Martha Stewart writes from prison.
The camp is fine; it is pretty much what I anticipated. The best news — everyone is nice — both the officials and my fellow inmates. I have adjusted and am very busy. The camp is like an old-fashioned college campus — without the freedom, of course.
Link via BartCop
“PUBLIC SPLIT ON WHETHER BUSH IS A DIVIDER”
CNN scrolling banner via Altercation
FERGUS FALLS, Minn. (AP) – People who went to a local clinic to get a flu shot didn’t receive the vaccine they wanted. Instead, they received an old-fashioned remedy.
The estimated 20 people who went to the flu shot clinic Friday at Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union were sent home with a can of chicken soup and a pack of tissues.
Story from Saturday’s Boston Globe —
About half of the roughly $5 billion in Iraq reconstruction funds disbursed by the US government in the first half of this year cannot be accounted for, according to an audit commissioned by the United Nations, which could not find records for numerous rebuilding projects and other payments.
One chunk of the money — $1.4 billion — was deposited into a local bank by Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq but could be tracked no further: The auditors reported that they were shown a deposit slip but could find no additional records to explain how the money was used or to prove that it remains in the bank.
Auditors also said they could not track more than $1 billion in funds doled out by US authorities for hundreds of large and small reconstruction projects.
Link via The American Street.
From July 2003 interview with Bill Moyers on NOW:
STEWART: No. They vote… less than 50 percent of the country. The country is, look, the general dialogue is being swayed by the people who are ideologically driven.
The five percent on each side that are so ideological driven that they will dictate the terms of the discussion. The other 90 percent of the country have lawns to mow, and kids to pick up from schools, and money to make, and things to do. Their lives are, they have entrusted… we live in a representative democracy.
And so, we elect representatives to go do our bidding, so that we can get the leaves out of the gutter, and do the things around the house that need to be done. What the representatives have done over 200 years is set up a periphery — I think they call it the Beltway — that is obtuse enough that we can’t penetrate it anymore, unless we spend all of our time. This is the way that it’s been set up purposefully by both sides. In the financial industry, as well. They don’t want average people to easily penetrate the workings because then we call them on it.
From Bill Moyers’ interview with Jon Stewart, July 11, 2003:
MOYERS: I do not know… I have a confession.
STEWART: Alright.
MOYERS: I do not know whether you are practicing a old form of parody and satire.
STEWART: Uh-huh.
MOYERS: Or a new form of journalism.
STEWART: Well then that either speaks to the sad state of comedy or the sad state of news. I can’t figure out which one. I think, honestly, we’re practicing a new form of desperation. Where we just are so inundated with mixed messages from the media and from politicians that we’re just trying to sort it out for ourselves.
John, official youngest brother of NewMexiKen, advises that if you are not watching the PBS show NOW with Bill Moyers, you should be!
For every dollar the federal government spent in the fiscal year that ended two weeks ago:
Saddam Hussein will get the Nobel Peace Prize for his disarmament-related program activities during the 1990s?
In his convention address in New York, President Bush announced a new $1 billion initiative to enroll “millions of poor children” in two popular government health programs. But next week, the Bush administration plans to return $1.1 billion in unspent children’s health funds to the U.S. Treasury, making his convention promise a financial wash at best.
From The Washington Post, September 25, 2004
“There’s 100,000 troops trained: police, guard, special units, border patrol. There’s going to be 125,000 trained by the end of this year.”
President George W. Bush
Presidential Debate
September 30th, 2004
From Reuters:
They estimated that 22,700 Iraqi personnel have received enough basic training to make them “minimally effective at their tasks,” in contrast to the 100,000 figure cited by Bush.
“[T]he Central Intelligence Agency has fewer experienced case officers assigned to its headquarters unit dealing with Osama bin Laden than it did at the time of the [September 11, 2001] attacks…”
has some good new signs.
The following is from Bill Moyers’ speech at the Society of Professional Journalists national convention on September 11, 2004:
How do we explain the possibility that a close election in November could turn on several million good and decent citizens who believe in the Rapture Index? That’s what I said – the Rapture Index; google it and you will understand why the best-selling books in America today are the twelve volumes of the left-behind series which have earned multi-millions of dollars for their co-authors who earlier this year completed a triumphant tour of the Bible Belt whose buckle holds in place George W. Bush’s armor of the Lord. These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the l9th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative millions of people believe to be literally true.
According to this narrative, Jesus will return to earth only when certain conditions are met: when Israel has been established as a state; when Israel then occupies the rest of its “biblical lands;” when the third temple has been rebuilt on the site now occupied by the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosques; and, then, when legions of the Antichrist attack Israel. This will trigger a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon during which all the Jews who have not converted will be burned. Then the Messiah returns to earth. The Rapture occurs once the big battle begins. True believers” will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts and frogs during the several years of tribulation which follow.
I’m not making this up. We’re reported on these people for our weekly broadcast on PBS, following some of them from Texas to the West Bank. They are sincere, serious, and polite as they tell you that they feel called to help bring the Rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That’s why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. It’s why they have staged confrontations at the old temple site in Jerusalem. It’s why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the 9th chapter of the Book of Revelations where four angels “which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released “to slay the third part of men.’ As the British writer George Monbiot has pointed out, for these people the Middle East is not a foreign policy issue, it’s a biblical scenario, a matter of personal belief. A war with Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed; if there’s a conflagration there, they come out winners on the far side of tribulation, inside the pearly gates, in celestial splendor, supping on ambrosia to the accompaniment of harps plucked by angels.
One estimate puts these people at about l5% of the electorate. Most are likely to vote Republican; they are part of the core of George W. Bush’s base support. He knows who they are and what they want. When the President asked Ariel Sharon to pull his tanks out of Jenin in 2002, over one hundred thousand angry Christian fundamentalists barraged the White House with emails and Mr. Bush never mentioned the matter again. Not coincidentally, the administration recently put itself solidly behind Ariel Sharon’s expansions of settlements on the West Banks. In George Monbiot’s analysis, the President stands to lose fewer votes by encouraging Israeli expansion into the West Bank than he stands to lose by restraining it. “He would be mad to listen to these people, but he would also be mad not to.” No wonder Karl Rove walks around the West Wing whistling “Onward Christian Soldiers.” He knows how many votes he is likely to get from these pious folk who believe that the Rapture Index now stands at 144 — just one point below the critical threshold at which point the prophecy is fulfilled, the whole thing blows, the sky is filled with floating naked bodies, and the true believers wind up at the right hand of God. With no regret for those left behind.
The whole speech is well-worth your time.
Juan Cole has a must read if you care to have some perspective about Iraq as it is today, If America were Iraq, What would it be Like?. Some excerpts:
What if there were private armies totalling 275,000 men, armed with machine guns, assault rifles (legal again!), rocket-propelled grenades, and mortar launchers, hiding out in dangerous urban areas of cities all over the country? What if they completely controlled Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Denver and Omaha, such that local police and Federal troops could not go into those cities?
What if the Air Force routinely (I mean daily or weekly) bombed Billings, Montana, Flint, Michigan, Watts in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Anacostia in Washington, DC, and other urban areas, attempting to target “safe houses” of “criminal gangs”, but inevitably killing a lot of children and little old ladies?
What if, from time to time, the US Army besieged Virginia Beach, killing hundreds of armed members of the Christian Soldiers? What if entire platoons of the Christian Soldiers militia holed up in Arlington National Cemetery, and were bombarded by US Air Force warplanes daily, destroying thousands of graves and even pulverizing the Vietnam Memorial over on the Mall? What if the National Council of Churches had to call for a popular march of thousands of believers to converge on the National Cathedral to stop the US Army from demolishing it to get at a rogue band of the Timothy McVeigh Memorial Brigades?
Juan Cole is a Professor of History at the University of Michigan.
Quit hanging out here and go read Get Your War On.
Penn Jillette is all agitated about free speech. Provocative.
Showbiz is just there to give people something to talk about. Houdini appeared in a press photo with just a few bondage chains hanging over his genitals. People talked about that picture. Some went to see his show because of that picture. Some probably boycotted him forever because of that picture. The government just stayed out and let the hype play itself out. I don’t believe in reincarnation, but if Houdini did come back as a modern African American woman, he’d be sure to have pierced nipples and a wardrobe malfunction on TV.
A Flash animation of the last meal request of several men executed in Texas. Strange, yet somehow mesmerizing.
Link via Makes Me Ralph.
Russian mother forced to chose between two children at the school in Beslan last week.
“They said, ‘Pack your things quickly, and take your babies with you,’ ” Dzandarova said.
Shortly after, she learned that she would have to choose between taking her son or her daughter.
Dzandarova had both Alan [2] and Alana [6] with her and made a snap decision to pass Alana to her 16-year-old sister-in-law. But the guerrillas saw through the ruse and refused to allow her to take the older child.
“Alana was clinging to me and holding my hand firmly. But they separated us, and said: ‘You go with the boy. Your sister can stay here with her.’ I cried. I begged them. Alana cried. The women around us wept. One of the Chechens said: ‘If you don’t go now, you don’t go at all. You stay here with your children … and we will shoot all of you.’ ”
She couldn’t save both of them. She could only die with both of them — or save one of them and herself.
“I didn’t have time to think what I was doing,” she said. “I pressed Alan even stronger to myself, and I went out, and I heard all the time how my daughter was crying and calling for me behind my back. I thought my heart would break into pieces there and then.”
Article from Friday’s Los Angeles Times.
Link via Body and Soul, which has much, much more.
The Memory Hole reveals a document redacted by the Department of Justice. The redaction is a quote from a Supreme Court decision, presumably censored to protect national security. The offending language:
The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect “domestic security.” Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent.
Starting Monday, Albuquerque radio listeners will be part of a nationwide experiment in talk radio.
Air America Radio Network is coming to the Duke City on KABQ-AM (1350), owned by Clear Channel Radio. …
The format, which begins airing Monday morning, will include Limbaugh archcritic Al Franken, whose show is scheduled to run from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., directly opposite Limbaugh on KKOB-AM (770). …
Hammond said the station will be looking for a local talk radio host down the road.
From the Albuquerque Tribune
In the world of terrorism, there’s al Queda, there’s the Chechnyan rebels…
And then there’s Maude.
Bea Arthur sparked a security scare at Logan Airport in Boston this week when she tried to board a Cape Air flight with a pocketknife in her handbag.
The “Golden Girls” star, now 81, was flagged by a Transportation Security Administration agent, who discovered the knife – a strict no-no following 9/11.
“She started yelling that it wasn’t hers and said ‘The terrorists put it there,’ ” a fellow passenger said. “She kept yelling about the ‘terrorists, the terrorists, the terrorists.’ ”
After the blade was confiscated, Arthur took a keyring from her bag and told the agent it belonged to the “terrorists,” before throwing it at them.
As she boarded the plane, she told the TSA employees, “We’re all doomed.”
A spokeswoman for Cape Air says, “Miss Arthur was cracking jokes and was a real character.”
From the Philadelphia Daily News
Blogger TBogg lost his father yesterday. Last night he wrote about it. It’s well-worth your time.
From Talk Left
Imagine the feeling. You sit on a jury, convict a man of rape and sentence him to 45 years in jail. 22 years later, DNA proves the man innocent. Jurors in the case of Arthur Lee Whitfieled, released from jail this week, share their reactions.
In the past two weeks, Wilton Dedge left jail after 22 years. Robert Coney was freed at 76 after serving 41 years. And Michael McAllister, who served 18 years.
Reading this from Heather (aka dooce) can’t help but make one sad for the personal heartbreak it describes. But NewMexiKen had another longer-term thought.
Modern life may in fact bring on more anxieties than our ancestors faced. And the constant barrage of drug advertisements and self-indulgent articles and books on this and that and every other ailment surely makes us more self-aware than they were. Even so, I will assume human beings have faced emotional problems beyond their control for centuries — and they were every bit as miserable as us, without any of the understanding, or any of the possible solutions.
It’s a wonder to me that the human race has lasted this long.
