PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - It was lunchtime in one of Haiti's worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud. With food prices rising, Haiti's poorest can't afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies. Charlene, 16 with a 1-month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau. The mud has long been prized by pregnant women and children here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places like Cite Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene shares a two-room house with her baby, five siblings and two unemployed parents, cookies made of dirt, salt and vegetable shortening have become a regular meal.
"When my mother does not cook anything, I have to eat them three times a day," Charlene said. Her baby, named Woodson, lay still across her lap, looking even thinner than the slim 6 pounds 3 ounces he weighed at birth.
Though she likes their buttery, salty taste, Charlene said the cookies also give her stomach pains. "When I nurse, the baby sometimes seems colicky too," she said.
Food prices around the world have spiked because of higher oil prices, needed for fertilizer, irrigation and transportation. Prices for basic ingredients such as corn and wheat are also up sharply, and the increasing global demand for biofuels is pressuring food markets as well.
The problem is particularly dire in the Carribean, where island nations depend on imports and food prices are up 40 percent in places.
I have nothing else to add to this. This is just a comprehensive failure of humanity in every imaginable way.
This is Mitt Robo Romney relating to black people.
"Who let the dogs out"
"Woof woof"
"I see you have some bling bling"
To me, this is worse than some golf channel bimbo asking for Tiger to be lynched.
I can deal with the "I will lynch you" brand of racism but I can't tolerate that Mitt Romney brand of racism where all black people are fucking snippets of a rap video who do nothing more than wear baggy pants, say "Yo's!" and "Raise the roof!'s"
Not only are the references casually racist, they are dated. Bling bling and "Who let the dogs out?" are from the 1990's.
At least the motherfucker could have said "Who Superman'd that ho?!"
In direct contrast to this simplistic casual racism, the Washington Post has launched a new site called the Root (www.theroot.com) that examines blackness in all its complexity.
Peep Chris Rock getting emotional after discovering his super great grandfather fought for the Union in the Civil War.
Powerful stuff.
Be sure to watch the video with Morgan Freedman discovering that his possibly raped great grandmother lived with and was buried with the father of her children and the other video of Don Cheadle discovering his family was enslaved by Native Americans.
I need to do one of these genealogy tests quick fast and figure out where the fuck I came from.
Bill Clinton got a huge pass from liberals and blacks during his time in the White House.
People rallied behind Bill because Republicans got a little too obsessed with his blow job.
People thought it was a little creepy, especially since the critics like Newt Gingrich eventually got caught cheating on his wife who was in the hospital with cancer.
Gingrich’s personal life has been the subject of much attention from both the media and his political opponents over the years. In 1992, his Democratic opponent, Tony Center, ran an ad claiming that Gingrich had "delivered divorce papers to his wife the day after her cancer operation," which was not strictly true, although friends have acknowledged that he discussed divorce terms with his estranged wife while visiting her in the hospital.[14]
And how can we forget Clinton Crusader Larry Craig and his gay bathroom stall loving last year.
Once Clinton left office his free pass continued because Bush was such a disastrous failure as a president. But with the Bush era coming to an end people are beyond the "anyone but Bush, why not Clinton Part 3" mentality that Hillary was hoping to ride in on.
And with Bill Clinton so willing to play the attack dog, it is fair to assess what people let him get away with in order to keep someone in office they thought would be able to fend off Republicans.
The Clintons are a dirty and divisive family and Hillary's current profile will get murdered by McCain.
She can't play the experience card or pro-military card with McCain. And the Clinton family dirt will disgust everyone who may have forgotten how they get down.
She had a major hand in many of the Clinton scandals and the slumlord that Hillary accused Obama of being cool with,
Whoops, she was in a picture with him.
Plus there was major Hillary donor Norman Hsu who got busted on fraud charges.
Whatever small mistakes Obama made in associates, the Clintons have made on a much larger scale, over and over again.
Politicians should stand on their records independently and relative to their peers. Bush being a shady ass mother fucker doesn't mitigate the shady dealings Clinton was involved with.
Now it's 2008 and Hillary is trying to present herself as a fully researched strong capable female, who just happens to be riding on her husband's coattails.
The rabid white female liberals of Hillary's base seem to miss the irony here.
Let's trace this feminism. Hillary let Bill shit on her for decades with repeated sexual scandals as she awaited the moment when Bill would put her in charge. Not to mention all the women Hillary implicitly let be slandered or explicitly slandered after Bill's sex scandals.
It's so sad to see the Clinton's bringing back the dirty tricks and politics of personal destruction. But it reminds us that the Clinton's modus operandi and character has been remarkable consistent.
We can also expect that if Hillary is nominated the GOP will reopen the many cases of sexual harassment and abuse of Paula Jones, Monica Lewinski, etc. But this time, the focus will be on Hillary’s role managing the attack machine. Previously, she was portrayed more as another victim of Bill's sexual compulsions and philandering. In retrospect, and in light of the return of the Clinton political attack machine, either the GOP or the “watchdog" press will start reminding folks that it was Hillary who was in charge of the fast reaction task force when they used smears, lies, denigration, and intimidation to undermine the credibility of anyone who challenged their power.
The long list of woman who were victims of Bill's sexual compulsions, like Paula Jones, Monica Lewinski, Gennifer Flowers, Jaunita Broaderick, Kathleen Willey, Sally Perdue, Elizabeth Ward Grace, Dolly Browning etc. soon thereafter, became victims of Hillary, Carville and the rest of The Clinton Attack Machine.
Hillary got a free pass on these retaliation charges. In any modern day state Commission Against Discrimination hearing, these retaliation actions would receive higher civil penalties than even the harassment charges.
For example, surrogate, James Carville was sent out to denigrate Paula Jones on news shows with the "walk through a trailer park with $100 and see what crawls out comments."
Here’s what Mr. Young, who is black and a former ambassador to the United Nations, had to say last month in an interview posted online: “Bill is every bit as black as Barack. He’s probably gone with more black women than Barack.”
He then went on to make disgusting comments about the way that Bill and Hillary Clinton defended themselves years ago against the fallout from the former president’s womanizing. That’s coming from the Clinton camp!
Bad Bill had been roughing up Obama so much that Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina suggested that he might want to “chill.” On a conference call with reporters yesterday, the former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a national co-chairman of the Obama campaign, tut-tutted that the “incredible distortions” of the political beast were “not keeping with the image of a former president.”
Jonathan Alter reported in Newsweek that Senator Edward Kennedy and Rahm Emanuel, the Illinois congressman and former Clinton aide, have heatedly told Bill “that he needs to change his tone and stop attacking Senator Barack Obama.”
With all the sniping from the Clinton camp about whether Barack Obama has enough experience to make a strong president, consider another presidential candidate who was far more of a novice. He had the gall to run for president even though he had served a single undistinguished term in the House of Representatives, before being hounded back to his district.
Looking at the 19 presidents since 1900, three of the greatest were among those with the fewest years in electoral politics. Teddy Roosevelt had been a governor for two years and vice president for six months; Woodrow Wilson, a governor for just two years; and Franklin Roosevelt, a governor for four years. None ever served in Congress.
The Billary fiasco is the couple you see arguing in the restaurant or apartment next door, but played on a national political scale. They have dragged America down in their domestic circus for long enough. The Presidency is not a make-up present for the wife you fucked around on.
"Between August 2005 and January 2007 Blige allegedly received multiple shipments from an Orlando pharmacy of Jentropin, a human growth hormone, and Oxandrolone, an anabolic steroid, in orders sent to her at the Beverly Hills Hotel, MGM Grand in Las Vegas, and Clay Gym in New York City.
At least one of the orders was mailed under the name "Marlo Stanfield," which is the character name of a drug kingpin on the Baltimore-based HBO crime drama "The Wire."
"[50 Cent] is alleged to have received shipments of steroids at his mansion in Farmington, Conn. in July 2006 an order was mailed to his residence under the name "Michael Jordan" and also at a residence on Oakmont Drive in Los Angeles. Steroids in his name also were mailed to the office of a Long Island chiropractor."
My name is Stringer Bell Vic Mackey Jack Bauer and I'd like one steroid please!
Two alleged gang members who taunted the Miami Dade Police Department in a video posted on YouTube have been arrested by U.S. agents and charged with federal firearms violations.
Rudy Villanueva and Tony Logan, alleged members of a Miami-Dade County street gang called the Bird Road Boys, were seen in the video brandishing a shotgun, assault rifle and handguns. Villanueva was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement late Tuesday evening, and Logan was arrested early Wednesday morning.
Villanueva, who goes by the names King Bird Road and Bird Road Rudy, is the alleged leader of the gang and is seen on the video saying, "Metro Dade Gang Unit, here I am baby." Villanueva went on in the video to say "we's out here fighting a Cold War" and that "they come at us if they want to.
Logan appears in the video saying "come get it" while flashing gang signs and pulling the triggers of the two handguns he is holding.
Mexicans for the win!
For somehow involving The Wire with the ever spreading steroid scandal, steroid rappers are the Snitch of the Week.
The Cowboys shattered what was left of my heart last week. The Giants crushed up the rest tonight.
Now it's Pats - Giants.
I cannot have the team lead by the first NFL quarterback with over 50 chromosomes, Eli Manning, be the team that stops the Patriots. I just can't. My brain would implode.
Even though his ad hoc mission collapsed, Sharpton still tried to take credit for the arrest. "Clearly his calling me ... helped lead to the conclusion," Sharpton said. "I hope that justice for all parties will be served."
The Marshals Service denied Sharpton's presence had anything to do with the arrest, and New Jersey prosecutors blasted him for his attempted intervention, which they said bought Blunt precious hours on the run.
Union County Prosecutor Ted Romankow said Sharpton never told him Blunt might have fled to Mexico - and the lawman first learned about Sharpton's stunt in Wednesday's News. "I said, 'Whoa, Mexico?'" said Romankow, who conceded jail guards didn't notice Blunt's original escape for 20 hours. "I was a little surprised."
Officials with Sharpton's National Action Network insist they informed NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly about the Mexico mission. An NYPD source said Sharpton told Kelly only that a friend was trying to get Blunt to surrender and never mentioned Sharpton was going to Mexico.
It's not Sharpton's first embarrassment. He famously defended Tawana Brawley even after the teen's rape claim was debunked and turned up in an FBI surveillance tape discussing a drug deal with a reputed mobster.
Blunt was awaiting trial on robbery and weapons charges when he broke out of the Union County Jail with Jose Espinosa, 20.
The pair stole a metal wheel from a storage room and used it to gradually pound a hole through a cinder block wall in Espinosa's cell. They covered up the hole with nudie pictures, just like a character did in the hit movie "The Shawshank Redemption."
They apparently escaped Dec. 14, but guards did not realize they were gone for nearly an entire day. Blunt even left a cheeky note thanking jail guard Rudolph Zurick for his help. Zurick later committed suicide.
Unlike Blunt, Espinosa didn't make it far. Cops busted him Tuesday a few blocks away from the jail in a girlfriend's basement apartment, where he had been hiding out with a twisted ankle.
Obstruction of justice... awesome!
This comes on the heels of some white twit on the Golf Channel who called for Tiger Woods to be lynched. As the stalwart defender of the Civil Rights that he is Tiger Woods said, "That's OK!" and then Sharpton jumped in and called for the announcer to be fired.
This woman should lose her job for that shit but Al Sharpton, with his record of corruption, opportunism and divisiveness is not the dude to trumpet these issues anymore, especially after going around the police to play bounty hunter. Get lost Sharpton.
Play golf, marry a white woman, join a country club and all that. But maintain awareness.
Why was Barack Obama able to pull off the mixed black man with different interests and background routine and maintain his sense of blackness, while Tiger Woods failed so miserably?
Al Sharpton, for getting your Bubs on, you are the Snitch of the Week. Tiger should lynch himself.
New Jersey, for showing all the real world ramifications of this chicken and egg level quagmire (there are multiple articles in the Times about this topic) that the inner city has sunk into, you are the Snitch of the Week.
- How can two twins marry each other by accident? Scary shit. I'm checking my birth certificate now.
- How bad do the establishment baby boomer generation of Democrats look as they try to stomp out Obama and maintain the status quo. The baby boomer age of political stagnancy and 1960's nostalgia must end.
Gloria Steinem, the fossilized grandmother of feminism, wrote a bullshit ass column in the NYTimes stating that no woman is ever a frontrunner,where she basically said that all women must support feminism by supporting Hillary, that Barack Obama wouldn't have a chance as a black woman and that white women are the saddest most oppressed group in the galaxy.
Her opinion is open to comments and she got owned.
I'm not supporting Clinton in spite of the fact that she shares my sex (female) and profession (lawyer), because she supported the war in Iraq when she had the opportunity (with way more information than the average American)to show some personal and professional integrity and do what was right even if it didn't affect the outcome of going to war. In voting for war she showed to me she was either: a)lazy by not reading the information she had available as a US Senator(unlikely); b)she was stupid by not understanding aforementioned information (unlikely) or...; c)she did what was politcally expedient (probable). I suspect she chose option (c), but is publically declaring option (b) by tring to identify with the many people who were fooled by the media and the other politicians who were too unaware or cowardly to voice opposition to the war. Neither is acceptable to me as a voter. I'm looking for someone in a presidental candidate, male or female, black white or brown, with a backbone to stand up and do what's right for the nation. I'm really, really bummed that it's not Ms. Clinton. I have the same problem with Edwards (I like trial lawyers!) Obama had the guts, early on, to say the war was wrong. It's Obama-rama for me. Sorry, Gloria, I grew up with your magazine. But it's not enough for me in middle age.
barak obama is an empty suit selling "hope" in lieu of Truth. Oprah Winfrey helped to elect Arnold Swartzenegger. I have no doubt that she voted her purse by doing this, as she is a large land owner in California, and that ilk fears Dems because they do not want to pay their "fair share" of Cali tax. Oprah has given us Swartzenegger and Dr. Phil. If that was not offensive enough to decent thinking people, now she brings us Obama. He has no ideas, no plan and nothing to add other than the cynical pacification of the masses with bedtime stories about hope, while calling Unions "special interest groups" that need to be done away with.
Obama votes with Bush constantly funding this terrible endless war.
Oprah, you play the race card and the gender card too.
You are a closeted republican and chose Barak Obama because you do not like other women who actually stand for something to working American Women besides glamour, angels, hollywood and dieting!
When Americans find out that Obama backs right wing corporate racist anti worker bullshit, they will not vote for him, and the victory will go to the most racist right wing republican ever.... Mccain, who is a fascist!
"It's not a TV crazed race. Frankly you can't buy your way into it," Cuomo said, according to Albany Times Union reporter Rick Karlin. "You can't shuck and jive at a press conference," he added. "All those moves you can make with the press don't work when you're in someone's living room."
The phrase "shuck and jive" refers to mischievous blacks behaving innocently in the presence of an authority figure, so as to lie and get out of trouble.
He then tried to claim his words where taken out of context. He meant the non-racist use of "shuck and jive."
I read a comment of Huffington Post hat summed the increasing string of racial attacks Hillary is using,
(3) Clinton Surrogate Francine Torge, comparing Obama to John F. Kennedy who "was assassinated", and doing it in front of Hillary Clinton, whose "expression did not change noticeably when Ms. Torge made the comment": http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/07/civilrights/
(6) Two high-level Clinton volunteers were vilified in the press for attacking Barack Obama with an "Obama is a radical muslim terrorist" e-mail smear campaign that has been both disproven and discredited, and a third volunteer knew about the e-mail - she didn't forward it, but she didn't alert the campaign about the smear e-mail either: http://hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com/archives/2007/12/third_clinton_v.html
My growing hatred of Hillary has little to do with her ovaries and it will be truly sad if she swings support back her way because she can fake cry on cue. McCain is 204 years old and has been running for president since 1924. That motherfucking hasn't cried once.
And he got passed over for BUSH.
The Clinton's have burned up any favor they have with the black community a long time ago. Even they realize this and they try to backtrack on the shit they've said.
Keep all this shit in mind when the primaries swing around to your state.
The writer's strike was too late in the year to mess with anything so this year was fairly awesome, television wise.
But what hit me as I was compiling this list was the god awful taste of television critics. They are worse than music critics. At least film, in some instances, aspires to be high art so you get better Top 10 movie lists, but some of the shit I saw from "TV critics" was just embarrassing.
I know lists top 10 of 2XXX lists are symbolic and fluid, but can you explain this to me.
This fool has The Wire at number 10 of 2007. There was no Wire in 2007. It last ended in 2006 and just started again in 1/08.
Catch with this video if you need a refresh.
It's pretty awesome.
Anyhoo, are Dancing with the Stars, House, Pushing Daises and WOMAN PROTAGANISTS (What the fuck show is that shit?!) all better than The Wire? Diane Werts, one yourself.
Please Google any shows you don't know the plot of. It's too many damn URLs for me to put up.
Shows that next to end ASAP (2007 Edition)
Rescue Me (FX) - Leary's vanity project has went on long enough. You're angsty, you have demons and you hate/love your ex-wife. I get it. End it.
Weeds (Showtime) - A MILF sells weed and it's called MILF WEED. Get it? Mary Louise Parker is pretty hot, but this show jumped the shark and lost any satirical edge it had.
Brotherhood (Showtime) - Let's make a bootleg hybrid of Sopranos and The Wire that captures none of Tony Soprano's charismatic psychopathy and The Wire's laser precise analysis of failing cities. Let's put it in Rhode Island and curse alot. No.
Tell Me You Love Me (HBO) - Boring, depressing white people having boring depressing white people sex and then talk about it to their therapist. Why HBO? Dysfunctional white people have brought such great entertainment as Six Feet Under, Woody Allen's entire oeuvre and American Beauty but HBO caught a brick with this soft porn gimmick.
Nip/Tuck (FX) - Um, yea. Stop. Thanks.
Start Snitching's Disappointments of 2007
Big Love (HBO) - The second season was better than the first but this show will never be more than OK.
Family Guy (FOX) - The joke to bomb ratio has gotten a little high.
John From Cincinnati (HBO) - This show was the most unique failure I've ever seen on television. I respect what it tried to do and even what it did at times but this was the case of an artist not relaying his vision in a way for other to enjoy. You can make your art challenging, (David Lynch) but you have to let the viewer in somewhat. Half mesmerized by it's lyricism, half bored by its pretension and half confused its plot (that's a lot of halves) this show hurt my brain. I expect better from Milch.
Start Snitching's Honorable Mentions of 2007
Damages (FX) - At times it seem too slick for it's own damn good, with the story being told from 2039 directions but it came together so damn well that you have to respect it.
Riches (FX) - The American Dream, distorted, broken and almost made into a full season idea. Completely fell apart towards the end.
Brothers and Sisters (ABC) - My shameful guilty pleasure show.
Friday Night Lights (NBC) - Beautiful portraits of small town failures and those trying to get away. A little formulaic in its 2nd season, but still good.
The Top 10 Television Shows of 2007
10. Extras: Christmas Special (BBC/HBO) - No one makes you feel guiltier about laughing than Ricky Gervais. He may only have one story arc, but this toil/success/failure/redemption gimmick works like hell.
9/8. 30 Rock / The Office (NBC) - I would dare to say that NBC's new 1-2 Thursday combo is better than Seinfeld/Friends. Too bad they don't get nearly half the shine at those 90's stalwarts. (Btw, Friends sucks.) And Tracy Morgan should be some sort of Ambassador .
7. Flight of the Conchords (HBO) - TV can still make you laugh out loud. Really loud.
6. Californication (Showtime) - What I thought was going to be another David Duchovny post X-Files flounder turned out to be a beautiful reflection on failure, family and love. Agent Mulder did the burnt out failed LA writer thing well. Although the ending sucked.
5. Dexter (Showtime) - A serial killing detective being brought down by his own department. Good shit Showtime, but again, your ending sucked.
4. Rome (HBO) - This show wasn't perfect but I loved it. As a pseudo-history buff it was interesting to watch HBO's spin on things. It wasn't 100% historically accurate but the way it showed the small personal foibles that created these incredible historic events was amazing. Kind of like Bush's daddy issues bringing us into Iraq. Ahem...
3. Sopranos (HBO) - I said it before and I will say it again, when this show is great, there is no show that is great in the same way. It hits on the visceral action level, the wrenching emotional family stuff, the psychological baggage that traps us all with firm slap of societal comment to boot. That ending froze in my mind for months after the show.
Tony Soprano, you sick homicidal maniac, you will be missed. I could fuck with a Sopranos movie in 3 years.
Set in the 1960 Madison Avenue advertising world, it focused on a top level advertising executive, his career, family, past and mistress(es) and completely immersed itself it in the nicotine drenched post-war, pre-everything social milieu of the early 60's.
When I say pre-everything I mean, pre-Civil Rights, Women's Lib, pre-Jewish assimilation, pre-cigarette ban, pre-psychology. There was no political correctness.
When you understand the power lock white men had on society you can see why giving it up, or sharing parts of it later on in the 1960's was such a fucking disaster.
It was bizarre to see the writing imprint of a Sopranos handler show itself in a completely different setting but this show was as brutish as anything in the Sopranos.
And the ending, oh the ending. Incredible show.
1. The Shield (FX) - In reading this blog you may have kind of sorta heard that I like this little show called The Shield. There is one more season in 2008 and if Vic dies, which might damn well happen, I may not make it through 2008.
Did I shit on your favorite show? Completely ignore another or overrate something?
Let me know.
UPDATE
I forgot "The Unit" on CBS.
It's produced by Shawn Ryan of the Shield and it's an awesome show that captures the By Any Means Necessary / No Excuses alpha male attitude of the military that so absorbed me when I was a wee lad.
Obama is my niggy, I ride with him more and more by the day, but in case I forget that I am a black man in the USA, stories like this keep shit in perspective.
In October, the N.A.A.C.P. chapter for northern Maine got shocking news. A man from a nearby town had threatened to shoot “any and all black persons” attending the group’s meetings at an old stone church here, and state prosecutors were worried enough to seek a restraining order.
Such remarks are not unheard of in Maine, the nation’s whitest state, which has fewer black residents — 10,918 in 2006, or less than 1 percent of the population, according to the Census Bureau — than some neighborhoods of Chicago or New York. But nor are they usually so blunt. The chapter has since held meetings at police stations and canceled its annual Kwanzaa celebration, which normally draws people from up and down the coast of Maine...
“This man’s threat was shocking in its specificity and the anger it contained,” said Thomas Harnett, the assistant attorney general for civil rights education and enforcement. “It’s not often you see something articulated so clearly and so filled with acknowledged prejudice.”
Still, Mr. Harnett said his office received 250 to 300 reports of bias incidents every year from around the state, most of them racially motivated.
Um, black people, don't live in Maine.
It gets better,
Many come from Lewiston, where more than 3,000 Somali immigrants have settled in recent years. In July 2006, a group of Somalis were worshiping in a storefront mosque there when a white man rolled the head of a pig, an animal considered unclean in Islam, across the floor. And last month, a Somali student at Lewiston High School said, a white man threw sand and dirt in his face as he ran at a cross-country meet.
Last year, a white man shouted racial slurs at a pregnant black woman in Hancock, near Bangor, and kicked her in the abdomen, according to Mr. Harnett’s office. And in March, AssataSherrill, a black resident of Bangor, told the police that three white boys had thrown stones and shouted racial epithets at her as she walked her dog near the city’s waterfront.
Ms. Sherrill — who lives here with her teenage daughter, a high school senior who “hates every minute of it” and wants to attend historically black Spelman College in Atlanta — says she moved to Maine from Detroit in search of tranquillity. After the attack on her, she organized a series of community forums to discuss race issues in Maine. This month she held an alternative Kwanzaa celebration after Mr. Sawyer’s threat led the N.A.A.C.P. to cancel its larger version.
Shocking.
For reminding me where the fuck I live, Maine is the Snitch of the Week.
Detective Sean Johnstone of the Brooklyn South Narcotics Unit was arrested yesterday along with police officer Julio Alvarez in connection to 11 missing bags of cocaine that Johnstone seized in a drug bust. The detective was caught talking about the drugs when he forgot that he was wearing a wire for an undercover operation and he recorded himself talking about them to Alvarez.
My bad son!!!
Detective Johnstone and Alvarez, for showing me the realities of "The Shield: Reject Edition" you are the Snitch of the Week.
Everytime people start looking at the nutcases floating around the Republican candidacy, McCain seems to come back into fashion as the nostalgia choice.
"He's been around so long, he's a vet, he's been tortured, let's just give him the nod."
Um, no.
Despite how horrible all the choices are, please remember that McCain is a senile old man with a history of as much hypocritical wavering and opportunistic positioning as any other Republican.
Click the picture to enlarge and see how Alzheimer's has ravaged his mind.
So I recently managed to bite my tongue hard enough to finish the documentary "No End in Sight" and even though the movie came out in 2007, the film helped me realize that we are already fucked for 2008.
($100 a barrel oil, US dollar in the toilet, housing crash)
It's one thing to follow Iraq in the news for 5 years and be infuriated piece by piece, but it's something entirely different to watch the whole process laid out like it was in this movie.
The War in Iraq has already locked the spot of "the century's worst political failure"and that makes it doubly hard to watch Bush smirking and jostling his shoulders while playing dress-up in front of helicopters or watching Rumsfeld laugh about a quagmire in 2003.
The level of willful arrogance, myopia and deceit in this disaster astounds me.
My perception of experience has been shattered.
New graduates with no urban planning were put in charge of traffic in downtown Baghdad, meanwhile Cheney with decades of experience, ignored his owns statements about the difficulty of an Iraqi invasion and led the charge.
The whole Clinton/Obama experience issue is meaningless to me, now more than ever. Character is much more defining than just doing a job longer.
I've been watching war movies, documentaries as well as reading books and memoirs about the Middle East in the past month or so while I try to understand what the fuck happened. The Alphabet boys would probably like a few questions about my library records they are probably recording.
Some of note are,
Rory Stewart's memoir "The Places in Between" is fascinating, if occasionally boring look at immediate post 9/11 Afghanistan through the eyes of the gulliest white man ever. (He walked across the entire country.)
"Days of Glory" about Algerians who fought for France in WWII and got completely shitted on. Like "Glory" with Denzel, but better.
Even "Last King of Scotland" connects to Iraq for me. Knowing Idi Amin got to live his life in peaceful exile in Saudi Arabia after his crimes against humanity was an outrage to the "civilized world" yet Bush and Co. will fade into history unscathed by the same people who lust to prosecute African dictators in the Hague and other World Courts.
So what the fuck does this have to do with the New York Times?
Hot on the heels of the NY Times being a cheerleader for the Iraq War in 2003 via Judith Miller, and the general failure of the media of criticize Bush in 2000 or 2004, we have the mainstream media outlets hiring the filthy detritus of the warmongers who have been fired or quit in shame after the Iraq War debacle. These 'men' have proven themselves as having no real insight into world politics and history, yet they are awarded again and again with a national stage to spread their poison.
These papers have tried to present these hirings as some enlightened move, where they are giving equal voice to every viewpoint. I wrote to the Times telling them that my family would cancel their subscription after Kristol's hiring and I received this response.
Thank you for your e-mail concerning Bill Kristol. We appreciate your interest and your taking the time to let us know how you feel.
Mr. Kristol's column will be appearing on the Op-Ed page, where we offer a range of diverse opinions -- often differing from our own editorial opinions. Given that we are a news organization that believes in vibrant political discourse, we have brought Mr. Kristol on board after a long and thoughtful search through the ranks of strong conservative voices.
Will you -- or will we -- agree with him? Probably not.very often . . . but that is the point of offering multiple views and providing intellectual diversity. We hope the column will engender open debate and discussion in the democratic tradition of newspapers. And we hope that you will continue to read and to express your views to us. We very much value your readership.
Sincerely,
Blah blah (Name removed) SVP, Corporate Communications The New York Times Company
There is a difference between offering a conservative opinion which William Safire (who is incredibly smart) did successfully for the Times, and a Bill O Reilly style smear artist like Bill Kristol.
Bill Kristol has been wrong or lied about every major issue in the last 8 years. Check out his list of shit.
Why would I buy a paper with this man's word in them? Why would I even read your website? What level does that leave the Times on?
I love David Pogue, Nick Kristof A.O. Scott Frank Rich
and many other writers for the NYTimes, but I'd rather watch 2 Girls 1 Cup (for the love of God, do not research 2 girls 1 cup if you haven't seen it already) on repeat that read the shit he writes.
I can't wait for the Wire to tear apart the media this season. Sunday can't come soon enough.
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