

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It depends upon what the meaning of the word "fixed" means

If the Repubs can't deny the authenticity of the Downing Street Memo - and they can't*- they will surely pick it apart. They've already started, of course, with their moronic parsing of the word "fixed." That's complete bullshit, as this Media Matters article shows. Also pretty damned ironic, given the right's mocking of Clinton and "is." Oh, how quickly and willfully they forget.

*If any rabid right-wingers get up in your grill about the DSM's authenticity, here is some ammo, courtesy of Shakespeare's Sister.

MSNBC
[W]ar critics have come up with seven more memos, verified by NBC News.

Editor & Publisher
That memo and other internal British government documents were originally obtained by Michael Smith, who writes for the London Sunday Times, Pincus notes. Excerpts were made available to The Washington Post, and the material was confirmed as authentic by British sources. 

Washington Post
WashingtonPost.com staff writer Jefferson Morley, who questions (rather ridiculously) whether Dearlove's assessment of his meeting was "accurate," still notes:

There is no dispute about the authenticity of the Downing Street memo.

CNN
British officials did not dispute the document's authenticity...

NY Times
Officials at the British Foreign Office in London, while insisting on anonymity, said in response to queries from The New York Times that they would not dispute the authenticity of the document.

Times
The Times notes that when directly asked about it at their joint press conference, neither Bush nor Blair disputed the original leaked memo's authenticity, and additionally points out the USA Today, who hadn't previously covered the memo because they couldn't obtain independent verification, reported on it once Bush and Blair were given the opportunity to repudiate it and did not.

And Kevin Drum's got some more here.

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Action alert

I found this on we move to canada. It makes me sick. A gay teenager in Tennessee has been sent to one of those residential treatment centers that promises to "cure" him of his homsexuality. The facility, Love in Action, has a long list of ridiculous rules, but most troubling is the idea that they can tell this kid that he is a bad person, simply for being who he is.

Here is an example of Love in Action's stupidity:

There is no such creation as a "gay" or "homosexual" person.  There is only homosexual attraction and behavior; accordingly, there can be no change from a sexual identity that never existed in the first place. 

More fundie logic. It doesn't exist if I say it doesn't. That's it. Amen. Oh yeah, Satan's involved, too. But isn't he always? The little devil. I'm not linking to these fuckers, so I'll quote from their site:

Satan, working behind the secenes, has succeeded in redefining the meaning of key words, and therefore we only refinforce and strengthen a false identity by calling individuals by a name that does not apply.

OMFG, that is fucking brilliant. They don't even know how true that is, only the "key words" are "compassionate conservatism" and "personal responsibility," among many others. Evil is different things to different people, but I sure as hell know it when I see it. And this is it.

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DSM and Iraq war news

From a BBC news story, posted on Commom Dreams:

With the release of the second memo, blogs can take some credit in raising the profile of the story in the US media.

(and)

Based on bloggers linking to the Times, the story has rarely left the [Technorati] top five for much of the last month and a half.

There's much work to be done still, but we should feel proud of what we've been able to accomplish so far. Next step? Getting the word out about this.

American officials lied to British ministers over the use of "internationally reviled" napalm-type firebombs in Iraq.

We fire-bombed Iraqi civilians with napalm and then lied to our allies about doing so. Because this administration is hell-bent on keeping the truth from US citizens and because the mainstream media, for the most part, have been complicit in ignoring the facts, we have to expose the lies and corruption ourselves. So Bush and company continue to talk about the success of this war on terror and the sad but necessary collateral damage? And they blather on about supporting the troops and spin patriotic yarns about heros like Pat Tillman? Fine, that's business as usual for these guys. We must meet every one of their lies with facts.

Unfortunately, too many Americans are still buying into the lies, but if they are exposed to the truth, all but the most die-hard neocon and freeper types will eventually wake up. The truth is that Pat Tillman was killed by his own troops and that his family is furious about the administration's attempt to use his death to bolster support for the war and give people a "feel-good" story. The truth is that "collateral damage" is one of the biggest lies of any war. These people are not collateral; they are children and doctors and clerks and parents - in other words, they are people like us. They hurt and they bleed and they suffer and die needlessly. The truth is that our country, in our name, drops napalm bombs on innocent people, burning and melting their flesh.

So many of us knew of the lies that led us to war, and now, with the release of the Downing Street Memo, we have proof. We must keep fighting, blogging, contacting our Congressional representatives and doing whatever we can to get the word out, like Anthony Wade does in this excellent editorial.

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Priorities

I'm watching the DSM hearing again and thought I'd see what cable news is up to. Let's see. Larry King is chatting with Shania Twain, Sean Hannity is making ominous noises about Dick Durbin getting in trouble for speaking honestly, and Tucker Carlson is talking about the hottest senators. Yep, CNN, MSNBC and Fox are still as irrelevant and shallow as ever. Just thought I'd check.

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Downing Street Memo hearing

I was able to hear quite a bit of the hearing today on Pacifica Radio. Not nearly as much as I'd have liked - people kept interrupting me and wanting me to work. But I was able to see some of it on C-SPAN when I got home, and damned if they weren't meeting in a fucking basement!

"They tried to shut us out," [John] Conyers said after the hearing. "They tried to cut us off. They put us in a tiny room. The significance shouldn't be lost on anybody."

As if this wasn't insulting and inconvenient enough, the House scheduled 11 votes and a major appropriations hearing for the same time. You know what, though? Fuck 'em. We will be heard. If the MSM choose to sit around with their thumbs up their butts, so be it. I tend to think they won't - this is too big - but if they don't give this story the attention it deserves, we in the blogosphere will.

Allow me to be a little hopeful for a moment and think this might be the beginning of the end. I know this is just the start of a long and difficult process and that much work needs to be done, but the word "impeachment" came up several times during the meeting. O, glorious, beautiful, hopeful word! And god/dess bless the man who said something about the Republicans "taking to the mattresses." I'll post the complete quote once I find the transcript, but in the meantime, I'll just enjoy the gangster/thug comparison.

Here are some related links.

Shakespeare's Sister did a great job live-blogging the proceedings.

C-SPAN now has a link to the DSM on their home page and a video of the meeting. If you weren't able to listen or watch, you'll have another chance, as C-SPAN is re-airing the meeting tomorrow night at 8 p.m. EST.

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Bigots, cowards

I'd really like to hear the excuses these senators dredge up for not signing the anti-lynching resolution. I forgot? I had a headache? I need to appease the racists in my district? Whatever the reason, it's not good enough.

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Downing Street Memo action alert

Please see this alert from the Portland Independent Media Center and ask C-SPAN to televise tomorrow's DSM hearings. I know, I know, it's short notice, but I just found this today. I assumed they would be televised.

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Path of War timeline

(Courtesy of Shakespeare's Sister)

See this timeline from Raw Story. Read the whole thing, but if you like, first check out some of the most damning (IMO) evidence that the Iraq war was planned years ago.

January 26, 1998
The Project for a New American Century urges President Clinton to oust Saddam Hussein. Among the eighteen signers are Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and John Bolton.

December 1999
Bush surprises veteran political chroniclers with his blunt pronouncements about Saddam at a six-way New Hampshire primary event: “It was a gaffe-free evening for the rookie front-runner, till he was asked about Saddam’s weapons stash,” a Boston Globe reporter penned. ‘I’d take ‘em out,’ [Bush] grinned cavalierly, ‘take out the weapons of mass destruction…I’m surprised he’s still there,” said Bush.

January 2001
From the moment he took office, Bush made noises about "finishing the job his father started." (Time Magazine)

“From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” [Paul] O’Neill said. ”

Powell also said Hussein, “is not going to be around in a few years time.”

Vice President Dick Cheney, who was defense secretary during the war against Iraq, has also suggested a Bush administration might “have to take military action to forcibly remove Saddam from power,” as has current Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Actually, it's all damning. At this rate, I could end up copying and pasting the whole thing. Those of us who've been against this war from the beginning won't be surprised by any of these revelations (nor will anyone who has been to the PNAC site), but damn, this sure looks damning when you see the whole damned thing laid out. Damn them.

You can also read the latest leaked memos here.

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Downing Street Memo

Look what the ombudsperson at the StarTribune has to say about the DSM. (Found in the comments section of the Washington Note, which contains a link to DowningStreetMemo.com.)

The effort it has taken locally to get a string of politically potent stories to Star Tribune readers before they're old news online reveals a rusty news industry infrastructure that still hasn't absorbed the Internet into its newsgathering habits. The wire services, and the national newspapers that feed them, need to log in and begin approaching the Internet with the passion of a foreign correspondent dispatched to his first assignment in an exotic locale.

Regional newspaper editors can have a big impact by demanding quicker response from wire services to stories erupting online and by following McGrath's lead in assigning local reporters to the story if that's what it takes to get it into the paper.

Our readers clearly will accept no less. Good for them.

And good for reader's rep Kate Parry!

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Sickness

I haven't written much lately - been sick. My neck and shoulders have been aching the last couple of weeks, which I attributed to Bush-related stress, but it turns out I had something like the flu. When I began feeling feverish a few days ago, I worried, because neck pain and fevers are a bad combination, but I quickly ruled out meningitis (thanks, WebMD!).

I am not a fun sick person, nor am I terribly cute while in the throes of a raging fever. Oh, to be a delicate, wilting, langourous flower of infirmity, instead of a groaning, sweaty beast with tangled hair and sunken eyes.

I'm feeling much better now, but I'm convinced some of the pain was Bushopathic. I hold my shoulders abnormally high, and I can't decide if this is a shrug of resignation and despair, or an attempt to cover my ears and block out the noise of this insane regime. The fever broke, but I'm still a little achy.

So, what is the point of my complaining? Well, I am not the only one suffering from Bushy malaise. I'm trying to find stats on this, and if I do, I will post them. Of course, my first concern is for the innocent lives that have been destroyed by this pointless war, but I also worry about the heart and soul of our country. I know that my fellow bloggers are doing everything they can to fight the madness, and sometimes a good purge is necessary before continuing that work.

Are you made queasy by Bush's smirking, smug mugging for the camera? Bloated by a steady diet of lies and corruption? Choking on the ignorance and willful stupidity of the religious right? Come to Crabby's Virtual Vomitorium and rid yourself of toxic waste. I'll even hold your hair for you - after I christen the tub.

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Downing Street Memo/Minutes

This article on the Editor and Publisher site explains USA Today's decision to ignore the Downing Street Memo until yesterday.

Wrote reporter Mark Memmott in the USA Today article's final paragraph: "USA Today chose not to publish anything about the memo before today for several reasons, says Jim Cox, the newspaper's senior assignment editor for foreign news. 'We could not obtain the memo or a copy of it from a reliable source,' Cox says. 'There was no explicit confirmation of its authenticity from (Blair's office). And it was disclosed four days before the British elections, raising concerns about the timing.'"

The memo has attracted a great deal of media attention in Britain, but it has gotten much less play in the United States.

Wrote Memmott: "The Sunday Times' May 1 memo story, which broke just four days before Britain's national elections, caused a sensation in Europe. American media reacted more cautiously. The New York Times wrote about the memo May 2, but didn't mention until its 15th paragraph that the memo stated U.S. officials had 'fixed' intelligence and facts.

I can see the need for caution and understand concerns about timing. Might have been nice if these same media outlets had been equally skeptical of the administration before we pre-emptively and needlessly attacked Iraq. And it would have been swell if they'd maybe questioned the timing of those terror alerts.

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More reasons to love Bill Moyers

From his speech at Take Back America 2005:

---

Let me tell you something about these people ("the point of view of the fish," remember?)

They don't ask to get rich.

They want a job that pays a living wage.

They want social security to be there in their old age, for their own sake and so their kids won't be burdened with their care.

They want a simple, comprehensive health care system.

They want their livelihoods and the fate of their communities to be taken into account as the elites in government and corporations measure profits, economic growth and the GDP.

What's important in this story is not only that journalism still matters - that reporting from the ground up can strike a nerve in the heart of the imperium. What's important is that you see what as citizens you are up against. These guys play for keep. They mean to control the story. And if they can they will silence or discredit anyone who dissents from the official view of reality.

A profound transformation is occurring in America and those responsible for it don't want you to connect the dots. We are experiencing what has been described as a "fanatical drive to dismantle the political institutions, the legal and statutory canons, and the intellectual and cultural frameworks that have shaped public responsibility for social harms arising from the excesses of private power." From public land to water and other natural resources, from media with their broadcast and digital spectrums to scientific discoveries and medical breakthroughs, a broad range of America's public resources is being shifted to the control of elites and the benefit of the privileged. It all seems so clear now that we wonder how we could have ignored the warning signs at the time. Back in the early 1970s President Nixon's Attorney General, John Mitchell, predicted that "this country is going to go so far to the right that you won't recognize it." A wealthy right-winger of the time, William Simon, President Nixon's Secretary of the Treasury, wrote a polemic declaring that "funds generated by business…must rush by the multimillions" to conservative causes. Said Business Week, bluntly: "Some people will obviously have to do with less…It will be a bitter pill for many Americans to swallow the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more.

We've seen the strategy play out for years now: to cut workforces and wages, scour the globe in search of cheap labor, trash the social contract and the safety net meant to protect people from hardships beyond their control, make it hard for ordinary citizens to gain redress for the malfeasance and malpractice of corporations, and diminish the ability of government to check and balance "the animal spirits" of economic warfare where the winner takes all. Streams of money flowed into think tanks to shape the agenda, media to promote it, and a political machine to achieve it. What has happened to working Americans is not the result of Adam Smith's benign and invisible hand but the direct consequence of corporate money, ideological propaganda, a partisan political religion, and a string of political decisions favoring the interests of wealthy elites who bought the political system right out from under us."

Wade in! Go home and tell the truth to your neighbors and fight the corruption of the system. But it's not enough just to say how bad the others are. You owe your opponents the compliment of a good argument. Come up with fresh ideas to make capitalism work for all. Ask entrepreneurs to join you - they know how to make things happen. Show us a new vision of globalization with a conscience. Stand up for working people and people in the middle and people who can't stand on their own. Be not cowed, intimidated, or frightened - you may be on the losing side of the moment, as the early progressives were, but you're on the winning side of history. And have some fun when you fight - Americans are more likely to join the party that enjoys a party . Come to think of it, go out and argue that working people should have more time off from the endless hours of tedious work that devours the soul and the long commutes that devastate families and communities.

---

Full transcript here.

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A little hope

I'm reading the best book: The Impossible Will Take a Little While. It's a collection of essays about hope, about keeping the faith in trying times, and about how even small gestures can have great impact.

In the introduction, editor Paul Loeb tells the story of a friend who took her children to a vigil to protest nuclear testing. In the pouring rain, Lisa stood with about one hundred other women in front of the White House, feeling dejected by the small turnout. Lisa attended a much larger rally a few years later, where Dr. Spock spoke of what inspired him to get involved with this issue. He had been in D.C. at the same time that Lisa was at her vigil and saw the group standing in the rain. "I thought that if those women were out there," he said, "their cause must be really important."

I really needed this story. It expresses ideas that are close to my heart and that I too often forget. We rally, protest, write, blog, etc. in the hope that we will make the world a better place, but we can't always be sure of the outcome. But the gesture, whether dramatic or tiny, matters.

Before our country preemptively and needlessly attacked Iraq, millions of us all over the world gathered to say "Not in our name." For this, we were dismissed as "focus groups." We didn't succeed in preventing the war, of course, and if you look at the pictures from that day, you'll see that many of us look like little dots. I was one of those dots, and while I knew that we wouldn't change Bush's mind, I also knew that we had to be there. I needed to be there: to say "no," to add my face and voice to the millions of other focus group dots, to tell the world that not all Americans were bloodthirsty imbeciles, to do anything I could to resist the madness. And who knows? Maybe, collectively, we inspired a future Dr. Spock, or a Nelson Mandela, or maybe we just changed a few minds.

This is a wonderful, inspiring collection. Here are some other excerpts that I particularly like:

---

"When it is genuine, when it is born of the need to speak, no one can stop the human voice. When denied a mouth, it speaks with the hands or the eyes, or the pores, or anything at all. Because every single one of us has something to say to the others, something that deserves to be celebrated or forgiven by others."

Eduardo Galeano, from The Book of Embraces

"But to feel the affection that comes from those we do not know, from those unknown to us, who are watching over our sleep and our solitude, over our dangers and our weaknesses -- that is something still greater and more beautiful because it widens out the boundaries of our being, and unites all living things."

Pablo Neruda, from Neruda and Vallejo

"I do not believe the wicked always win. I believe our despair is a lie we are telling ourselves. In many other periods of history, people, ordinary citizens, routinely set aside hours, days, time in their lives for doing the work of politics, some of which is glam and revolutionary and some of which is dull and tedious and not especially pure -- and the world changed because of the work they did. That's what we're starting now."

Tony Kushner, adapted from talks at Chicago's Columbia College and New York's Cooper Union

Jesus' Third Way

Assert your own humanity and dignity as a person.
Meet force with ridicule or humor. (Good one!)
Shame the oppressor into repentance.
Deprive the oppressor of a situation where force is effective.
Be willing to undergo the penalty of breaking unjust laws.

(Take that fundies!)

Walter Wink, from Jesus and Nonviolence: The Third Way

"Sometimes only untamed irreverence can heal our bodies or souls." (Damned right!)

Paul Loeb, from the introduction to the chapter "The Flight of Our Dreams"

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Join the BBA

I did. So have Alicia and ae. I'm sure a lot of us have. I know L-girl has posted about both the Downing Street minutes and the petition and letter from John Conyers.

Started by the amazing Shakespeare's Sister, the alliance is a group of nearly 300 (and growing rapidly!) bloggers who are committed to getting the word out about the DS minutes. Why is she amazing? She started this alliance a week ago, for one. One week and she has scads of people signed up. Oh yeah, and her blog kicks ass, too.

So, what can we do?

• Read the minutes.


• Sign the letter from John Conyers.
  


• If you haven't already done so, join the BBA.
  


• Check out Shakespeare's Sister for updates and actions you can take.
  


• Watch the After Downing Street people on C-Span tomorrow morning.
  


• Blogroll the BBA and After Downing Street.

Tell your friends. Tell your coworkers. Tell your family. Tell that nice guy at the coffee shop. Persist. Know that we're in this together and that there is always hope. If you're religious, pray for the rest of the country to wake up from their long nap. It's been sweet dreams for too many, for too long - dreams of a happy place with family values and a tidy little war that's saving the world from evildoers and WMDs. Perhaps tap the dreamers lightly on their foreheads and say, "Wake up, sleepyheads. Rise and shine. Come on, it's been long enough. OK, this is getting ridiculous. WAKE THE FUCK UP!"

And for goodness sake, pray for impeachment. Pray for a war crimes trial. If you're not religious, hope and wish fervently for awakenings and impeachments and trials.

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UN anniversary

It's just one big fuck you after another from this administration. First, Bush pushes the moustachioed one on us, and now this. You'd think if Bolton was so interested in being our UN ambassador, he'd have the decency to at least make an appearance at one of the many 60th anniversary celebrations, even if it does mean traveling to the belly of the beast. But no, neither he nor W has bothered to RSVP. I bet they won't even send mindflowers.

Speaking of the UN, I saw the coolest thing a couple of weeks ago: a table used for the signing of the UN Charter in 1945. I was visiting my friend Sophie in Northern California, and we went to this museum, which has a lot of interesting stuff from the Gold Rush days. But that table was the best. On top are green tiles painted with scenes of the four seasons, and the sides are covered with Shakespearean verse. It was so pretty that I had to touch it. And I was delighted by the serendipity - to just stumble on it in a small city museum. I love surprises like that. It's odd, though, that I can't find any mention of it online. I'm a decent googler and I tried every possible combination of search terms, but came up with nothing. Sophie says I can't get any info about it online because it's a fake. She says the museum got it from Pottery Barn, but I'm sure it's for real.

As enchanted as I was by the table, I was also sad to think that if this madministration gets it way, everything associated with the UN will be relegated to small museums all over the country, or perhaps sold on eBay. And if The 'Stache has his way, the UN building (of "non-existent UN" fame) will be minus a few stories, and perhaps some future serendipity lover will stumble upon it, just as George and Nova happened upon the Statue of Liberty.

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