An Entirely Different Conversation on Race

From the Miami Herald:

TALLAHASSEE -- For a sign of Florida Republicans' all-out effort to attract black voters, look no farther than the glossy full-colored The Black Republican magazine that launches broadsides like these:

The KKK was the ''terrorist arm of the Democratic Party.'' Democrats, in addition to waging ''war on God,'' are still mired in sex and financial scandals.

That's all tucked in the back of the Sarasota-based National Black Republican Association's 60-page mag, the first half of which touts Republican Gov. Charlie Crist's civil rights record and the Republican Party of Florida's minority outreach efforts that the association has helped coordinate.

The strident comments and images -- replete with a Ku Klux Klan rally snapshot that notes ''every person in this photo was a Democrat'' -- has outraged Democrats and caught the Republican Party of Florida flat-footed as well.

...


But Democrats say the magazine omits the fact that many Southern Democrats joined the GOP after the 1960s civil rights movement.

'You could change the caption to say, `All of these people are now Republicans,' because the Democratic Party no longer suited their racist Southern strategy,'' said Dan Gelber, a Democratic state legislator from Miami Beach.

Compare.

Scientists Misrepresented in Global Warming Document

At least 45 of the 500 scientists named in The Heartland Institute's list of "500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares" have expressed anger over being included in the list. The Heartland Institute did not seek the scientists' consent before creating the list nor did they inform the scientists that they would be cited in the document.

Here are some of the scientists' responses (taken from desmogblog):

"I am horrified to find my name on such a list. I have spent the last 20 years arguing the opposite."

—Dr. David Sugden. Professor of Geography, University of Edinburgh

"I have NO doubts ..the recent changes in global climate ARE man-induced. I insist that you immediately remove my name from this list since I did not give you permission to put it there."

—Dr. Gregory Cutter, Professor, Department of Ocean, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Old Dominion University

"I don't believe any of my work can be used to support any of the statements listed in the article."

—Dr. Robert Whittaker, Professor of Biogeography, University of Oxford

"I'm outraged that they've included me as an "author" of this report. I do not share the views expressed in the summary."

—Dr. John Clague, Shrum Research Professor, Department of Earth Sciences, Simon Fraser University

Someone needs to tell Louisiana's Senate.

But Not Body Armor?

So let me get this straight. We're OK with letting students bring concealed weapons to class—for protection—but body armor is taking it just a bit too far? Because (if it wasn't illegal) a shooter might decide to wear it too??? I guess emotionally distressed kids who have no qualms about mass murder tend to draw a line when it comes to breaking laws that restrict wearing body armor to school.

If there was ever any doubt as to whether or not House Bill 199 is a Republican gimmick cooked up by NRA enthusiasts, shrouded in nonsensical arguments about protecting students, and aimed at turning the gun-wielding public against any and all sane politicians in this state—well this pretty much dispels it.

The Advertiser points out:

Rep. Roy Burrell, D-Shreveport, was one of only two members of the House Criminal Justice Committee to question the wisdom of passing such a state law.

He said he found it an unusual move in a committee that recently approved carrying concealed weapons on college campuses.

"Are we making the assumption that if we don't allow the wearing of body armor, we're making schools safer?" Burrell asked. "If somebody is going to commit a crime of this nature, they're not necessarily going to wear body armor."

Rep. Damon Baldone, D-Houma, said anyone intent on attacking students is likely to "wear a vest and break this law anyway."

But wait:

The bill has a provision that would allow any student who wants to wear armor for protection to request permission from the principal or chancellor of the school.

So doesn't that make this even more absurd? Assuming that a kid hellbent on murdering his fellow classmates wouldn't just wear the body armor anyway, couldn't he or she just get permission the day before? Or are we going to allow principals to select which students should and should not be allowed to protect themselves?

That aside, if the House wants to introduce a bill that would prohibit body armor in schools because it unsettles teachers and students, fine. But how can they simultaneously entertain a bill that would allow college students to arm themselves with concealed weapons? Would not the prospect of a classroom full of gun-toting youths also unsettle many teachers and students?

KBR Gang-Rape Case

... makes it to court. KBR had sought to force Jamie Leigh Jones' case into into arbitration, but a Texas judge ruled that the charges of sexual assault, rape, battery, and false imprisonment were actually serious enough to warrant a real trial. ABC News noted that there was, however, one exception:

Ellison did, however, rule that a sexual harassment claim that Jones included in her case against her supervisor in Texas would have to be decided in arbitration.

More on KBR, from Think Progress:

"KBR Ignored Warnings Of Unsafe Electrical Wiring That Led To Deaths Of U.S. Troops"

"Former KBR employees say workers stole from Iraq, ‘melted down gold to make spurs.’"

"Former Employee Says KBR Promoted Camp Manager After She Was Caught Stealing"

"KBR Dodges $500 Million In Social Security And Medicare Taxes In Cheney-Backed Scheme"

"Latest KBR scandal: contractors accused of sexual harrassment at British Embassy in Iraq."

"Pentagon Dismisses KBR Contaminated Water: Troops Should ‘Just Drink Bottled Water’"

"Rep. Poe: KBR Gang Rape Was Not ‘An Isolated Case Of Sexual Assault’"


More on the rape stories here.

McCain "Flip-Flop" on Abortion?

In this video from a 2000 debate, John McCain attacks George W. Bush for supporting the GOP's abortion platform—which allows no exceptions for abortion, even in cases of rape, incest, and when the pregnancy would constitute a life-threatening danger to the mother—while Bush's own position allows for these exceptions. McCain has favored changing the Republican platform even up until 2007. What about today?

From ABC News:

While McCain has not addressed the abortion platform since becoming the presumed Republican nominee, he reaffirmed his desire to change the GOP's official abortion stance following a multicandidate forum that took place in Des Moines, Iowa, April 14, 2007.

Despite McCain's support for changing the platform in 2000 and 2007, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., the co-chairman of McCain's Justice Advisory Committee, significantly downplays the possibility that McCain would revise the party's call for a nationwide constitutional ban on abortion with no exceptions.

"I don't think that's going to happen. I think you're going to see a platform process that is going to maintain that plank," said Brownback, a leading abortion rights opponent who endorsed McCain after ending his own White House bid.

...

"If he doesn't change the platform, then he's being the same kind of hypocrite that he accused Bush of being in 2000," said Jennifer Blei Stockman, the co-chairwoman of Republican Majority for Choice. "To not accept abortion in cases of rape and incest, give me a break. That's sick. That's inhumane."

"And the life of the mother?" she added. "These are things that we can't even put our arms around because they are so inhumane."

...

Stockman said that McCain's team is ignoring his previous commitments on this issue and is intentionally downplaying his clout.

"If McCain chooses not to revise the platform, I think he will say it's 'the system' and he will try to distance himself from it," said Stockman. "But he absolutely has the power to change it."

"Many people think of him as a moderate," she said. "But when it comes out that he doesn't want to change this extreme, right-wing Republican platform, the word 'moderate' is going to disappear from any description of McCain."

Cowboy U.

Kudos to The Advertiser for this article, which spells out problems with a bill that would allow concealed guns on college campuses. House Bill 199 was approved by a panel last week.

While a House committee advanced the bill, sending it to the full House for consideration, opposition to the bill is widespread. During the committee hearing, most of the students who testified opposed the legislation.

Presidents of the University of Louisiana System and Community and Technical College System campuses have adopted resolutions opposing the bill.

Campus police chiefs from across the state have expressed opposition. Cinnamon Salvador, chief of campus police at McNeese State University, called the theory that armed students could have stopped campus shootings "fantasy." He said guns carried by students "would more likely be used against each other."

The Louisiana Council of Student Body Presidents has adopted a resolution opposing House Bill 199. COSBP is composed of the student body and student bar association presidents of all Louisiana public colleges and universities. In the resolution, the student leaders said they have discussed the need for more campus police, more training of students and faculty and more resources for campus police officers. They said, however, they "do not feel that the proliferation of handguns on campuses or the arming of students and faculty would prevent or curtail violence on campuses but, rather, would increase the risk of such violence."

More of this. Less of this. Please.

Shenanigans

John McCon: I don't wan't to run a smear campaign, but the public demands it.

"CheneyCare"

*Tonight on Bill Moyers Journal:

Thirty-four years later, we're no closer to health care for everyone, despite the number of Americans who need it. But now, some very determined people are taking up the fight for universal health care. They're nurses — who day in and day out — encounter the human consequences of a broken system. Here's our report, by Producer Peter Meryash and Correspondent Rick Karr.

RICK KARR:Let's consider a hypothetical cardiac patient: Male, sixty-seven years old, high-stress job, and a history of serious heart problems. And let's say, hypothetically, that he'll be changing jobs soon. Intensive care unit nurse Geri Jenkins says a patient like this might have a tough time getting new health insurance.

GERI JENKINS: He's had four major heart attacks. He's had a quadruple bypass. He's got an implantable defibrillator in his chest. He has atrial fibrillation. He gets cardio vertigo and his heart rhythm goes out of whack. He would be uninsurable for having a preexisting condition.

RICK KARR:That is, he'd be uninsurable if he were an average American. But this case actually isn't hypothetical: The patient is Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney — the vice-president — and because he's a government employee, he can't be denied health insurance no matter how serious his heart condition is.

Last year, Cheney was rushed to the hospital with an irregular heartbeat — at least his fifth trip to the hospital since being in office — and the incident made national news....

RICK KARR:It also caught the attention of a union called the California Nurses Association — or CNA — whose members see a sharp contrast between what they call the "Cadillac healthcare" the Vice President gets as a government official and what's available to MOST Americans.

ROSE ANN DEMORO: Dick Cheney can have the choice of doctors. He can go to any hospital. He can have excellent standard of care. And he's alive today because of it. And there are a lot of people who aren't.

RICK KARR:Rose Ann DeMoro is executive director of the CNA. Under her leadership, the union launched an ad campaign that's designed to shock: It claims that if Cheney were just a regular American, he'd probably be dead by now. The ad has run in newspapers across the country and on the internet and it calls for radical change in the country's healthcare system so that everyone can have access to the kind of care that saved the Vice President's life.

...

ROSE ANN DEMORO:If you look at healthcare in America, there is no healthcare system. There's a healthcare industry. That's major objective is profit-making. Which means not providing the patient all of the care that they need, discharging patients early, patients without insurance being treated differently than wealthy people, frankly. And that is the healthcare system in America. Those who can afford it get to live and those who can't suffer needlessly.

RICK KARR:It's a strong indictment, but it's backed up by the numbers: The US has more preventable deaths than any other industrialized nation. And in fact, more than twenty thousand Americans die needlessly every year, according to a recent report, because they don't have health insurance.

But the CNA's "CheneyCare" campaign isn't just about the uninsured. The union says that even those of us who do have insurance face potentially fatal problems with the system. That's because insurance companies, driven by profits, are the ones deciding which medical treatments are paid for — and which aren't.

* will replace advertisement with video once it's posted. Until then, the video can be found here.

Superdelegates, part II

More superdelegates for Obama.

CNN story.

ABC points out that Obama has now taken the lead according to their superdelegate count. More at DailyKos.

Moyers on Charlie Rose

John Hagee

Pastor John Hagee, who has endorsed Sen. John McCain, reiterated his belief that the devastation of Hurricane Katrina was brought on by a "sinful city" and its plans for a "homosexual rally."

I find it amazing that people are willing to accept such a grotesque construction of God—one that would cause so much suffering to so many people out of a distaste for, of all things, gay pride. One would think Hagee's followers would take great offense to such a blatant and malicious perversion of the thing they hold most sacred.

And what of John McCain? Does John McCain support the practice of contorting and corrupting the idea of God in order to advance a political agenda of hatred and bigotry? He may have distanced himself from some of Hagee's comments, but why has he not rejected and denounced the endorsement of John Hagee altogether? Does that mean that he secretly believes this stuff too? How much of an influence would Hagee be on John McCain should he win the presidency? What would a presidency governed by this sort of ideology—an ideology of hate—mean for the rest of us?

Most importantly, does John McCain really believe that the victims of Katrina got what they deserved? These are legitimate concerns, and the people of Louisiana as well as everyone else affected by Hurricane Katrina have a right to know whether or not John McCain loathes us as much as his friends do.

Vitter Complaint Dismissed

A complaint, which was filed against Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) for his conduct involving the solicitation of prostitutes, has been dismissed by the senate ethics committee.

AP story

documentation

What Would You Buy ...

... with $3 trillion dollars?

Superdelegates

TPM is following up on Obama's recent meetings with uncommitted superdelegates.

Never Gonna Give You Up

Link.

More Moyers

From an interview on Democracy Now:

AMY GOODMAN: This is a moment, on a night like this, that everyone is watching. They want to see, you know, who’s won. But for those many, many hours, it’s only about the horse race. I don’t think I heard the word “war” once. I don’t think I heard, as I flipped from channel to channel, the word “healthcare.” I didn’t hear the issues discussed. It was all about the percentage points. And it went on, not just for a thirty-second summary of, you know, who was ahead and who was behind, but for hour after hour.

BILL MOYERS: Well, no. The main reason I put this book out, Moyers on Democracy, is because we are facing—you know, democracy is always a story of narrow escapes, and we may be running out of luck, because we’ve always thought the present was better than the—generally thought the present was better than the past and the future will be better than the present. All bets are off now, because we are not—our politics can create problems our policies can then not solve. Start a war, can’t finish it. Spend $2 trillion on healthcare, but can’t fix it. Infrastructure crumbling, highways full of potholes, can’t do anything about it.

These fundamental structural issues of American democracy are not being addressed by this campaign, even in the best of times, when it’s not just a horse race, when they’re on the Sunday morning talk shows, when they’re making speeches. They are so appealing to the particular interest of people, of groups, that they cannot take on—they’re not taking on the large issue. Obama talks about change. Hillary Clinton talks about, you know, a populist message. But neither one of them seem to me—and nor does John McCain—none of these three seem to me to be grasping what’s fundamentally at stake in this country, which is a system that is now dysfunctional. And so many powerful interests have a stake in maintaining the dysfunction that it’s almost impossible to change it.

That is the moment—this is the moment in which if we don’t solve that structural issue of our politics, we are in real trouble. And I don’t like to say that, because I have five grandchildren, and the future is theirs, not mine. But this is what we’re not hearing. This is what the system is not going to deal with in November. And it’s a very troubling reality.

...

AMY GOODMAN: What did you think of the ABC debate in Pennsylvania with the news anchors going for the first forty-five minutes—really going at Obama around issues, everything from pastors to pins, lapel pins?

BILL MOYERS: I thought it was a great exercise in irrelevance. Going back to one of your earlier questions, we never really—we rarely probe these candidates on what they would do about the fundamental systemic issues facing America. It has become a horse race in the media and on the campaign. That’s inevitable in some respects. But I was really sad to see our craft reduced to that kind of petty and parochial concerns. These debates, moderated and mediated by the press, have really become about the press. The Sunday morning talk shows are all about themselves. They’re not really about what’s happening—they’re not trying to help the people in Dubuque or Dallas or Des Moines get an understanding of the candidates.

...

AMY GOODMAN: Why do you think these candidates, the leading candidates of the Democratic supposedly opposition party, do not call for an immediate end to the war, do not call for single-payer healthcare?

BILL MOYERS: Because the media doesn’t allow complicated thought to be articulated in ways that enlighten instead of misinform people. Partisans seize upon these sound bites and turn them into—seize upon these speeches, take the sound bites and turn them against the candidates. It’s fear. It’s fear of being misquoted. It’s fear of having your ideas misappropriated.

The full transcript of this interview can be found on Democracy Now's website.

All five parts of the video interview can also be found here.

It's well worth your time.

update:

Moyers appeared on Charlie Rose's show Thursday night. Unfortunately I haven't been able to get a transcript or video link yet—there were some very good moments—so I'll post as soon as I find something. I actually started to transcribe part of it myself, but due to some technical difficulties I lost the recording. (damn you TiVo!) Until then keep an eye on these two sites:

official Charlie Rose site

Charlie Rose YouTube site

Obama Wins North Carolina; Indiana Less Clear Goes to Clinton

With 99% of precincts reporting, Barack Obama is projected to win North Carolina by 14%.

With 95% of precincts reporting (as of 12:00 central), Clinton is ahead in Indiana by 2%, or 16,609 votes. Lake County, which is expected to go for Obama, is still out.

update:

Lake County is now reporting at 99% with Obama ahead 55%-45%. This puts Clinton at an overall, statewide lead of around 22,000 votes with 99% of precincts reporting.


another update:

CNN has called Indiana for Hillary Clinton.

MSNBC calls Indiana an "apparent" win for Clinton.

Cazayoux Wins LA-06

I realize I'm a little late with this, but congratulations to Don Cazayoux for his win on Saturday. This is a big victory for Democrats.

Bill Moyers

I can't even begin to express how much I love Bill Moyers, but this clip is a glimpse into why his shows have been among my favorite television programs for years. Compare this commentary to the sensationalist filth that is passed off as news and analysis on the cable networks.

And I give Moyers bonus points for wagging a finger at those hacks.