Bill O'Reilly and Saddam Hussein

"Shoot them on sight. That’s me… President O’Reilly… Curfew in Ramadi, seven o’clock at night. You’re on the street? You’re dead. I shoot you right between the eyes. Ok? That’s how I run that country. Just like Saddam ran it."
Bill O'Reilly, June 19, 2006

“I don't care about the people of Fallujah. You're not going to win their hearts and minds. They're going to kill you to the very end. They've proven that. So let's knock this place down. . . we know what the final solution should be.” —Bill O’Reilly, March 31, 2004

“Because look ... when 2 percent of the population feels that you're doing them a favor, just forget it, you're not going to win. You're not going to win. And I don't have any respect by and large for the Iraqi people at all. I have no respect for them. I think that they're a prehistoric group that is -- yeah, there's excuses. . . . And this teaches us a big lesson, that we cannot intervene in the Muslim world ever again. What we can do is bomb the living daylights out of them, just like we did in the Balkans. - Bill O'Reilly, June 17, 2004

O'Reilly ought to be happy. Iraq is being run just the way he wants. American soldiers act like occupiers have throughout history. They shoot people on sight all the time, and yes they are acting just like Saddam. We have bombed the living daylights out of them, so what is his complaint? Not enough dead people, too little infrastructure destroyed? You just can't please some people.

Bill O'Reilly is a sick, freakish man who makes dirty phone calls to young women. Check out the Smoking Gun to relive Bill's juvenile fantasies directed at a colleague. Fox News settled with her to make Bill's phone sex fantasies go away.

But I digress. Back to Iraq. O'Reilly is the honest voice of the war monger. The Democratic party is filled with opportunists and wimps who know the occupation was wrong but wouldn't stand up to fight it. O'Reilly truly believes in brutality and death. He should be condemned for his statements, but the finger in the wind pro-war crowd should not be let off the hook. They support O'Reilly's sick ravings, even if they claim not to.

Tony Snow Proves Cynthia McKinney Right

A few months back Cynthia McKinney was called everything but a child of God. She struck a capital hill cop who grabbed her (armed and dangerous with a cell phone) and was raked over the coals for days on end because of the incident.

Someone should have known that something was amiss when White House press secretary Tony Snow praised her. Snow quoted a "McKinney" statement during a meeting with Bush.

"Cynthia McKinney made the point yesterday in the meeting with the president that the one thing they had gotten from generals there were thorough and honest assessments of what's going on."

There was just one little problem. McKinney wasn't at the meeting.

"I apologize for being an idiot. I misidentified Representative Sheila Jackson Lee as Cynthia McKinney."

Seen one colored woman at the White House, seen 'em all.

Israelis Kill Civilians, Again

When I saw this photo in today's paper I immediately noticed that a child had been killed. For the second time in the past week Israel has killed Palestinian civilians. The first group of dead included seven members of one family. Now they have killed again, claiming to target a missile maker. Hmmm. The goal is to spread terror and let no one forget who has the power to kill.

Take the Pledge

"I will not vote for or support any candidate for Congress or President who does not make a speedy end to the war in Iraq, and preventing any future war of aggression, a public position in his or her campaign."
Voters for Peace

Sign the online petition and pass it on.

More Money for Slaughter

"Gentle reader, are you getting enough vicarious pleasure from the slaughter of Iraqi women and children to justify this price tag? Is murdering 'ragheads' that important to you? If so, you are one sick person, just like every member of the Bush administration." Paul Craig Roberts

Congress has decided to keep spending your money to fund terror around the world. What's another $50 billion when so much has gone into Halliburton's coffers already? While more money is spent to kill people the Bush administration has decided to make sure that even fewer people have the opportunity to tell us about it. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld has ordered all reporters to leave Guantanamo. When the next suicide takes place there, we probably won't be told about it.

The suicides of three prisoners there capped off a week of glee and gloating over death. So much for the GOP "culture of life" which only applies to embryos and Floridians in vegetative states.

While politicians and newspapers out did one another dancing on Zarqawi's grave, the U.S. government dismissed the suicides of desperate prisoners held without charge as a "p.r. move." Even the Bushies had to take back that disgraceful remark, but only as a "p.r. move." The State Department spokesperson who first uttered those awful words knew what she was saying. Bush and his team are all uncivilized barbarians, and what comes out of their mouths first is exactly what they mean.

Zarqawi Schmarqawi, Part II

"I don't think that Zarqawi is himself responsible for the killings of hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq. I think George Bush is. - Michael Berg

Michael Berg's son, Chris, was kidnapped and beheaded in Iraq last year. Zarqawi was fingered as the killer, but Michael Berg is unconvinced. He is a man after my own heart. Once you lie to him he has problems with trust.

Berg is correct when he says that the biggest killer in Iraq is Bush. The blood of thousands is on his hands, and by extension on ours as well. Of course, if we could just stop giving our government permission to be barbaric, our hands would be clean again.

Zarqawi Schmarqawi

I really can't take yet another turning point in Iraq. Zarqawi's death is just the latest in a long line. Check this laundry list from Alternet.

The truth is really quite simple. No one likes being occupied. Even if Zarqawi was the mastermind they claimed, there will be other masterminds until the U.S. leaves.

Black Commentator

Thursday is Black Commentator day. Glen Ford has a great piece on Radio BC about a truly diabolical plan to implant microchips in immigrants. Well, they will start with immigrants. Prisoners will be next, anyone who questions Bush will be next. You get the picture.

In my column I take on reporting of the Haditha killings. It is all to the good that this story has been reported, but the killings should not be treated as some sort of anomaly. There have been many Hadithas in Iraq and they are the inevitable result of military occupation.

George and Laura Split

As I reported back on May 26th, the tabloids are saying that George and Laura are in serious trouble. George is hitting the bottle and Laura wants him to seek counseling. Now comes word that Laura has moved out of the White House and is staying at Washington's Mayflower Hotel. The Mayflower will neither confirm nor deny.

Let's see if the New York Times finds this news fit to print. They defended their voyeurism of the Clinton's marriage, but they have yet to print anything negative about the Bush family.

Now comes word that the rift is caused by Condi Rice, Secretary of State and rumored home wrecker. She did have a slip of the tongue a few years back and call Bush her husband, maybe she is finally turning her fantasy into reality.

I actually hope that if the corporate media ever has the guts to report on George and Laura that they leave Condi out of it. There are enough indications that George never stopped drinking and that he is in serious need of mental health care. They have to play catch up by reporting on him the way they should have been all along.

Who am I kidding? The media protects him and defends his policies from the occupation of Iraq to the elimination of the estate tax. They certainly won't touch his private life.

Ann Coulter's Hate

It is good that Ann Coulter's hate filled screed against 9/11 families has been universally condemned. I do wish that her other hate filled screeds were condemned with the same degree of vehemence. In a lecture at UCLA Coulter said she supported Israel for the same reason she supported apartheid South Africa. Both countries were "surrounded by savages." Here is more of Ann's hit parade of fascism and bigotry.

"I don't really care about the electorate."

"I think our motto should be, post-9-11: 'Raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences.'"

"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."

Conservatives love her. In her "raghead" speech at the Conservative Political Action Caucus she received enthusiastic applause. The 9/11 widows are the recipients of Coulter's wrath because they dared question Dubya and they are right to be angry with Coulter, but everyone should be angry with her. Coulter should be condemned for her ethnic slurs and eliminationist rhetoric, not just for attacking icons of America's suffering.

By the way, Coulter is under investigation for vote fraud in Florida. She truly does not care about the electorate.

Is Michelle Malkin an Anchor Baby?

Who is Michelle Malkin? She is a self-hating Filipino-American who lives and breathes for white supremacy. Malkin believes that the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II was a good thing. I kid you not. She even wrote a book about it, In Defense of Internment.

The first time I saw her on Fox news I asked myself, "Who is this sister?" It turns out she is no sister of mine, not racially, politically, philosophically or otherwise. She is just very dark skinned. This fact has to have caused her much grief in life. Like Ramesh Ponnoru and Dinesh D'Souza, the other white supremacy loving, right wing haters of other dark skinned people, she must have been called nigger many, many times.

At any rate, Michelle is currently foaming at the mouth because immigrants sometimes reproduce. To hear her tell it, their offspring, "anchor babies," are a threat to civilization. The anti-immigrant zealots want all of us to have our pants in a twist because immigrants sometimes have babies after they arrive in the U.S. Those children are American citizens. The nativists are alarmed because these babies can grow up and petition for their parents and othe relatives to immigrate legally.

It turns out that Malkin may be an anchor baby herself. Her father is a physician who came to the U.S. on a work visa sometime in 1970. Michelle was born in October 1970. Unless he arrived in January 1970 and impregnated his wife immediately upon arrival, he and the missus had already created their little anchor baby jackpot before they left the Phillippines.

Her father did come here legally, but Malkin makes no such distinction between legal and illegal pregnant foreigners.

At East Coast hospitals, tales of South Korean "obstetric tourists" abound. (An estimated 5,000 South Korean anchor babies are born in the US every year). And, of course, there's a terrorism angle...The time is ripe to reassess drive-by citizenship and what it means to be an American.

The obstetric tourists are here legally, just like Malkin's dad. Time is up Michelle. If mom was pregnant when she arrived, you should give up your "drive by citizenship." Keep it moving and don't come back.

Kerry Won, Ohio was Stolen

"We should have put more money behind it. I take responsibility for it; it was my mistake. They spent something like $30 million, and we didn't. That's just a terrible imbalance when somebody's lying about you." - John Kerry

What an idiot. All Kerry had to do was call them, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, liars. That is it. That is all. He should have called them liars and sued them for slander. He didn't need money to call them liars, he just should have said so, often.

Wimping out to right wing smears was the least of Kerry's crimes. The election was stolen from him, it is provable, but he still straddles the fence. The current issue of Rolling Stone has an exhaustive report from Robert Kennedy, Jr. on the subject.

Ohio was the key part of the theft that sent Bush back to the White House. Kerry had an opportunity to expose the theft and delegitimize Bush, but being Kerry, he did nothing. He still says nothing about it. What a loser.

Kerry is now rebutting the Swift Boat chargers. Talk about a day late and a dollar short. In general I hate the fact that Hillary Clinton is already the democratic establishment choice for 2008. There is a bright side, however. I won't have to hear about Kerry anymore.

George and Laura Split!

The Globe seems to think so anyway. Will the New York Times write about the marriage of the current White House occupants? Frankly, I don't care about the state of the Bush marriage, but if the Times is going to use 2,000 words worth of newsprint to tell us how often Bill and Hillary see each other, they can tell us that George and Laura may not be speaking and that he may be hitting the bottle once again. Actually, I never thought that he ever stopped drinking, but that is another story.

Thanks to Media Matters for the scoop. At times like this I am reminded of the running joke in the Men in Black movies. The New York Times can't be trusted, but the tabloids can.

Satan is Pro Abortion

Who knew? According to the web site Christian Shirts, the God of this World, Beelzebub, Prince of Darkness, Lord of the Flies, the Devil, is pro-choice and canvassing for votes.

I thought the Evil One was pro Bush. In any case, I have come up with another t-shirt slogan.

"Vote for War" - Satan

That is a shir every Christian should own.

Thanks for the Shout Out

Every one wants a little validation every now and again. Common Dreams gave me a pat on the back today when they linked to my latest commentary in Black Commentator. My subject was Tony Snow and his "tar baby" remark. Thanks very much Common Dreams.

Racism in Anti-Immigrant Debate

What nobody seems to ask, though, is why they [Minutemen] have to "weed out the racists" in the first place. If the core of their appeal isn't racial in nature, then why do they draw so many people for whom it is?
David Niewert, Orcinus

I never thought of the CCC as being a white supremacist organization in the mode of say "Stormfront" or something like that. It's a neo-confederate group which is certainly racist but organized explicitly around hatred of African-Americans. The fact that they are touting the ridiculous Aztlan "threat" puts the lie to any claims that this immigration debate isn't being fueled by racism.
Digby

CNN has a lot to answer for. Recently Lou Dobbs used a graphic supplied by the Concerned Citizens Council, the new name for the old white citizens councils that ruled in the days of segregation. Dobbs is helping peddle the idiotic notion that Mexicans immigrate to the U.S. in order to concur the southwest. It is nonsense, but if it were true that means the old adage is true. Payback is a bitch.

The map does show how much of Mexico's territory was stolen by the United States in the 1840s. Look at it this way, Mexicans are just coming back to their old neighborhoods.

It is high time that the racism inherent in the anti-immigrant argument was called what it really is. It doesn't matter if CNN and the rest of the corporate media want to normalize and validate hate speech.

Throw the Key Away

Former Enron chieftains Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling are guilty. Actually, we have known that for some years now, but a jury made it official. Thank goodness for a little justice. On second thought, let's wait until they are sentenced before we rejoice.

Why Bush Will Nuke Iran

People like Senator Byrd now are talking about impeachment. But Bush is too fast for us -- he will nuke Iran before any hearings on his high crimes and misdemeanors can take place.
Dr. Justin Frank

Dr. Justin Frank is a psychiatrist and author of "Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President." Frank has studied Bush's life, his words and most importantly his deeds and reached terrifying conclusions.

Our president is a deeply disturbed man, a dry dunk who is incapable of feeling empathy. According to Frank, Bush needs to have limits set on his behavior, but no one has done that. The president will conduct a nuclear test in Nevada on June 2nd and the press and the Congress have said little if anything about it.

As his approval ratings tank and talk of impeachment grows, Bush will become more dangerous, not less so. Frank predicts, and I have long believed, that he will attack Iran as opposition to his administration grows and becomes more coordinated.

I missed the march in New York City on Saturday, but I was able to attend an interfaith service sponsored by Clergy and Laity Concerned About Iraq. Poet Drew Dellinger was among the speakers. In one of his poem Hieroglyphic Stairway Dellinger says that his descendants come to him in dreams and ask him these questions.

what did you do while the planet was plundered? what did you do when the earth was unraveling?

One of the things we should all do is set limits on the insane people who will bring this country to destruction if we fail to act.

Si Se Puede

"The British, the French, the Spanish and the Dutch didn't get green cards when they showed up on Indian lands. "
Black Commentator

Power to the people. Yesterday more than 1 million people marched across the nation to demand citizenship rights for immigrants. It isn't surprising that rallies took place in Washington, San Diego and New York. You do have to take notice when 3,000 march in Garden City, Kansas, a town with only 30,000 residents.

I digress, but did anyone wonder why the Chappaquiddick Band of Wampanoag spoke shortly after Sen. Ted Kennedy? For a moment my imagination got the best of me and I thought the Republicans were behind it. Maybe living in the Bush age has made me too paranoid.

Cynthia McKinney and Tom Delay

MATTHEWS: Thanks. I owe you one. I owe you two -- today and last night.
DELAY: No you don't.
MATTHEWS: No, I do.
DELAY: I appreciate it.

Cynthia McKinney is a member of Congress, not a serial killer. If you believed what you read in the papers this week you would believe she is the latter.

Republicans need a good distraction this week. After all, Tom Delay is about to be fitted for an orange jump suit. McKinney got into a shoving match with a Capital Hill cop when she didn't stop at a security check point. A bad decision definitely, but she could be a lot worse.

McKinney could have shot someone and then dispatched a private citizen to tell us about it. She could have instigated a war that would make her a much wealthier person. I guess only Vice Presidents get to do those things.

In an era when trillions of dollars have been stolen from tax payers, when the U.S. government advocates torture, I can't get worked up because of pushing and shoving in the halls of Congress. I wish Democrats would do a little more pushing and shoving, figuratively speaking of course.

Speaking of the indicted Tom Delay, he gets applause when he enters Congress. He also has "journalists" who live to suck on his toes. If Chris Matthews had any shame, he would quit his job as host of the laughably named, "Hardball."

Matthews has been whoring for Republicans for quite a while but he was caught on tape with Delay during a commercial break.

MATTHEWS: Hey thank you for calling me. It was a good thing for me, mostly.
DELAY: Oh really.
MATTHEWS: Oh of course it was. We got on the air as fast as we could....
[...]
MATTHEWS: Shannon [DeLay aide] told me, she called me, she said 'don't worry -- he's not calling in to complain'...
MATTHEWS: Have you seen this new focus group stuff on the candidates?
DELAY: No I haven't
MATTHEWS: It's great stuff. I'll send it to you -- it's great -- yeah it's great stuff. Hillary, John Kerry. All these guys, all these democrats, and how they do. And, uh, Frank Luntz did it...
DELAY: who I like
CM: ...and Hillary did not do well. Kerry did well.
DELAY: You're kidding.
MATTHEWS: I am NOT kidding. They didn't like Edwards -- they thought he was a rich lawyer, pretending to care about poor people...
DELAY: Too slick. Too slick.
MATTHEWS: ...and Hillary was a know-it-all.
DELAY: Nothing worse than a woman know-it-all

There is something worse than female know it alls, and that is journalists who treat one party's talking points as though they are truth revealed from the heavens.

Delay announced this week that he isn't running for re-election but apparently he still wields a hammer. Chris Matthews seems to think so anyway. He knows his bread is buttered by the right wing, even if they are on the way to jail.

Israeli Soldier Killed Reporter in Cold Blood

Mr. Miller died as he and colleagues were trying to leave a Palestinian house at night, holding a white flag with a torch shone on it, clad in body armour and helmets with the letters "TV" written on it in fluorescent tape.

Did you know that James Miller, a British cameraman, was shot dead by an Israeli soldier in 2003? Of course you don't know about it. No one in the American media told you.

The shooting really isn't surprising. Occupiers do not take kindly to having their dirty work exposed. They are also unaccustomed to being called to account for their actions. They can do anything they want, including shoot reporters in the neck.

Yes Virginia, There is a Pro-Israeli Lobby

Can there be any doubt that Israel holds sway over American politicians and the media?Presidential candidates vie with one another to promise that they will attack Iran in order to protect Israel. Neither they nor the media will point out that Israel is armed with nukes and Iran can’t possibly have any for at least five years.

It is amazing that Israel and its American allies wanted a war against Iraq, but anyone who points out that very public information is labeled an anti-Semite. Worse yet, no one can point out that the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein when he had WMDs or that Israel pushed for that alliance as well.

Israel may have known about the 9/11 terror attaks. No one is supposed to talk about the so-called moving company in New Jersey whose workers happened to be Mossad agents who happened to have cameras pointed at the World Trade Center on the morning of 9/11. I’m also not supposed to mention the Israeli art students who only sold their work at the FBI and DEA.
Sounds strange to me, but what do I know. I’m just an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist.

It seems I'm not the only one who is sick and tired of Israel getting America into one mess after another. A few brave voices dare to speak up in an age when even plays that criticize Israel are banned. "My Name is Rachel Corrie" can't find a home on the New York stage.

Professors Stephen Walt of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, are in the news because of their study "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy." They haven't done anything revolutionary, just document the power of Israel's lobby in America.

Amazingly, their detractors claim there is no lobby or that it isn't really effective or declare that Condi Rice is a gentile.

That is the primary power of the lobby, labeling as anti-Semitic anyone who notices its success. I wish that someone would tell me the rules. Am I allowed to say that there is a lobby for Israel? Am I supposed to say its effect is neglible? Am I supposed to acknowledge its success but do so in hushed tones?

Let me know sometime soon. If I'm going to be called an anti-Semite, I would like to know why.

Condom Rice

I never liked her, but I didn't say it. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw did.

As he introduced his guest, the Foreign Secretary held up a copy of a local newspaper and read out the headline: "Condom….er, Condi Comes to the Centre of the World".

Where is Freud when you need him?

9/11: Enough Already

I have had it with 9/11. This week the city of New York released tapes of 911 calls made from the World Trade Center. Two films are due to be released this year, one about Flight 93 ("Let's Roll") and the other about firefighters.

Idealizing American dead only serves to diminish the dead in other countries. I recall being terrified and grief stricken on that awful day, but I'm not going to fetishize what I felt. To do so makes me think that my life is more valuable than another's. As much as I love being alive, I have to say that I don't have more of a right to stay that way than anyone else in the world.

Those are brave words coming from a New Yorker. Osama's warnings are meant for me, my family and my neighbors. I'm the one with a bulls eye on my head.

Having said that, I still say no to 9/11 memorials. The city and state of New York are about to waste millions of tax payer dollars to bail out a developer, all in the name of building something, anything, at the site known as ground zero. What a waste.

What business would move to the site of two terror attacks? The answer of course if no one will. The government will be the primary tenant, all so that we can say that the terrorists didn't win.

Well they did win. They killed nearly 3,000 people, and they taught us they would kick ass. That means they won. Period. Get over it.

We aren't the losers just because of Osama either. 9/11 was used to justify the occupation of Iraq. It empowered the awful neo-cons who now want to attack Iran and make America even more of a mass murderer.

It is never hard to get Americans to kill people somewhere in the world, but 9/11 made it all too easy. Yes, we lost on September 11, 2001. The families of the dead lost most of all. If we think of anyone we should think of them, and then we should move on. Further displays of public grief only empower the killers to keep killing.

War Against Women

Housewives are happier than women who work outside the home, or so we were told by a recent study. There is just one problem. The study's findings are different from every other study on the subject. Alternet points out the following.

"Over the past 15 years, some 20 studies have looked at the association between women's employment and earnings and their marital happiness. These studies have involved different samples of people and different methods of arriving at results. But they all tell the same story: Employed women are as happy (and perhaps happier) in their marriages as non-employed women and having an income generally improves a woman's marital happiness."

How politically expedient to quote a study whose results are different from every other study, at the precise moment that women are being told to go back to the 1950s. Be afraid, be very afraid when supposedly scientific work backs up the right wing agenda.

Bring Me Your Tired and Your Poor

Los Angeles is not known as a city where people are prone to take to the streets. When I heard that a crowd estimated to be at least 500,000 strong assembled there to protest anti-immigrant legislation, I had to sit up and take notice.

Frankly, I see nothing wrong with immigration, legal or otherwise. I laugh when I see Lou Dobbs go on his rants about undocumented workers. When Dobbs' ancestors came from whatever part of Europe they hail from, did they phone ahead and get permission from the Iroquois and the Sioux? Of course they didn't.

You see, there is a lot of karma going on here. The parts of the country that now comprise Texas, California, Nevada, Utah and parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Wyoming were all part of Mexico. The US stole that huge amount of land, half of Mexico's territory, in a war waged between 1846 and 1848. When immigrants sneak across the border, they are just going back to their old neighborhood.

If the often quoted figure of 11 million undocumented immigrants is correct, then it is no small matter to send them home. Be careful what you ask for. Eleven million people pay a hell of a lot of sales tax. They rent a lot of apartments and buy a lot of houses. Many of them are in fact tax payers. If the 500,000 who protested in LA show the extent of immigration in that state, then California would lose a lot if they all left.

If you are ever tempted to complain about immigration, just think of the poor Indians when they saw boats land at Plymouth Rock. You have a lot less to complain about than they did.

War Against Black Women

"Even after controlling for socioeconomic status and disease stage, African-American women were 19 percent more likely to die from breast cancer than white women."

There is always a war against all black people. It exists because beliefs in white supremacy still exist. Once again yet another study shows that black people have to be on their guard wherever they go, including the doctor's office.

Black women are being seriously under treated for breast cancer. A study of breast cancer patients in New York City hospitals in 1999 and 2000 indicated the following.

They found that minority women were only 50 percent as likely as white women to receive adjuvant treatment, even though they had similar rates of referrals to oncologists.
The likelihood of under-use of adjuvant treatment was 34 percent among black women, 23 percent among Hispanic women and 16 percent among white women.

I'm not going to waste my time pondering this issue. Too many white people still feel superior to non-white people and so they treat non-white people badly. Case closed, end of discussion. I'm not going to pretend that a mystery exists when it doesn't.

War Against Women

Much has been made of the news that 7 women died after using RU-486, the abortion pill. Very little has been said about the 69 American men who have died because they wanted to have erections. Yes, viagra can kill.

Fewer women die from abortions of all kinds than die from complications of child birth. Scary stats on the abortion pill are an attempt to outlaw abortion, which is meant to punish women for having sex.

There are many people who believe that the fetus is a person, but most of those who want abortion to be illegal want to keep girls in there place and that means punishing them for being sexually active. Check out this chart (scroll down) and you will see what I mean.

More Bush Lies, More Press Obedience

"And when he [Saddam Hussein] chose to deny the inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him. "
George W. Bush, March 21, 2006

That statement is an out and out bold-faced lie. Hussein gave UN weapons inspectors unlimited access to Iraq in November 2002. They found no WMD of any kind because Hussein destroyed his stock piles in 1991 before the first Gulf War. I knew that. The millions who marched around the world three years ago knew that. Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld and Rice knew it too. The press knew that. Sorry, they are apparently out of the loop. Bush keeps lying and they keep acting like stenographers, obediently taking down his every word without question.

The occupation of Iraq has now lasted nearly as long as America's involvement in World War II. Despite the destruction of that nation there is still no political opposition worth mentioning. Despite the opposition of a majority of Americans Bush made it clear that he wasn't contemplating a troop withdrawal. Why should he? No one is standing in his way.

Harold Ford Jr. Is Worse Than I Thought



















photo - Memphis Commercial Appeal

"If you're not going to stand up for your mother, then who are you going to stand up for?"
Barbara Ford Branch

I have no use for Ford, none whatsoever. He is a political prostitute, publicly expressing his love for George Bush and supporting an end to social security.

Now we know that he is willing to lie about his own grand mother for political gain. Ford Sr. and now Harold Ford Jr., claim that family matriarch Vera Ford, pictured above, was white.

Sorry. That is not the photograph of a white woman. Fortunately, at least one of her descendants is honest. Barbara Ford Branch is quite adamant that her mother was a black woman and is calling out her own nephew. Good for her.

Ford Sr. and Jr. are asking us to believe that a white person would pass for black in an era when to put it mildly, there was no incentive to do so. Hmmm. I suppose anything is possible, but Ford has proven that the legal theory is true. Liar in one thing, liar in all.

War Against Women

OK girls, get back in your place. South Dakota has banned the few abortions that took place there. The state of Missouri will no longer fund birth control clinics that serve poor women. Every week the New York Times tells us that women want to go back to the kitchen. What is going on?

The consolidation of power by the American right wing means that Iraq has been occupied, colonized and used as a cash cow for corporations. It means that we can say goodbye to fair elections. It means that the corporate media bows to conservative ideology. It means that museums that claim to promote science apologize for teaching Darwin. Even HBO has gotten in on the act. They are presenting a new series that tells us polygamy is a good thing. Yikes.

Right wing domination also means that anyone who was subservient to white men has to assume their old position. The right wing, even right wing women, extol the virtues of submissive women and guys who keep them that way. Women make less than men because they want to, the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, housewives are happier than women who work outside the home, etc.

It is sad that few women are willing to speak about discrimination against them. Today's New York Times has an article about women at law firms. Why do so few make partner? Gee, I don't know. Could it be discrimination? You think?

I will now be on the look out for war against women stories. Stay tuned.

The Trouble with Irshad Manji

Is Irshad Manji supportive of Israel’s continued occupation of Palestine? In a New York Times op-ed on March 18, 2006 entitled, “How I Learned to Love the Wall” her answer appears to be yes. Actually, the title tells us all we need to know.

Ms. Manji is making a name for herself as the “go to person” on Islam, kind of like a Muslim Henry Louis Gates. You know the type. The New York Times and the rest of the corporate media maintain a hotline to their cell phones. In return for joining the punditocracy, they tell the media and the politicians what they want to hear about the group they claim to represent. They always give the powers that be a pass. It is a good deal for Manji, Gates and their ilk.

In her op-ed Manji condemns suicide bombing, as she ought to do. However, she is struck dumb on the subject of deaths caused by the occupiers. She says nothing about bull dozed homes, nothing about babies dying in childbirth when their mothers in labor were not allowed to pass through check points. She says nothing about the Israeli violence that has killed Palestinians. Manji neglects to mention that Israel knew as early as 1967 that the occupation was illegal.

The occupation of Palestine is a violation of Israeli law, international law and of human rights. It doesn’t matter that Manji is a Muslim. Her support for the occupation tells us that she is more concerned with vilifying certain segments of the Muslim community than she is in speaking out against oppression. That is the trouble with Irshad Manji.

Thanks Left Edge North

“[Merton Center} holds daily leaflet distribution activities in downtown Pittsburgh and is currently focused on its opposition to the potential war on Iraq.”
FBI

Who is a terrorist? According to the FBI, it is anyone opposed to Bush administration policy. The quote above is from a FBI memo that confirms spying took place against a Pittsburgh peace group in 2002. Keep thatt in mind when Bush says he is only spying on terrorists.

New Civil War

In this week's Black Commentator I note the beginnings of a new movement for succession. South Dakotans succeeded from the rest of the country when they outlawed abortion. Yes, it is that serious. We are facing assaults on our rights on a state by state basis. In Missouri, the GOP controlled legislature voted to ban state funding of birth control services. It looks like this war is targeting women first.

By the way, I have to thank Alternet for picking up my BC commentary.

More Dead Iraqis

Only Nixon in the midst of Watergate had lower approval ratings than Bush has now. Every poll shows his approval ratings in the 34% range.

The gutless Democrats are still afraid of him. Sen. Feingold's attempt to censure the president because of warrantless surveillance sent his fraidy cat colleagues running for cover. The corporate media tell us that talk of impeachment and censure will energize the Republican base. Who cares? They are his only supporters now anyway. How can anyone fear a president that most of the country can no longer stand?

Today the U.S. military began killing more Iraqis. Operation Swarmer will send bombs onto homes, and mosques and schools. Bodies will be torn apart. Families will be devastated.

Nothing scares the Democrats more than saying no to killing. They always support death and destruction. They will say that the president must be supported at a time of crisis and blah, blah, blah. Killing is a political winner. Even for a loser president.

Operation Swarmer may signal the beginning of the end of U.S. troops in Iraq. It also signals the beginning of a wider war against Iran and no one in a position of power will lift a finger to stop it.

Say Goodbye to Violence

"Every time I know a punch is coming or a gun is about to be blasted in someone's face or the soldier is gut-punching the prisoner or the boxer is about to slam the other guy to the mat in a flurry of spit and blood and disgust, I wince. My body recoils. I cannot help but turn away. I cannot watch. Not anymore."
Mark Morford

Mark Morford is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. In his most recent column he explains why he has decided to turn away from depictions of violence.

I stopped watching The Sopranos a few years ago. I know it is well acted, well written and keeps viewers interested in its characters, all of the ingredients for good drama. Yet I realized that when all was said and done it just glorifies violence and criminality. I don't care who did what to whom. I don't care about the latest cliff hanger. I can't watch a celebration of violence any longer.

If more of us abstained from the ever more desensitizing violence presented by the corporate media we would be better human beings. We couldn't be talked into killing Iraqis or Iranians or whomever else the killer elite targets for death.

I'm glad that Morford took the pledge. The rest of us should too.

If 300,000 People March, but the Press Doesn't Tell You, Did the March Take Place?

Last Wednesday, March 8th, groups across the country marched, lobbied Congress, and took other actions to protest the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005. In Chicago an estimated 300,000 took to the streets. That estimate comes from the police department, which always low balls numbers of participants in demonstrations.
I don't recall seeing news reports mentioning the demonstration at all, much less the fact that the crowd was at least 300,000 strong.

The bill sponsored by Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner, would make it a crime to any way assist an illegal immigrant. Don't give illegals a beds to sleep in or bowls of soup. You could end up a Halliburton detention center right along side them. No one will know you are there. The media won't bother to report that the centers exist either.

A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words

The AP thinks it got a big scoop on the Katrina briefing story. What a joke. There is a photo of the briefing on the White House web site. It has been there since August.

Bush Briefing on Katrina

On August 30, 2005 the St. Petersburg Times wrote.

On Saturday night, Mayfield was so worried about Hurricane Katrina that he called the governors of Louisiana and Mississippi and the mayor of New Orleans. On Sunday, he even talked about the force of Katrina during a video conference call to President Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Remember this when the corporate media acts like the briefing is a new story.

Bush Knew, and So Did the Corporate Media

On August 28th, President Bush was briefed by the director of the National Hurricane Center that Katrina was going to be a very dangerous storm. He was told about the possibility of a levee breech and the inadequacy of New Orleans evacuation plans. This photo of the video conference is from the White House web site. On September 7th, I told my readers that the President had been briefed.

May I ask why the corporate media is suddenly acting as if this is new information? Am I to believe that the New York Times and the Washington Post and the networks know less than I do? Fat chance.

This is yet another indication of the media's complicity in letting the Bush regime off the hook because they don't want to annoy the powerful. For months we have heard the trite refrain of "all levels of government" failing the Gulf Coast. The federal government failed and continues to fail New Orleans. It is a federal responsibility to deal with a natural disaster of this magnitude.

The sad fact of the matter is that it was too late. Even if the president awoke from his drunk and or medicated stupor, the response would not have been much better. Bush had already destroyed the government infrastructure that would have helped New Orleans. This administration doesn't want a government that helps people. They want government to expand corporate power, make the wealthy wealthier and increase military spending and kill people in the rest of the world. FEMA was emasculated because they don't want a FEMA. They want to privatize every government program that they can and destroy the rest.

The Bush administration won't rebuild New Orleans for the same reason. All of the evacuees should have been housed, in their former homes, by now. Schools and hospitals should have been rebuilt. It won't happen because they don't care about black people (thanks Kanye) and because the devastated New Orleans presents them with their fantasy, a city devoid of needy citizens.

The medicare drug plan is a mess for the same reason. It wasn't developed to help the public. It was made to help big pharmaceutical companies. The legislation specifically prevents the federal government from doing anything to lower drug prices, the way they do now with the Veterans Administration. Well, who knows how long that will last. Bush wouldn't want anything like that as part of his legacy.

Octavia Butler
1947 - 2006

"At the present, I feel so unhopeful. I recognize we will pay more attention when we have different leadership. I’m not exactly sure where that leadership will come from. But that doesn’t mean I think we’re all going down the toilet, I just don’t see where that hope will come from. I think we need people with stronger ideals than John Kerry or Bill Clinton. I think we need people with more courage and vision. It’s a shame we have had people who are so damn weak."
Octavia Butler

There was a time when I would go to book signings on a regular basis. Ironically I spent time this weekend looking over some of those books. My copy of Parable of the Talents was signed by its author, the science fiction writer, Octavia Butler. "To Margaret, Best Wishes, Octavia E. Butler." I walked down memory lane without knowing that Ms. Butler passed away on Friday after falling and hitting her head on the pavement near her home in Seattle.

I discovered Ms. Butler because of my obsession with Star Trek. My compulsion to read everything about it brought me to a magazine called Starlog. Starlog was mostly about movies and television shows but it also covered science fiction authors as well. One issue of Starlog had an interview with Octavia Butler. Until that moment I had no idea there was a black female science fiction writer.

Dawn was the first of her books that I read. The protagonist is a black woman, but the publishers used the image of a white woman on the cover. Octavia had to sell a lot more books before people who looked like her characters were allowed to advertise them.

She wrote about time travel, interspecies breeding with aliens, and survivors of civil war. I always felt that any of her books would have made wonderful movies. Hollywood rarely sees things my way.

That is too bad. Octavia Butler's work would fascinate and enlighten millions of people. I hope that those who have never read her books will do so now.

Julia Mancuso's Drug Dealer Father

She announced at a press conference that her mother's grandfather had been a liquor runner for Al Capone.
NBC Olympics

It was a bleak winter olympics for American corporations. They had pinned their hopes for advertising gold on the injured Michelle Kwan and lazy ski bum Bode Miller. On one of the last days of competition however, there was a small ray of sunshine. American Julia Mancuso won the women's giant slalom gold medal.

Mancuso was best known for sporting a tiara on and off slope. Whatever. Apparently she is a good athlete and proved herself in the clutch.

While perusing NBC's olympic website, I came across this little gem of information. Mancuso's father, Ciro Mancuso, was a drug king pin who ran a multi million dollar marijuana smuggling operation and ended up serving 5 years behind bars. Being the inquisitive chick that I am, I just had to do a Google search.

Ciro Mancuso is one interesting guy. Before he did his stretch in a federal penitentiary, he snitched on his own lawyer, Patrick Hallinan, and dozens of others, all in attempt to keep from doing time himself. Hallinan was eventually acquitted and out-of-control prosecutor Anthony White turned his rath on Mancuso, making certain he went to the slammer.

Mancuso didn't do too badly, however. His snitching to the feds gave him a leg up on other drug dealers.

Because of his assistance to the government, Mancuso was allowed to remain free until his legal case was resolved and to keep between $2 and $4 million in cash and land that were earned from his trafficking business in Thai marijuana.

Do you recall that when the "war on drugs" was launched we were assured that the "kingpins" would be the ones who went to jail? As an excellent documentary on PBS' Frontline told us, snitches get off. Family members snitch on one another to avoid life sentences. If you have no information to give, you do big time, kingpin or not.

Of course, the mass incarceration of black people began with the monstrous war on drugs. The Mancusos of the world do less time and even get to keep their cash.

There is more I could say. For example, if a black olympian had criminals on both sides of the family, would that information be repeated over and over? I'm guessing that the answer would be yes.

If Madison Avenue wants to use Mancuso to sell products that is their business. But the Mancuso story is not just a personal one. It is the story of how the government has become as corrupt as the criminals they pursue, all in the name of saving us from drugs, and putting more colored faces behind bars.

Thanks for the Hook Up

I have to thank David Neiwert at Orcinus and Steve Gilliard at The News Blog for linking to a Black Commentator column I wrote last February on the never ending efforts of white supremacy groups to foment hatred and violence in our society. Neiwert is always alerting us to the dangers these groups pose. He has noted a disturbing surge in neo Nazi activity in the northwest. Please donate to his "Say No to Nazis" campaign. The Nazis and others are shrewd and are using different tactics than they have in the past. They have learned to clean up their image and that makes them even more dangerous.

I also need to thank Znet and Smirking Chimp for posting my Black Commentator column on Halliburton's contract to build detention centers.

It is good to know that other people find my work useful and want to spread it around. Next Thursday in Black Commentator I will get to the truly outrageous aspect of the Dubai port security deal. Can you say bribery?

Dumb Blondes

If they're (Lou Dobbs and Chris Matthews) both true blonds at 60, they should be put on display at a medical museum.
Jack Shafer, Slate

No need to question if white supremacy is ascendant. Just look at the women, and men, who read the news. MSNBC, Fox and CNN must have a requirement that all women on camera become blonde. Even the Weather Channel is in the act. Brunettes aren't allowed to tell us about high pressure systems and noreasters. Slate must be thanked for this great photo essay on television's Aryan nation.

Rita Cosby is the host of one MSNBC's many awful programs. She proved her fitness to only peddle missing blonde girl stories when she said Democrats were going after the "hoodlum vote."

"They (Democrats) are going after the quote, hoodlum vote. I mean that I think is very racist. Clearly they are going after the African American vote." When the usually brain dead and also bleached blonde Chris Matthews asked her to explain herself, Ms. Cosby added,"They're going after the felons. They're going after the convicted felons. They're going after these rosters saying that some of these felons should be able to vote."

Yes, Blondie, former felons who have finished their sentences should be allowed to vote. The lack of voting rights for felons is the great untold story of the Florida election theft in 2000. Jeb Bush removed thousands of eligible voters, by claiming they were felons when they were not.

Blondie should be asked why it is racist to turn out the black vote. It is racism that makes black people a disproportionate pool of the incarcerated population and it is racism that allows these citizens to lose their voting rights.

It is bad enough that we have to look at an endless pool of bleached blondes. Unfortunately we also have to listen to them.

Letterman on Cheney

Letterman gets to the root of the problem here.

CBS Covers for Cheney

It has already begun, the press cover up I mean. CBS has already scrubbed its website of anything that the Bushies don't like. CBS initially reported that the Secret Service prevented local law enforcement from interviewing Cheney. Now those quotes are gone.

The press corps tore into Scott McLellan yesterday but it couldn't last. We are back to business as usual between the White House and the corporate media.

Accident Schmaccident

"I said, 'Mr. Vice President, this is going to be public, and I'm comfortable going to the hometown newspaper,"' she told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "And he said, 'You go ahead and do whatever you are comfortable doing."' McClellan said: "The vice president thought that Mrs. Armstrong should be the first one to go out there and provide that information to the public, which she did. She reached out early Sunday morning to do so."
CBS

OK, forget what I posted yesterday. Dick Cheney shot this guy Whittington on purpose. Whittington was wearing a bright orange jacket. He was shot in the face, neck and chest. He was in intensive care. The Secret Service turned the local sheriff's office away when they came to interview Cheney.

There is more to this story and we won't know what it is until Whittington speaks up. He is a mover and a shaker in Texas politics. If he wasn't he wouldn't have been hanging out with the Veep in the first place. He isn't the type to remain silent after getting shot.

We have all experienced panic and done something stupid because of it, but this is just beyond the pale. What idiot told Mrs. Armstrong to call the press? Who decided not to get in front of the story and put a good spin on it? It all points to the shooting being something other than an acccident.

I always knew that Bush and Cheney were criminals, I just didn't think they would start shooting their own kind.

Dick Cheney Shoots

What the f**k? Today we are told that Vice President Dick Cheney was hunting for quail in Texas and accidentallly shot another hunter, Harry Whittington. The shooting took place yesterday but was not reported until today.

The news did not come from the Vice President's office. The story was first broken by the Corpus Christi Caller Times (registration required) and the first confirmation came from Katharine Armstrong, owner of the ranch where the hunt took place.

My first take on this story is that Cheney hoped the incident could be covered up. He had good reason to believe he could get away with it. On June 28, 2005, I posted that Cheney showed up at the hospital in Vail, Colorado under the name Dr. Hoffman. Arrianna Huffington, thank God she hangs out with the swells, happened to be in Vail at the same time and noticed that the Veep's plane had landed. If it were not for Arianna we wouldn't know anything about this hospital visit.

Huffington heard that Cheney had an EKG, Cheney claimed to be visiting his orthopedic surgeon, that surgeon's staff denied he was even working that day. The corporate media laid low, as they always do, and Cheney got away with lying about an illness that sent him to the hospital.

I am not expecting anything better from the media this time around. There are grounds to impeach Cheney for his obvious conflicts of interest with Halliburton and for ordering Lewis Libby to leak classified information to the press. The media haven't gotten around to saying much about those issues either.

Let's hope the stress doesn't give Cheney a heart attack. Of course, if it does no one will tell us about it.

“Let Condoleezza Rice, Bush and all the tyrants shut up."
Sheik Hassan Nasrallah

It is hard to argue with those sentiments. I have said the same thing myself. Condi can never leave well enough alone. The Scandinavians were taking the heat on the Muhammad cartoons, and instead of keeping quiet she accused Iran and Syria of instigating trouble.

Syria and Iran don't have to instigate anything. Muslims are mad that the prophet was depicted and they were even madder that he was disparaged.

Now it seems that the Danes were a little choosey about whose religion they laughed at. Jyllands-Posten, the paper that sparked the uproar, refused to publish cartoons making fun of Jesus.

Muhammad Cartoons

Should European newspapers have printed the cartoons of Muhammad? I say no, and for a very simple reason. Muslims do not depict Muhammad, in any way, shape or form. Any depiction of Muhammad is considered blasphemous, so I see no reason to create them.

I know that we have freedom of expression. I am free to insult and offend, but it is freedom that I choose not to exercise.

Writers or artists can express their opinions about the role that Islam plays in politics without resorting to means that they know will cause ill will. Anyone who wants to debate suicide bombing or terrorists who kill in the name of their religion should do so. It isn't true that we have to decide between speaking out or demeaning religious belief.

I would not riot if Muslims depicted Jesus in a way that I found offensive and it is terrible that demonstrations have resulted in deaths. I am a Christian but I acknowledge that much of religious belief is metaphor about the human condition. I wish that people weren't dying over metaphors about Muhammad or any other religious figure.

Blame Jennifer Aniston

I can't stop the Oprah bashing. I already took her on in my Black Commentator column last week but I'm just having too much fun. Steve Winn of the San Francisco Chronicle has an interesting take on Oprah. Her much talked about tongue lashing of Frey made her look like Joan Crawford in a tizzy over wire hangers.

As I said in BC, Oprah is the corporate honcho extraordinaire. Nothing wrong with that, just don't pretend to be "your best self" when the real issue is cold, hard cash.

This bizarre episode began when Oprah wanted to interview Jennifer Aniston. Aniston owns the film rights to Frey's book, and demanded that Oprah promote it in exchange for the sit down. Oprah also got a warning from a past guest that Frey was lying before he even appeared on the show. Too late. A deal is a deal. Frey went on the air and the rest is history.

When proof of Oprah's knowledge of the lies started to come out, the damage control began. You have to give her credit. She knows how to get herself out of a jam.

Joint Chiefs in a Snit

"Using the likeness of a service member who has lost his arms and legs in war as the central theme of a cartoon is beyond tasteless."
Joint Chiefs of Staff letter to Washington Post

No, cartoons aren't tasteless. Death because of military aggression is tasteless. The Joint Chiefs had to know that occupying Iraq made no sense militarily, but they work for Bush, so like millions of other Americans they did what their boss wanted them to do.

Washington Post cartoonist Tom Toles was called on the carpet by the brass because of a cartoon that made fun of Rumsfeld and by extension the Joint Chiefs as well. They all need a better sense of humor and they need to get the hell out of Iraq, where most quadruple amputees go without treatment of any kind.

Coretta Scott King
1927 - 2006

Coretta Scott King

Coretta Scott King is one of the unsung heros of the civil rights movement. Her life was often endangered along with her husband's. During the Montgomery bus boycott her home was bombed while she and her infant daughter Yolanda were inside.

She must have been extremely proud of her husband but her life with him must have been extremely difficult too. Mrs. King was a classically trained musician. When she married she had every expectation of being the proper first lady of a baptist church. Fate had other plans for her.

I know that every one will claim to have loved her and her husband. George Bush, who opposes everything King stood for, will probably be front and center at her funeral. Yuck. Sorry, I have no articulate words to describe that image. It just makes me sick.

It is sad that at the end of her life she watched her children fight over the direction of her husband's legacy. The expectations her children lived under must have been crushing. I sincerely hope that they will be able to mend their family relationship and find a way to speak to the issues their parents fought for with such determination.

Alternet

How America Sees the World

I had to go away unexpectedly. I won't have a post until tomorrow. Until then, see how America sees the world.

The "Minutemen" and White Supremacy Groups

In yesterday's Huffington Post, Earl Ofari Hutchinson wrote about illegal immigration and its effect on black Americans. I don't know of any definitive data that answers the $64,000 question. Do immigrants, illegal and legal, take jobs from blacks?

Hutchinson tells the story of a young black man who expressed support for the Minutemen, border vigilantes intent on stopping Mexicans from crossing. This man did not know that the Minutemen have ties to white supremacist organizations.

Orcinus has the story, including photos of confederate and Nazi flags at a Minutemen march.

"I Really Feel Duped"
Oprah Winfrey

Oprah, who do you think you are kidding? At first you protected your investment and defended serial liar James Frey, but when it became obvious that your staff and possibly you were aware of the nature of one of the lies, you back tracked.

A former staffer at Hazelden, the rehab facility that Frey described in his book, says that she told Oprah's producers that Frey's accounts were lies. Oprah went ahead with her promotion of Frey's book anyway, knowing a besteller when she saw one.

In my Black Commentator column last week I said that Oprah should be seen for what she is, a business woman. She isn't a shrink, or a spiritual leader. She sells a feel good product and that is OK, but no one should be fooled by her claims of promoting our best selves. No one should now be fooled by her crocodile tears.

Oprah may not be a spiritual leader, but she is beginning to show signs of being a cult leader. Her viewer/followers backed her initial defense of Frey. What will they say now? If they go from felling OK to feeling duped too, Oprah should confirm the rumors and become a Scientologist. She is in a cult of her own making already.

Greater Georgelandia

A great cartoon by Mark Fiore can be seen here. Turn up your sound.

Chavez Remarks Not Anti-Semitic

"You have interfered in the political status, in the security, and in the well-being of our community. You have acted on your own, without consulting us, on issues that you don't know or understand."
Letter from Confederation of Jewish Associations of Venezuela to the Wiesenthal Center

By now you have heard the accusation that Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez made anti-Semitic remarks. You probably have not heard that the quotes were edited. Key comments were left out of news reports and result in a lie.

Fair has the story.

Jihadball!



Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC's Hardball, is a very lucky man. He is an idiot who nonetheless hosts a political talk show that is seen around the country. He claims to be a Democrat but constantly proclaims his love for George W. Bush. He recently declared that only the "wackos" dislike Bush.

Matthews most recent buffoonery was the result of bin Laden's latest message. Bin Laden knows what everyone else outside of the U.S. knows, namely that Halliburton and its ilk have made billions of dollars on the occupation of Iraq. When bin Laden stated what is now common knowledge, Matthews nonsense went into over drive.

Matthews said that bin Laden sounded like Michael Moore, as if Moore had some top secret information. Moore has a better sense of humor than I do. He used comedy to skewer Matthews. Well, Moore has given us a good laugh. Enjoy.

Wilson Pickett

Lou Rawls passed away this month. Wilson Pickett died yesterday. Like the other great artists of their generation, both men started as gospel singers. It is not a coincidence that they were able to sing from their souls.

Artists who came from gospel never lost their ability to convey a spirituality. They may not have sung about scripture, they may have even lived sordid personal lives like Sam Cooke, but their spirituality came through in every song.

We now have a generation of artists who don't know their craft, who have no true passion. It shows. That is why I can't listen to them.

Rest in peace Wilson Pickett.

Ray Nagin and New Orleans

"How do you make chocolate? You take dark chocolate, you mix it with white milk, and it becomes a delicious drink."
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin

Earlier this week I made my annual rant about the way King's birthday is celebrated. Politicians who promote injustice or war run to black audiences and pander. Think of Hillary Clinton and her plantation comment. What a hypocrite, pretending to be righteous. Hell no. The pro-war Mrs. Slick Willie shouldn't be allowed to celebrate King's birthay at all. Instead she is lionized and treated like a queen.

As for New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, where does one begin? He shoulda stood in bed instead of pretending to celebrate King's legacy. I don't have a problem with him calling New Orleans the Chocolate City. I'm just confused. I thought Washington D.C. was Chocolate City. What do I know?

What the hell did he mean by claiming that God was punishing America by sending Katrina? Who the hell is being punished? Why would God punish poor New Orleans residents? Have they caused global warming, destroyed the Gulf Coast marsh lands or killed thousands in wars? No they haven't. I guess Nagin thinks God is a pretty f*ed up guy.

Nagin shouldn't have apologized for calling NOLA Chocolate City if he meant that the feds should rebuild the city for its residents. Of course, Nagin is a corporate guy, not a politician. He endorsed a Republican gubernatorial candidate and even toyed with the notion of endorsing Bush in 2000. Telling the feds to "get up off their asses" was his shining moment. Keep that in mind the next time you are told that corporate types are better leaders.

Nagin back tracked from his ill conceived comments and now just looks like a jackass. At this moment New Orleans is in desperate need of leadership. The city's destruction is now underway. As always, Black Commentator has the story.

War with Iran

Is your entire f*cking country on crack??? Are all you Americans out of your cotton picking minds??? Are you completely freaking delusional? Homicidal? Psychotic? Have you lost any shred of a moral compass? WHAT IN THE NAME OF JESUS H. CHRIST ON A CRUTCH IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!!!!!
Den Valdron

The Bush team always wanted it. The neocons always pushed for it. Israel has been pushing for it. As the opposition to the Iraq occupation grows and talk of impeachment gets louder, the likelihood of a U.S. attack on Iran increases. Don't think for a momen that the Bushmen will just sit around and wait to be taken out.

For anyone stupid enough to think that attacking Iran is a good idea, read Den Valdron's piece in TPM Cafe. By the way Den, America is on crack, is out of its mind, is delusional, homicidal, and psychotic. As for its moral compass, it was always a bit haywire. Our country is led by insane people who will start an economic if not a shooting war with Russia and China if they attack Iran.

Everyone who threatened to leave the country if Bush won should start giving the idea serious thought.

Happy King Day

They must see Americans as strange liberators.
Martin Luther King, April 4, 1967

OK, I'm late. Yesterday morning the Blogger server had a poltergeist so I couldn't post. I then spent the rest of the day without email access. That is my story and I'm sticking with it. I don't really have that much to say about King, except my usual rant. It goes like this.

Very few people today really care what King said. He was passionately anti-war. He wanted to end poverty. Today we have a U.S. occupation of Iraq and the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. One of King's top aides, Andrew Young, sees nothing wrong with requiring voters to present I.D. in order to cast a ballot.

Yesterday pro-war politicians ran from black church to black church claiming to honor King's memory. It is a disgrace that they are allowed to walk in the door in the first place. King's children are squabling over money and the right wing quote King for their own benefit.

Maybe it isn't so bad that I was late.

Opray and Frey's Fakery

Thanks to a Crooks and Liars reader for this poem.

FAKE IT TO MAKE IT

I read his book
Coming off a crack run
Holed up in a master suite
With marijuana
And a mad woman

It was just the kind of tripe
To take my mind off
My reality

Its only appeal
Was in the ideaThat AA
Could be avoided
I could dig that
Having been to meetings
Long before
He’d heard of them
And having my own misgivings
With the program

But they were nothing
Compared to the questions
I had about his story

It soundedLike a clear case
Of overkill
To the seasoned ears
Of someone
Who’d seen sobriety

And lost it
While living a life
Not nearly as adventurous

I could see how the uninitiated
Could find it intriguing

How it could titillate

And now it turns out
That even addled
My alarm bells
Were onto something

And the intuition
Of a REAL alcoholic
Was on target

When I saw him
As the shit-sucking
Sycophant

I’d suspected

From the very first line

Oprah Winfrey and James Frey

Oprah Winfrey doesn't believe her own press. "Be your best self." I think that is the pablum she sells to the public. What nonsense. She clearly doesn't believe one word of it.

James Frey is the author of an alleged memoir entitled "A MillionLittle Pieces." The book is the story of his drug addiction. Frey appeared on Oprah and was a featured author for her book club.

The website Smoking Gun looked into Frey's claims of arrests and incarcerations. It turned out that Frey lied, a lot. Apparently he is a pretty average addict, a self-aggrandizing liar. He may be a decent writer but he is also a con man too. Like I said, a typical addict.

Frey appeared on Larry King Live last night to defend his lies. Oprah called in to the show and said that she stands by the book.

And I feel about "A Million Little Pieces" that although some of the facts have been questioned -- and people have a right to question, because we live in a country that lets you do that, that the underlying message of redemption in James Frey's memoir still resonates with me. And I know that it resonates with millions of other people who have read this book and will continue to read this book.

Redemption? Excuse me, but lying is Addiction 101. What kind of redemption is it to make a living out of being a liar? Frey is probably still using and drinking. He is just a dog and Oprah would have been better off if she had said nothing at all.

Frey could have written the true story of his addiction. Perhaps the lack of embellishments would have kept if from becoming a best seller, but so what. Someone truly in recovery wouldn't care. Actually a writer in recovery would have written a novel. Yes, he could have honestly embellished an addict's story.

In any case, here are the 12 Steps that Frey, and Oprah, clearly don't care about but ought to know by heart.

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol--that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Gee, where does one begin? Number 10 jumps out at me. Frey and Oprah need to think long and hard about that one. They are both wrong and they need to admit it.

Kickback Mountain

Thanks to American Idle for the link.

Harry Belafonte is Right

Is it worse to kill people or to criticize someone who kills people? I vote that killing is worse, so I think Harry Belafonte was absolutely right when he called Bush a terrorist.

Belafonte is being raked over the coals for comments he made in Venezuela at an appearance with President Chavez. He called Bush "the greatest terrorist in the world" and claimed that "millions" of Americans support the Chavez revolution.

Those of us who know anything about Venezuela are few and far between. Americans don't know much about their own country. So I disagree with Belafonte on that point, but it is a minor one.

Belafonte is catching heat because he gave Bush a well deserved slap in the face. Bush is a killer. Thousands are dead in Iraq because of the U.S. military, far more than those killed by "insurgent" car bombs.

This is not the first time that Belafonte walked into the cross hairs of the media. A few years ago he made the following statement about Colin Powell.

There are those slaves who lived on the plantation, and there were those slaves who lived in the house. You got the privilege of living in the house if you served the master. Colin Powell was permitted to come into the house of the master.

I wish that he had made a more reasoned, thoughtful criticism of Powell. When Belafonte had the opportunity to respond to his critics he did a much better job.

America has many plantations, even today. Not only in America, those plantations sit in many places around the world, where I've seen people suffer. I work for the United Nations. I go to places where enormous upheaval and pain and anguish exist. And a lot of it exists based upon American policy. Whom we support, whom we support as heads of state, what countries we've helped to overthrow, what leaders we've helped to diminish because they did not fit the mold we think they should fit, no matter how ill advised that thought may be. It is not without reason that I make my observation.

Belafonte is not just being criticized by right wing attack dogs. Everyone who ever gave him an award, or has any connection with him is now running for cover. The AARP is now sorry they honored him for his work as a UNICEF goodwill ambassador.

To our dismay, Mr. Belafonte has made reckless and irresponsible statements about the President of the United States which we neither support nor condone. Mr. Belafonte is entitled to express his own personal views, but AARP does not condone the manner and tone which he has chosen and finds his comments completely unacceptable.

Even UNICEF is doing a furious back pedal. UNICEF issued a statement making clear that Belafonte spoke "as a private citizen and was not speaking as a UNICEF ambassador, nor acting in an official capacity on behalf of the organization."

It is unfortunate that press is reporting on Chavez only because of Belafonte's remarks. Chavez usually makes the news because the White House has been outspoken in its desire to over throw him. Pat Robertson advocated killing him. When Chavez said Bush wanted him dead he was called crazy. Roberston's brazen threat ended up helping Chavez, so I say thanks to Pat.

When Harry Belafonte lies to Congress about WMD, kidnaps, tortures, kills thousands, and then spies on Americans I will be mad at him. Until that day, I'll direct my anger at the killers in high places.

We have to thank Belafonte. Reactions to his remarks will be very telling. Anyone who joins in the pile on is not to be trusted by thinking people. Black people are not excluded from that assessment. Belafonte gave us a water shed moment. Let us all pay close attention.

Media Corruption

In a note to readers on January 4th USA Today explained its errroneous report that 12 of 13 miners survived.

"This documentation proved inadequate and fell short of USA TODAY's professional standards. When USA TODAY learned that only one miner had survived, the story was immediately corrected at usatoday.com and in the newspaper's final edition. USA TODAY regrets the errors. "

I used to make fun of USA Today and call it the McPaper. It seems the NY Times and Washington Post are also McPapers. Unlike USA Today they did not 'fess up about their role in the disgraceful reporting of the mine disaster.

They are not alone. Editors and reporters around the country are acting like the people they cover. According to Editor and Publisher they won't return phone calls when they are asked to explain what they reported and why they reported it.

The explanations that have emerged have been astonishingly craven. The Associated Press used the families as an excuse. (Newsflash to the news media. Relatives miles from the scene are not a source). Other organizations blamed the Governor, some blamed the mining company. Few were willing to admit that they had no credible source and had no business making claims of any kind.

I am a bit obsessed with this story about the news business. It confirms what I have long feared about the corporate media. Their loyalty to the corporate structure has rendered them useless in news gathering. They turned a local news story into a national news story and at the moment when there was an opportunity for real reporting they didn't know jack.

It is significant that most reporters were at church with the families instead of the places where they could really get information. They were interested in showing weeping relatives or in the case of Geraldo showing themselves weeping. Getting at the truth was of no importance.

The corporate media are thoroughly corrupt. The word corruption may not seem to describe the current sorry state of affairs but it does. Reporters in West Virginia were not taking bribes, but they put ratings and readership numbers ahead of getting at the truth. They create false interest in stories that either aren't news at all or that are of concern to small numbers of people. They do it to make money and they do it because their desire to please the powerful prevents them from telling us anything important.

The consequences for our society are grave. What happens when talk of impeaching Bush turns to action? What will the Bushmen do to stay in power? They will announce terror alerts, which have been non-existent since last November, and then they will start a war. The media will be embedded and the American bubble will get thicker and thicker at the very moment we will need to know the truth.

Happy New Year.

Let Us Prey

"I don't know enough about him (Alito) to say I actually think he's the right man to do the job. I'm saying I trust a friend of mine who promised me that he would appoint people to the justice system that would be attentive to the needs I care about."
Rev. Herbert Lusk

Save us Jesus. Justice Sunday III is upon us and now colored people are part of the antics. Lusk is a pastor of a church in Philadelphia that has received more than $1 million in faith based initiative funding. The photo ops with Bush paid off.

Lusk is hosting the event that is meant to show right wing church support for the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. He claims to know little about Alito because of the judge's decisions on civil rights issues. On the other hand, he may truly be ignorant about Alito. Alito/Schmalito. It is time to render unto Caesar and keep that cash flowing.

Lusk will be joined by the usual suspects, Falwell, Perkins, etc. He will also be joined by people like Wellington Boone who brags about being an Uncle Tom, and Alveda King, an MLK relative who uses her family name to back the right wing and make a few bucks too. Read the sad story here.

Mining Disaster Heroes

"A lot of the media left to go to the church where family members were located, but I stayed put because this was where every official news conference was given--and we never got anything official here. Something was not right. Then we were hearing reports that 12 ambulances had gone in [to the mine area] but only one was coming out. There was so much hype that no one considered the fact that there was no [official] update."
Linda Skidmore, editor of The Intermountain News

Imagine that, actually waiting for confirmation before running with a story. Linda Skidmore is editor of the Intermountain News. Becky Wagoner is a reporter for the paper. While CNN, ABC, the New York Times and God knows who else got the miner story wrong the local news paper didn't go with the story.

That's right. The local people reported what should have remained a local story in the first place. Maybe Geraldo Rivera can go back to being a war correspondent and West Virginians will never have to look at him again.

Thanks to Editor and Publisher for the Intermountain story.

Zombie Coal Miners

I haven't written a word on this blog since November 17, 2005, and that was just to say that I wouldn't be writing for a while. My life is no less crazed and over committed, but nothing moves me quite like an opportunity to lambast the national media.

Yesterday as I heard endless stories about the trapped coal miners in West Virginia I experienced a terrible sense of deja vu. I have that feeling every time the media turns a local story into a national one.

Why do they do it? Why is a missing child in South Dakota a news story in Florida, Iowa and California too? Why do we know about nutty runaway brides or people who have 16 kids? The answer is quite simple. The corporate media is only interested in advancing corporate interests. Distracting us with bread and circuses makes it all the easier for them. They may tell us something useful every now and then, but that isn't their mission any more.

They won't tell us that the president is wired during a debate, or that he has illegally spied on American citizens, and that they knew before November 2004 and shut up to help keep him in office. Yes, all that applies to the New York Times.

Today the Times hedged, a little, but not enough. Their version of bad reporting was "12 Miners Found Alive, Family Members Say." They were a tiny bit better than the New York Post and Daily News. Their headlines screamed, ALIVE!, MIRACLE! Perhaps tomorrow they will say OOPS! or IS OUR FACE RED!.

Not only do the corporate media act only to protect the interests of the powerful, but now they don't even know fact checking 101 or any other reporting basics. Keep that in mind the next time you complain about the press. Remind yourself that they just don't know how to report any more, about miners or anything else for that matter.

They can make up for this stunning incompetence by telling us about work place safety. Oh, wait a minute. I started dreaming again. Sorry.

So, I'm back. All I needed was a little outrage.

When Will Freedom Rider Return?

The Freedom Rider isn't sure. I have other responsibilities that are taking up huge amounts of my time and mental energy.

I appreciate those of you who have asked about me and my blog, but I can only say that I will return. I just can't say when.

I'm still writing for Black Commentator. Please check us out every week.