Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion.
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"News that's not known, or not known enough." Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion. |
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Obama will be a punchline for future generations ♦ Here's a CSI-worthy autopsy of how the Obama gang has squandered the grass-roots organization that worked its ass off getting him elected. First thing they did was dump the huge email and activist army, and instead decision-making was handed over to insiders. All the other mistakes could've been called in advance (and were) once it was clear that Obama would put only hacks and hollow-heads into
But I ain't grousing, honest. I've been feeling much better since I gave up hope, and that will be President Obama's legacy — quashing the last faint hopes for America. It's really quite entertaining to watch, as Obama goes from a man promising grand change and holding the potential for at least modest course corrections, to a guy whose name will be a punchline for future generations (think Millard Fillmore). On issue after issue after issue, the Obama administration keeps moving in the opposite direction from anything that the people who voted for him could be said to have supported. The Bush-Cheney war criminals won't be prosecuted, which is almost literally a green light for the next Republican administration to resume policies of torture and war crimes. Wiretapping and diversion of Americans' emails without warrants continues unabated. The banking industry, home to the nation's richest criminals, continues to receive bailout checks instead of subpoenas. The wars continue, with only lip service to any end, and the open secret of new wars in Pakistan and Yemen. Guantanamo remains open for business, and we all know what that business is. Health care reform remains an unfulfilled promise. The President speaks of his support for "clean" coal and nuclear power. On and on the list goes.
It's been a grand doublecross, worthy of a soap opera on the CW, with Mr Obama playing the angsty vampire. Among the few people I call friends Obama won unanimously in 2008, but I don't see how he'll get any votes in 2012. ♦ The Obama administration has picked William Lietzau as the Pentagon’s new deputy assistant secretary for detainee affairs. Repulsively but not surprisingly, Lietzau's main qualification is that he was "key behind-the-scenes architect of the Bush administration’s first version of the military commissions for terrorism suspects — which the Supreme Court found to unconstitutionally restrict the legal rights of detainees". ♦ Instead of accomplishing anything with their substantial electoral victories and Congressional majorities, President Obama and the Democrats continue their endless, pointless, and fruitless search for bipartisanship. Rachel Maddow explains it almost poetically, but nobody needs Ms Maddow to understand what's happening. The Republicans are dedicated to obstructing everything, and the Democrats are dedicated to yielding to the Republicans on everything. ♦ We're supposed to believe that Democrats are going to take action to end the Republicans' filibuster abuse. Of course, such action is necessary if anything at all is going to be accomplished in the Senate, but I'm not sure many Democrats in the Senate really want to accomplish anything. File this one under "hope so, but believe it when you see it". ♦ President Obama has apparently wimped out on the notion of recess appointments, after Republicans let a few dozen appointees actually take their jobs. None of the approved were even remotely controversial, and it's hard to find any reasonable reason anyone could oppose any of the dozens more still log-jammed. ♦ Obama's people and his supporters have been bragging about his televised and heavily-hyped appearance at a Republican lawmakers' conference a few weeks ago, portraying it as a big win. And indeed, from the extended clips I've seen, Obama rhetorically mopped the floor with the Republicans. But we're dealing with liars here — liar is a synonym for Republican — they've been lying that they won. And with no media to pushback on this or any other lies, it's the Republicans who are coming out ahead from that ill-advised showdown. Give it another month or so and it'll be "common knowledge" that Obama foolishly appeared before Republicans in a debate setting, and they mopped the floor with him. ♦ Does anyone in the Obama administration have a heart? Only four presidents in American history have gone farther into their terms without issuing a single presidential pardon, and one of those four was the unpardonable George W Bush. ♦ Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was asked by some flunky on ABC News whether there is any danger that U.S. treasury bonds could be demoted from their triple-A rating, and Geithner responded, “Absolutely not. And that will never happen to this country.” I don't think anyone who reads our blog would be stupid enough to take Geithner at his word, and I wouldn't be surprised if Geithner is still in charge at the Treasury Department when the inevitable downgrade comes. ♦ President Obama says he doesn't begrudge the enormous bonuses paid to the same high-finance execs who got away with torpedoing the American economy. The president, speaking in an interview, said in response to a question that while $17 million is “an extraordinary amount of money” for Main Street, “there are some baseball players who are making more than that and don’t get to the World Series either, so I’m shocked by that as well.” Cripes, whatever happened to the politically savvy guy who ran for President in 2008? That guy would've understood just how tone-deaf such comments sound. Derek Jeter didn't rip off the banking system for billions, and didn't get rewarded for it with a handout from the US Treasury.
♦ Here's a Washington Post interview where Attorney General Eric Holder clearly lays the groundwork for yet another surrender, this time over holding a fair trial for alleged terrorist Khalid Sheik Mohammed. Holder says: “At the end of the day, wherever this case is tried, in whatever forum, what we have to ensure is that it’s done as transparently as possible and with adherence to all the rules. If we do that, I’m not sure the location or even the forum is as important as what the world sees in that proceeding.” Got that? What can "in whatever forum" mean? Seems to me it's a signal that there probably won't be trials under the American system of justice. This is not a trivial matter. It's important, damned important. This is one of several issues where Republicans are pushing hard to ignore, lower, or simply end the various components that once added up to America, and Democrats like Obama are yielding. We're talking about fair trials for the accused, and Republicans are against that concept, and it looks like the Obama administration will again surrender or compromise, the Republicans will again win, and the essence of America will continue being chiseled away in a bipartisan effort. ♦ Long-time Senatorial disaster Arlen Specter (D-Pennsylvania) is running for his sixth term in the upper house. He celebrated his 80th birthday last week, and we observed the occasion by sending twenty bucks to his primary opponent, Joe Sestak (donate). ♦ Only 12% of Americans are cognizant of the tax cut they got last year, thanks to the Democrats and the Obama administration. And I mean that both ways — thanks to the Democrats and the Obama administration ordinary Americans got a tax cut, but even when they accomplish something Democrats lack the wits or simple competence to make sure people know it — so thanks to the Dems and the Obama administration, the tax cut remains basically a secret. Republicans are awful at governing but they're pretty good at making sure people know what they want 'em to know, even though it's never true. So Republicans continue portraying the Dems and Obama as tax-and-spend pinkos, and have you seen any Democratic office-holder anywhere push back against this conception? ♦ Chris Floyd: "And what is Barack Obama's agenda? What is his political program? It breaks down into three main elements: unwinnable wars, unconscionable bailouts, and unworkable, unwanted health care "reform" that forces people to further enrich some of the most despised conglomerates in the land. It is, in every way, a recipe for moral, economic and political disaster. It is a gigantic anchor tied around the neck of the Democratic Party, and it will drag the whole lumbering wreck back to the bottom in short order." ♦ I'm not usually among the many fans of John F Kennedy. He was before my time, and he seems to be worshipped by almost every stereotypical latte-sipping liberal who's ever annoyed me. But that said, hearing something Kennedy said fifty years ago made me smile.
♦ "Obama is succeeding", says professional pundit Matt Yglesias. Discuss among yourselves. I'll be snickering in the next room. ♦ Here's an interesting proposal that's probably going nowhere, but that doesn't make it any less interesting. Michael Moore should announce that he's running for President in 2012, and then he should campaign enthusiastically, in his normal no-bull style, with his long-time positions and his feisty impatience for lies about his positions, as a serious shove to the Obama administration, from the left. "If Obama's advisers knew for certain that they would face an effective progressive challenge in the 2012 primaries and caucuses, it's likely that they would start making different political choices immediately, because everything they fail to accomplish by spring 2012 would be on the table in the primaries and caucuses: health care for all, putting America back to work, ending the war in Afghanistan."
But in the interest of fairness, we'll also give Obama and the Democrats a pat on the back when they get something right. This week... * The White House has responded sensibly — meaning bluntly, forcefully — to at least one Republican Senator's bumbling confusion and/or lies about national security and constitutional rights. Sincere applause here, but why is it so astronomically rare to see the Obama administration play defense against the Republicans' bluff, bluster, and bullsh*t? * Lt. Dan Choi, the soldier who's been in limbo for months since coming out on The Rachel Maddow Show last spring, has received an order to return to active duty. No real word on what this means, but it sure sounds like a step toward trashing the preposterous and un-American "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy. * And those are the week's only optimistic signs. On every other matter the Democrats' and Obama administration's agenda seems to be a long litany of compromise, surrender, and abandoned hope. ♦ Steve Benen: "More than a dozen GOP lawmakers who said the recovery package is simply incapable of creating jobs and generating economic growth pleaded with the Agriculture Department to spend stimulus dollars in their areas to 'create jobs' and 'spur economic opportunities'. In several instances, far-right lawmakers would publicly condemn the very idea of economic stimulus efforts and request stimulus dollars within a few days of each other."
♦ Hannah Giles, the preacher's daughter who played the prostitute in the infamous ACORN "sting" videos, is asking for help with her legal bills as ACORN defends itself. From the excerpts of her fundraising letter, we are unsurprised to learn that she's stupid and a liar. We're certain, though, that she'll promptly find her money problems solved. ♦ Richard Clark, chief counter-terrorism adviser on the U.S. National Security Council for Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, has something to say: "Recent months have seen the party out of power picking fights over the conduct of our efforts against Al Qaeda, often with total disregard to the facts and frequently blowing issues totally out of proportion, while ignoring the more important challenges we face in defeating terrorists. ... It has been hard to escape the conclusion that the goal of these critics is to discredit the President's handling of terrorism for political advantage, whether or not the administration is actually doing a good job. Indeed, they seem to be posturing themselves simply so that if there is a successful terrorist attack on America, they can say 'I told you Obama doesn't know how to fight Al Qaeda'." ♦ In last week's fake Republican outrage, we saw the right-wing take great phony umbrage over President Obama's habit of using the word "I" in reference to himself. Can't wait to see what next week's fake Republican outrage will be about. It's always sumfin. ♦ A British court has ordered the release of details about how the American government arranged for the torture of a British citizen, Binyam Mohamed, whose genitals were cut by a scalpel as part of his, uh, interrogation. The Obama administration responded to the ruling with all the integrity, compassion, and human decency you'd expect from the US government in such matters — none. Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for President Barack Obama, said: "We're deeply disappointed with the court's judgment because we shared this information in confidence and with certain expectations. As we warned, the court's judgment will complicate the confidentiality of our intelligence-sharing relationship with the UK, and it will have to factor into our decision-making going forward."
♦ The Obama administration claims the right to track anyone's location via their cell phone, without a search warrant. Because they can. And this is different from the Bush-Cheney administration because ... ? ♦ Andrew Moshirnia: "So here is a nice and scary development. It appears that the FBI wants Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to keep a log of the URLs visited by consumers. Wait it gets better. This log would be retained for two years. And, a complete URL listing would require deep packet inspection, which is a no-no under the Wiretap Act. "The FBI says not to worry, we won't collect this information without a warrant. This of course would inspire more confidence if the FBI had not been caught repeatedly violating the warrant requirements of the Wiretap Act and other domestic spying restrictions." ♦ Our cell phones aren't just for calls anymore. They hold our address books, our calendars, our emails, and our grocery lists. They may even include things like a list of questions to ask your doctor, pictures of your girlfriend, or URLs of web sites you've visited. When can police search your phone and look at all this information? That's the question that EFF is asking a court in California to consider. In People v. Taylor, police in Daly City, California seized a suspect's iPhone during his arrest. Hours later, investigators bypassed the password and searched through the data on the device without a search warrant. After the officers realized that the information was too extensive to write down, they finally obtained a warrant to search the phone.
♦ US forces kidnapped and imprisoned Reuters photographer Ibrahim Jassam Mohammed seventeen months ago, without ever saying why. He was released last week, without anyone saying why or saying 'sorry'. "How can I describe my feelings? This is like being born again," Jassam told Reuters by telephone as he was greeted emotionally by his family. ♦ I've seen scant coverage of this in the past so I came into this knowing not much about it, and Paul Craig Roberts makes the common mistake of preaching about what it means before he presents the facts of the matter. But it's difficult to square the coverage of "Lady Al Qaeda" Aafia Siddiqui's conviction in American media with Al Jazeera's report or, for that matter, with earlier background coverage in American media. Paul Craig Roberts says she's an American, and other reports mention that she married an American and lived in Massachusetts, so presumably Roberts is right — curious that the New York Daily News doesn't consider that worth mentioning. Instead, at least in the Daily News, she's a nut arrested for terrorism but inexplicably not charged with that crime, who somehow overpowered her American captors and grabbed a weapon from one of them and shot at them, though no evidence beyond witnesses' testimony seems to have been presented and she's the only one who was shot. In Al Jazeera's coverage, Tina Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network, presents the essence of the most obvious questions that remain: "I think that if there was credible evidence that Aafia Siddiqui had been involved in any sort of terrorist activities ... any sort of plot against the United States that she had been involved in, we would have seen prosecutions for those crimes.
"One has to wonder whether the reasons she was in custody to begin with are ever going to be addressed by the government of the United States. "Why she had been on that wanted list, and why all of these allegations that were not made in court have continued to be leaked to the media and have continued to paint Dr Aafia in a negative light despite the fact that she has never been charged with any terrorism activity." ♦ A Pennsylvania man sued the federal government Wednesday, alleging that he was abusively interrogated, handcuffed and detained for five hours at Philadelphia's airport in August because he carried a set of English-Arabic flashcards as part of his college language studies. ♦ In two separate court challenges, people who allegedly wore military medals they hadn't earned are challenging the Stolen Valor Act of 2006, which makes it a crime to falsely claim such honors. The liars' logic is impeccable to me — freedom of speech has to include the freedom to lie. Why should this particular kind of lie be punished by law, when so many other lies are not? ♦ Terri Saunders: "There’s next to no evidence terrorist groups like Al-Qaida train and deploy sleeper agents to countries around the world, an intelligence expert told a federal court Monday. ... If they (terrorism groups) spent time and money and effort developing sleeper agents, why aren’t they using them? There is no evidence of sleeper agents being employed.” ♦ Judge Vaughn Walker (appointed by Bush41 in 1989), who's hearing the lawsuit over California's anti-gay Proposition 8, is rumored to be gay, a rumor the San Francisco Chronicle is helping to spread. This is considered worrisome among those who want gays to have fewer or no civil rights, since they think a gay judge is less likely to decide the matter that way. The civil rights of gays should presumably be decided only by straights? ♦ According to a new poll, a substantial majority of Americans would support ending "Don't Ask Don't Tell" (DADT). In 1993, when then-President Bill Clinton briefly supported equal rights for gays, only 44% of Americans supported the idea. Which means, so much progress has been made in public opinion that ending DADT wouldn't even be "leadership" any more — it would be politicians being led by public opinion. ♦ Don Peck: "Even if the economy were to immediately begin producing 600,000 jobs a month — more than double the pace of the mid-to-late 1990s, when job growth was strong — it would take roughly two years to dig ourselves out of the hole we’re in. The economy could add jobs that fast, or even faster — job growth is theoretically limited only by labor supply, and a lot more labor is sitting idle today than usual. But the U.S. hasn’t seen that pace of sustained employment growth in more than 30 years. "Thirty years ago, of course, American businesses made things. There were factories, there were exports, there were unions and there was a strong middle-class. All these factors are gone. The factories are gone, the exports are a trickle, most of what Americans need and eat is imported, and the jobs Americans yearn for are now in Bangledesh, where the pay is a dime a day." ♦ Steve Clemons: "Several years ago, I met with the Deputy Director of the Policy Planning staff of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and I asked him what he was working on -- and what China's grand strategy was. "His reply: 'We are trying to figure out how to keep you Americans distracted in small Middle Eastern countries'."
♦ PayPal, which has a long track record of scummy behavior and coming between customers and their cash, has apparently blocked payments on personal accounts for everyone in India. ♦ Feeling that aggressive reporting by ABC News had unfairly tarnished the Toyota brand name, a large chain of Toyota dealerships yanked its ads off ABC affiliates. The notion of "aggressive reporting" from ABC News is almost laughable, but can any news provider that's funded by advertising (which is, of course, every major news provider in America) afford aggressive reporting? ♦ Lots of jokes on late-night TV about Toyota's safety problems and the company's recent large-scale recalls. But while everyone's piling on Toyota, where's the well-earned criticism for the regulatory agencies that knew about the problem for years and didn't do diddly? Not once in more than six years of reviews of Toyota’s problems did officials at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which regulates automakers, use their power to subpoena Toyota’s records, even though they said they believed the automaker was withholding critical information. ♦ John Thain used to be the CEO of Merrill Lynch, leading that old, established firm into the toilet and flushing it away while taking millions in pay, stock, and bonuses and spending $1.2-million to redecorate his office suite while the company floundered. But there's a consequence for such severe mismanagement — Thain has been announced as the new CEO of CIT Group as that lending giant emerges from bankruptcy. CIT Group will pay Thain $6-million a year in paychecks and stocks. ♦ Vermont's top health official said it's "reasonable to assume" that radioactive tritium leaking from the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in the town of Vernon is now leaching into the Connecticut River. Remember, President Obama described nuclear power as "clean" in the State of the Union address. ♦ The American Civil Liberties Union (donate) wants its members and supporters to contact Google executives and ask them not to work with the U.S. National Security Agency to investigate cyber-attacks allegedly coming from China. ♦ Senator Al Franken (D-Minnesota) is opposing the merger of NBC and Comcast, and wants your support. He has mine — the merger is bad news and ought to not be allowed. ♦ Blackwater (which now calls itself Xe) is alleged to have billed the government for hooker services as "morale welfare recreation". ♦ A few days before Valentine's Day, the well-publicized but poorly-capitalized 1-800-Flowers suddenly stopped delivering flowers and honoring its coupons. I would image that a lot of husbands and boyfriends were screwed by this, and not in the way they wanted. Moral of the story is, always, if it's at all possible, take your business to a local business. ♦ The new commercials for Domino's are even more bullsh*tty than most commercials. ♦ Snake-oil salesman Kevin Trudeau has been held in contempt of court, again. Kevin Trudeau, man. What a douche. His ads run virtually non-stop overnight on two stations here, both of which brag about how you should trust their silly newscasts while they're taking Trudeau's cash. Consider his ads, airing on hundreds of TV stations in virtually ever American city, when you're wondering whether Congress will ever crack down on big-money crooks. ♦ It's a bit of a publicity stunt, but Google will be constructing ultrahigh-speed fiber-optic networks in a few as yet un-announced American communities, just to demonstrate to Americans what it's like to have genuine high-speed internet access. Lord knows AT&T and Comcast and Charter aren't going to provide such service to anyone but the mega-wealthy, so kudos to Google for kickin' 'em in the arse.
The numbers are often remarkably precise. Sometimes they are attributed to U.S. sources, sometimes to the Pakistanis; sometimes, it’s hard to tell where the information comes from. In the Pakistani press, on the other hand, the numbers that come back are usually of civilian dead. They, too, tend to be precise. Don’t let that precision fool you. Here’s the reality: There are no reporters on the ground and none of these figures can be taken as accurate. Let’s just consider the CIA side of things. Any information that comes from American sources (i.e. the CIA) has to be looked at with great wariness. As a start, the CIA’s history is one of deception. There’s no reason to take anything its sources say at face value. They will report just what they think it’s in their interest to report — and the ongoing "success" of their drone strikes is distinctly in their interest.
Earthquakes alone do not create disasters of the scale now experienced in Haiti. The wealthy nations have for too long exploited Haiti, denying it the right to develop in a secure, sovereign, sustainable way. The global outpouring of support for Haitians must be matched by long-term, unrestricted grants of aid, and immediate forgiveness of all that country’s debt. Given their role in Haiti’s plight, the United States, France and other industrialized nations should be the ones seeking forgiveness.
The Obama administration is leading the way in affirming that an election held last November under state-of-siege rule and the inauguration of Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo as president late last month have washed away all the sins of the past. For Washington, the June 28 military overthrow of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, along with the brutal repression that followed, is a dead letter.
This is what's known as a Hail Mary pass. Is it good strategy? Who knows? But the strategy that's brought us here has been a never-ending series of stupid moves and sell-outs to the insurance industry, and not even a 70-yard touchdown pass could erase the memory of that six-month debacle. ♦ At this point, I don't think it's well understood how many of the GOP's central health-care policy ideas have already been included as compromises in the health-care bill. But one good way is to look at the GOP's "Solutions for America" homepage, which lays out its health-care plan in some detail. It has four planks. All of them -- yes, you read that right -- are in the Senate health-care bill. ♦ These good folks want to encourage you and a million other Americans to phone your Congresscritters and Senators and urge them to get off their kiesters and finally pass the lame-ass health care reform legislation. ♦ And I say by all means, dial and write and harangue. I have to confess, though, that I'm done, at least for a while. I am just god damned tired of having to constantly nag god damned Democrats to do the right thing on every god damned issue, knowing that no matter how god damned obvious the difference between right and wrong might be, these god damned Democrats won't do the right god damned thing unless they get a million god damned angry phone calls. ♦ The Obama administration has already sent a sternly-worded letter to Anthem Blue Cross over the company's excessive rate increase for individual policy holders in California. How excessive? Up to 39 percent. Oh my goodness, a sternly-worded letter! I take it all back — Barack Obama is clearly a man of action. ♦ The New York Times thoughtfully provides information on a new and sickening way that giant corporations are profiting by keeping health care astoundingly expensive. It's the new phenomenon of old folks' hospitals, designed to take advantage of new Medicare rules that were intended to make long-term care more financially realistic for hospitals.
That dratted liberal media never stops spreading its dratted liberal propaganda. ♦ Associated Press is back on Google. ♦ David Gregory, who is reportedly the host of Meet the Press (a show I haven't watched in a decade) thinks we should be looking to Alan Greenspan and Henry Paulson for economic insight. Sounds like a good reason not to watch Meet the Press for another decade, at least. ♦ Laurie Essig: "I listen to NPR, but I don’t give a penny to them. I don’t feel bad about this. I don’t let the guilt of a funny Eric Glass “give money or die a lonely death” promo eat me up inside. I used to give money to NPR, but years ago, during the build up to the illegal war in Iraq, when NPR, like the New York Times, did NOT do its job and report on what were the clear and obvious lies of the Bush administration, I stopped giving. The Times at least apologized for their role in misinforming the American public about Weapons of Mass Destruction and connections between Bin Laden and Hussein. NPR, rather than apologizing, has gotten increasingly right wing since then." ♦ Fox TV mouth Bill O'Reilly is "co-writing" a new book called Killing Lincoln, which will purportedly take readers "into the mind of Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth". ♦ Think your local TV newscasts are a mountain of garbage? Well, you're right, but the "news team" at Channel 5 in Nashville has to be a frontrunner for irresponsibility. Within days of the TV station's fearmongering report about local Muslims, the local Islamic Center was vandalized. ♦ Always ahead of the curve, we've long despised Politico because it's little more than a Republican rumor-megaphone. But now there's a new reason to despise them, as they're apparently claiming worldwide ownership of the word "politico". ♦ Newsweek sent a conservative writer to the big Tea Bagger shindig in Nashville, who turned in an admirably honest piece complaining accurately that most of the event's speakers and attendees were seven slices shy of a loaf. Which sounds like any typical Republican meeting. The author also notes that "few media observers bothered to catalog these bizarre, conspiracist outbursts, and instead fixated on Sarah Palin's Saturday night keynote address". Newsweek being Newsweek, the article appeared only on-line. ♦ The New York Times reported last week that Filipinos are killing each other over renditions of Frank Sinatra's "My Way". It was an amusing story, but even as I read it I was wondering why it felt so factually absent. Maybe something's fishy here. ♦ Congressman Jack Murtha died last week, and eulogies are everywhere. He sat in Congress for more than 35 years, and brought Pennsylvania enough pork to put a barbeque in every backyard. He was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Abscam scandal of 1980, was under federal investigation at the time of his death for his questionable relationship with the now-defunct defense lobbyist PMA Group, and made CREW's list of the top ten most corrupt members of Congress. So far as I know without doing in-depth research, Murtha's one un-ambiguous good turn was coming out against the Iraq war, several years after voting to start it. But the late Congressman Murtha will be sorely missed ... by Lockheed Martin. ♦ In short, the way students are treated in college trains them for the social position they will occupy once they get out. At schools like Cleveland State, they’re being trained for positions somewhere in the middle of the class system, in the depths of one bureaucracy or another. They’re being conditioned for lives with few second chances, no extensions, little support, narrow opportunity — lives of subordination, supervision, and control, lives of deadlines, not guidelines. At places like Yale, of course, it’s the reverse. ♦ Amidst all the ads for romantic roses and candies, I just want to fart. I'm happily married and the very concept of Valentine's Day makes me blue. I don't like being manipulated.
“I said, ‘Hold on folks, do you realize that there’s a very large Asian community in Doraville and the surrounding area?” Yasutake recalled Monday. “I was offended as an Asian man. Would we run a line through East Point or the West End and call it the ‘black’ line?” ♦ Terrorists who want to overthrow the United States government must now register with South Carolina's Secretary of State and declare their intentions — or face a $25,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison. ♦ Felony snowball throwing charges have been leveled against two Virginia college students for allegedly pelting a city plow and an undercover police car during Saturday's blizzard. ... If convicted of the felonious snowball tossing, the men each face between one and five years in prison, and a maximum $2,500. fine. Hmmm. I am trying to envision the kind of snowball assault that would merit such charges, and I don't think a mere two persons could do it. To actually be interfering in any way with the work of a snow plow driver or cops in an un-marked vehicle, wouldn't you need at least half a dozen snowball tossers, with a staff of another half dozen prepping the snowballs for a constant barrage? ♦ The studies show there’s significantly less racism among people who don’t have strong religious beliefs, while highly devout religious communities exhibit more prejudice against people of other races (with seminaries showing the highest degree of racism). ♦ Prosecutors in a human rights trial have alleged that TV preacher Pat Robertson lobbied George W. Bush on behalf of Liberian warlord Charles Taylor. ♦ The Virginia state House has passed legislation to protect the state from the AntiChrist. ♦ Kentucky legislators, led by Democrats, are trying to establish Bible classes in public schools. Supposedly it's supposed to “teach students knowledge of biblical content, characters, poetry and narratives that are prerequisites to understanding contemporary society and culture,” and not at all be a class in Christian indoctrination, and if you believe that you probably believe in Christ on a cross. ♦ Unknown News is updated once weekly, usually on Mondays. It's our attempt to spotlight news that was underplayed, ignored, or simply lost in the non-stop news cycle. Have a seat and some cheese puffs but please, no smoking. A tip o' the hat to Daniel D., the letter Z, AK for CSS help, JR Mooneyham, Bad Attitudes, Little Green Footballs, Right Wing Watch, Pharyngula, The Agitator, E & P in Exile, Progressive Review, Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog, Jim B., Sherri B., Cassandra, Joseph D., Joe G., Lon Garm, J.S. (not the Watergate felon) Magruder at Eat the Blog, Andrea O., Alexander Shaumyan, SirJ, Bill T., wlgriffi, our first web-home at pitas.com (1999-2003, and still a great place for publishing your blog), and the love of my life (who prefers to remain anonymous).
Click here for readers' comments We welcome readers' comments, questions, or criticisms. Javascript is required, spam won't be tolerated, we're impatient with wingnuttery, and our readers are too intelligent to insult each other. Comments will ordinarily appear instantly, but during times when we're flooded with comments from cranks and kooks there might be a delay for publishers' approval. We also publish incoming emails that seem pertinent. If your email is not intended for publication, sugar, you better say so plainly. And last week we learned that comment threads that go deeper than five levels make the DISQUS comment system melt down, at least on Internet Explorer, so this week we've moved the comments to their own page with wider margins so that hopefully won't happen again. Helen & Harry Highwater, unknownnews@inbox.com Recommended sites for gathering unknown or underreported news: Media Matters Pro Publica ThinkProgress Washington Monthly TruthOut
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