Message ??

From today’s Chicago Tribune comes this little gem

“What we’ve got right now is a deficiency in our message and a loss of confidence by the American people that we will do what we say we are going to do,” Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in a conference call with reporters.

“Deficiency in our message?” That is some spin. It isn’t a deficiency with the message, it is disgust with lies, the deceit, the saying one thing in public and doing something else when the doors are closed and the cameras turned off.

“Deficiency in our message?” It is people losing their houses or their relatives losing their houses or their neighbor losing their house. It is rising unemployment, it is a sinking middle class, it is gas prices at $4 a gallon and promising to go higher.

“Deficiency in our message?” No, not at all. It is disgust with policies that put 20,000 mercenaries in Iraq that are not answerable to any judicial authority. Mercenaries who can, at will, commit rape and murder. Mercenaries who the State Department keeps giving new contracts to because the military is stretched to thin.

“Deficiency in our message?” A military that is broke. An army that is recruiting gang members, felons who have committed violent crimes, men with steel plates in their heads. This is an army that will take a decade to repair.

“Deficiency in our message?” Gas tax H-O-L-I-D-A-Y ? ? ? Give me a fookin’ break. An eighteen cent savings on a $4 gallon of gas is well under five percent. And where would that 18 cents go. Right into Exxon-Mobil’s pocket.

“Deficiency in our message?” Health care for the rich & well connected. For the rest of us, go to the Emergency Room, if you can find a hospital that still has one open. For profit, pre-existing conditions? I have a fookin’ pre-existing condition. I am alive. I will die someday. I have a right to quality health care, just because I am a human being.

“Deficiency in our message?” NO ! ! It is a deficiency in your product. Your product is more suited for Saudi Arabia or Burma. Your product is one of intimidation and lies, one where the rich and powerful get to keep all the money and the rest of us fight for any crumbs you drop.

Hopefully, and I say hopefully because Bush has been successfully selling fear for eight years, but hopefully, the tattered remnants of this defective and despicable product will be shredded on the first Tuesday in November.

Happy Birthday

Happy

Birthday,

Israel

Thought of the Day

The world is my country, science my religion.

Christiaan Huygens (1629 - 1695)

It All Flows Downhill

Two stories, two different subjects, two different Federal agencies, yet both act as if “depraved indifference” is their middle name.

First the more serious. The ACLU issued this press release as the result of papers received as part of a Freedom Of Information Act request to DOD. The “beaten with a stove” line is over the top

One of the documents released to the ACLU is a list of at least four prisoner deaths that were the subject of Navy Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS) investigations. The NCIS document contains new information about the deaths of some of these prisoners, including details about Farhad Mohamed, who had contusions under his eyes and the bottom of his chin, a swollen nose, cuts and large bumps on his forehead when he died in Mosul in 2004. The document also includes details about Naem Sadoon Hatab, a 52-year-old Iraqi man who was strangled to death at the Whitehorse detainment facility in Nasiriyah in June 2003; the shooting death of Hemdan El Gashame in Nasiriyah in March 2003; and the death of Manadel Jamadi during an interrogation after his head was beaten with a stove at Abu Ghraib in November 2003.

The press release leaves me with the impression that the folks behind these goings on feel that they can get away with anything. Granted, I did not socialize with policy makers and admirals during my twenty-one years in the Navy, but what these folks are today is beyond the pale.

Second story, immediate consequences not as grave, perhaps, but the attitude of the un-civil servants is that they can get away with anything and there will never be any consequenses. An Italian citizen who has visited the United States before is held in a county jail for ten day for no reason. Just some spiteful GS-7 government employee wanting to show his authority. The New York Times has it here. (My ems)

Ms. Cooper, 23, who had promised to show her boyfriend another side of her country on this visit — meaning Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon — eventually learned that he had been sent in shackles to a rural Virginia jail. And there he remained for more than 10 days, locked up without charges or legal recourse while Ms. Cooper, her parents and their well-connected neighbors tried everything to get him out.

Mr. Salerno’s case may be extreme, but it underscores the real but little-known dangers that many travelers from Europe and other first-world nations face when they arrive in the United States — problems that can startle Americans as much as their foreign visitors.

[ . . . ]

Though citizens of those nations do not need visas to enter the United States for as long as 90 days, their admission is up to the discretion of border agents. There are more than 60 grounds for finding someone inadmissible, including a hunch that the person plans to work or immigrate, or evidence of an overstay, however brief, on an earlier visit.

This is far too much power to give to a low level government bureaucrat. I willing to bet that these guys make it up as they go along. And only when this issue threatened to become an embarrassment was it resolved.

“Now an innocent European, who has never broken any laws, committed any crimes, or overstayed his visa, is being held in a county jail,” Ms. Cooper wrote in an e-mail message to The New York Times last Wednesday, prompting a reporter’s inquiries.

Less than 24 hours later, immigration officials intervened and arranged to deliver Mr. Salerno to Dulles, where last Friday he flew to Rome. Ms. Cooper, who said she was now considering moving to Italy, was by his side.

What I see in these two incidents is a lawlessness, an attitude that “I am above the law” and that my boss, with a wink and a nod said that it is okay. They remind me of Nazi Storm Troopers who lived as if the law did not apply to them.

So, what is it that flows downhill?  In this case it is the attitude that comes out of the White House.  It is a President that says he signed off on the torture.  It is a Vice President that say, “So.”  When the boss feels that he is above the law, it infects all of his employees.

Edwards Has Made His Decision

And it’s Obama:

ABC News’ Kate Snow, Raelyn Johnson, Sunlen Miller, and Rick Klein Report: Former Sen. John Edwards is endorsing Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy Wednesday evening, in a dramatic attempt by the Obama campaign to answer concerns regarding Obama’s appeal to working-class voters, several senior Democratic sources tell ABC News.

The Obama campaign confirms Edwards will endorse Obama at a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan Wednesday. The event was originally scheduled to start at 7pmET, but was moved up to 6:20pmET, presumably to have the announcement make the evening news.

Edwards, who ran for president on a platform of eradicating poverty, plans to appear alongside Obama for the announcement. The event comes one day after Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton defeated Obama by 41 points in the West Virginia primary, and Edwards’ endorsement will give Obama a key establishment stamp of approval as he attempts to close out the nominating process.

Hillary Clinton’s reaction:

“Well, I don’t think it’s good news, but there’s a lot of news in this business and we move forward and move past it,” the Clinton adviser said.

Asked what effect the Edwards endorsement might have: “We don’t know. We’ll see. We’ll see how much of it is transferable,” referring to Edwards’ popularity with white working class voters.

Coming off the heels of a 41-point landslide win in West Virginia, the Clinton camp had hoped to build some momentum, pledging to continue the campaign through the remanining primaries over the next three weeks.

“We’re going on to Kentucky and Oregon and the rest of the contests and then we’ll see what happens with Michigan and Florida and by June 4th we’ll have a clearer idea about where everyone stands,” Clinton said in the interview with ABC News’ Charlie Gibson Wednesday.

Clinton is being praised in the blogosphere for disagreeing with John McCain’s “Hamas endorsed Obama” canard, and for saying that it would be “a grave error” for her supporters to vote for McCain rather than Obama “if” he is the nominee. Maybe that’s a sign that, despite all her talk about swing states winning the election, and white blue-collar voters preferring her to Obama, et al., she actually does at least suspect that she is not going to win the nomination. Still, she is going to have a hard time, in my opinion, convincing her fans that Obama is a better choice from day one than McCain is, since she spent so much time earlier in the campaign telling America that she and McCain both had the experience to hit the ground running, while Obama did not. I mean, better late than never, I suppose — but I still find it mightily disingenuous and cynical of Clinton, having played Bush Republican to Obama’s Kennedy-esque Democrat for months and months and months, to suddenly turn around now, at just about the very last moment of the race for the nomination, and make like her views and governing philosophy are more in line with Obama’s than with McCain’s.

Thought of the Day

In politics, stupidity is not a handicap.

Napoleon

Do we see a pattern here?

A lot can happen between now and the first Tuesday in November. But first this bit of news out of The Politico :

Democrats picked up a northern Mississippi House seat in one of the most conservative-minded districts in the country tonight — an upset victory that will carry significant ramifications into the November elections.

With 370 of 462 precincts reporting, the Democratic nominee, Prentiss County Chancery Clerk Travis Childers, leads Republican Greg Davis, 51 to 49 percent. The Associated Press has called the race for Childers.

The victory marks the Democrats’ third straight special election pickup in as many months, and is poised to hurt the Republican party’s already-flagging morale and prompt a new round of finger-pointing among the already fractured GOP caucus.

The first Special Election was for Denny Hastert’s old seat. Was in Republican hands for over 30 years.

A Dem won.

The second Special Election was in the Baton Rouge area of Louisiana. In Repub hands for over 20 consecutive years.

A Dem won.

And Yesterday a Special Election in Mississippi for a seat that was in Republican hands for 13 years.

A Dem won

Do we see a pattern here?

Thought of the Day

A free society is a place where it’s safe to be unpopular.

Adlai Stevenson

Another Good Naval Officer

Yup, another good U.S. Navy officer just committed a “career limiting move.” Captain Keith Allred, the military judge in the case of Salim Hamden, disqualified Brig. General Thomas Hartman, the Pentagon’s legal adviser to the military commissions, from further participation in the Hamden case. Here is the Raw Story article. Read it and come back.

Captain Allred has more than enough time in the Navy to be able to retire. But I’m betting that after this ruling he eliminated any chance he might have had to become an Admiral. Last year we saw a Navy Lt Commander win at the Supreme Court, beating the Bush administration, and he is gone. Out of the Navy. A civilian, now.

I truly hope this decision does not ruin Captain Allred’s career. But Bush is savage with those that disagree with him. I’d call Bush a “petty tyrant.”

Panic, Panic I Tell You

First, about 7:30 this evening I get a call from a brother-in-law, Reg, who asks me what the price of gas is in Piqua, Ohio where we live. Reg lives about 30 miles north in St. Marys, Ohio. I tell him I’ll find out and call him back. He says OK and that he heard that it’s going to $4.44 a gallon.

I call my daughter, who can see a gas station from her front door. She says it is $3.75 a gallon at the BP, highest price in town. I call Reg back and tell him. That’s when he tells me that he is at a gas station filling up. I didn’t ask him the price.

Then right in the middle of Olbermann, Mrs. Chief gets a call from her sister. She is in panic mode. She works as a clerk in a tobacco store and customers are coming in and saying that gas in Minster, Ohio is $4.50 and in New Breman it is $4.70. And she is acting as if the world is going to end. The president is pulling oil out of the petroleum reserve, according to her. Truck drivers are parking their trucks in protest. To calm her down, Mrs. Chief tells her that we’ll drive around town and see what the price of gas is in Piqua.

Kroger is $3.71, Speedway $3.71, Marathon $3.71, another Speedway $3.72 and Valero $3.70. After Mrs. Chief tells her sis, she calms down.

But I have to wonder and ask, where do these cock-a-mamie stories come from? How do they start? Why are people so ready to believe them?

I am glad that this crisis is over.