Kerry quotes Bible;Bush camp claims copyright infringement
A Bush campaign spokesman called John Kerry's use of biblical quotes in an address to Baptist worshippers in St. Louis Sunday ". . . beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse and a sad exploitation of Scripture for a political attack."
No, really. Read it. That's what he said.
Counterattack . . .
Bill Safire's column in the NYTimes today, "Follow-up on Kofigate" seems to be another salvo in the Republican "blame-Clinton" election-year counterattack strategy.
The UN's toleration for corruptions within the Iraq oil-for-food program now being investigated was tolerated by -- indeed, NewsMax suggests even guided by -- "policy emanating from Washington." And we all know who that means . . .
So if the story gains traction (and Safire's doin' his best to make that happen), Republicans can use it to attack Kerry's Clintonesque pro-UN internationalism and boost their own arguments for taking out Saddam . . .
UPDATE: Oh yeah, and this won't hurt the Republicans, either. Glorious Appearing, the final book in best-selling apocalyptic Left Behind* series -- which depicts the antichrist as president of the UN --goes on sale tomorrow . . . Only, as it turns out, it's not actually the final book. Christian activists/authors/rapturists Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins are now promising a follow up to Jesus's return, on that dramatizes the final battle between god and the devil. And then, of course, there's a prequel in the works. So I guess we're not there quite yet . . .
*Millenial hysteria has woven its way through American history, becoming most apparent at century turning points and during social and political crises. Personally, my favorite American prophet is William Miller who, in the super-charged millenial atmosphere of western New York's Burned-over District, announced that the end was nigh. Using the bible prophesies and mathematical calculations, Miller took to the road preaching that 1843 would be the final year. Though Miller himself never identified a specific date, many of his followers settled on August 11 and when the day came and went were saddened to find themselves still there. Miller responded by announcing an error in his calculations and telling them to be ready the following year.
Most of the 50,000-100,000 people who tidied up affairs and prepared for the end-of-time on October 22, 1844, suffered through what came to be known as The Great Disappointment and then went back to their more-or-less normal lives, while others became the core of religious movements like the Seventh Day Adventists that continue to the present day.
Takin' it to the (suburban) streets . . .
Demonstrators in town to attend the 33rd Annual National People's Action Conference dropped by to visit Karl Rove today, swarming around his suburban home amidst chants of "Karl, Karl, come on out. See what the Dream Act is all about" and, stating the obvious, "Karl Rove ain't got no soul." NPA activists, who believe that real Homeland Security depends on healthy, stable neighborhoods, good jobs and educational opportunities, also planned home visits to Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao and agriculture secretary Ann Veneman.
Rove did what any good unelected official would do when confronted by too much democracy: called the cops, bargained in bad faith and whined.
Truth hurts . . .
Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank play it straight in their report on Condi Rice's 60 Minutes interview last night . . .
March 28, 2004
Now this is intriguing . . .
Though there has been no similar comment from the Kerry camp, Ralph Nader has said that he will meet with the presumptive Democratic nominee next month to discuss defeating Bush in November. Boy would I love to be a fly on the wall when that meeting takes place . . .
Kerry supports Venezuelan right-wing
If you're here because you've been here before and decided to come back, then you'll probably want to sign the petition at Venezuelanalysis.com calling on John Kerry to retract his website statement critical of President Hugo Chavez. Go here and here to read the statements at Kerry's site, and here to read Venezuelanalysis' refutations.
Kerry may be the presumptive Democratic candidate, but we need to let him know we aren't looking for a wolf in sheep's clothing and if he ba-ahs the same SA policies as Bush we won't vote for him.
Mayor With a Mission
the NYTimes has a good feature article on Jason West, the New Paltz mayor who whose decision to marry gay couples has been interrupted by a court injunction. Though he's been portrayed by some as an opportunist, West and fellow New Paltz greens are thoughtful, experienced activists who are redefining local politics for the 21st century.
March 26, 2004
Noam Chomsky has a blog?
Yeah, he does. It's called Turning the Tide, it's been up a couple of days, and I just learned about it from Cyndy at mousemusings
Here' part of a Chomsky post titled Structural Adjustment:
People in the more civilized sectors of the world (what we call "the third world," or the "developing countries") often burst out laughing when they witness an election in which the choices are two men from very wealthy families with plenty of clout in the very narrow political system, who went to the same elite university and even joined the same secret society to be socialized into the manners and attitudes of the rulers, and who are able to participate in the election because they have massive funding from highly concentrated sectors of unaccountable power that cast over society the shadow called "politics," as John Dewey put it.
But it's up to us whether we want to tolerate this, and if we could begin to approach the level of democracy of, say, Brazil, we could do quite a lot about IMF conditionalities. And it doesn't happen by just showing up once every four years to participate in an "election.
Reading Chomsky is like viewing Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Map of Spaceship Earth. Both require a structural adjustment in how we think . . .
March 22, 2004
American gun drummer
I was away most of yesterday and so missed this article in the UK Observer on America's home-grown terrorists William Krar and Judith Bruey. The mainstream media has mostly ignored the story ever since Krar and Bruey were arrested in April 2003 for possessing an arsenal of weapons. Property seized in the course of the arrests included machine guns, silencers, pistols, mines and explosives, and half-a-million rounds of ammunition. Oh yeah, and the fixings for a cyanide bomb that could kill thousands.
Fortunately, The Memory Hole, which has posted earlier reports and pictures on this under-covered story, blogged on yesterday's Observer report.
One current theory is that Krar was some sort of traveling salesman, a Willie Loman of the extremist underground. Only instead of hawking widgets from a sample case, this guy hauled guns and parts for bombs . . .
You know, I occasionally read conspiracy literature dealing with the assassination of JFK. I don't read all of it, and I've probably missed a lot of the definitive stuff. Still, over the years I've found that the circles and networks surrounding that never-to-be-fully-understood event grow wider and more complex.
Just recently I finished Larry Handcock's-spiral bound research report, Someone Would Have Talked: What We Know Forty Years After the Kennedy Assassination. It's a book that has given me new insights into how terrorism works: how operatives cherry pick arms, weapons specialists and other actors from a floating criminal underground to carry out a planned attack; and how a single action can be so compartmentalized that actors may not know the true objective or who, beyond thier own assignments, participated in the plot.
My point is this. William Krar and Judith Bruey appear to have been connected to white-supremacist and militia groups. But that doesn't mean they don't have ties to international terrorist activities of all stripes. Or that they haven't been alternately used and infiltrated by governmental covert organizations like the FBI, CIA, Defence Intelligence Organization, Office of Naval Intelligence and who knows what else.
It will be interesting to see what is made public about Krar's activities. There may well be strands in its investigation that the FBI does not want to see revealed.
(Tweaked 3/22/04, 9:53 am: caught typos and changed a couple of words)
March 21, 2004
I'll be back. But before I go, did anyone see Ted Kennedy's interview with Tim Russert this morning? Tim kept assaulting him with the BushCo line on Kerry, interrupting and just badgering something fierce. Ted would not back down on anything and you could tell he was gettin' pumped. When Russert said Bush calls himself a "proud conservative" and asked if Kennedy called himself a "proud liberal", he calmly replied, "Yes, I do."
Then Russert thought he had his opening and closed in for the kill. "Does John Kerry consider himself a 'proud liberal'?" he asked, expecting to see the senator wriggle and squirm. Kennedy threw him a feint: "You see, this is the trouble with labels . . ." he began. But then he started in on the Bush deficit, and pressed Russert to say whether they fit his definition of a conservative. It was great:the worm was makin' the angler squirm. All Russert could do was repeat the question, "But is Kerry a liberal? Is he a liberal?" Over and over again.
Now, all these quotes are approximate because the transcript isn't up yet, But Kennedy shut him up with approximately this: "Tell you what. You tell me if George Bush is a compassionate conservative and I'll stick a label on John Kerry's politics."
Absolutely hysterical! The camera was on Russert, who couldn't even look up from his notes, and you could hear Kennedy laughing off-camera . . . It was hard to tell with his head ducked the way it was, but it looked like Russert was kinda laughing, too. Whatever was going on, he sure couldn't talk. The director had to switch to a graphic so Russert could recover. I could almost hear him in the booth goin' "Shit. Ted just blew Tim out of the water. Get something else up on the screen quick!"
(Tweaked 3/21/04, 1:42 pm: Posted draft by mistake)
A Bush campaign spokesman called John Kerry's use of biblical quotes in an address to Baptist worshippers in St. Louis Sunday ". . . beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse and a sad exploitation of Scripture for a political attack."
No, really. Read it. That's what he said.
Counterattack . . .
Bill Safire's column in the NYTimes today, "Follow-up on Kofigate" seems to be another salvo in the Republican "blame-Clinton" election-year counterattack strategy.
The UN's toleration for corruptions within the Iraq oil-for-food program now being investigated was tolerated by -- indeed, NewsMax suggests even guided by -- "policy emanating from Washington." And we all know who that means . . .
So if the story gains traction (and Safire's doin' his best to make that happen), Republicans can use it to attack Kerry's Clintonesque pro-UN internationalism and boost their own arguments for taking out Saddam . . .
UPDATE: Oh yeah, and this won't hurt the Republicans, either. Glorious Appearing, the final book in best-selling apocalyptic Left Behind* series -- which depicts the antichrist as president of the UN --goes on sale tomorrow . . . Only, as it turns out, it's not actually the final book. Christian activists/authors/rapturists Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins are now promising a follow up to Jesus's return, on that dramatizes the final battle between god and the devil. And then, of course, there's a prequel in the works. So I guess we're not there quite yet . . .
*Millenial hysteria has woven its way through American history, becoming most apparent at century turning points and during social and political crises. Personally, my favorite American prophet is William Miller who, in the super-charged millenial atmosphere of western New York's Burned-over District, announced that the end was nigh. Using the bible prophesies and mathematical calculations, Miller took to the road preaching that 1843 would be the final year. Though Miller himself never identified a specific date, many of his followers settled on August 11 and when the day came and went were saddened to find themselves still there. Miller responded by announcing an error in his calculations and telling them to be ready the following year.
Most of the 50,000-100,000 people who tidied up affairs and prepared for the end-of-time on October 22, 1844, suffered through what came to be known as The Great Disappointment and then went back to their more-or-less normal lives, while others became the core of religious movements like the Seventh Day Adventists that continue to the present day.
Takin' it to the (suburban) streets . . .
Demonstrators in town to attend the 33rd Annual National People's Action Conference dropped by to visit Karl Rove today, swarming around his suburban home amidst chants of "Karl, Karl, come on out. See what the Dream Act is all about" and, stating the obvious, "Karl Rove ain't got no soul." NPA activists, who believe that real Homeland Security depends on healthy, stable neighborhoods, good jobs and educational opportunities, also planned home visits to Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao and agriculture secretary Ann Veneman.
Rove did what any good unelected official would do when confronted by too much democracy: called the cops, bargained in bad faith and whined.
Truth hurts . . .
Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank play it straight in their report on Condi Rice's 60 Minutes interview last night . . .
Now this is intriguing . . .
Though there has been no similar comment from the Kerry camp, Ralph Nader has said that he will meet with the presumptive Democratic nominee next month to discuss defeating Bush in November. Boy would I love to be a fly on the wall when that meeting takes place . . .
Kerry supports Venezuelan right-wing
If you're here because you've been here before and decided to come back, then you'll probably want to sign the petition at Venezuelanalysis.com calling on John Kerry to retract his website statement critical of President Hugo Chavez. Go here and here to read the statements at Kerry's site, and here to read Venezuelanalysis' refutations.
Kerry may be the presumptive Democratic candidate, but we need to let him know we aren't looking for a wolf in sheep's clothing and if he ba-ahs the same SA policies as Bush we won't vote for him.
Mayor With a Mission
the NYTimes has a good feature article on Jason West, the New Paltz mayor who whose decision to marry gay couples has been interrupted by a court injunction. Though he's been portrayed by some as an opportunist, West and fellow New Paltz greens are thoughtful, experienced activists who are redefining local politics for the 21st century.
Noam Chomsky has a blog?
Yeah, he does. It's called Turning the Tide, it's been up a couple of days, and I just learned about it from Cyndy at mousemusings
Here' part of a Chomsky post titled Structural Adjustment:
People in the more civilized sectors of the world (what we call "the third world," or the "developing countries") often burst out laughing when they witness an election in which the choices are two men from very wealthy families with plenty of clout in the very narrow political system, who went to the same elite university and even joined the same secret society to be socialized into the manners and attitudes of the rulers, and who are able to participate in the election because they have massive funding from highly concentrated sectors of unaccountable power that cast over society the shadow called "politics," as John Dewey put it.But it's up to us whether we want to tolerate this, and if we could begin to approach the level of democracy of, say, Brazil, we could do quite a lot about IMF conditionalities. And it doesn't happen by just showing up once every four years to participate in an "election.
Reading Chomsky is like viewing Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Map of Spaceship Earth. Both require a structural adjustment in how we think . . .
American gun drummer
I was away most of yesterday and so missed this article in the UK Observer on America's home-grown terrorists William Krar and Judith Bruey. The mainstream media has mostly ignored the story ever since Krar and Bruey were arrested in April 2003 for possessing an arsenal of weapons. Property seized in the course of the arrests included machine guns, silencers, pistols, mines and explosives, and half-a-million rounds of ammunition. Oh yeah, and the fixings for a cyanide bomb that could kill thousands.
Fortunately, The Memory Hole, which has posted earlier reports and pictures on this under-covered story, blogged on yesterday's Observer report.
One current theory is that Krar was some sort of traveling salesman, a Willie Loman of the extremist underground. Only instead of hawking widgets from a sample case, this guy hauled guns and parts for bombs . . .
You know, I occasionally read conspiracy literature dealing with the assassination of JFK. I don't read all of it, and I've probably missed a lot of the definitive stuff. Still, over the years I've found that the circles and networks surrounding that never-to-be-fully-understood event grow wider and more complex.
Just recently I finished Larry Handcock's-spiral bound research report, Someone Would Have Talked: What We Know Forty Years After the Kennedy Assassination. It's a book that has given me new insights into how terrorism works: how operatives cherry pick arms, weapons specialists and other actors from a floating criminal underground to carry out a planned attack; and how a single action can be so compartmentalized that actors may not know the true objective or who, beyond thier own assignments, participated in the plot.
My point is this. William Krar and Judith Bruey appear to have been connected to white-supremacist and militia groups. But that doesn't mean they don't have ties to international terrorist activities of all stripes. Or that they haven't been alternately used and infiltrated by governmental covert organizations like the FBI, CIA, Defence Intelligence Organization, Office of Naval Intelligence and who knows what else.
It will be interesting to see what is made public about Krar's activities. There may well be strands in its investigation that the FBI does not want to see revealed.
(Tweaked 3/22/04, 9:53 am: caught typos and changed a couple of words)
I'll be back. But before I go, did anyone see Ted Kennedy's interview with Tim Russert this morning? Tim kept assaulting him with the BushCo line on Kerry, interrupting and just badgering something fierce. Ted would not back down on anything and you could tell he was gettin' pumped. When Russert said Bush calls himself a "proud conservative" and asked if Kennedy called himself a "proud liberal", he calmly replied, "Yes, I do."
Then Russert thought he had his opening and closed in for the kill. "Does John Kerry consider himself a 'proud liberal'?" he asked, expecting to see the senator wriggle and squirm. Kennedy threw him a feint: "You see, this is the trouble with labels . . ." he began. But then he started in on the Bush deficit, and pressed Russert to say whether they fit his definition of a conservative. It was great:the worm was makin' the angler squirm. All Russert could do was repeat the question, "But is Kerry a liberal? Is he a liberal?" Over and over again.
Now, all these quotes are approximate because the transcript isn't up yet, But Kennedy shut him up with approximately this: "Tell you what. You tell me if George Bush is a compassionate conservative and I'll stick a label on John Kerry's politics."
Absolutely hysterical! The camera was on Russert, who couldn't even look up from his notes, and you could hear Kennedy laughing off-camera . . . It was hard to tell with his head ducked the way it was, but it looked like Russert was kinda laughing, too. Whatever was going on, he sure couldn't talk. The director had to switch to a graphic so Russert could recover. I could almost hear him in the booth goin' "Shit. Ted just blew Tim out of the water. Get something else up on the screen quick!"
(Tweaked 3/21/04, 1:42 pm: Posted draft by mistake)
abuddhas memes
