Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Obama’s VP short-list: Bayh-bayh progressive hopes (1:52 pm)
It seems to me that any talk of Obama’s potential VP picks is mostly mindless speculation, but our mainstream media, in all their inherent wisdom, has drained the pool down to two “short-list” contenders for the VP slot: Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) and Gov. Tim Kaine (D-VA). Thankfully, Sam Nunn, who, just so you know, THINKS IT IS SICK TO MAKE A STRAIGHT NAVAL MAN SHARE A SUBMARINE WITH A GAY NAVAL MAN, is quickly fading from VP speculation, (at least this week), but Joan Walsh at Salon makes clear what an awful disappointment both these men would be should Obama choose one. Here she is on Bayh:
Bayh is viewed as having foreign policy credentials, but to my mind, they’re mostly bad. I vividly remember his heinous argument for why Democrats had to support the Iraq war in October 2002: “The majority of the American people tend to trust the Republican Party more on issues involving national security and defense than they do the Democratic Party,” he told Fox News back then. “We need to work to improve our image on that score by taking a more aggressive posture with regard to Iraq, empowering the president.”
And here she is on Kaine:
Kaine creates comparable problems for Obama with the Democratic base when it comes to the issue of abortion. A Roman Catholic, he is antiabortion, though he says he prefers expanding women’s access to contraception and healthcare over criminalizing them and their doctors (though he does support a late-term abortion ban, as does Bayh). Given that one of Obama’s top arguments to lure fence-sitting female Hillary Clinton supporters has been John McCain’s antichoice stance, both Kaine and Bayh would seem to hurt Obama on that score.
It’s truly amazing to me the way progressives fought tooth and nail to defeat who we thought was a triangulating, narcissistic, politically-motivated centrist only to nominate a triangulating, narcissistic, politically-motivated centrist. Makes my head spin.
posted by Jarrett | 2 comments
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Republican Rap Sheet: the Top 10 (4:00 pm)
Today, Republican Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska was indicted on seven felony counts for not disclosing gifts and income. Mr. Stevens, who is the longest serving Republican senator ever, adds to a growing Republican rap sheet. Here is a quick Top 10 list of some of his younger Capitol Hill colleagues and their recent shenanigans, in reverse chronology:
- [2008] Representative Rick Renzi (R-AZ), along with two buddies, drummed up a 35-count indictment from a grand jury. Charges include extortion, wire fraud and money laundering.
- [2007] I. Lewis Libby, Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, was convicted of lying to a grand jury and to the F.B.I. in their investigation in to the leaking of the identity of a C.I.A. operative.
- [2007] Representative Bob Ney (R-OH) was sentenced to two and a half years in prison after admitting culpability in a lobbying scandal involving one Mr. Jack Abramoff.
- [2006] David H. Safavian resigned as the head of federal procurement policies at the Bush White House before being convicted on four counts of lying and obstruction of justice charges related to one Mr. Jack Abramoff.
- [2006] Tony Rudy, Tom DeLay’s one time chief of staff, pleaded guilty to lining his pockets with thousands of dollars funneled through a consulting firm he ran with his wife. The admission came in the wake of an investigation regarding one Mr. Jack Abramoff.
- [2006] Representative Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-CA) accrued $2.4 million from bribes in the form of yachts, homes... read more
posted by Matthew Schwartzman-Stubbs | start the discussion
Monday, July 28, 2008
The War on Drugs ravages New Orleans (11:34 am)
If it’s not a hurricane (and an abysmal federal response) decimating New Orleans’ African-American community, it’s a wannabe “tough on crime” district attorney. Facing South, the blog of the Institute for Southern Studies, reports that “New Orleans District Attorney Keva Landrum-Johnson is filling up Louisiana’s prisons with a new policy charging minor marijuana offenders with felonies if they have prior convictions.” Predictably, according to New Orleans CityBusiness:
The resulting impact has clogged the courts with non-violent, petty offenses, drained the resources of the criminal justice system and damaged low-income African-American communities, [Steve Singer, chief of trials for the Orleans Public Defenders Office] said.
This is nothing new, reports Facing South:
Targeting nonviolent drug offenders and tacking felony charges on people arrested for second and third marijuana possession offenses is not a new phenomenon in the racially-skewed U.S. drug war. The impact on communities of color in the South has been devastating. In New Orleans, low-income African-Americans make up the majority of those facing charges each month, many of whom typically can’t afford bail and must sit in Orleans Parish Prison for extended periods of time unable to support their families.
Read the whole Facing South entry here.
Also, if you haven’t visited before, the whole blog is worth a weekly look-see. You can read about how “coastal wetlands provide $23.2 billion worth of protection from hurricane-related flooding in the United States each year” on their site here.
posted by Jarrett | start the discussion
Greenwald/Sirota (11:20 am)
Salon has posted a Glenn Greenwald interview with In These Times Senior Editor David Sirota on “Salon Radio” today. Definitely worth a listen.
Also, Robert McChesney hosted an interview with Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) yesterday on his standout radio show, Media Matters, a weekly broadcast from WILL-am 580 in Urbana, IL
posted by Jarrett | start the discussion
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Refugee crisis a ‘surreal state of affairs’ (3:01 pm)
Capt. Luis Carlos Montalván - who wrote “Promoting Incompetence In Iraq” in the August issue of In These Times - left the military after 17 years of service and two tours of duty in Iraq.
Disenchanted with what he says was “incredible dereliction, incompetence and corruption” in military leadership, and unable to speak out due to gag orders, Montalván, along with Capt. Tyler Boudreau, formed the Iraq Veterans Refugee Aid Association (IVRAA).
Under the sponsorship of Physicians for Social Responsibility, IVRAA aims to influence U.S. policy to grant aid and asylum for Iraqi refugees.
Since the U.S. invasion in 2003, an estimated 4.7 million Iraqis have been forced out of their homes. Nearly 2 million of them have left the country entirely.
In August, Montalván and Boudreau are traveling to Jordan - a temporary home to 750,000 displaced refugees - for IVRAA’s first fact-finding mission.
“We want to see [the refugee situation] for ourselves,” Montalván says. “We have a moral responsibility, as does our nation, to deal with this surreal state of affairs.”
IVRAA’s mission, he says, is to provide opportunities to U.S. veterans to give back, and to get the U.S. government to change its policies.
“There is a refugee crisis no matter what party you’re affiliated with, no matter what your notion of the war is,” Montalván says. “This is something everyone should be able to get their arms around.”
Head here to donate and read about the trip to Jordan.
posted by Justine Reisinger | start the discussion
Monday, July 21, 2008
He Doth ‘Defend’ Too Much (2:26 pm)
Remember Sen. Larry “I’m Not Gay” Craig? That toe-tapping conservative GOPer who was busted in 2007 for allegedly soliciting sex in an airport bathroom? Well, I happened upon this Newsweek quote from the October 20, 2003 issue:
“I’ve got all your records!” -A breathless Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, to Latin heartthrob Ricky Martin, who was in Washington to talk to lawmakers about the exploitation of children
In more recent news, on June 27, the Carpetbagger Reports that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is being reintroduced. Who should be one of hypocrites behind it than our buddy Larry.
Hey, Larr, maybe stick to the bad music instead of “defending” marriage.
posted by Sanhita Sinharoy | 1 comment
SnagFilms: The Great Doc Distro (1:26 pm)
SnagFilms launched in beta last week, and just may be my new favorite thing/distraction. A platform for “the world’s most compelling documentaries, whether from established heavyweights or first-time filmmakers,” SnagFilms offers some 250 full-length documentary films (with new titles added daily) for immediate, hi-res streamed playback. No downloads, no low-res letdowns. Glorious.
Browsing SnagFilms is a breeze, too. Viewers with an idea of what they’re looking for can search titles topically (campus, environment, health, history, etc). More adventurous types can peruse the A-Z listing. Never has finding documentary films about rejected film scripts (Dreams on Spec), the plight of the honeybee (Every Third Bite), feminist Buddhism on the India-Tibet border (Sisters of Ladakh), or an extraordinary Holocaust education project in a Tennessee middle school (Paper Clips) been so easy, entertaining, and informative.
But SnagFilms doesn’t stop there. Trumpeting the motto “Find. Watch. Snag. Support.,” SnagFilms propounds a broader mission, a viewer-engagement-based aim that activates its free-flick allure. Each title is available in a widget, allowing viewers, bloggers, social-networkers and others to pull (“snag”) films to embed into their
own e-spaces. By promoting such globalized e-theatres, SnagFilms “encourages users to engage with the films’ issues and supporter communities.” Says founder Ted Leonsis:
There has never been a time when so many high-quality socially relevant documentary films have been made, yet even though tens of thousands of
documentaries are submitted to film festivals every year, only a handful find theatrical distribution. SnagFilms was created so that anyone who has a website, publishes a blog, or participates in a social network can open an online multiplex theater, giving others an opportunity to watch one or more of the films we’ll stream, to distribute these films by snagging them for their own sites, and to support the causes promoted by these films by linking to participating nonprofits.
posted by Brian Allen Anderson | start the discussion
Remember Colin Powell? He’s advising Obama now. (10:54 am)
Talking Points Memo catches a “little nugget” from last week’s New York Times:
Another person who has contributed outside advice is former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, whom Mr. Obama has been wooing. Mr. Powell, a Republican, has a friendship of decades with Mr. McCain, but friends say he has felt excluded from Mr. McCain’s foreign policy operation and was impressed when Mr. Obama called on him in June. Mr. Powell also met around the same time with Mr. McCain.
As a refresher course let’s return to Colin Powell’s testimony on 02/05/2003 before the United Nations Security Council in which he said the following:
“There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more.”
Where were the rest of the media on the fact that Obama, the candidate “who was against the war from the start,” is “wooing” one of the worst offenders responsible for the start of the Iraq War? Why wasn’t this striking hypocrisy reported far and wide, turned over, and analyzed ad nauseum? Oh, that’s right, because The New Yorker published a cartoon.
Speaking of, it seems that, according to Salon, Obama’s campaign has shut out The New Yorker from his recent visit to the Middle East, despite the fact that the magazine has produced some of the finest reporting on the candidate to date, and despite the fact that there were 40 spots open for journalists on the trip. It seems the candidate of change believes in freedom of the press…to a limit.
posted by Jarrett | 1 comment
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