Prometheus 6

...it’s one thing to lack class and a sense of grace, quite another to deliberately try and wreck the presidential prospects of your party’s likely nominee — and to do it in a way that has the potential to undermine the substantial racial progress that has been made in this country over many years.

Seeds of Destruction
By BOB HERBERT

The Clintons have never understood how to exit the stage gracefully.

Their repertoire has always been deficient in grace and class. So there was Hillary Clinton cold-bloodedly asserting to USA Today that she was the candidate favored by “hard-working Americans, white Americans,” and that her opponent, Barack Obama, the black candidate, just can’t cut it with that crowd.

“There’s a pattern emerging here,” said Mrs. Clinton.

There is, indeed. There was a name for it when the Republicans were using that kind of lousy rhetoric to good effect: it was called the Southern strategy, although it was hardly limited to the South. Now the Clintons, in their desperation to find some way — any way — back to the White House, have leapt aboard that sorry train.

He can’t win! Don’t you understand? He’s black! He’s black!

E-Mail Shows Racial Jokes by Secret Service Supervisors
By DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON — Secret Service supervisors shared crude sexual jokes and engaged in racially derogatory banter about blacks, and passed around an anecdote about a possible assassination of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, according to internal e-mail disclosed in a federal court filing on Friday by lawyers for black Secret Service agents.

The filing includes 10 e-mail messages that were among documents the agency recently turned over to lawyers for the black agents as part of an increasingly bitter discrimination lawsuit. The messages were written mainly from 2003 through 2005, and were sent to and from e-mail accounts of at least 20 Secret Service supervisors.

The messages offer a glimpse into the darker recesses of an agency known for protecting presidents and other dignitaries but whose culture is regarded as one of the most insular in federal law enforcement.

Well...

Recent reports in the U.K. media indicate that the laws are being used for everything but terrorism investigations:

• Derby City Council, Bolton, Gateshead, and Hartlepool used surveillance to investigate dog fouling.
• Bolton Council also used the act to investigate littering.
• The London borough of Kensington and Chelsea conducted surveillance on the misuse of a disabled parking pass.
• Liverpool City Council used Ripa to identify a false claim for damages.
• Conwy Council used the law to spy on a person who was working while off sick.

CCTV boom has failed to slash crime, say police
Owen Bowcott
The Guardian,
Tuesday May 6 2008

Massive investment in CCTV cameras to prevent crime in the UK has failed to have a significant impact, despite billions of pounds spent on the new technology, a senior police officer piloting a new database has warned. Only 3% of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV images, despite the fact that Britain has more security cameras than any other country in Europe.

The warning comes from the head of the Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office (Viido) at New Scotland Yard as the force launches a series of initiatives to try to boost conviction rates using CCTV evidence.

Black Community Is Increasingly Protective of Obama
By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 10, 2008; A04

In black America, oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Bill Clinton is no longer revered as the "first black president." Tavis Smiley's rapid-fire commentaries on a popular radio show have been silenced. And the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., self-described defender of the black church, has been derided by many on the Web as an old man who needs to "step off."

They all landed in the black community's doghouse after being viewed as endangering Sen. Barack Obama's chances of being elected president. And the community's desire to protect the first African American ever to be in this position may only grow with his win in North Carolina and his close loss in Indiana this week.

McCain called the dispute "hardly worth our time," adding: "This happened eight years ago."

McCain Disputes Accounts, Says He Voted for Bush

Two Hollywood actors who dined with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in early 2001 at actress Candice Bergen's home confirmed reports that he told the assembled group he did not vote for George W. Bush in the 2000 election, but McCain denied the claim at a news conference.

In separate phone interviews, Bradley Whitford and Richard Schiff -- both of whom starred in television's "The West Wing" -- said late Thursday night that the senator made the remarks after he spoke at length about his reservations about Bush becoming president. Liberal blogger Arianna Huffington first wrote about the incident Monday, asserting that neither McCain nor his wife Cindy backed Bush in his first presidential bid, and the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday that an unidentified woman who was also at the dinner confirmed Huffington's account.

Okay, it's not. The DMCA needs to go AND we need net neutrality guaranteed.  

"The bill squarely addresses the issue of the enormous market power of the telephone and cable companies as the providers of 98 percent of the broadband service in the country," said Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge. "The bill restores the principle of nondiscrimination that allowed the Internet to flourish in the dial-up era, making certain that the same freedom and innovation will flourish in the broadband era without burdensome regulation."

Lawmakers Introduce New Net Neutrality Bill
By GRANT GROSS, IDG News Service\Washington Bureau, IDG

Two Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives have introduced a bill that would subject broadband providers to antitrust violations if they block or slow Internet traffic.

When Officer Reynolds returned, I again asked why I had been incarcerated. “This is not incarceration. Do you know what incarceration means?” he said.

I unloaded: “I have a master’s degree from Columbia University. I am a reporter for the New York Post. What do you mean this is not incarceration?”

The air froze. Officer Castillo kept writing, but I watched his face go flush.

“Stop and Frisk” Racism
Posted by Jessie on May 8th, 2008

In an item related in many fundamental ways to the protests yesterday, the New York Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against the NYPD for its “stop and frisk” practice on behalf of a New York Post reporter, Leonardo Blair (pictured here, photo from NYPost). In an ironic twist, the New York Post, a conservative rag owned by Rupert Murdoch, the same day ran an editorial in favor of the NYPD’s “stop and frisk” policy, asserting that any decrease in this racially biased practice would result in “crime and chaos.” The reality of living in a police state - and make no mistake, New York City is a police state - is that you never leave home without ID. If you don’t have state-issued ID on you, then you’re subject to being detained by the police until they can “verify your identity.” And, once they stop you, even without probable cause, they collect your name, address and date of birth for their database. But of course, it’s a policy that doesn’t get applied equally. As a white woman that frequently passes for straight, I often skate past those sorts of searches. My fellow New Yorkers who are black and brown, like the reporter in the NYCLU’s lawsuit, are not so fortunate. Leo Blair, a Jamaican immigrant and graduate of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, tells his own story of what happened when he was stopped by the police (from the NY Post):

And (obliquely) dday. And Marc Ambinder. And Matt Stoller. And Chris Bowers. 

Read "The Obama Party"
by tristero

As I finish editing this, I am aware that there is a lot going on in the world that requires more immediate attention than ruminating about something so minor as internal Democratic party politics. There is havoc in Lebanon and the ghastly tragedies that have befallen Myanmar look like they will be exponentially increased by the stupidity of its malicious rulers. Still, if you have a few moments, I'd like to urge anyone who hasn't yet read dday's post, "The Obama Party" to read it.

Win or lose, for good or otherwise, it really appears that Obama is in a position to renovate the Democratic party. As dday mentions, this does not necessarily mean that that reform will make the party more conducive to liberal and progressive ideas. As I see it, however, by displacing the sclerotic leaders who managed, incredibly, to make both the 2004 election and the 2000 race so close that a candidate as clearly awful as Bush could steal the presidency (once if not twice), there are potential opportunities for liberals.

That's the conclusion I've come to today.

Not on that note but because of it, I would like to thank my friend the ex-lion tamer for his stories from the language barrier.

When Washington Journal asked McCain supporters to call in and explain why they support him, I knew we'd get some Billary supporters.

May 8, 2008
Senator Barack Obama

Obama for America
P.O. Box 8102
Chicago, IL 60680

Dear Senator Obama,

This has been an historic and exciting campaign. Millions of new voters have been brought into the process and their enthusiasm for the Democratic Party and the principles for which you and I have fought and continue to fight is unprecedented.

After nearly six years, R. Kelly child pornography trial seems like a go
Judge hints that proceeding will start Friday as scheduled
By Stacy St. Clair

Tribune reporter

10:58 PM CDT, May 8, 2008

R. Kelly finally will have his day in court, nearly six years after first being indicted on child pornography charges.

The R&B superstar, 41, is accused of videotaping himself engaging in sex acts with a girl prosecutors say could be as young as 13. He has pleaded not guilty.

You don't even get the Politics tag, Mrs. Clinton. You just get the Race and Identity tag.

She referred to an Associated Press story on Indiana and North Carolina exit polls "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hardworking Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

She added, "There's a pattern emerging here."

Indeed there is. Mr. Krugman... 

More tirades from Obama supporters against Mrs. Clinton are not the answer — they will only further alienate her grass-roots supporters, many of whom feel that she received a raw deal.

Nor is it helpful to insult the groups that supported Mrs. Clinton, either by suggesting that racism was their only motivation or by minimizing their importance.

...what say you? 

Discussions of how and why Mr. Obama’s support narrowed over time have a Rashomon-like quality: different observers see very different truths. But at this point it doesn’t matter whose fault it was.

You STILL think there are different truths? You still think it doesn't matter whose fault it is?

HILL DROPS A RACIAL BOMB
By MAGGIE HABERMAN

May 9, 2008 --

Hillary Rodham Clinton played the race card yesterday as she dismissed Barack Obama as a candidate who will have a hard time winning support from "white Americans."

It was the most starkly racial comment Clinton has made in the campaign, and drew quick condemnation from some Democrats.

The centerpiece is to be a 2 1/2 -story sculpture of the civil rights leader carved in a giant chunk of granite. Called the Stone of Hope, it would depict King, standing with his arms folded, looming from the stone. At 28 feet tall, it would be eight feet taller than the statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial.

Unhappy With 'Confrontational' Image, U.S. Panel Wants King Statue Reworked
By Michael E. Ruane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 9, 2008; A01

A powerful federal arts commission is urging that the sculpture of Martin Luther King Jr. proposed for a memorial on the Tidal Basin be reworked because it is too "confrontational" and reminiscent of political art in totalitarian states.

The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts thinks "the colossal scale and Social Realist style of the proposed statue recalls a genre of political sculpture that has recently been pulled down in other countries," commission secretary Thomas Luebke said in a letter in April.

By law, no project like the memorial can go forward without approval from the commission, the federal agency that advises the government on public design and aesthetics in the capital.

The other notion -- that Clinton could position herself as some kind of Great White Hope and still expect African American voters to give her their enthusiastic support in the fall -- is just nuts. Obama has already won a majority of the Democratic primary contests; within a couple of weeks, he almost certainly will have won a majority of the pledged convention delegates and will be assured of finishing with more of the popular vote. Only in Camp Clinton does anyone believe that his supporters will be happy if party leaders tell him, in effect, "Nice job, kid, but we can't give you the nomination because, well, you're black. White people might not like that."

Clinton's sin isn't racism, it's arrogance. From the beginning, the Clinton campaign has refused to consider the possibility that Obama's success was more than a fad. This was supposed to be Clinton's year, and if Obama was winning primaries, there had to be some reason that had nothing to do with merit. It was because he was black, or because he had better slogans, or because he was a better public speaker, or because he was the media's darling. This new business about white voters is just the latest story the Clinton campaign is telling itself about the usurper named Obama.

The Card Clinton Is Playing
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, May 9, 2008; A27

From the beginning, Hillary Clinton has campaigned as if the Democratic nomination were hers by divine right. That's why she is falling short -- and that's why she should be persuaded to quit now, rather than later, before her majestic sense of entitlement splits the party along racial lines.

If that sounds harsh, look at the argument she made Wednesday, in an interview with USA Today, as to why she should be the nominee instead of Barack Obama. She cited an Associated Press article "that found how Senator Obama's support . . . among working, hardworking Americans, white Americans, is weakening again. I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on."

Discussions of how and why Mr. Obama’s support narrowed over time have a Rashomon-like quality: different observers see very different truths. But at this point it doesn’t matter whose fault it was.

Yes it does. You, sir, were a major part of the problem.

More tirades from Obama supporters against Mrs. Clinton are not the answer — they will only further alienate her grass-roots supporters, many of whom feel that she received a raw deal.

Nor is it helpful to insult the groups that supported Mrs. Clinton, either by suggesting that racism was their only motivation or by minimizing their importance.

As much as I respect Mr. Krugman, I suggest he switch ever occurance of "Clinton" with "Obama" and shut the hell up.

Thinking About November
By PAUL KRUGMAN

The fight for the Democratic nomination seems to be winding down. It’s not completely over, but the odds now overwhelmingly favor Barack Obama.

Assuming that Mr. Obama is the nominee, he’ll lead a party that, judging by the usual indicators, should be poised for an easy victory — perhaps even a landslide.

Yet Democrats are worried. Are those worries justified?

"The majority has taken, once again, their go-it-alone policy," Boehner lamented yesterday. "It's time for Democrats and Republicans to work together."

To induce this working together, Boehner decided to stop the House from working at all. 

Republicans Vote Against Moms; No Word Yet on Puppies, Kittens
By Dana Milbank
Friday, May 9, 2008; A03

It was already shaping up to be a difficult year for congressional Republicans. Now, on the cusp of Mother's Day, comes this: A majority of the House GOP has voted against motherhood.

On Wednesday afternoon, the House had just voted, 412 to 0, to pass H. Res. 1113, "Celebrating the role of mothers in the United States and supporting the goals and ideals of Mother's Day," when Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), rose in protest.

"Mr. Speaker, I move to reconsider the vote," he announced.

Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), who has two young daughters, moved to table Tiahrt's request, setting up a revote. This time, 178 Republicans cast their votes against mothers.

It has long been the custom to compare a popular piece of legislation to motherhood and apple pie. Evidently, that is no longer the standard. Worse, Republicans are now confronted with a John Kerry-esque predicament: They actually voted for motherhood before they voted against it.

The Lucrative Art of War

Congress is finally moving to shut one of the more egregious forms of Iraq war profiteering: defense contractors using offshore shell companies to avoid paying their fair share of payroll taxes. The practice is widespread and Congressional investigators have been dispatched to one of the prime tax refuges, the Cayman Islands, to seek a firsthand estimate of how much the Treasury is being shorted.

No one will be surprised to hear that one of the suspected prime offenders is KBR, the Texas-based defense contractor, formerly a part of the Halliburton conglomerate allied with Vice President Dick Cheney. According to a report in The Boston Globe, KBR, which has landed billions in Iraq contracts, has used two Cayman shell companies to avoid paying hundreds of millions in payroll, Medicare and unemployment taxes.

First of all, if you have to say you don't want to sound like a bigot, you KNOW you sound like a bigot.

Secondly, if Obama proves Black folks are equal then we've ALWAYS been equal, only held back by society.

Like Kristol and Brooks, McCain regards Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln as political idols; like them, he never hesitates in asserting that government power should be used to rekindle American (and Republican) pride in government. Unlike most neoconservative intellectuals, however, McCain is intimately familiar with the bluntest edge of state-sponsored force. A McCain presidency would put legislative flesh on David Brooks’ fuzzy pre-9/11 notions of “grand aspiration,” deploying a virtuous federal bureaucracy to purify unclean private transactions from the boardroom to the bedroom. And it would prosecute the nation’s post-9/11 wars with a militaristic zeal this country hasn’t seen in generations. 

Be Afraid of President McCain
The frightening mind of an authoritarian maverick
Matt Welch | April 2007

The John McCain presidency effectively began on January 10, 2007, when George W. Bush announced the deployment of five more combat brigades to Iraq. This escalation of an unpopular war ran counter to the advice of Bush’s senior military leadership, ignored the recommendations made by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, and sidestepped the objections of the Iraqi government it was ostensibly intended to assist. But the plan was nearly identical to what the Republican senior senator from Arizona, nearly alone among his Capitol Hill colleagues, had been advocating for months: boost troop levels by at least 20,000, give coalition forces the authority to impose security in every corner of Baghdad, and increase the size of America’s overburdened standing military by around 100,000 during the next five years.

By enthusiastically endorsing McCain’s approach, the lame duck president all but finished the job of anointing the senator his political successor. McCain had already spent the previous three years lining up Bush’s campaign team, making nice with the social conservatives he railed against in the 2000 primaries, and positioning himself as the most hawkish of all the nomination-chasing Republican hawks. For the purposes of the 2008 campaign, Bush’s surge announcement was almost the perfect gift: McCain got to solidify his case with primary voters even while giving himself operational deniability. (“We’ve made many, many mistakes since 2003, and these will not be easily reversed,” he said on January 11, while reiterating his call for even more troops.) The sheer unpopularity of Bush’s move did knock the previously front-running McCain a notch or two behind Rudy Giuliani in the polls. (Both men have consistently finished ahead of Democratic contenders Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in head-to-head competition.) But it also allowed McCain to recapture some of his lost reputation as a straight-talking independent. “I would much rather lose a campaign than lose a war,” he said with a grin on Larry King Live right after Bush’s speech. The press, which had been souring on the candidate during his noisy lurch to the right, breathed an audible sigh of relief. “Defiant McCain back as maverick,” declared the Chicago Tribune.

In discussing that drug bust at San Diego State University, Reason Magazine's Matt Welsh asks:

I always wonder what happens to these guys who are arrested in their early 20s for meeting a sliver of the insatiable undergraduate demand for pot-smoking. I was never any dealer, nor much of a user, but I've known and worked with quite a few perfectly successful people who dealt drugs in college. I have also known a couple who were unlucky (and/or careless) enough to get carted off to jail, but those guys I lost track of. (Though through the magic of Google I see one former mushroom-dealing colleague running a successful business in Texas, so hopefully it all turned out well.)

So I leave the question open to the floor: What ever happened to your drug dealing friend or aquaintance who got arrested in or around college?

There's this article in the New York Times today, I’m Not Lying, I’m Telling a Future Truth. Really. that puts a smiley face on white lies.

A series of recent studies, focusing on students who inflate their grade-point average, suggests that such exaggeration is very different psychologically from other forms of truth twisting. Touching up scenes or past performances induces none of the anxiety that lying or keeping secrets does, these studies find; and embroiderers often work to live up to the enhanced self-images they project. The findings imply that some kinds of deception are aimed more at the deceiver than at the audience, and they may help in distinguishing braggarts and posers from those who are expressing personal aspirations, however clumsily.