In a new book, Grand Illusions, by Ralph Nader's 2000 and 2004 campaign managers, Theresa Amato, it is revealed that former DNC chair Terry McAuliffe, offered the Nader campaign cold hard cash in 2004 in exchange for pulling out in 19 states.
More on this, with my rebellious remarks on this, later today. Off to work for now.
Another timely piece from Paul Craig Roberts over at CounterPunch, discussing Obama's growing blind-eye to Bush torture crimes.
In keeping with the Bush Administration's penchant for secrecy and censorship, President Obama, the newest figurehead for US imperialism, has reversed his promise to allow the release of grizzly evidence of the torture program set into motion at the highest levels of the Bush Administration in 2001. Veteran muckraking journalist Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker magazine has reported at length over the past several years about Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal and this particular batch of photos which is said to document the worst of the unimaginable tactics committed by US soldiers and interrogators (rape and sexual abuse) deployed in the name of the alleged values of freedom and democracy that the US claims to champion more than any other country.
Several weeks ago the Pentagon announced the release of these photos would come by late May, which, absent public pressure, now seems highly unlikely.
Juggling the past two semesters with full loads of courses and working 30-35 hours a week at the job kept me plenty busy away from the routine of posting to the blog and keep daily tabs on the news and developments on issues covered on the blog since November 2005. Needless to say, I did not have the chunky amounts of spare time that I used to enjoy.
Aside from that, the trusty laptop which worked like a horse since May 2005 took a turn for the worst 3-4 months ago after being dropped one too many times. In all likelihood, a trip to tech to fix the internals might have done the trick. My internet sessions became short and sporadic, subject to freezing, requiring a complete reboot. In the bigger picture, it was time to upgrade to better specs anyway. All things considered, the HP had an impressive run in travels to Chicago, Washington DC, Tennessee and elsewhere and across town between campuses and such. I bought a Toshiba laptop yesterday, instead of another HP. If I had known earlier in the day that I have until July 1st to register for the 2nd session of courses this summer, I likely would have bought an HP priced at $100 more or so.
The busy Fall semester ended Sunday. Rebel Pundit will return live Wednesday evening.
I am finally provoked into returning from an extended hiatus from the blog. Work and school...and enjoying what little spare time I have to unwind all on a full-time basis put the regular blogging on the back-burner.
I have been without cable television for the better part of 10, going on 11 months and Keith Olbermann will likely be the singular reason that I reconnect the service in the very near future. For over five years Olbermann has been a lone, but forceful voice against the Bush Administration and its GOP hacks over the countless failed policies on both the domestic and international fronts. My only beef with KO is his lack of equal intensity against the Democrats, who have gone out of their way to not assume the role of an opposition party. That aside, it is nights like these that Olbermann's true passion, logic, grit, conviction and emotion unapologetically just about runneth over...and where the last five minutes of his hour long show summons our collective attention.
Since last week's passing of Proposition 8 in California, which called for a ban on gay marriage, the gay community and its comrades in advocacy have taken to streets in an inspiring display of struggle and determination.
Monday evening, Olbermann brought more clarity to the situation...:
Here's the full text of Olbermann's remarks:
Finally tonight as promised, a Special Comment on the passage, last week, of Proposition Eight in California, which rescinded the right of same-sex couples to marry, and tilted the balance on this issue, from coast to coast.Some parameters, as preface. This isn't about yelling, and this isn't about politics, and this isn't really just about Prop-8. And I don't have a personal investment in this: I'm not gay, I had to strain to think of one member of even my very extended family who is, I have no personal stories of close friends or colleagues fighting the prejudice that still pervades their lives.
And yet to me this vote is horrible. Horrible. Because this isn't about yelling, and this isn't about politics.
This is about the... human heart, and if that sounds corny, so be it.
If you voted for this Proposition or support those who did or the sentiment they expressed, I have some questions, because, truly, I do not... understand. Why does this matter to you? What is it to you? In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships, these people over here want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your option. They don't want to deny you yours. They don't want to take anything away from you. They want what you want -- a chance to be a little less alone in the world.
Only now you are saying to them -- no. You can't have it on these terms. Maybe something similar. If they behave. If they don't cause too much trouble. You'll even give them all the same legal rights -- even as you're taking away the legal right, which they already had. A world around them, still anchored in love and marriage, and you are saying, no, you can't marry. What if somebody passed a law that said you couldn't marry?
I keep hearing this term "re-defining" marriage.
If this country hadn't re-defined marriage, black people still couldn't marry white people. Sixteen states had laws on the books which made that illegal... in 1967. 1967.
The parents of the President-Elect of the United States couldn't have married in nearly one third of the states of the country their son grew up to lead. But it's worse than that. If this country had not "re-defined" marriage, some black people still couldn't marry...black people. It is one of the most overlooked and cruelest parts of our sad story of slavery. Marriages were not legally recognized, if the people were slaves. Since slaves were property, they could not legally be husband and wife, or mother and child. Their marriage vows were different: not "Until Death, Do You Part," but "Until Death or Distance, Do You Part." Marriages among slaves were not legally recognized.
You know, just like marriages today in California are not legally recognized, if the people are... gay.
And uncountable in our history are the number of men and women, forced by society into marrying the opposite sex, in sham marriages, or marriages of convenience, or just marriages of not knowing -- centuries of men and women who have lived their lives in shame and unhappiness, and who have, through a lie to themselves or others, broken countless other lives, of spouses and children... All because we said a man couldn't marry another man, or a woman couldn't marry another woman. The sanctity of marriage. How many marriages like that have there been and how on earth do they increase the "sanctity" of marriage rather than render the term, meaningless?
What is this, to you? Nobody is asking you to embrace their expression of love. But don't you, as human beings, have to embrace... that love? The world is barren enough.
It is stacked against love, and against hope, and against those very few and precious emotions that enable us to go forward. Your marriage only stands a 50-50 chance of lasting, no matter how much you feel and how hard you work.
And here are people overjoyed at the prospect of just that chance, and that work, just for the hope of having that feeling. With so much hate in the world, with so much meaningless division, and people pitted against people for no good reason, this is what your religion tells you to do? With your experience of life and this world and all its sadnesses, this is what your conscience tells you to do?
With your knowledge that life, with endless vigor, seems to tilt the playing field on which we all live, in favor of unhappiness and hate... this is what your heart tells you to do? You want to sanctify marriage? You want to honor your God and the universal love you believe he represents? Then Spread happiness -- this tiny, symbolic, semantical grain of happiness -- share it with all those who seek it. Quote me anything from your religious leader or book of choice telling you to stand against this. And then tell me how you can believe both that statement and another statement, another one which reads only "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
---
You are asked now, by your country, and perhaps by your creator, to stand on one side or another. You are asked now to stand, not on a question of politics, not on a question of religion, not on a question of gay or straight. You are asked now to stand, on a question of...love. All you need do is stand, and let the tiny ember of love meet its own fate. You don't have to help it, you don't have it applaud it, you don't have to fight for it. Just don't put it out. Just don't extinguish it. Because while it may at first look like that love is between two people you don't know and you don't understand and maybe you don't even want to know...It is, in fact, the ember of your love, for your fellow **person...
Just because this is the only world we have. And the other guy counts, too.
This is the second time in ten days I find myself concluding by turning to, of all things, the closing plea for mercy by Clarence Darrow in a murder trial.
But what he said, fits what is really at the heart of this:
"I was reading last night of the aspiration of the old Persian poet, Omar-Khayyam," he told the judge.
"It appealed to me as the highest that I can vision. I wish it was in my heart, and I wish it was in the hearts of all:
"So I be written in the Book of Love;
"I do not care about that Book above.
"Erase my name, or write it as you will,
"So I be written in the Book of Love."
---
Good night, and good luck.
The Socialist Worker has a different look on the Democratic convention...:
Yeah, the Democrats attending the convention in Denver are lot like you and me--that is, if you're used to rubbing elbows with the rich and famous at lavish parties and sleeping at the Ritz-Carlton, with a 6,800-square-foot spa.The Democrats' convention Web site brags that the party is making history, with the "first convention since 1960, when President John F. Kennedy moved his acceptance speech to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, to open its doors to more than 75,000 people from across the country, as Barack Obama accepts the Democratic nomination for President of the United States at Invesco Field at Mile High. In the first 48 hours after the invitation was issued, more than 80,000 Coloradans requested community credentials for Senator Obama's speech."
But what they don't mention is that not all attendees are created--or will be treated--equally. During Obama's Invesco Field speech, reported the New York Times, "most supporters will be sitting under the open night sky. But a group of lobbyists and corporate executives will watch the event from plush skyboxes, with catered food and a flowing bar, and a price tag of up to $1 million."
Skybox attendees--which include representatives from Quest, Comcast and Xcel Energy and Tom Golisano, a New York Republican who donated $1 million--will also be able to avoid long security lines, since they have a separate entrance from "the community" and a private elevator to get them to their seats.
It's rumored that Oprah Winfrey, one of the wealthiest people in the world, was so excited to attend the convention that she rented a house for the week--to the tune of $50,000, more than many workers make in a year. [More...]
Between my nearly full-time job, a full load of course this semester and Young Greens work and then just enjoying a calming few minutes over a glass of wine at the end of a long day, I now have no time to keep tabs on the news and share thoughts on the blog.
I know the Democratic Convention is taking place in Denver this week. I was originally planning to fly up and partake in the protest activites, catch a Ralph Nader Super-Rally, march against war and empire and so forth but the first week of the semester of course coincided with the plans. I'm only in the classroom Mondays and Wednesdays. In theory I could have flown up Monday evening and missed today's lectures.
Needless to say, I have paid little attention to the DNC in the same way I will pay attention to the RNC next week in the Twin Cities....with the television on mute. I do manage to listen to part of a speech or some news analysis just to keep tabs with the latest rhetoric, tone and how the establishment frames the issues and arguments, sets the boundaries for political discourse and so forth.
I'm quite busy for the rest of the week, but over the weekend the blog will end its summer hiatus and I will try to post with a sense of regularity and consistency.
Check out Green Party presidential nominee Cynthia McKinney's speech delivered at the National Hip-Hop Political Convention earlier this month.
Yesterday the Congressional Budget Office released its report Contractors' Support of U.S. Operations in Iraq, documenting the tens of billions of dollars spent towards private contract work in the Iraq war.
The New York Times (reg. required) noted yesterday that at least 20% of the money spent towards financing and sustaining the Iraq war have been used to prop up the work of hundreds of companies, firms and corporations cashing in on a lucrative industry given berth by the Iraq war.
The Socialist Worker has a different take on the situation in Georgia, adding a perspective missing from the accounts spewed by the mainstream media and U.S. political establishment.
