Link of the Week (as opposed to the Weakest Link):
“It’s Judgment Day for McCain” at the Wall Street Journal Thomas Frank writes: “Last week, Republican presidential candidate John McCain called for a commission to ‘find out what went wrong’ on Wall Street. … Mr. McCain has a special advantage to bring to any such investigation — many of the relevant witnesses are friends or colleagues of his. In fact, he can probably get to the bottom of the whole mess just by cross-examining the people riding on his campaign bus.” [Emphasis added.] Full Story »
As noted a couple weeks ago, the S&R team hooked up with the crew from Zero Coordinate and Eccentric Production at the DNC in Denver. In addition to their invaluable help in shooting the Lee Camp interview, we also worked together in covering the Returned Soldiers/Rage Against the Machine/Tent State march on the DNC.
Natalie Ashodian and her team have now produced a powerful video from that march, and for those who only read about it (or, as is more likely the case, given how little attention the mainstream press paid to it, never even heard about it in the first place) this coverage is extremely important. Full Story »
With the bailout of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the Reagan revolution has at last realized the robber barons’ dream: privatize the profits and socialize the debt. Nicely done, fellas.
— a letter to the editor of The New York Times from Candida Pugh of Oakland, Calif.; Sept. 10; emphasis added.
We now see the compensation wasn’t deserved. I don’t think taxpayers want their money to go to the C.E.O.’s of these very large institutions.
— Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on the exit pay packages of Daniel H. Mudd of Fannie Mae and Richard F. Syron of Freddie Mac who, The Times’ Eric Dash reports, are eligible for as much as $24 million in severance, retirement benefits and deferred compensation; Sept. 10. Full Story »
Sarah Palin told ABC’s Charles Gibson yesterday that she favors admitting Georgia and the Ukraine, both on Russia’s borders, to NATO. When Gibson asked her if she would go to war with Russia to defend Georgia, she said, “”Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you’re going to be expected to be called upon and help.”
Right you are, Ms. Palin, but help doesn’t always mean military help, else the NATO countries would have chosen up sides and embroiled themselves in war when Greece and Turkey went at it over Cyprus. You are technically correct, though, because the defense clause of the treaty reads: Full Story »
Another year, another opportunity for the GOP to use 9/11 to pump fear into our populace while “honoring our dead.”
As a New Yorker, while that day and weeks and months that followed will always be with me, I’d long grown numb from the Bush administration’s and Republicans Party’s branding of 9/11 for their own despotic aims: an America in which democracy has been gagged, waterboarded and renditioned to a dank faraway cell for its own protection, while our “heroic” protectors of freedom fight against a noun — terror — and something that’s been around since the dawn of time — terrorists.
For a brief moment, however, during the Republican National Convention’s “9/11 tribute” film, I was viscerally reminded of the lengths to which our current leadership will go to terrorize their own citizens into handing over their liberties for another four years. Full Story »
Links of the Week (as opposed to the Weakest Link):
Paul Begala: “I was for Hillary in the primaries, but when she endorsed Sen. Obama, I proudly sent him a check for the legal maximum. On the memo line of the check I wrote, ‘FOR NEGATIVE CAMPAIGNING ONLY.’”
For his New Yorker piece, “The General’s Dilemma,” subtitled “David Petraeus, the pressures of politics, and the road out of Iraq,” Steve Coll discussed Iraq with top American and British officers. Since violence has decreased due to the Mahdi army standing down and the Sunnis we’ve been buying off, they “described the conflict as having recently entered a new phase. Iraq’s government, they said, is increasingly animated by independent ambition.” Full Story »
The object of the political war is not to shrink the state or shut it down; it is to capture the thing and run it for your constituents’ benefit.
— from “The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule” by Thomas Frank; p. 39; emphasis added.
When our economy is hurting, the last thing we should do is raise taxes as Barack Obama plans to do and has done. The American people cannot afford a Barack Obama presidency.
Today’s jobs report is a reminder of what’s at stake in this election — John McCain showed last night that he is intent on continuing the economic policies that just this year have caused the American economy to lose 605,000 jobs.
— statement from Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama following the jobs report release; Sept. 5. Full Story »
Link of the Week (as opposed to the Weakest Link):
Interview with Middle-East expert Joshua Landis at Right Web: “For instance, we just had a Syrian delegation that came to Washington. … For reasons that remain a little murky to me, that fell through. A friend in the State Department told me that part of the reason was that it was just too much for the Bush administration to absorb. Washington had just announced that it was going to meet with the Iranians in Geneva … and they could deal with only one meeting with one ‘axis of evil’ power at the same time.” Full Story »
Something I have always enjoyed about the US is its propensity for intensive navel-gazing. Hell, the mainstream western nations in general are all good at this, but the US has turned it into an art-form.
The agonising over Iraq started long before the US even began the war, and continues till now. There is a voluble and energetic debate as to the best way to deal with the situation. You can call the president a traitor, or even - with a nod to Bugliosi - demand that he be tried for murder.
And this is all deeply pondered, and vitriolically debated.
Unless, of course, one suggests that other nations undergo similar scrutiny. Russia, for instance. Then you get flamed to a sizzle. Writers in Russia are treated even worse. They get killed. Full Story »
There’s a game I used to play with my geopolitics university students. I’d get them to form a circle and then I’d ramble about in the middle linking them up with black cotton thread. It would form a dense and incomprehensible jangle, tying them up in improbable ways. I’d always leave a few free.
Then I’d get one of the untied students to “attack” one of the tied students. As he moved towards the other, he would have to cross the threads in the middle and would quickly draw others into the conflict.
The thread, I told my students, are the ties of international trade and politics. And Russia has just played silly-buggers with everyone else’s party. Full Story »
I ducked out a few minutes ago to grab a gelato over at Gelazzi on Larimer Square and didn’t realize, as I tried to walk in, that it was reserved temporarily for a private party. “Oh, I’m sorry,†I said, retreating. But when the woman at the door saw my press pass, she invited me right in. I figured that whoever was hosting, I could take the press packet handed to me in exchange for a cup of chocolate-chocolate chip and coffee Italian-style ice cream.
Turns out it was a gathering to establish a U.S. Department of Peace. That’s the goal of The Peace Alliance, a D.C.-based organization whose mission with such a project is
“to reduce and prevent violence domestically and internationally.â€
It sounded a little gimmicky at first. But as I thumbed through the press kit, I started to wonder, why not? Full Story »
Young man, you have the gift of gab. Keep it up and some day you’ll be President of the United States.
 an old Republican to a young Warren G. Harding after his first political speech, according to a New York Times obituary of President Harding; Aug. 3, 1923.
I predicted that New Orleans would come back as a stronger and better city. That’s the prediction I made. I also pledged that we’d help. And $126 billion later, three years after the storm  we’ve helped deliver $126 billion of U.S. taxpayers’ money. (Applause.) And I thank you for applauding on that statement, but I know you’re applauding the American taxpayer. A lot of people around the country care deeply about the people down here. And so it was  you know, it was money that we were happy to spend.
 President Bush, speaking at the historic Jackson Barracks in New Orleans on the recovery of the Gulf Coast region three years after Hurricane Katrina; Aug. 20. Full Story »
Jeff Huber at Pen and Sword: The Russia-Georgia conflict “looks more like the relatively heroic measures Big Daddy Bush took in the first Iraq war. If the Bush administration spin merchants were working for the Russians, the story would go that mean old Georgia decided to beat up on poor little South Ossetia and Abkhazia and the big strong Russians swept in to save the day for the underdogs, just like America did when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.” Who else but the Commander (Huber) would have thought to make that analogy? Full Story »
In China, size matters. People want to have a car that shows off their status in society. No one wants to buy small.
 Zhang Linsen, the 44-year-old founder of a media and graphic design company in Songjiang, China; he owns a black Hummer H2; July 28; emphasis added.
It’s a cultural thing. When the kids are hungry, they go to their mother, not their father. And when there is less food, women are the first to eat less.
 Herve Kone, director of a group that promotes development, social justice and human rights in Burkina Faso, quoted in the Washington Post Foreign Service’s Kevin Sullivan story about the impacts of the African food crisis on women and children; July 20. Full Story »
Vincent Bugliosi talks about prosecuting George Bush and his appearance before the House Judiciary Committee.
S&R: Will the next president have any say in the prosecution of George Bush?
VB: No, he doesn’t have any say in it at all. The attorney general on his own can institute legal proceedings against Bush. But a pretty powerful way is for Congress to send what they call a criminal referral over to the attorney general. Full Story »
Vincent Bugliosi talks about prosecuting George Bush and his appearance before the House Judiciary Committee appearance.
The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder is a call to action. A man of 73, in the wake of years spent creating his masterwork, 2007’s Reclaiming History about the Kennedy assassination, has constructed his case with the passion of an idealistic college student. Surely the rest of us are capable of catching one last wave of Bush & Co. outrage. We do want to see Bush brought to justice, don’t we? Full Story »
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Link of the Week (as opposed to the Weakest Link):
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Sarah Palin 
Something I have always enjoyed about the US is its propensity for intensive navel-gazing. Hell, the mainstream western nations in general are all good at this, but the US has turned it into an art-form.
There’s a game I used to play with my geopolitics university students. I’d get them to form a circle and then I’d ramble about in the middle linking them up with black cotton thread. It would form a dense and incomprehensible jangle, tying them up in improbable ways. I’d always leave a few free.
