Monday, April 03, 2006

Rummy, Conid, Dave Zirin and Law and Disorder

Good evening. Let's kick things off with Democracy Now!


Gen. Zinni: Rumsfeld Should Resign
Here in this country, calls for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfled to resign are increasing. On Sunday, Gen. Anthony Zinni, the former commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, accused Rumsfeld of committing a "series of disastrous mistakes" in Iraq.

This is like if in Titanic, right before Leonardo dies, someone decided to fire the head chef.
Rumsfeld needs to go but this goes way up. Firing Rumsfeld would be a good first step. I'd probably do a little dance for a day or two each morning when I hopped out of bed. But he didn't do anything without Bully Boy's approval or knowledge.



Condoleezza Rice: U.S. Made Thousands of Mistakes in Iraq
Meanwhile Condoleezza Rice admitted that the United States had probably made thousands of errors in Iraq. She made the admission on Friday during a meeting in Britain. "I know that we made tactical errors, thousands of them I'm sure," Rice said. "This could have gone that way or that could have gone that way, but when you look back in history what will be judged is did you make the right strategic decisions and if you spend all your time trying to judge this tactical issue or that tactical issue I think you miss the larger sweep."

Now see, that should be fired number two. After her, Dick Cheney, then Bully Boy. Impeach Cheney and Bully Boy. By the way, I thought she was supposed to be educated? "When you look back in history what will be judged"? When you look back in history, you judge by what was . . .

I don't know, her senetence just seems bad to me and if I'm noticing it, you better believe other people are too. And did you notice all the protests on the news that were greeting her in England? That was so cool. I think that sort of stuff's going to be happening a lot more because people are just sick of it. They're sick of the war, sick of the administration and sick of the lies.
Like Wally's new post says "THIS JUST IN! BAD DAYS FOR BULLY!" and I don't think they're going away. It's like this bully is in school picking on all the other kids in the sandbox and then 1 kid stands up to him. After that, the bully's never so scary. He just becomes a joke. That's our Bully Boy.


I hope everybody caught Ruth's "Ruth's Public Radio Report" this weekend. She ran down some really important public radio shows you shouldn't miss. (Real public radio, not NPR.)
And Leigh Ann e-mailed asking why I didn't talk about Law and Disorder here last week? I did listen. I'm listening right now while I write this because they do the new episode on Mondays and Nina tapes them. So they did a thing about Guantanamo and a thing about a break in that might have been the government breaking into a place illegally. But right now, they're talking about the protests that have been going on over the efforts to turn immigrants into felons and stuff.

The break in story is probably my favorite because they are talking about how the government did break ins under Nixon and then in the eighties and how now this could be one too. The Brecht Center may be the name of the place. If it's not, use the link to find out for yourself. But they got their computers stolen. That was the only thing that was stolen.

And Michael Ratner and I guess his sister Margaret Ratner Kunstler talked about how they had a bumper beeper from a client one time, a tracking device put on someone's bumper, and they locked it in an office safe and the FBI broke in and stole the safe to get the beeper back.

So that was really interesting. You should listen. I'm trying to learn everyone's name. I know Michael Ratner's name because he's mentioned a lot by Ruth and at The Common Ills and he's on Democracy Now! a lot. Michael Smith sounds a little like Michael Ratner and you really do have to listen to the growl or gravel of Ratner's voice if you're trying to figure them out. Those are two of the four hosts. The other two are Dalia Hashad and Heidi Boghosian and I can tell them apart easy. Dalia actually sounds like my sister Kelley and Heidi's got a voice that I would call "creamy." Like if she were a soup, she'd be cream of something. (I like all the cream soups, cream of mushroom, cream of chicken, cream of brocoli, ice cream! :D)

All four have really cool voices. But I have never heard anyone with a voice like Heidi Boghosian. It's really cool. So all four are lawyers and they take a look at stuff that's going on and give you a legal look. It's a really great show and you should be listening to it.

Here's two other things you shouldn't miss:

"EXCLUSIVE...Noam Chomsky on Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy."
"Noam Chomsky on Iraq Troop Withdrawal, Haiti, Democracy in Latin America and the Israeli Elections"

Those are from Democracy Now! and you don't want to miss them.

And you never want to miss Dave Zirin's "The Press Mob, Their Rope and Barry Bonds:"

Is Barry Bonds the object of a racist witch-hunt? Over the last week I have had to publicly argue this issue against some of the finest minds of my generation (all right, John Rocker and Jose Canseco). In addition, I have duked it out on talk radio, sports radio, email chats, and various blogs. The dominant argument I hear repeatedly, whether from Mr. Rocker or Mr. Liberal Blogger, is that I am an idiot if I think that the Bonds steroid-mania is all about bigotry run amok. Unfortunately that is not my argument.
To be clear:
I don't think that everyone against Bonds is a racist. I don't think every sportswriter who wants Bonds punished is a racist. And I certainly don't think anyone who believes in harsh penalties for steroid use is a racist. One can hate Barry Bonds and also spend Sundays singing "We Shall Overcome" with the Harlem Boys Choir before reading select passages from Go Tell it On The Mountain. But to argue that race has nothing to do with the saga of Barry Bonds is to practice ignorance frightening in its Rocker-ian grandiosity.
Of course you can always simply agree with San Francisco Giants owner Peter Magowan, CEO of Safeway Supermarkets and anti-union zealot, who believes that it is a remarkable sign of racial progress that Barry Bonds is flayed before the public. Magowan said, "I don't believe this is a case of racism. In fact, I think this shows how far we've come. If the media brought this up 20 years ago, they would have been considered racists."
Now that's progress. The media can be as racist as they want without being called on it.
The fact is that racism smears this entire story like rancid cream cheese on a stale bialy.

I don't know which of C.I.'s things to recommend because I've got a list of four things I wanted to note. I asked Nina to help me and she said to recommend "And the war drags on . . ." because it's got one of C.I.'s "passionate speeches." We got to hear C.I. speak right before the third anniversary and that was way cool. Since then, Nina always gets excited when it's an entry that reads like a speech. (I've heard C.I. do stuff like when we're all writing together at The Third Estate Sunday Review. But it was really cool to sit there and watch all these people just get inspired and stuff.)

Be sure to check out Like Maria Said Paz for Elaine's take on today's news.















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