Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Bully Boy goes to Denver and the people turn out to make their voices heard

Good evening. We'll kick things off with Democracy Now!

Time Magazine Reporter Testifies in CIA Leak Case
This update on the CIA leak case - the Washington Post is reporting Karl Rove's defense team is hoping the testimony of a reporter from Time Magazine might help Rove escape indictment. On Sunday Time revealed that its reporter Viveca Novak had agreed to testify about a conversation she had last year with Rove's attorney Robert Luskin. A person familiar with the investigation told the Washington Post that Luskin cited his conversations with Novak in persuading Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald not to indict Rove in late October. So far Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff Lewis Scooter Libby is the only administration to be indicted over the outing of Valerie Plame's identity as an undercover CIA operative.

Round and round it goes, where it ends, only Karl Rove knows. For now. Patrick Fitzgerald seems to be on to something with Karl. When Scooter got indicted there was some disappointment but it's really starting to look like it's not over by a long shot.

Maybe that's why Bully Boy looks so creepy these days? He's so worried it's eating away at him? My aunt swears he looks like he's drinking again. She says his skin looks like it. I don't know about that. Anybody else seeing it?



Greenpeace Disrupts Blair Speech About Nuclear Energy
In Britain, members of Greenpeace disrupted a speech of Prime Minister Tony Blair's in which he launched an energy review which could lead to new nuclear power stations. The Greenpeace activists climbed into the roof above the podium and unfurled a banner saying: "Nuclear: Wrong Answer." They also dropped stickers onto the delegates below them.

In England, Tony Blair can't hide the way Bully Boy tries to in this country. But in Denver, they turned out to protest the Bully Boy today. From Mark Couch and Tim Hughes' "Bush praises Musgrave in Denver" in the Denver Post:

Outside the Brown Palace Hotel, about 300 protesters expressed their opposition to the war in Iraq by banging on pots, pans and drums, blowing on horns, flutes, kazoos and recorders
and breaking into "peace now" chants.
"Tell George Bush what Democracy looks like!" an organizer yelled through a bullhorn, kicking off one round of call-and-response.
"This is what Democracy looks like!" the crowd yelled back.
South High School students Ashley Adams and Jenny Fleming-Owen wrote "No More War" and "Make Love Not War" on their faces in black ink
The only two pro-Bush sign holders on the scene found themselves in heated arguments.

Ah, that's so cute. Two little Bush-ites. Standing by their Bully Boy. Back to the article:

All day, chants called for an end to the war and for Bush's impeachment. A few signs equated him to Hitler. Several accused him of invading Iraq in pursuit of oil profits and an expanded American empire.

"This whole war never should have happened," Bonnie McCormick, 87, of Boulder said as the throng marched from the Capitol to the Brown Palace. A 30-year military wife and long-time anti-war activist, McCormick said she was arrested during a recent protest outside a military recruitment center in Lakewood. "Bush should be spending money on education and health care, not war."
The demonstration included several veterans from the Iraq war and previous conflicts.

The summer of protest lit a fire and it keeps on blazing.

Speaking of blazing, what was in C.I.'s cereal this morning? Did you catch The Common Ills this morning? C.I. was on fire. Read "NYT: 'Justices Reject F.B.I. Translator's Appeal on Termination' (Linda Greenhouse)" and "Other Items." C.I. really took on the New York Timid today.

Sunday, C.I. noted that Pop Politics had some stuff on sports and Wally told me the same thing. This is from Richard C. Crepeau's "Giving Thanks for Football: An American Tradition:"

The history of Thanksgiving and of football both go back to the Middle Ages, so it may not be so strange that the two would become intertwined in modern America.
The first American Thanksgiving is generally believed to have been in Plymouth Colony in mid-October of 1621, when William Bradford and the Pilgrims gathered with local Indians to give thanks for survival and the first harvest. The first Thanksgiving proclaimed by a president was Nov. 26, 1789, when George Washington called for a national day of Thanksgiving for the new form of government.
By the end of that century the practice had faded, but through the first half of the 19th century, Sarah Hale, editor of Godey's Lady's Book kept the idea alive by writing editorials and letters to presidents and governors urging their adoption of such a day. Finally, during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln took her advice and proclaimed the last Thursday of November 1863, as Thanksgiving Day. The practice stuck.
Eleven years later, in 1874, the first intercollegiate football game was played. In 1876, the Intercollegiate Football Association was formed and instituted a championship game for Thanksgiving Day. Within a decade it was the premier athletic event in the nation.
Princeton and Yale were the participants all but twice in the first two decades of the league. By the 1890s, when the game was played in the Polo Grounds, it was drawing 40,000 fans. Players, students and fans wore their school colors while banners flew from carriages, hotels and the business establishments of the city. It was by then one of the most important social events of the season for New York's social elite.

If you're not checking out Pop Politics, you should. It's got lots of great stuff. And don't forget to check out Elaine's commentary at Like Maria Said Paz.











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