Cyril Neville says no to N'awlins

Looks like the Nevilles will opt out of "New" New Orleans unless the rebuilding includes more black ownership.

Cyril Neville says no to N'awlins: "Entertainment Archive

Cyril Neville says no to N'awlins

December 15, 2005

BY DAVE HOEKSTRA Staff Reporter


During a heartfelt conversation before embarking on the train journey, Neville explained he and his wife, Gaynielle, have bought a home in Austin, Texas..

'Would I go back to live?' Neville asked. 'There's nothing there. And the situation for musicians was a joke. People thought there was a New Orleans music scene -- there wasn't. You worked two times a year: Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest. The only musicians I knew who made a living playing music in New Orleans were Kermit Ruffins and Pete Fountain. Everyone else had to have a day job or go on tour. I have worked more in two months in Austin than I worked in two years in New Orleans..........................

'I am not a fish,' he said. 'I cannot live under 6 feet of water. In the 9th Ward and Gentilly they are going to do mass buyouts, bulldoze everything and make it green space. In my estimation, those are golf courses and other places where African-American people won't be welcome. There's nothing wrong with my house except that water destroyed everything we had in it. The foundation is fine. The house is still there. Same thing with our neighbors. So what are they talking bulldozing?".....................

"People are talking to me, but some of the people I know went through much more than I did. There are 3,000 children missing in New Orleans. [The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children places the figure at 1,300.] Hundreds of bodies are waiting to be identified. The people of New Orleans have been scattered to the four winds. Their lives were determined by people in Washington and Baton Rouge before the storm hit. Without African Americans having ownership, economic equity and the same type of things the French Quarter gets -- like tax cuts -- the city will never be the same. The 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th Wards should have their own tourist commission. Build our own hotels and restaurants in those areas. The key is ownership. Then I would think about going back and living there. But we're still practicing American democracy. How can we ever bring it to somebody else?"

It is a good read. He is currently on tour with Arlo Guthrie. A twelve day Amtrack journey from Chicago to New Orleans, to raise money for Katrina victims.

Married women lose the right to vote on Arizona!

Isn't this against the 19 Amendment or something?

Eligible to Vote in Arizona? Prove It - Los Angeles Times: "Proposition 200, which voters approved last year, requires Arizonans to prove U.S. citizenship to register to vote and to show a photo ID at the polls.

The law put this border state at the edge of a nationwide push to tighten screening at the polls: fifteen states now require ID at polling places, but no other state requires documentation of citizenship in order to register.

It's a movement that advocates say is long overdue to prevent election fraud, but which critics say will decrease voter turnout and has already disenfranchised thousands of Arizona voters.

In Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, more than 10,000 people trying to register have been rejected for being unable to prove their citizenship. Yvonne Reed, a spokeswoman for the recorder's office, said Friday that most probably are U.S. citizens whose married names differ from their birth certificates or who have lost documentation.

Reed said she hoped the number of rejected voters would shrink as election officials explained the new requirements. But, she said, 'there will be an amount of people who we will not be able to get on the rolls because of not being able to find the right documents or just losing interest.'"

Actually since married women are much more likely to vote republican than unmarried women, it would be poetic if this disenfranchises a bunch of republican women.

Why the Dems Need James Carville to Take a Long, Long Vacation

Hey Democrats! Now that we know Matalin is working for Cheney, please don't take campaign advise from this man!

Why the Dems Need James Carville to Take a Long, Long Vacation:
That's all in the past. Now, as one of Dick Cheney's most trusted first-term advisors, one of eight founding members of the White House Iraq Group, a witness in front of the Plamegate grand jury, and a close friend of Scooter Libby ("The man you pray you get seated next to at a dinner party," she recently cooed), Matalin is a central player in all this.


"And it has hopelessly handcuffed Carville. Check out this exchange from his appearance on The Situation Room this week:

BLITZER: Should the vice president hold a news conference or grant an interview and answer the tough questions that are being asked out there?

CARVILLE: I've got a better idea. Why doesn't the president get out and have one? Harry Truman didn't say the buck stops with the Vice President. The buck stops with the President.

[snip]

I think the first step is not the Vice President -- [it's] the President of the United States standing up, answering to the American people, answering people's questions... The Vice nothing. There aren't no Vices around here. There's one man in charge of this country and that is George W. Bush."

"The Vice nothing"? "There are no Vices around here"? The buck doesn't stop with the Vice President? Are you kidding me? The Vice President's office is Ground Zero on Plamegate -- and on the Bush administration's push for war. It was Cheney who regularly stormed over to the CIA, knocking heads and twisting arms to get the intel he wanted. It was Cheney who set the Plamegate ball rolling by demanding info on the bogus claims of a Niger/Iraq uranium connection. It was Cheney who led the media charge in selling the war with his unwavering claims that Saddam had the ability to "subject the United States...to nuclear blackmail." It was Cheney who helped foster the bogus impression that there was an al-Qaeda/Saddam connection -- continuing to tout the "Atta met with Saddam's reps in Prague" story long after it had been shot down by the FBI. It was Cheney's office that opened its arms to Chalabi after the CIA soured on him. It was "Cheney's Cheney," Scooter Libby, who wrote the original draft of Colin Powell's shameful UN speech. And it was Cheney's office that took the lead in the administration's efforts to discredit Joe Wilson and his wife.

Memo to Carville: If you can't talk about Dick Cheney, then you can't talk about Plamegate. Or about the war -- and the lies and deceptions the administration used to sell it to the American people. And if you can't talk about Plamegate and the war, you should not be talking at all from the Democratic side of the aisle.

Arrianna piles on with this quote!

I think Democrats have a great opportunity to show that they're going to stand up for the interests of working people, going to stand up for the interests of middle-class people and get away from the machine gun lobby and the anti-Family Medical Leave and all of these other decisions here.

Were in the middle of the Plame investigation, the President has a 35% approval rating and he still wants to focus on domestic issues. Come on? He is clearly too compromised to advise Democrats on this matter. Frankly he was during the Kerry campaign as well.

Smoking Gun on Manipulation of Iraq Intelligence? 'NY Times' Cites New Document

The New York Times Drops a Bomb Shell

Smoking Gun on Manipulation of Iraq Intelligence? 'NY Times' Cites New Document: "Tomorrow, in its print edition, The New York Times starts to answer the question, with reporter Douglas Jehl disclosing the contents of a newly declassified memo apparently passed to him by Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

It shows that an al-Qaeda official held by the Americans was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the basis for its claims that Iraq trained al-Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to this Defense Intelligence Agency document from February 2002.

It declared that it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, 'was intentionally misleading the debriefers' in making claims about Iraqi support for al-Qaeda's work with illicit weapons, Jehl reports.

“The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi's credibility,” Jehl writes. “Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi's information as ‘credible’ evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons."

We also have more evidence Democrats are finally starting to move on Bush!

Broadcasting & Cable: The Business of Television

Broadcasting & Cable: The Business of Television: "The Corporation for Public Broadcasting Board of Directors said Thursday that embattled former board chairman Ken Tomlinson has resigned.

The board has been reviewing a CPB Inspector General's report--called for by a pair of congressmen--on Tomlinson's relationship with the board stemming from Tomlinson's attempts to add more conservative programming.

The board said in a statement: '[F]ormer chairman Kenneth Y. Tomlinson has resigned from the CPB board. The board does not believe that Mr. Tomlinson acted maliciously or with any intent to harm CPB or public broadcasting, and the board recognizes that Mr. Tomlinson strongly disputes the findings in the soon-to-be-released Inspector General’s report.

'The board expresses its disappointment in the performance of former key staff whose responsibility it was to advise the board and its members.

'Nonetheless, both the board and Mr. Tomlinson believe it is in the best interests of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that he no longer remain on the board."

Score one for Bill Moyers and Link TV. They have been broadcasting the speech Bill Moyers gave in May to the "National Conference on Media Reform" in St Louis.

Exerpt of speech

We didn’t know this a year ago. We just learned it from The New York Times two weeks ago that last year Mr. Tomlinson had spend ten thousand dollars to hire a contractor who would watch my show and report on political bias. That’s right. He spent ten thousand dollars of your money to hire a guy to watch “NOW” to find out who my guests were and what my stories were. Ten thousand dollars. Gee, Ken, for two dollars and fifty cents a week, you could pick up a copy of TV Guide on the newsstand. A subscription is even cheaper, and I would have sent you a coupon that can save you up to sixty-two percent. Or, for that matter, Ken, all you had to do was watch the show. You could have made it easier with a double Jim Beam, your favorite. Or you could -- mine, too. We have some things in common. Or you could go online, where the listings are posted. Hell, Ken, you could have called me collect, and I would have told you who we were having on the show.

[break]

The public paid for that study, but Ken Tomlinson acts as if he owns it. Let’s see it. You can watch my bias. You can watch my mistakes. You can watch everything I do right there on the air. We have the funders listed, everything is there, it’s all listed. But he won’t do it. In a May 10th op-ed piece in Reverend Moon’s conservative Washington Times, Ken Tomlinson maintained he had not released the findings because public broadcasting is such a delicate institution he did not want to, (quote), “damage public broadcasting’s image with controversy.” Where I come from in Texas, we shovel that kind of stuff every day.

As we learned this week, that’s not the only news Mr. Tomlinson tried to keep to himself. As Dr. Wilson indicated, and as reported by Jeff Chester’s Center for Digital Democracy, which the Human Center for Media and Democracy also support, there were two public opinion surveys commissioned by CPB, but not released to the media, not even to PBS and NPR. According to a source who talked to Salon.com, the first results were too good and Tomlinson didn’t believe them. After the Iraq war, the board commissioned another round of polling, and they thought they’d get worse results, but they didn’t.

This is the man, by the way, who was running the Voice of America back in 1984 when a fanatic named Charlie Wick was politicizing the United States Information Agency of which Voice of America was a part. It turned out there was a blacklist of people who had been removed from the list of prominent Americans sent abroad to lecture on behalf of America and the USIA. What’s more, it was discovered that evidence as to how those people were chosen to be on the blacklist, more than seven hundred documents, had been shredded. Among those on the blacklist of journalists, writers, scholars and politicians were dangerous left wing subversives like Walter Cronkite, James Baldwin, Gary Hart, Ralph Nader, Ben Bradley, Coretta Scott King and David Brinkley.

They did it as part of their fundraising drive. They probably broadcasted it every day for an entire week. Even offered it in DVD form as a gift for being a sustaining member. Needless to say there is a lot of overlap between Link TV and Now viewers.

"Moral Disaster of Monumental Proportion Reconciliation Act"

Are the Democrats finally getting feisty? Today Senator Frank Lautenberg (D)New Jersey, introduced an amemendment to change the name of the Republican "Deficit Reduction and Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 2005" to the "Moral Disaster of Monumental Proportion Reconciliation Act"!

The post quotes him as saying,

"'Let's call this bill what it is -- a moral disaster,' explained Lautenberg. 'This bill would close the door of opportunity and cut critical services to the poor, elderly, sick and hungry.'

Senators had yet to vote on the amendment as of this post, but given the Republican majority in the Senate the name change seems to have little chance of passage.

The overall bill being debated in the Senate is aimed at making cuts in spending on entitlement programs in order to offset the massive federal costs incurred for the clean-up of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita along the Gulf Coast. Democrats have massed in opposition to the cuts, which they insist disproportionately disadvantage the nation's poorest and most infirm citizens."

I really was shocked at the level of gall it would take to make the poor pay for this. However the Democrats have let other things like this slide, so I no longer expect anything from them.

Joe Biden: "Antiwar Democrats are elitists, unpatriotic, and out of touch with America

I guess Joe isn't reading the polls!

SEN. JOE BIDEN, D-Del., made some interesting comments during his Manchester stop Tuesday night. He said too many Democrats were elitist and even unpatriotic, and he blamed them for helping Republicans paint the entire party as out of touch with America.

Biden noted that some Democrats had even questioned why he wore an American flag pin on his lapel.

The senator has been refreshingly honest about his run for the Democratic nomination for President in 2008. Further honest comments like those he made Tuesday night might hurt his chances within a party lurching increasingly to the left. But the Democrats need to hear them.

The anti-American left has seriously damaged the party, and unless more high-profile Democrats take them on, theirs will continue to be the minority party in America.  

I think he made the part about the American flag pin up!

According to the latest polls Bush's approval rating is at 35%.  His favorability rating is 33%.  If the Democratic party nominates him or someone like him it is truly dead, dead dead!

ABC News:

I know I am on everyones shit list because I dislike kos, but I do cover issues hardly anyone else gives a shit about. Here is just one issue that I think the Democrats should prioritize that is absolutely not on the kossack or mainstream Democratic agenda. For years the republicans have been able to undercut social programs by portraying the poor as morally inferior. They have even gotten mainstream economics departments at Universities to put out this kind of stuff. The mainstream news often reports these kinds of "spun" statistics without recongnizing that they are really carefully disguised op/eds, rather than careful research.


ABC News: Church-going boosts economic well-being: study:

"'Doubling the frequency of attendance leads to a 9.1 percent increase in household income, or a rise of 5.5 percent as a fraction of the poverty scale,' Jonathan Gruber of the economics department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote in his study.

'Those with more faith may be less 'stressed out' about daily problems that impede success in the labor market and the marriage market, and therefore are more successful,' Gruber wrote in the study, which was released by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Top Stories

Could it be the opposite is true? Maybe a 9.1 percent increase in household income, or a rise of 5.5 percent as a fraction of the poverty scale actually leads to a doubling of church attendence. Maybe less stress in one job and marriage and more personal success also leads to more church attendence.

Living in a community with complementary ethnic groups that share the same religion increases the frequency of going to a house of worship, he said in the paper titled 'Religious Market Structure, Religious Participation, and Outcomes: Is Religion Good for You?'

According to this study you also need to strenuously avoid contact with other religious and ethnic groups to be successful, particularly if you are white.

Such visits correlate to higher levels of education and income, lower levels of welfare receipt and disability, higher levels of marriage and lower levels of divorce, the study said."

Could it be that higher levels of education and income, more wealth and better health, not to mention better marriages also lead to more church attendence?

This appears to be one of those "the rich are morally superior to the poor spin jobs" that often masks itself as hard science. It is sad MIT is subsidizing it.

Daily Kos: John Bolton: Crazy Von Mustache is Baaa-acccck!

More on John Bolton

Daily Kos: John Bolton: Crazy Von Mustache is Baaa-acccck!: "John Bolton: Crazy Von Mustache is Baaa-acccck!
by Melody Townsel [Subscribe]
Fri Sep 30th, 2005 at 10:38:12 CST

Hello, Kossacks:

I've been laying low here on Kos lately, spending my free time for the last month on Katrina relief -- but this news is well worth sharing.

Our friend Steve Clemons over at the Washington Note is reporting that the Mustachinator is forging new ground in Bushco's race to push the envelope of dysfunctional loyalty. This week, well-placed sources tell Clemons that Joltin' Bolton is tapping Jeffrey Gedmin as a senior member of his staff.

More below the break.

* Melody Townsel's diary :: ::
*

Here's Steve's take on the news:

President Bush stands by those loyal to him -- as he did with John Bolton, who was precisely the wrong person to send as America's Ambassador to the U.N.

Now John Bolton is reportedly gathering a new group of staffers loyal specifically to him.

News has just reached TWN that Aspen Institute Berlin Director Jeffrey Gedmin, who worked at the American Enterprise Institute with Bolton and who directed AEI's New Atlantic Initiative, will be joining Bolton as one of his senior staff at the mission."

Fear Exceeded Crime's Reality in New Orleans - New York Times

No rapes have been reported to the police. Neither have any shootings at helicopters.

Fear Exceeded Crime's Reality in New Orleans - New York Times: "In an interview last week with The New York Times, Superintendent Compass said that some of his most shocking statements turned out to be untrue. Asked about reports of rapes and murders, he said: 'We have no official reports to document any murder. Not one official report of rape or sexual assault.'

On Sept. 4, however, he was quoted in The Times about conditions at the convention center, saying: 'The tourists are walking around there, and as soon as these individuals see them, they're being preyed upon. They are beating, they are raping them in the streets.'

Those comments, Superintendent Compass now says, were based on secondhand reports. The tourists 'were walking with their suitcases, and they would have their clothes and things taken,' he said last week. 'No rapes that we can quantify.'

Rumors Affected Response

A full chronicle of the week's crimes, actual and reported, may never be possible because so many basic functions of government ceased early in the week, including most public safety record-keeping. The city's 911 operators left their phones when water began to rise around their building."

I am betting crony controlled fema spread them to cover their asses. Afterall fema would constantly announce on cnn it was suspending operations based on these reports.

Daily Kos: Intentional negligence by Fed Gov?

Daily Kos: Intentional negligence by Fed Gov?: "Intentional negligence by Fed Gov?
by contrapunktus [Subscribe]
Thu Sep 8th, 2005 at 14:27:12 CST

Just a thought:

* contrapunktus's diary :: ::
*

Is it possible that this administration is, in a perverted way, content with their response to Katrina? After all, it does prove the long held republican contention that government doesn't work. I won't be surprised to see an effort to further centralize the emergency response branches of the federal government, �la the Patriot Act.Perhaps even an effort to privatize the services that should be, and should have been rendered by FEMA and DHS with some good old no-bid contracts.

In a way, the republicans are apparently correct. The government really DOESN'T work, at least not when they are in charge of it."

How many have died?

ABC15.com: Phoenix and Arizona News, Live Weather, Web Cams and More: "Congressman reports more than 100 died in a warehouse, waiting for rescue

Posted: 09/07/2005 15:05:14

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Even as crews in New Orleans try to find and count the corpses that are decaying in the 90-degree heat, reports of the extent of the tragedy are starting to emerge.

A Louisiana congressman says more than 100 people died at a warehouse along a New Orleans dock. Congressman Charlie Melancon (muh-LAWN'-suhn) says they died as they waited for rescuers to take them to safety.

And a state lawmaker says 30 people died at a flooded-out nursing home just outside New Orleans. Nita Hutter says the staff had left the residents behind in their beds. A rescue that was supposed to take place never materialized."

This is just getting worse even after more than a week. The New York Times says fema has ordered 25,000 boby bags. The Tennessean interviewed a mortician named Dan Brukner working for the Disaster Mortuary Responce Team and he reported that he was told to expect up to 40,000 dead bodies in the three affected states.

Why the US Is Supporting Civil War

Tom Hayden hits the nail on the head about Bush in the neocons.

Why the US Is Supporting Civil War: "There's a small practical problem with this revised vision. It is likely to intensify the war on two levels: Iraqis against the Americans and Iraqis against each other. I don't have a particular philosophical preference for centralized government, but the alternative in Iraq is a devolution to warring ethnic and religious fiefdoms under the control of the international market. Yoo, Brooks and Galbraith are silent on this untidy aspect of their scenario, with Yoo even reminding Americans that we had to go through the 'fiery experience' of civil war before becoming a nation. Leaving aside the fact that Americans threw the British out by force, that's a macabre future for Iraqis who were promised 'liberation.' Since the civil war will not be won militarily, the Administration will argue that the occupation must be permanent.

If this sounds mad, manipulative or both, what does it reveal about US intentions in Iraq?

It suggests that the American purpose has been to destroy Iraqi nationalism, as in the previous Baathist state and the continued de-Baathification policies.

It suggests that our 'best and brightest' want to weaken any future possibility of a strong Iraqi state with control of its own enterprises and resources.

It suggests that the US has chosen to ally itself with Islamic fundamentalism rather than a secular state with a centralized government.

It suggests that civil war against the Sunnis and any other 'diehards' is the US preference rather than a political settlement that brings the nationalist resistance, including the Sunnis, into negotiations rather than war.

This is the same strategy the Israelis chose decades ago when they directly and indirectly supported the Islamic religious groupings as preferable to the secular and 'Marxist' Palestinian Liberation Organization [PLO] two decades ago. That strategy contributed directly to the creation of Hezbollah and suicide bombers.

It is the same strategy that led the US to support the mujahadeen, the embryonic Al Qaeda, against the secular, pro-Russian Afghan government. In 1998, two years before 9/11, Zbigiew Brzezinski flippantly dismissed critics of the policy this way:

Question: And neither do you regret having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists?

Answer: What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?

Question: 'Some agitated Muslims'? But it has been said that repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today...

Answer: Nonsense... [Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, Jan. 15-21, 1998]

The US opposes independent nationalism from Iraq to Venezuela. It prefers to weaken independent states to diminish their military potential in either the Middle East or Latin America, and to break down what are described as 'protectionist' barriers to the 'free trade' model of Halliburton or Wal-Mart.

In seeking to impose both Pentagon dominance and a neo-liberal economic model on the world, the US is prepared to accept alliances with religious forces that insist on strict censorship and punishment of freedom of association and belief. For Bush and the neo-conservatives, it seems, freedom for American investors can't wait, but women - their rights 'are not critical to the evolution of democracy.'"

Katrina warning

Ok people get out now. If you know a poor person that needs a ride. Take them with. The superdome is 9 feet below sea level.

CATASTROPHIC HURRICANE APPROACHING NEW ORLEANS REGION

NHC WARNINGS:

Hurricane Warnings :
NORTH CENTRAL GULF COAST FROM MORGAN CITY LOUISIANA EASTWARD TO THE ALABAMA/FLORIDA BORDER...INCLUDING THE CITY OF NEW ORLEANS AND LAKE PONCHARTRAIN.

Tropical Storm Warning & Watches: A TROPICAL STORM WARNING AND A HURRICANE
WATCH HAVE BEEN ISSUED FROM EAST OF THE ALABAMA/FLORIDA BORDER EASTWARD TO DESTIN FLORIDA...AND FROM WEST OF MORGAN CITY TO
INTRACOASTAL CITY LOUISIANA.

A TROPICAL STORM WARNING IS ALSO IN EFFECT FROM DESTIN FLORIDA TO INDIAN PASS FLORIDA AND FROM THE INTRACOASTAL CITY LOUISIANA WEST TO CAMERON, LOUISIANA.

NOTE: My Advisory Service is for Informational Purposes only -- You are STRONGLY urged to follow the directions of all Emergency management, Police and Governmental Agencies in your area as it relates to the protection of lives and property - regardless of what my Storm Updates may imply.
*******************************

CURRENT POSITION / NOTEWORTHY REPORTS PAST HOUR

KATRINA LOCATED 26.1N / 88.1W or 290 miles SSE of Gulfport, MS. - 275 miles SSE of downtown New Orleans - and 240 miles SSE of Port Eads at the southern tip of the Mississippi Delta. Katrina is heading just north of DUE Northwest at 9Kts (10 MPH) over the past 2 hours

RECON Reports:

Pressure 907mb ( DOWN 42MB IN 24 HRS)
MAX Flight Level wind 166KTS - SUSTAINED SURFACE WINDS 175MPH - GUSTS TO 200MPH.

EYEWALL DIAMETER IS STEADY AT 22NM
CREW REPORTS 'PERFECT STADIUM EFFECT'

Hurricane Katrina is now as strong as Hurricane Camille in 1969 - but this storm is larger, and will cause more extensive damage, and if it strikes New Orleans at 'just the right angle' - will no doubt MAY lead to the greatest loss of life from a land falling hurricane in nearly 100 years.

The exact track - and even the exact intensity of Katrina at landfall is still simply too difficult to predict with the type of precision everyone would like. As discussed extensively over the past few days, the overall environment surrounding Katrina was expected to become as conducive to the development of a CAT 5 hurricane that scientists are able to determine. One o the biggest 'unknowns' - and lowest skill forecast - are for storm intensity. Ironically, this is especially true when trying to forecast intensities in the near-term -- 24 hours or less.

Unlike Track forecast accuracy, which improves as the time of landfall approaches, intensity forecasts exhibit only slightly better skill than pure chance, when in the 0-24 hour outlook period. MANY factors come into play that
cause this, including the fact that we still do not know 'everything' we need to know about how hurricane work.

As a result, one of the biggest changes that occur with a hurricane that affect intensity are the eye wall replacement cycles - also talked about extensively in the past 2 days. There is no real telling when an eye wall replacement cycle will start, or how long it will last. However, the first signs of it are normally when the eye diameter starts shrinking to near or below 10NM.

Last night, when Katrina bean intensifying rapidly, the eye was 40NM across. Even around 2AM, the eye had only shrunk to 38NM, yet the pressure had already fallen to 935mb. I have never seen (in 35 years of watching) a storm
of such intensity, with such a large eye. 5 hours later, we find an eye that is 22NM across, and the pressure has fallensome 28mb -- and the winds responded immediately by increasing to a strong CAT intensity.

The question is - will the eye continue to shrink over the coming hours (which by the way would cause the winds to increase even more all things being equal) -- and then cause the storm to enter an eye wall replacement cycle. What could be a 'fooler' is that the eye might get down to around 15NM-18NM and then start to re-cycle. We are in uncharted territory in this regard. The '10NM or less rule of thumb' may not apply to what is about the most intense hurricane in recorded history (in the Atlantic basin). In any event, once the eye wall goes through regeneration, the pressure will rise, and the maximum winds will decrease as the developing outer eyewall will be of much greater diameter. A replacement cycle can run from 6 to 18 hours. Another possibility, is that Katrina may start doing a different variation on the theme - that is - rapid eye wall cycling. VERY intense hurricanes have done this before.

IVAN went through this type of rapid cycling while in was in the Caribbean. This is where the eye shrinks to near 5-8NM while a new wall forms at around 15NM. This replacement cycle lasts for 2-4 hours -- and the period of slightly higher
pressure, and lower winds is relatively brief. This may have the highest probability of happening. No doubt this entire process is related to why historically, Atlantic basin Hurricanes rarely can maintain CAT 5 intensity for very long periods.

By the time a 12 or 18 cycle completes, the storm is many times in an area that is not as favorable for re-intensification.
Either the water temps are cooler, or the vertical shears are a bit higher, or the storm is closer to land. There is only a
VERY REMOTE possibility that Katrina will not have at least 1 eye wall replacement during the next 24 hours.

Below are some recent Buoy reports (about 1 hour ago). Note that the storm surge from Katrina is NOT the same thing as sea swell or wave heights. The storm surge is totally different, and relates to how much the entire ocean rises above normal
tidal height. Similar to a Tsunami. ON TOP of the storm surge, will be the wind driven waves. These wave heights are what are being shown below, and will be what I pass along as the storm approaches. IVAN produced a wave height of 70 feet that destroyed an oil platform. Katrina, IF IT MAINTAINS ITS CURRENT INTENSITY, will cause wave heights of 80-100 feet over the open ocean -depending on just how fast the storm is moving by any given area at the time. The full force winds of 175mph, and gusts to 200mph is likely only occurring across an arcing shaped rectangular area roughly 5 miles wide by 30 miles long, adjacent to the NE portion of the eyewall. That is the area where the 80-100ft waves would
be occurring. Assuming Katrina cuts across the Delta with the TRUE CENTER passing over Borne at it's current intensity, a 24-28 foot storm surge will hit the Delta and the Bay St. Louis area, where wind driven waves will be about 50 feet.

Because of the extraordinary nature of this event -- my updates will vary considerably from 'normal'. Only highly relevant images and analysis will be provided. I will attempt to issue 1 'Major Update' around 8PM CDT tonight.

To maximize peoples ability to see 'the whole story' - my blog postings will tend to be 'updates' only to each post - versus starting an entirely new post. An update to this Advisory with the latest computer model run data will be sent in about 1 hour.

Steve Gregory

BUOY REPORTS

42001 180NM South of Southwest Pass, LA Winds N 37Kts Gust 47Kts 20 foot sea swells
42007 - 22NM SSE of Biloxi, MS Winds E 25Kts Gust 29Kts / 12 foot sea swells
42039 (115NM ESE Pensacolal) Winds E 27Kts Gust 37Kts / 19 foot sea swells
42040 (64NM South of Dauphin Island) Winds ENE 25Kts Gust 33Kts / 17 ftoot sea swells

AlterNet: A Different Take on Disengagement

Disengagement was all a show folks. They just did it to make the likelyhood of leaving the West Bank look impossible to the Israeli majority.

AlterNet: A Different Take on Disengagement: "If Ariel Sharon had been willing to negotiate a genuine peace agreement with the Palestinians in which Israel withdrew to the 1967 border (with slight border modifications along the lines suggested by Yossi Beilin in the Geneva Accord of 2003), one part of that agreement could have allowed all settlers to stay in their homes in Gaza and the West Bank as long as they agreed to be law-abiding citizens of the Palestinian state that would be governing that area. If they were not willing to give up their Israeli citizenship and live in peace with their neighbors, they could voluntarily leave their homes and return to Israel. That is the same choice that Arabs faced once Israel was established in a land that they once governed. It should have been the choice offered to Israeli settlers as well.

There never had to be the horrible scene of people being dragged from their homes.

So why did it happen? Because Ariel Sharon's entire plan -- as explained to the Israeli public by his assistant, Dov Weisglass -- was to sacrifice the settlers of Gaza precisely in order to have the painful images that dominated the media, so that Sharon could argue 'Of course no one can ask us to do this kind of thing to the 300,000 settlers in the West Bank, given the pain everyone has seen us go through in Gaza.'

As Sharon's aides tried to tell the settlers, the Disengagement was intended to preserve the Occupation, not undermine it. And so, Sharon is moving ahead to finish construction of the Separation Wall and cut off from the West Bank the 150,000 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem (not to mention many other Palestinians living in proximity to the Wall), expropriate more and more Palestinian land, and 'create facts' on the ground that will be hard to change.

There are some who celebrate this Gaza withdrawal as the first step in the process of dismantling settlements. Rabbi Lerner asks them the following: 'At what point, how many years from now, while the Occupation continues of much of the West Bank, will you acknowledge that this was simply another part of the scheme that Sharon has--to hold on to close to 50 percent of the West Bank while offering Palestinians a state that will be neither economically nor politically viable, a state that, when they refuse it, or when they accept it and then ask for more, will be used as 'proof' that nothing will ever satisfy them?' So, Rabbi Lerner argues, we should understand that all the pain was part of an elaborate ruse--and though the immediate victims are the Gaza settlers, the real victims are all the peoples of Israel and Palestine who will have to endure the ongoing suffering that the continuation of the Occupation guarantees."

The only problem for Sharon is that it isn't working. Most of the Israeli public supports more disengagement from the West Bank settlements. They were also offended by the behavior of the settlers, because of the way they exploited their kids and because of their harassment of the soldiers.

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Britain heads for clash with US

Britain rebels against our hired asshole at the UN John Bolton. As documented in yesterdays diary he also intends to derail the nuclear non proliferation treaty and work to stop global warming.

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Britain heads for clash with US: "A draft of that plan had included a review of progress on the UN's millennium development goals - poverty eradication targets set in 2000 for completion by 2015 - and the introduction of reforms aimed at repairing the damage done to the UN's reputation by Iraq, Rwanda and the Balkans.

Article continues
But it was revealed this week that Mr Bush's new ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, was seeking 750 changes to the 36-page draft plan to be presented to a special summit in New York on September 14 to 16. Mr Bolton's amendments, if successful, would leave the plan in tatters......

The concern in British and other international circles is that the American objections, if adopted, would severely undermine the UN summit, the biggest-ever gathering of world leaders......

A source close to the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan said it was too early to declare the UN plan dead. "Bolton wants to knock down the plan and start from scratch," the source said. "He will find that his opinions are not shared by most of the rest of the world."

The president of the UN general assembly, Jean Ping from the Gambia, has been working on the draft, covering issues of poverty, climate change, genocide, small arms, the creation of a permanent UN peacekeeping capability and reform of the UN management structure, for the past year.........

U.S. Wants Changes In U.N. Agreement

News of our hired asshole at the UN John Bolton!

U.S. Wants Changes In U.N. Agreement: "The United States has only recently introduced more than 750 amendments that would eliminate new pledges of foreign aid to impoverished nations, scrap provisions that call for action to halt climate change and urge nuclear powers to make greater progress in dismantling their nuclear arms. At the same time, the administration is urging members of the United Nations to strengthen language in the 29-page document that would underscore the importance of taking tougher action against terrorism, promoting human rights and democracy, and halting the spread of the world's deadliest weapons..........

The proposed changes, submitted by U.S. Ambassador John R. Bolton, touch on virtually every aspect of U.N. affairs and provide a detailed look at U.S. concerns about the world body's future. They underscore U.S. efforts to impose greater oversight of U.N. spending and to eliminate any reference to the International Criminal Court. The administration also opposes language that urges the five permanent members of the Security Council not to cast vetoes to block action to halt genocide, war crimes or ethnic cleansing.

These changes are so hypocritical. Where to start. For one thing you can't seriously want to halt the spread of WMD then halt provisions that call for greater progress to be made dismantling nukes. If you are serious about tackling genocide, why in the world would you want to kill the ICC? They were the one that tried Milosevic. This is all meant to support American Unilateralism and exceptionalism.

The Bush adminstration neoconservatives hate the ICC because it might take a look at Abu Ghraib for instance, and because it has taken issue with the wall and the settlements in Israel. They also want to halt the dismantlement nuclear weapons because they are trying to rebuild America's arsenal. In fact they are testing them again after Kennedy banned nuclear testing. In this spirit they have rejected the nuclear non proliferation treaty. This is one of the reasons we have no leverage over the Iranians, who have signed it. Putting the millenium goals, foreign aid to poor countries, and the global warming issue on hold is just a way to be venial and extra stupid, arrogant and assholish. Neocons consider meaness a virtue. That is what unilaterism is in essence, being an asshole and getting away with it.

Bolton would have been refused the position at the UN if this were a sane and responsible administration. He is one of the guys that lied us into the Iraq war.

The Blog | Max Blumenthal: Hitchens Tries S&M | The Huffington Post

Max Bluenthal gives the most thorough run down, of Christopher Hitchens and his hypocracy that I have ever seen.

The Blog | Max Blumenthal: Hitchens Tries S&M | The Huffington Post: "Take hitching July 12, 2001 column for the Nation magazine eulogizing Israeli peace activist Israel Shahak. Here, Hitchens makes practically the same points he condemns Sheehan for supposedly making (sentiments that I don't necessarily disagree with, but which are nonetheless hypocritical for Hitchens to now denounce):

Only the other day, I read some sanguinary proclamation from the rabbinical commander of the Shas party, Ovadia Yosef, himself much sought after by both Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon. It was a vulgar demand for the holy extermination of non-Jews; the vilest effusions of Hamas and Islamic Jihad would have been hard-pressed to match it. The man wants a dictatorial theocracy for Jews and helotry or expulsion for the Palestinians, and he sees (as Shahak did in reverse) the connection. This is not a detail; Yosef's government receives an enormous US subsidy, and his intended victims live (and die, every day) under a Pax Americana.


Hitchens' expressed his opinion of Zionism more explicitly in a barely coherent November 14, 2001 op-ed for the Guardian, called 'Ha, ha, ha to the pacifists.' Accusing 'the peaceniks' of harboring a conciliatory attitude towards radical Islamic terrorists, Hitchens wrote:

Come Yom Kippur I tend to step up my scornful remarks about Zionism. Whatever happened to the robust secularism that used to help characterise the left? And why is it suddenly only the injured feelings of Muslims that count?


Hitchens criticism of Sheehan is, of course, rooted in his role as a Hoover Institute-funded cheerleader for the failed policies of his newfound neocon fantasist friends. If we harken back to the days of the Clinton administration, however, we'll see how Hitchens took a decidedly different tack on US foreign policy."

Raw Story: Exclusive: Downing Street reporter dissects pre-war Iraq intelligence

How Tony Blair stovepiped and misinterpreted intellegence analysis to scare the shit out of Britons!

There was of course nothing sub-conscious about the way in which the 45-minute claim was hardened up. The source did not specify the precise context for this timing and no-one in either British spy agency MI6 or the JIC Current Intelligence Group on Iraq seemed to know.

But among military intelligence experts on artillery and missile systems, the figures rang some very loud bells. They appeared to be straight out of the old Soviet artillery and rocket troops manual. The most likely systems the Iraqis would use to deliver chemical or biological weapons were all Soviet-made mortar, artillery and missile systems.

These included the al-Hussein surface-to-surface missile. This was an Iraqi version of the Scud missile, which was the Soviet army-level surface-to-surface missile system. In common with all other Soviet workers, Red Army troops were given 'norms' for the time it should take them to perform particular tasks. The 'norm' for the time it should take for warheads to be moved from a forward storage site to the missile firing point and the missile to be ready to fire was 45 minutes.

more......

t is not clear whether the Prime Minister spotted the 45-minute claim when it first landed on his desk in the shape of the original CX report from MI6. But it had certainly caught his eye in the days following its first mention in a draft of the dossier circulated on Sept. 9, 2002. At this stage it was only mentioned twice and, since it was not qualified, couched in very cautious terms. The Sept. 9 draft said the intelligence merely 'suggested' Iraq could deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes.

But amid the confusing, and often uncertain, intelligence reports on Iraq it was a detail that Mr Blair and his advisers, not least Alastair Campbell, his Director of Communications, knew the public would understand. Despite the conclusions of the Intelligence and Security Committee, there is no doubt that as far as Campbell and Blair were concerned, it was the sound bite that would sell the war to some of the many people who remained unconvinced, not least a large number of backbench Labour MPs. It would only take Saddam 45 minutes to fire his chemical or biological weapons.

Put at its simplest, as Campbell knew the tabloid headline writers would, British bases in Cyprus were '45 minutes from doom.'

Blair got a boost in the polls since the recent bombings in London. People approve of this deportation of radical clerics, but this hasn't translated into approval for the war, so this boost is likely temporary. In the meantime there is still an impeachment movement going on.

No Proof Found of Iran Arms Program

Bolton fabricates evidence of WMD against Iran!

No Proof Found of Iran Arms Program: "Traces of bomb-grade uranium found two years ago in Iran came from contaminated Pakistani equipment and are not evidence of a clandestine nuclear weapons program, a group of U.S. government experts and other international scientists has determined.


'The biggest smoking gun that everyone was waving is now eliminated with these conclusions,' said a senior official who discussed the still-confidential findings on the condition of anonymity.........

Iran has long contended that the uranium traces were the result of contaminated equipment bought years ago from Pakistan. But the Bush administration had pointed to the material as evidence that Iran was making bomb-grade ingredients........

John R. Bolton, now U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, served as the administration's point man on nuclear issuesduring President Bush's first term. He suggested during congressional testimony in June 2004 that the Iranians were lying about the contamination.

"Another unmistakable indicator of Iran's intentions is the pattern of repeatedly lying to and providing false and incomplete reports to the IAEA," Bolton said. "For example, Iran first denied it had enriched any uranium. Then it said it had not enriched uranium more than 1.2 percent. Later, when evidence of uranium enriched to 36 percent was found, it attributed this to contamination from imported centrifuge parts.".......

Bolton was also central to the frabrication of evidence against Iraq! From the famous report "The Stove Pipe" by Seymour Hersh

A few months after George Bush took office, Greg Thielmann, an expert on disarmament with the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, or INR, was assigned to be the daily intelligence liaison to John Bolton, the Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control, who is a prominent conservative. Thielmann understood that his posting had been mandated by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who thought that every important State Department bureau should be assigned a daily intelligence officer. “Bolton was the guy with whom I had to do business,” Thielmann said. “We were going to provide him with all the information he was entitled to see. That’s what being a professional intelligence officer is all about.”

But, Thielmann told me, “Bolton seemed to be troubled because INR was not telling him what he wanted to hear.” Thielmann soon found himself shut out of Bolton’s early-morning staff meetings. “I was intercepted at the door of his office and told, ‘The Under-Secretary doesn’t need you to attend this meeting anymore.’ ” When Thielmann protested that he was there to provide intelligence input, the aide said, “The Under-Secretary wants to keep this in the family.”

Eventually, Thielmann said, Bolton demanded that he and his staff have direct electronic access to sensitive intelligence, such as foreign-agent reports and electronic intercepts. In previous Administrations, such data had been made available to under-secretaries only after it was analyzed, usually in the specially secured offices of INR. The whole point of the intelligence system in place, according to Thielmann, was “to prevent raw intelligence from getting to people who would be misled.” Bolton, however, wanted his aides to receive and assign intelligence analyses and assessments using the raw data. In essence, the under-secretary would be running his own intelligence operation, without any guidance or support. “He surrounded himself with a hand-chosen group of loyalists, and found a way to get C.I.A. information directly,” Thielmann said.

In a subsequent interview, Bolton acknowledged that he had changed the procedures for handling intelligence, in an effort to extend the scope of the classified materials available to his office. “I found that there was lots of stuff that I wasn’t getting and that the INR analysts weren’t including,” he told me. “I didn’t want it filtered. I wanted to see everything—to be fully informed. If that puts someone’s nose out of joint, sorry about that.” Bolton told me that he wanted to reach out to the intelligence community but that Thielmann had “invited himself” to his daily staff meetings. “This was my meeting with the four assistant secretaries who report to me, in preparation for the Secretary’s 8:30 a.m. staff meeting,” Bolton said. “This was within my family of bureaus. There was no place for INR or anyone else—the Human Resources Bureau or the Office of Foreign Buildings.”

FOXNews.com - U.S. & World - Robertson Calls for Chavez's Assassination

As the dailykos version of the story read: Radical Cleric issues fatwa to kill the President!

FOXNews.com - U.S. & World - Robertson Calls for Chavez's Assassination: "VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson (search) suggested on-air that American operatives assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (search) to stop his country from becoming 'a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism.'

'We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability,' Robertson said Monday on the Christian Broadcast Network's 'The 700 Club.'

'We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator,' he continued. 'It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.'

Chavez has emerged as one of the most outspoken critics of President Bush (search), accusing the United States of conspiring to topple his government and possibly backing plots to assassinate him. U.S. officials have called the accusations ridiculous.

'You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it,' Robertson said. 'It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war ... and I don't think any oil shipments will stop.'"

There are several problems with this proposal.

1)One Chavez isn't a dictator. He has been elected three times already. The last time was a recall election monitored by the Carter Center, which Jimmy Cater himself declared legimate. He won by close to 60% of the vote. Unlike Ohio 2004 and Florida 2000, the devices used in this election left a paper trail.

2)The coup wasn't popular. If it was, Chavez wouldn't have won the recall that occured after the coup. Also isn't is stupid to have a coup when you can just recall someone who is unpopular? Maybe the reason they had a coup was because they knew the people weren't really on their side?

3)Chavez has only threatened to stop oil shipments if there is an attempt on his life. His successors are actually the ones that vowed to do this. By threatening Chavez, you are making this event more likely. You are also proving him absolutely right in his fear that the US is trying to kill him.

4)Isn't Robertson suppose to believe in the 10 commandments. You know, "Thou shall not kill! Though shall not steal! Though shall not lie!" Looks to me like you have broken several here Pat! You are killing Chavez, just because he wants to govern his own country and because you want to take his oil instead of having to buy it lawfully, and you are lying to justify it. You are nothing but a big time thug Pat!

Because of this argument you Pat, have actually convinced me of the necessity of putting the 10 commandments up in the classrooms of all the red states!

43 service women have died for Islamic theocracy.

Spc. Carrie L.French, 19

That's right 43 lost their lives for rule by the clerics. We will install "Iranian style Democracy".  Islam will now be the primary source of law in the Constitution as oppose to a source. The clerics will dominate family law, divorce, inheritance and child custody.  Women won't have a secular alternative.  All laws in Iraq can be nullified by the Clerics under the Constitution. The administration is twisting arms for this atrocity.

According to the Guardian

There are currently 138,000 US troops in Iraq, including 25,000 marines. President Bush has repeatedly denied that the US intends to "cut and run", leaving Iraq to the insurgents. "Our troops know that they're fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere to protect their fellow Americans from a savage enemy," the president said yesterday in his weekly radio address.

Conservative Shias, dominant in the Iraqi government, had clashed with Kurds and other minorities who wanted Islam to be "a" rather than "the" main source of law.

According to Kurdish and Sunni negotiators, the US ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, proposed that Islam be named "a primary source" and supported a wording which would give clerics authority in civil matters such as divorce, marriage and inheritance.

If approved, critics say that the proposals would erode women's rights and other freedoms enshrined under existing laws. "We understand the Americans have sided with the Shias. It's shocking. It doesn't fit with American values," an unnamed Kurdish negotiator told Reuters. "They have spent so much blood and money here, only to back the creation of an Islamist state."

Dozens of women gathered in central Baghdad yesterday to protest against what the organiser, Yanar Mohammad, feared would be a "fascist, nationalist and Islamist" constitution. "We are fighting to avoid becoming second class citizens," she said.

A Bush supporter had this to say on MTP.

GERECHT: I think it's important to remember that in the year 1900, for example, in the United States ... women did not have the right to vote. If Iraqis could develop a democracy that resembled America in the 1900s, I think we'd all be thrilled. I mean, women's social rights are not critical to the evolution of democracy. We hope they're there. I think they will be there. But I think we need to put this into perspective.

Excuse me, but the American constitution was changable because it was not beholden to religious law. The founders were 18 century secularists, with 18th century views on women but they were secularists, never the less. Iraqi women will have to arm themselves and overthrow the government to get change.

MyDD :: Second Bowers Blogopshere Memo to the Democratic Establishment

Being against the war plays well with the Democratic base. Remember these people actually vote in primaries.

MyDD :: Second Bowers Blogopshere Memo to the Democratic Establishment:

"However, while I don't have a blanket answer, like many others who spend their days amongst the netroots, I have known for some time exactly how a prospective Democratic nominee could move his or her numbers without running a single ad of any kind. Actually, it is rather simple: offer a real plan to get out of Iraq.

Don't believe me? Look at three candidates from the first two Dailykos community 2008 straw polls, Clinton, Feingold, and Edwards, who have been battling it out for a distant second behind Clark. You can find the June poll here and the July poll here.

June July
Clinton 36.8% 37.0%
Feingold 35.6% 35.5%
Edwards 27.6% 27.5%

(Note: Percentages reflect the percentages of votes each candidate received from the combined total of Clinton, Feingold and Edwards votes)

Clinton, Feingold and Edwards had nearly identical, and static, support among the netroots in these two polls. Now, look at the numbers in the August straw poll, one day after Feingold declared that he supported a timeline with fixed dates and a real plan for withdrawal:

August
Feingold 53.0%
Clinton 25.0%
Edwards 22.0%

(Note: numbers as of this writing)

Now that is what I call moving numbers. One single policy proposal completely altered the way the netroots saw these three candidates in relative terms. And that is in one day, with one policy. There is, quite simply, nothing else a candidate could do to move support in the netroots as quickly as this, period.

* * *"

The Blog | Cenk Uygur: The War Against Fundamentalism | The Huffington Post

It's fundamentalism stupid!

The Blog | Cenk Uygur: The War Against Fundamentalism | The Huffington Post: "have a simple answer – fundamentalism. Muslim fundamentalists believe it is their moral duty to fight a jihad against the West. They are guided by their strict, literal reading of the Koran (helped along by hateful imams who select the worst parts of the Koran).

But we are not just aligned against Muslim fundamentalists. The problem is broader than that. It is Jewish fundamentalists like the Gaza settlers and Christian fundamentalists like Tom DeLay who want to drive us further into this conflict. They also rely on their absurd interpretations of their religious texts.

The Jewish settlers who are being removed from the Gaza Strip this week believe God promised them that piece of land over two thousand years ago. Because of this belief they are not concerned by the 1.3 million Palestinians who happen to live there. People who are willing to walk all over the rights and property of other people because of their own religious beliefs are dangerous, not just to the people they oppress – but to all of us.

They drive us deeper and deeper into wars with no end. How can the Palestinians stop fighting if they are occupied by people who think they have no rights because God is not on their side? Of course, this will lead to conflicts that spiral out of control.

The problem is we are too polite and we are not willing to call people what they are – crazy. If you think Santa Claus, Barney the Purple Dinosaur or Yahweh promised you some land over two thousand years ago because you were specially selected by him as his chosen people – you are nuts!"

There is one fundamentalism this author doesn't recognize though.

I’ll go further. A culture that does not promote democracy where citizens are empowered to make their own decisions is wrong. A culture that is opposed to science and evolution is wrong.

Now, that sounds like I’m saying American culture is better than most of the other cultures in the world. That is mostly right. The neocons think the United States can dominate the world if we impose our democracy on other countries through invasion. I think we can prosper together in a world where we fight to impose our culture on others. Not through bloody invasions but through the power of our ideas.

There isn’t a country in the world that can withstand invasion by Levi’s, Nike, McDonald’s, American movies and Paris Hilton porn. The neocons think we can bomb Iran into a democracy (I honestly have never heard of a dumber and more counterproductive idea). I think we flood young Iranians with cell phones, laptops and television dishes, then sit back, relax and enjoy the show.

Imposing low wage McDonalds and Wal-Mart on the rest of the world will make fundamentalism worse by making it more ignorant and poor. Paris Hilton porn is only acceptable because she is rich and really had a choice about it. Many poor women, are more or less forced into porn and prostitution by poverty, and debt slavery. Market Fundamentalism wants to view women's body parts as a commodity, and that isn't a good thing either.

Daily Kos: Feingold stands apart: Target date for withrawal will work Review of his MTP appearance

Daily Kos: Feingold stands apart: Target date for withrawal will work: "1. It's a false argument to think that a target date for withdrawal is a recipe for failure. In truth, most success in the effort so far has resulted from setting targets: the sovereignty transfer; the elections; and the constitution (which even with the delays, is still part of a timeline)

2. Not setting a target actually makes matters WORSE, since it gives Osama a continuing recruiting tool, augmenting terrorist numbers

3. The Democratic leadership - Reid, Biden, Hillary - have fallen into the same trap they did when the war resolution was first debated (Iraq wasn't one of the 45 listed nations where Al Qaeda had a presence). They are simply intimidated by the White House.

4. In any case, a target isn't a deadline; it's a middle and flexible ground for goal setting. Staying the course is simply unacceptable.
[i]
Whatever one thinks of these opinions, there is no question that Feingold offers a clear alternative to the Democratic leadership."[/i]

Exactly, why do we want a scaredy-pants dem to lead the party. Biden and Hillary are both considered contenders for the Democratic nomination.

The Swift Boating of Cindy Sheehan - New York Times

by Frank Rich

The Swift Boating of Cindy Sheehan - New York Times: "The most prominent smear victims have been Bush political opponents with heroic Vietnam r�sum�s: John McCain, Max Cleland, John Kerry. But the list of past targets stretches from the former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke to Specialist Thomas Wilson, the grunt who publicly challenged Donald Rumsfeld about inadequately armored vehicles last December. The assault on the whistle-blower Joseph Wilson - the diplomat described by the first President Bush as 'courageous' and 'a true American hero' for confronting Saddam to save American hostages in 1991 - was so toxic it may yet send its perpetrators to jail.

True to form, the attack on Cindy Sheehan surfaced early on Fox News, where she was immediately labeled a 'crackpot' by Fred Barnes. The right-wing blogosphere quickly spread tales of her divorce, her angry Republican in-laws, her supposed political flip-flops, her incendiary sloganeering and her association with known ticket-stub-carrying attendees of 'Fahrenheit 9/11.' Rush Limbaugh went so far as to declare that Ms. Sheehan's 'story is nothing more than forged documents - there's nothing about it that's real.'

But this time the Swift Boating failed, utterly, and that failure is yet another revealing historical marker in this summer's collapse of political support for the Iraq war.

When the Bush mob attacks critics like Ms. Sheehan, its highest priority is to change the subject. If we talk about Richard Clarke's character, then we stop talking about the administration's pre-9/11 inattentiveness to terrorism. If Thomas Wilson is trashed as an insubordinate plant of the 'liberal media,' we forget the Pentagon's abysmal failure to give our troops adequate armor (a failure that persists today, eight months after he spoke up). If we focus on Joseph Wilson's wife, we lose the big picture of how the administration twisted intelligence to gin up the threat of Saddam's nonexistent W.M.D.'s."

Let's hope they can't make the shit stick in the American mind, however since the public was turning against the war without Sheehan, I am not sure I wanted this effort. As the great James Wolcott points out.

No one doubts her pain, sorrow, sincerity, and commitment. But I worry that if she insists on staying in Crawford, Texas to meet the president again, Camp Casey might attracts all sorts of "undesirable elements" that could damage her cause and provoke a column from Richard Cohen of the Washington Post arguing she's in danger of losing her "credibility." And I think that we would all agree that when it comes to being the conscience of journalistic liberalism inside the Beltway, no one has a nattier beard than Richard Cohen.

Daily Kos: Feingold on Meet the Press

This should be good.

Daily Kos: Feingold on Meet the Press: "Feingold on Meet the Press
by peacenik23 [Subscribe]
Sun Aug 21st, 2005 at 01:34:43 CST

For the past while, a lot of us have been unhappy with the Dems on sunday morning talk shows. Too much Biden and Lieberman, too little Dean and Feingold. Well that all should change this morning with Senator Feingold appearing on Meet the Press.

'With the casualty count mounting in Iraq and protesters continuing to shadow President Bush, the debate over America's involvement in Iraq has dominated the news. Should the U.S. set a deadline for withdrawing American troops? Yes, says Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), who, in an exclusive interview on this Sunday's 'Meet the Press,' will discuss his decision to be the first U.S. Senator to offer a specific date -- December 31, 2006 -- as the target for the complete withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.'

(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3898804/)"

Finegold is a Presidential hopeful and one the first Senators to offer up a time table for withdrawal.

In a telephone interview from Wisconsin, Feingold said he has heard a wave of public disenchantment at 15 town hall meetings so far during the August recess, leading him to propose a Dec. 31, 2006, deadline.

"There's a deepening feeling of dismay in the country about the way things are going in Iraq," Feingold said. He rejected Bush's assertion that a deadline would make it easier for insurgents to simply hang on. "I think he's wrong. I think not talking about endgames is playing into our enemies' hand."

The White House had no comment, except to point to Bush's past statements rejecting a withdrawal timetable, a position shared by Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.). "Like other members of the caucus, he's been calling for some benchmarks from the administration to measure progress," Reid spokesman Jim Manley said, "but he is opposed to setting a date certain for withdrawal, concerned that would undercut the troops."

He has true spine, because he has to know he will be attacked for it. Look at what the republicans did to the war protesters, John Kerry and now Cindy Sheehan. I want a President with a spine of steel! I don't think anyone will fall for the wishy washy dem being more electable, dlc line of bull at the next round of Presidential primaries.

Bush will `go on with life'

Bush says not meeting with Sheehan "is necessary for him to go on with my life."

Bush will `go on with life': "'But,' he added, 'I think it's also important for me to go on with my life, to keep a balanced life.'

The comments came prior to a bike ride on the ranch with journalists and aides. It also came as the crowd of protesters grew in support of Sheehan, the California mother who came here Aug. 6 demanding to talk to Bush about the death of her son Casey. Sheehan arrived earlier in the week with about a half dozen supporters. As of yesterday (Saturday) there were about 300 anti-war protesters and approximately 100 people supporting the Bush Administration. In addition to the two-hour bike ride, Bush's Saturday schedule included an evening Little League Baseball playoff game, a lunch meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a nap, some fishing and some reading. 'I think the people want the president to be in a position to make good, crisp decisions and to stay healthy,' he said when asked about bike riding while a grieving mom wanted to speak with him. 'And part of my being is to be outside exercising.'

On Friday, Bush's motorcade drove by the protest site en route to a Republican fund-raising event at a nearby ranch.

As Bush rolled by, Sheehan held a sign that said, 'Why do you make time for donors and not for me?'"

This last part says it all. Remember, this stuff is now being reported in the overwhelmingly probush Southern media!

The Raw Story | Senate Intelligence chairman quietly 'fixed' intelligence, and diverted blame from White House over Iraq

The scandal widens to include the intelligence committee.

The Raw Story | Senate Intelligence chairman quietly 'fixed' intelligence, and diverted blame from White House over Iraq: "Senate Intelligence chairman quietly 'fixed' intelligence, and diverted blame from White House over Iraq

Larisa Alexandrovna

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush issued an order to the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State Department, and his cabinet members that severely curtailed intelligence oversight by restricting classified information to just eight members of Congress.

'The only Members of Congress whom you or your expressly designated officers may brief regarding classified or sensitive law enforcement information,' he writes, 'are the Speaker of the House, the House Minority Leader, the Senate Majority and Minority Leaders, and the Chairs and Ranking Members of the Intelligence Committees in the House and Senate.'

The order is aimed at protecting 'military security' and 'sensitive law enforcement.'

But what was said to be an effort to protect the United States became a tool by which the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Pat Roberts (R-KS) ensured there was no serious investigation into how the administration fixed the intelligence that took the United States to war in Iraq or the fabricated documents used as evidence to do so.

Timeline: How Roberts helped fix pre-war intelligence
Coupled with limited access to intelligence documents, RAW STORY has found that Roberts and a handful of other strategically-placed Washington players stymied all questions into pre-war intelligence on Iraq and post-invasion cover-ups, including the outing of a CIA covert agent, by using targeted leaks and artfully deflecting blame from the White House."

Unfortunately, this list of eight would include Democratic minority leaders Daschle and Gephardt, followed by Pelosi, and ranking Democrats Jay Rockefeller, and Nancy Pelosi followed by Jane Harmon.

Over 100 Groups Urge President to Enforce Anti-Prostitution Policy to Aid Sexually Exploited Women and Children

This headline should read "Liberals stupidly allow Bush to frame aids education as pro-sex trafficking.

Over 100 Groups Urge President to Enforce Anti-Prostitution Policy to Aid Sexually Exploited Women and Children: "diet diet
News at eDiets relations

Over 100 Groups Urge President to Enforce Anti-Prostitution Policy to Aid Sexually Exploited Women and Children

WASHINGTON, Aug 8, 2005 (U.S. Newswire via COMTEX) -- In a joint letter to President Bush, over 100 women's, health and policy organizations have urged him to protect victims of human trafficking and 'stand firm on legislation and policies that require groups receiving certain federal grants to provide written assurance that they oppose prostitution.'

The letter brings into sharp focus a contentious debate over how to best aid prostituted persons and sex trafficking victims. Some governments and groups favor the so-called 'harm reduction' approach that emphasizes supplying sexually exploited persons with condoms and trying to teach negotiating skills. The U.S. government instead promotes an abolitionist approach that opposes prostitution as inherently harmful and degrading and actively supports the rescue and restoration of sexually exploited individuals, most of whom are women and children.

The U.S. policy-supporting letter was delivered by the Christian Medical Association ( CMA, http://www.cmda.org ) to President Bush's domestic policy advisor, Claude Allen. The letter counters the contentions of some activist groups, expressed in a letter sent to Mr. Bush in May, calling for the President not to enforce the anti-prostitution pledge policy, which was passed by Congress (the United States Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act of 2003) and signed into law.

Consistent with that law, President Bush issued a National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD-22) that asserted, 'Our Policy is based on an abolitionist approach to trafficking in persons... . The United States Government opposes prostitution and any related activities, including pimping, pandering, or maintaining brothels as contributing to the phenomenon of trafficking in persons.'"

Of coarse the harm reduction approach in no way endorses sex trafficking(actually sex slavery} but by focusing on legalization, rather than the fact that Bush isn't allowing them to give information about safe sex, the people who oppose Bush on this make it look that way.

A little post on the undercovered events taking place in Israel right now. This involves the disengagement protests at a place called Kfar Maimon.

Haaretz - Israel News - At Kfar Maimon the State of the Faithful was founded: "On Wednesday morning many scores of them listened to a lesson by Rabbi Yehoshua Shapira, the head of the hesder yeshiva (combined Torah study and military service program) in Ramat Gan and one of the most charismatic figures in the eyes of the national religious youth, who explained the parallel between the individual and the nation. According to Hasidic thought, he said, the individual is made up of the anima (the physiological aspect, which is common to all animals), the spirit (the abilities that are common to all human beings) and the soul (the spiritual quality that exists only in Jews). The anima comes to the individual at birth, whereas the spirit enters him only when he reaches the age of mitzvoth (the age of commandment observance, 13 for males). The difficulty of reconciling these forces is the reason for tshe self-destructive tendencies in adolescence. The same development exists in the collective, explained Shapira. The national organism has an 'anima' - it is the state. The state has to see to the material needs of the nation. The state was born in 1948, but the second stage of its development occurred in the Six-Day War. The connection to the Divine presence opened the heart to the 'spirit,' which is supposed to enter into the existing political structures, which are equivalent to the anima. And here is the rub: He is not disappointed with Sharon, as he has no faith in any secular leader. 'I do not believe in a leader who does not come from the beit midrash (religious study house). There cannot be a man of the anima who leads the Jewish people in the era of the spirit. The spirit can come only from the beit midrash.' The difficulties that the Jewish people have faced are stages of maturation, of the birth of the spirit from within the anima, which also entail the danger of confusion and self-destructive tendencies. The disengagement plan is an example of this.

The unwillingness to recognize a secular leadership and the demand for a 'believing' leadership were expressed in the past in groups like Moshe Feiglin's Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish leadership). Now, with the disappointment with Sharon and the secular right as a whole, this line is gathering momentum, and similar things were heard at Kfar Maimon from rabbis like Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, the rabbi of Safed.

As one of the settlement rabbis said to me, 'It could be that we will lose this battle (for Gush Katif), but we will certainly win the whole fight.' The big fight is for hegemony in the state, and religious Zionism is intending to take the place of secular Zionism, which has become tired and has collapsed."

I think it should be clear to everyone as of now that the settlers in Israel are religious extremists. Why the christian right in this country wants America to support a bunch of nutcases that don't believe gentiles have souls is beyond me? Is Pat Robertson an honorary Jew or something?

Daily Kos: GOP Unravels...in Texas

Things are turning around in the Bush administrations home state of Texas as well!

Daily Kos: GOP Unravels...in Texas: "I'm talking about the stinging defeat suffered by the Texas GOP on the floor of the state House today. GOP leadership, helped to election by illegal corporate contributions, watched helplessly as the Democratic minority and a few frightened Republicans voted down bills that 1) raised taxes on the middle class; 2) Cut taxes for Big Insurance and other special interests involved in the scandal; 3) Stiffed school children and teachers under the guise of education reform.

This is no small matter. It should be pointed out that in the early 1970s, a political scandal called Sharpstown surfaced just ahead of a national political scandal called Watergate. By 1976, Jimmy Carter could carry Texas.

The talking points are simple: Texas Republicans are trying to raise taxes on middle class Texans and devastate public education so they can do what they were ordered to do when they accepted the illegal bribes: cut taxes for the people who paid the bribes.

Several corporations have been indicted. So have some staffers who were allegedly involved in the scheme. Tom DeLay, who lives off his aura of power, says he was powerless over a scheme that invoved his committee and its money and its contributers and that advanced his Congressional redistricting scheme. A grand jury, holding all the cards, is still meeting."

Of coarse our own congress operates on similar principles when you consider the bankruptcy bill and the energy bill!

Roberts Listed in Federalist Society '97-98 Directory

Roberts Listed in Federalist Society '97-98 Directory: "Roberts has burnished his legal image carefully. When news organizations have reported his membership in the society, he or others speaking on his behalf have sought corrections. Last week, the White House told news organizations that had reported his membership in the group that he had no memory of belonging. The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today and the Associated Press printed corrections.

Over the weekend, The Post obtained a copy of the Federalist Society Lawyers' Division Leadership Directory, 1997-1998. It lists Roberts, then a partner at the law firm Hogan & Hartson, as a member of the steering committee of the organization's Washington chapter and includes his firm's address and telephone number.

Yesterday, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Roberts 'has no recollection of being a member of the Federalist Society, or its steering committee.' Roberts has acknowledged taking part in some Federalist Society activities, Perino said."

Ok, yeah, uh huh!

Anyway, I am of the mind that Roe is a goner, and that isn't entirely a bad thing. As Eric Alterman points out!

Anyway, the Roberts nomination seems to mean we should plan on saying goodbye to thirty-two years of life under “Roe,” which is not entirely a bad thing, even for pro-choice advocates. After all, Bush did terrific with unmarried women without college educations. It would be helpful, politically (and democratically) for them to learn just what it was they were voting for. There’s a much longer argument to be made here, about how judicially-created and enforced liberalism has weakened its cause and alienated its potential supporters while not gaining terribly much in real world terms. (I’m told much the same can be said for “Brown v. Board—at least the “with all deliberate speed” part of it too, but I’ve not yet read up on that argument, and it’s not nearly so germane.) The implications go far beyond that obviously. Roberts is only 50 and Bush is likely to get two more nominees. We may not recognize the Constitution when he’s done. In the meantime, I’ll stick to what I know, will cover the nomination fight if something extraordinary happens. If not, there’s plenty to keep us all busy.

There is nothing you can do to stop a frieght train, and that is what the Bush administration is. The damage done may lead to important reforms in the end! Particularly if it ends public complacency. I know many people who vote for Republicans based on the notion that the courts will protect them from the religious right. It isn't just working class women who don't have time to read newspapers, as Alterman would lead us to believe. It is also upper middle class married women. The so-called security moms. That will officially end once Roe is overturned.

Job Market in W.Va. Defies Efforts to Reform Welfare

We should measure welfare reform on whether it succeeds in lifting the poor out of poverty. Not just on whether case loads are reduced! Hopefully this will be a priority for a restored Democratic congress, but given the New Democrat leanings of the modern Democrats somehow I doubt it.

Job Market in W.Va. Defies Efforts to Reform Welfare: "She has just turned 30, but her left ankle, crushed when her Dodge compact slammed into a cliff four years ago, keeps her limping, in pain and out of work. Just getting around is a job. She lives in a hollow where the roads twist like whirligigs and it takes half an hour to get to the grocery store -- 45 minutes if you end up behind a coal truck. But she no longer has a car, so she has to grab rides from relatives when she can.


Pedestrians and cars filled McDowell Street in downtown Welch, W.Va., in the 1970s, left. Since the coal boom ended, however, cities such as Welch have struggled with poverty and high rates of unemployment.
Pedestrians and cars filled McDowell Street in downtown Welch, W.Va., in the 1970s, left. Since the coal boom ended, however, cities such as Welch have struggled with poverty and high rates of unemployment. (West Virginia State Archive Via Associated Press)

Diamond received welfare, or Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), until the 60-month limit ran out. Nearly two years later, she began receiving disability checks, or Supplemental Security Income (SSI). She gets $479 a month and $160 in food stamps. Still, she says, she can barely afford the electric bills for her trailer or food for her 8-year-old daughter.

She believes this is how it will always be. 'I can't work at all,' she said, 'and there ain't no jobs here no how, except in the coal mines. There's nowhere else for me to go, neither. Without my family, I would not survive.'

In the Central Appalachian coal country, where the land is famously rich and the people famously not, welfare caseloads are down, but poverty still flourishes. Since the 1996 welfare reform law, or Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, took effect, the rolls in West Virginia have dropped from 38,404 to fewer than 10,000. In general, the law -- which sets a five-year limit for receiving welfare and requires recipients to get an education, take job training or perform community service -- is considered a success. But in West Virginia, many former recipients are worse off than before, according to research by West Virginia University.

Even as the Senate is considering reauthorizing the welfare reform act with stricter work requirements and more child care funding, a prime goal of the act -- moving welfare recipients into jobs -- remains elusive in rural West Virginia, according to the research, done in conjunction with the state Department of Health and Human Resources. A year after their checks stopped, 73.1 percent of former recipients were unemployed, 65.6 percent reported not being able to afford their basic utilities, and only a small proportion believed that their prospects for the future were good (11.3 percent) or excellent (3.1 percent), the researchers found."