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Saturday, March 25, 2006
No, this isn't an anti-war march.
It's more than [Photo: Bob Chamberlin/LA Times] Tens of thousands of immigrant rights advocates from across Southern California jammed downtown to march Saturday in protest of federal legislation that would build more walls along the U.S.-Mexico border and make helping illegal immigrants a crime. The US House of Representatives has already approved HR 4437, which would make it felony to be in the US illegally and impose tougher penalties on employers who hire undocumented workers. The Senate will start its debate on its version of the House bill this coming week. TalkLeft has more background on the proposed immigration law here. Via AP. More: The LA Times has extensive coverage of today's march and rally here. | | Posted by Magpie at 4:29 PM | Get permalink
Are you a terrorist suspect?
You might be, and you'd never know it. Over at the other roost, this mapgie's blogmate Mary has an excellent post on the TALON database run by the US Defense Department. Under the guise of protecting the country from terrorism, the database is accumulating information much of it wrong about thousands of American. Or maybe hundreds of thousands. Or millions. Since the program is secret, no one really knows. Once of the things I found scariest is how easy it is to get your name into the database: The Pentagon also now has a toll-free number for citizens to report suspicious activity directly to the military. The number of the hotline is 1-800-CALL-SPY:You have reached the U.S. Army Call Spy hotline. You may remain anonymous. Please leave a detailed message of the incident you wish to report. Your call is important. If you wish to be contacted, please leave your name and telephone number. If this is an emergency, please contact your local office of the F.B.I. Thank you. Yes, I called the number and it's for real. And no, I didn't give them your name. But I did have to wait for three rings before the hotline answered, which was more than long enough for the feds to know which phone number I was calling from. Go over and read all of Mary's TALON post, and then go visit the website for PBS' NOW program, where you'll find much more info about TALON here. The ACLU has more details on how the government is spying on US residents here. | | Posted by Magpie at 3:59 PM | Get permalink
Sometimes people are out ot get you.
And sometimes you're just Former Reagan-era Pentagon official Kathleen "KT" McFarland stunned a crowd of Suffolk County Republicans on Thursday by saying: Via NY Post. | | Posted by Magpie at 3:01 PM | Get permalink
Buck Owens, 1929 2006.
Buck Owens [left] and the Buckaroos. Legendary country singer and musician Buck Owens died in his sleep early today at his home in Bakersfield, California. He was 78. Although these days he is mainly remembered for his work as a cast member of the long-running country music TV show Hee Haw during the 1970s and early 1980s, Buck Owens was country music's biggest star in the 1960s. He had twenty #1 records on the US country charts, including 'Together Again,' 'Waitin' in Your Welfare Line,' and 'Act Naturally' the last of which brought Owens to a wider audience when it was recorded by the Beatles. With his band the Buckaroos [which included guitarist and collaborator Don Rich], Owens crafted a rhythmic, hard-driving sound that audiences and radio listeners found irresistable. He was responsible for giving young ex-convict Merle Haggard his first big break [Haggard played in Owens' band briefly] and had a major influence on the sound of a generation of younger country musicians, notably Dwight Yoakam and BR5-49. Owens was a product his Dust Bowl-era upbringing in California, and never fit in well with the Nashville style that came to dominate country music by 1960. Robert Price of the Bakersfield Californian fills in some details: Elvis Presley changed the world in 1956, but by that time Owens, along with bandmates like Bill Woods, Henry Sharp, Oscar Whittington and Sanders, had been playing a loud, driving, danceable version of country music for a half-decade. Owen's most productive period came to a halt in 1974, when Buckaroos guitarist [and Owen's arranging and songwriting collaborator] Don Rich was killed in a motorcycle accident. Without Rich at his side, Owens lost direction and enthusiasm, and his string of hit records came to a screaming halt. Although he continued on as cast member for Hee Haw until the mid-1980s, Owens' creative period had effectively ended at least for the moment and he was without a record contract after 1980. Owens was persuaded to come out of retirement by Dwight Yoakam in the late 1980s, and their duet recording of 'The Streets of Bakersfield' was a #1 country record in 1988. Owens had another, smaller hit the next year when he dueted with Ringo Starr on a new version of 'Act Naturally.' Owens recorded two final albums in the 1990s, one of which Hot Dog has moments which [in this magpie's opinion] can stand up next to the classic material from the 1960s. The AP obituary for Owens can be found here. A much more extensive obit is here at the Bakersfield Californian. [Registration req'd, but you can get a password from BugMeNot here.] at Bakersfield's Blackboard Nightclub sometime in the 1950s. [Photographer unknown] Salon ran an excellent profile of Buck Owens in 1999, which you can find here. A 1997 profile [with some cool photos] is here. Good short bios of Owens can be found at here at the Country Music Hall of Fame and here at CMT. The homepage for Owen's Crystal Palace nightclub in Bakersfield is here, including several recent videos of Owens performing here. You can watch an excerpt [on a teeny tiny screen] from a 1966 performance on Buck Owens Ranch Show if you go here. If you were only going to have one Buck Owens album in your collecton, the obvious choice is Rhino's Buck Owens Collection, a 3-disc set that covers his career from 1959 to 1990. But I'm partial to Buck Owens and the Buckaroos Live at Carnegie Hall, recorded in 1966 when Owens and his band were at the top of their form and fianlly made available in 1989 by the Country Music Foundation. MusicMatch Guide has an excellent annotated discography (just click on any album title) here. There's another version of the essentially the same info [but organized more attractively] over here. You can listen to audio samples of many Buck Owens hits here at Amazon. For more on the 'Bakersfield Sound' of which Owens was its foremost example I highly recommend browsing the treasure trove of articles and photos here and at the Bakersfield Californian's Bakersfield Sound website here. | | Posted by Magpie at 9:33 AM | Get permalink
About that good news from Iraq ...
The other day, we posted about what happens when you try to find good news in Iraq. Over at the Booman Tribune, Stephen D has another take on the same subject. Just go read it, paying special attention to what he says at the end of the post. Via WB42 5:30 Report With Doug Krile. | | Posted by Magpie at 12:35 AM | Get permalink
What could possibly go wrong?
This magpie's favorite cartoon in the current New Yorker: Prints and t-shirts of the cartoon are available here. | | Posted by Magpie at 12:18 AM | Get permalink
Keeping score in Iraq.
At Asia Times, Syrian political analyst Sami Moubayed appraises the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq on its third anniversary. Among his conclusions are that the main beneficiaries of the occupation were not the ones that Dubya administration and Pentagon bigwigs had planned on back in 2002 and 2003: The first and ultimate victor is the Islamic Republic of Iran. What more could Iran want than the downfall of a dictator against whom it had fought for eight years in the 1980s, and his replacement with Shi'ite politicians who had been created by and in Iran in the 1980s? You'll undoubtedly disagree with some of Moubayed's conclusions about Iraq [I did], but his article makes very interesting reading. | | Posted by Magpie at 12:09 AM | Get permalink
How stupid is this, we ask you?
One of the obvious alternatives to petroleum for powering internal combustion engines is ethanol, which can be produced from all sorts of crops. In Brazil, for example, most of the vehicles in the country run on ethanol. Even in the US, General Motors has been running an extensive TV ad campaign hyping vehicles that use ethanol fuels made from corn. To run all those vehicles, a lot of corn is going to have to be turned into ethanol in a lot of plants. And, in fact, up to 190 of those plants are under construction or planned for the US alone. There's a problem, though, easily seen at the ethanol plant that opened last year in Iowa: To make wonderful, clean-burning ethanol, the plant burns 300 tons of coal each day. Coal burning produces carbon dioxide [CO2], which is a potent greenhouse gas. Coal-fired plants also produce sulfur dioxide [SO2], which causes acid rain, and mercury, which causes neurological damage [especially in infants and children]. If natural gas were used instead of coal, ethanol plants would emit less carbon dioxide, almost no sulfur dioxide, and no mercury at all. But coal was chosen to fuel the Iowa plant anyway and, even worse, most of the ethanol plants in the pipeline will be coal-fired as well. So, to produce fuel that will help cut greenhouse gases, big industry wants to burn coal, which will produce at least the volume of greenhouse gases that ethanol is supposed to eliminate and emit sulfur dioxide and mercury as a bonus. Smart, huh? Via Christian Science Monitor. | | Posted by Magpie at 12:05 AM | Get permalink
Do you have a brass Republican?
It's a new version of a very old joke, but it still cracked this magpie up to no end. I'd skip listening to the song, though. Via MetaFilter. | | Posted by Magpie at 12:03 AM | Get permalink
A gentle reminder.
The US isn't necessarily the most important country in the world. And the countries of Europe aren't such heavyweights, either. [Map: Worldmapper] The map above shows the relative proportion of the world's population that lives in each country. The more people, the bigger the size. Notice where the countries with the really huge populations are. There's a much larger version of the map here. I got this map from Worldmapper, which has a number of other interesting thematic maps that you can view. The series on world population since 1500 is especially interesting. Via MetaFilter. | | Posted by Magpie at 12:00 AM | Get permalink
Friday, March 24, 2006
It's a system, George.
On March 24, 1976, the Argentine military overthrew the elected government of Isabel Perón, in a coup that was at least tacitly supported by the US. This coup began the seven years of the Argentine 'Dirty War,' during which the right-wing military dictatorship ran a witchhunt against 'radicals', 'communists', 'terrorists', and 'Jews' literally grabbing people off the streets or out of their homes. Those desaparacidos [disappeared ones] were tortured and, commonly, murdered by their captors. It's estimated that between 10,000 and 30,000 people were killed during the Dirty War, but no one really knows. at a checkpoint in Buenos Aires in 1977. [Archive photo: AFP] The brutal policies of the dictatorship eventually turned the nation against its military rulers. In a last-ditch effort to keep themselves in power, the generals attacked the Malvinas [Falkland Islands], a UK possession, thinking that a successful war would turn things around politically. They had over-reached, however, and the quick UK victory over the Argentine forces occupying the Malvinas led to the end of the military regime. Since then, successive Argentine governments have grappled with the legacy of the Dirty War, both in terms of trying to find out what really happened during those years and in terms of bringing the perpetrators of the Dirty War to justice. On the 30th anniversary of Argentina's coup, Chilean writer and critic Ariel Dorfman offers some advice to Dubya regarding his own Dirty War: For starters, given that Bush obdurately claims that the United States has been called upon by God to spread "democracy" around the globe, he could use a good history lesson and examine how his country propped up the terrorist regime in Argentina. Bush's father, who was the director of the CIA at the time of the coup in 1976, could tell his son a thing or two about the American role in supporting that dictatorship and some other tyrannies all through the twentieth century. More crucial to Bush Junior, however, and more urgent, would be to examine how the Argentine military, in the years since their country returned to democracy, have slowly and painfully dealt with their massive human rights violations. Dorfman goes on from there, and he's stirred up quite a hornet's nest in the comments about his post. [Dorfman, incidentally, had to flee his home country, Chile, when another US-backed coup overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. The military regime that replaced Allende was guilty of atrocities like those that would occur later in Argentina, although not on such a large scale.] Via the UK Guardian's Comment is free blog. | | Posted by Magpie at 7:04 PM | Get permalink
I Ain't Marching Anymore.
Julia told me to do this. And, like Jeanne, I'm old enough to remember when the song was new. [Photo: Ron Enfield] I Ain't Marching Anymore [Words/music by Phil Ochs] I heard Phil Ochs sing this song at the rally after an anti-Vietnam War march in LA in [I think] 1973. I can still hear him. | | Posted by Magpie at 4:56 PM | Get permalink
Dubya to Congress: Drop dead.
After all the wrangling over the renewal of the Patriot Act, and all the assurances that the GOP-crafted 'compromise' would ensure that Congress keeps tabs on how the FBI and Justice Department use the act's surveillance provisions, Dubya says that he'll just ignore those oversight requirements. [After] the reporters and guests had left [the Mar 9 signing ceremony], the White House quietly issued a "signing statement," an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law. Basically, the prez is once again telling Congress that it's irrelevant, that he'll do exactly what he wants no matter what laws are passed. And once again, sadly, the GOP-controlled Congress will roll over and play dead. This magpie suspects we're all going to need to familiarize ourselves with the words 'authoritarian government.' You can read the full text of Dubya's signing statement and of the parts of the Patriot Act that he claims he has the right to ignore if you go here. Via Boston Globe and Free Government Information. | | Posted by Magpie at 4:11 PM | Get permalink
The slow death of US newspapers.
Our favorite Texan, Molly Ivins, says that a good part of what's killing newspapers is self-inflicted. [Photographer unknown] So we're looking at a steady decline over a long period, and many of the geniuses who run our business believe they have a solution. Our product isn't selling as well as it used to, so they think we need to cut the number of reporters, cut the space devoted to the news and cut the amount of money used to gather the news, and this will solve the problem. For some reason, they assume people will want to buy more newspapers if they have less news in them and are less useful to people. I'm just amazed the Bush administration hasn't named the whole darn bunch of them to run FEMA yet. Ivins has a lot more to say on the subject. And, given the effects that the recent sale of the Knight Ridder newspaper chain is going to have on the news available to those of us in the US, we strongly suggest reading the whole thing. Via AlterNet. | | Posted by Magpie at 12:44 PM | Get permalink
Another myth debunked!
Despite what your teachers and parents may have told you, High Times is not a 'gateway magazine' and will not lead you to the 'harder stuff'. Researchers tracked the daily reading habits of 120 occasional and regular High Times readers and found that by the end of the eight-month study, none of the subjects had any interest in reading National Book Award finalists, historical nonfiction, or political biographies. Via The Onion [who else?]. | | Posted by Magpie at 12:06 PM | Get permalink
Falling apart.
The new findings show that temperature increases can affect Greenland's ice sheet far more reapidly than han had been believed: Models that treated glaciers like giant ice cubes had predicted very slow melting. But recent studies of Greenland glaciers have shown much faster effects when meltwater causes glaciers to slip easily over rock. Via New Scientist. | | Posted by Magpie at 11:04 AM | Get permalink
We're here, we're queer, and the death squads are killing us.
Acting on a fatwa issued last fall by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, death squads from the Badr Corps the military arm of Iraq's largest Shi'a political group is persecuting and killing gay and lesbian Iraqis. When asked for help or to give sanctuary, US forces are reported to be 'met with indifference and derision.' Exiled gay and lesbian Iraqis have told journalist Doug Ireland that the Badr Corps is 'is committed to the "sexual cleansing" of Iraq, and they accuse Iran of providing support and advice to the death squads. Left, Ammar, aged 27, was abducted and shot in back of the head in Baghdad by suspected Badr militias in January 2006. Right, Haydar Faiek, aged 40, a transsexual Iraqi, was beaten and burned to death by Badr militias in September 2005. Speaking by telephone from London, [Ali Hili of the Abu Nawas Group an organization of exiled gay Iraqis] said that "there is a very, very serious threat to life for gay people in Iraq today. We are receiving regular reports from our extensive network of contacts with underground gay activists and gay people in Iraq -- intimidation, beatings, kidnappings and murders of gays have become an almost daily occurrence. The Badr Corps was killing gay people even before the Ayatollah's fatwah, but Sistani's murderous homophobic incitement has given a green light to all Shia Muslims to hunt and kill lesbians and gay men." Those still in Iraq tell a bleak story: Tahseen is an underground gay activist in Iraq, and a correspondent there for the British Abu Nawas Group. A 31-year-old photography lab technician, Tahseen told me by telephone from Baghdad this weekend that, "Just last week, four gay people we know of were found dead. I am afraid to leave my room and go out in the street because I will be killed. We all live in fear." Tahseen said that men who seem obviously gay "cannot walk in the street. My best friend was recently killed for being gay." Ireland's post has many more details about the current situation for lesbians and gay men in Iraq, and links to other of his reports on LGBT people in Iraq and Iran. What I've presented in this post barely scratches the surface. You can read Ireland's full story here at his blog, or at here at Gay City News. How you can help: The Abu Nawas Group desperately needs money for its work to protect and publicize the plight of gay men and lesbians in Iraq. The Abu Nawas Group works closely with the British gay rights group OutRage!, so checks should be made payable to "OutRage!", with a cover note stating that you want the money to go to "Abu Nawas Iraqi LGBT - UK". Mail donations to: OutRage!, PO Box 17816, London SW14 8WT, England, UK. | | Posted by Magpie at 12:23 AM | Get permalink
Justice delayed but justice at last.
It's perhaps the best-known song to come out of Africa in the 20th century, but neither the composer of 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' Solomon Linda or his children got any part of the millions of dollars that the song made for others around the world. As we posted last month, however, the years-long legal struggle of the Linda family ended when the current holder of the song's copyright agreed to pay Linda's heirs an undisclosed amount of past royalties, generally believed to be millions of US dollars. Better late than never, the NY Times has run a story on the song and the legal dispute, and it fills in some details that this magpie hadn't heard before:
From there, it took flight worldwide. In the early 50's, Pete Seeger recorded it with his group, the Weavers. His version differed from the original mainly in his misinterpretation of the word "mbube" (pronounced "EEM-boo-beh"). Mr. Seeger sang it as "wimoweh," and turned it into a folk music staple. Among the many other versions of the song since then were the 1960's recording by the US group The Tokens and the version used in the Disney animated film, 'The Lion King.' Solomon Linda died penniless in 1962, having received the equivalent of only 38 US cents for the rights to his song. One of his daughters died five years ago, without seeing the successful end of her family's lawsuits. You can read earlier Magpie posts about 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' here [June 2003] and here [Feb 2006]. | | Posted by Magpie at 12:18 AM | Get permalink
Katrina plus 7 months.
In what's billed as the first survey of Katrina evacuees taken, the NY Times reports that most evacuees are still without a permanent home, have used up their savings, and think that their life is worse than before the hurricane hit the Gulf coast. The survey of 300 evacuees also found that blacks have suffered 'a heavier economic and social burden' than have whites. And evacuees believe that the rest of the country doesn't care what happens to them. The blacks interviewed were more likely to have had their homes destroyed or to have lost a close friend or relative. Although a majority of both blacks and whites left their homes before Hurricane Katrina hit, blacks were more likely to have been separated from family members. The situation of evacuees could be substantially worse than what is portrayed in the article. Some of the poorest evacuees were missed by the survey because the Times couldn't find them. | | Posted by Magpie at 12:10 AM | Get permalink
Echidne's modest proposal.
A war on Easter, no less. Fox News has nothing to talk about, because we have been lax on our recent culture war efforts. I propose a strong offensive against Easter, especially the little yellow chickens. They should not be displayed prominently in the public sphere, not even if it is established that the Founding Fathers loved them. We are adamantly and defiantly opposed to little yellow chickens, and we are ready to spend money and time to fight them. Or anyone who likes them. Over at Pharyngula, PZ Meyers has heard Echidne's call, and has come up with more ammunition for the fight: The only good thing about Easter is that it is a fertility festival. I suggest that we emphasize good, conservative, traditionalist values, and insist that it be celebrated properly: everyone gets naked and frolic in the nearest freshly plowed corn field and, ummm, "plows the field" some more. [When you go off to read Echidne's and Pharyngula's posts, don't forget to read the comments!] This magpie also stands ready for battle in the war on Easter. After all, how many chances do you get to help make Bill O'Reilly's head explode? More: Uh-oh. It looks like those nasty homosexuals have enlisted in the war on Easter, too. | | Posted by Magpie at 12:08 AM | Get permalink
Acceptance of US lesbians and gay men is on the rise.
And this is going on despite the religious right's continuing anti-gay drumbeat. According to a new survey from the Pew Research Center, public acceptance of same-sex marriage has increased markedly over the past two years {see table to left]. With the exceptions of the period around when same-sex marriages became legal in Massachusetts, and another during the final months before the 2004 election, these increase continues a trend that has shown up in Pew surveys since the mid-1990s. Pew also asked questions about lesbian/gay service in the military and adoption by same-sex couples. Similar increases in acceptance have occurred with both of these issues as well, with the public split almost evenly on adoption and almost two-thirds favoring an end to the ban on lesbians and gay men serving openly in the military. Of course, the blips upward during 2004 show how volatile public opinion can be when scare tactices are employed by the religious right, but it appears that the long-term trend is away from a continued acceptance of legal discrimination against lesbians and gay men. Keep your fingers crossed. Via Feministing. | | Posted by Magpie at 12:04 AM | Get permalink
We've all heard about the Great Firewall of China...
... which keeps Chinese internet surfers from accessing websites and information that the Chinese government finds 'inconvenient' or politically objectionable. But it turns out that Australia may be getting a Great Firewall of its own, under the guise of protecting children from sex and violence on the web. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, PM John Howard's right-wing government is currently running a test of internet filtering in the state of Tasmania, and 'has not ruled out' mandatory ISP-based filtering for the whole country. The really sad part of the story is that even Australian Labor Party the ostensible 'opposition party' supports filtering. Via Null Device. | | Posted by Magpie at 12:01 AM | Get permalink
Jeez, I just can't make up my mind.
Luckily, there's someone like South Dakota state senator Bill Napoli to help all us poor gals make those difficult decisions. You can see the rest of the cartoon here, at Stephanie McMillan's website. If Napoli's name isn't familiar to you, he was one of the main backers of the almost-total ban on abortions recently enacted in South Dakota. Our man Napoli is a firm believer in traditional values and in the ability of men to make decisions for their womenfolk, as is evident from the comments that he made to a reporter from PBS' News Hour: When I was growing up here in the wild west, if a young man got a girl pregnant out of wedlock, they got married, and the whole darned neighborhood was involved in that wedding. I mean, you just didn't allow that sort of thing to happen, you know? I mean, they wanted that child to be brought up in a home with two parents, you know, that whole story. And so I happen to believe that can happen again. Given Napoli's opinions, you might want to take McMillan's advice and give ol' Bill a phone call. Or two. Or more. Via Broadsheet. | | Posted by Magpie at 12:00 AM | Get permalink
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Pop quiz!
Quick! What are those guys eating in the photo below? [I promise that the image has not been manipulated.] [Photo: Newley Purnell] It's that Korean favorite, hot dogs covered in french fries, available on the streets of Seoul for US $1. And yes, they are deep-fried. And, swear many, really good. There's another photo and a bit more information here. Via Grow-a-Brain. | | Posted by Magpie at 5:32 PM | Get permalink
Where is all the good news from Iraq?
One of the ways in which Dubya's administration and its right-wing supporters try to undermine the credibility the US media's reporting on Iraq is to claim that there's this huge trove of 'good news' from Iraq, but that the bias of the US media keeps that news from getting reported. Instead, readers and viewers are subjected to a drumbeat of bad news that distorts the 'real' picture. A good example of this tactic came yesterday, as Dubya gave his performance at another one of those 'town hall' meetings that only the prez's supporters are allowed to attend: Q [My husband's] job while serving {in Iraq] was as a broadcast journalist. And he has brought back several DVDs full of wonderful footage of reconstruction, of medical things going on. And I ask you this from the bottom of my heart, for a solution to this, because it seems that our major media networks don't want to portray the good. They just want to focus -- (applause) -- We could go into all the reasons why the good news is totally swamped by the bad, but Gal Beckerman has already done the job for us. Here's a sample: We're left with this nagging feeling, however, that the overwhelming reason why we see so much "bad news" coming out of Iraq is that, in spite of a halting start-and-stop sort of progress toward democratic institutions, things are not going well on the ground. (As the New York Times noted last week, both the number of insurgents, the number of foreign terrorists and the daily number of attacks by those groups more than tripled from February, 2004 to February of this year. And during that period, both oil and electricity production in Iraq have dwindled, as has household fuel availability. Which is why Bagdhad is darker than it was two years ago.) Via CJR Daily. | | Posted by Magpie at 3:47 PM | Get permalink
Civil war or not civil war?
Dubya and the apologists for the ongoing disaster in Iraq keep insisting that, while there may be danger of the country falling into civil war, Iraq isn't there yet. Journalists such as Chris Albritton and Mideast experts like Juan Cole have argued that, not only is there an Iraqi civil war now, but that war has been going on for awhile. In an article at Salon, Cole tries to settle the civil war argument once and for all. For this magpie, the following source quoted by Cole does the job: "Sustained military combat, primarily internal, resulting in at least 1,000 battle-deaths per year, pitting central government forces against an insurgent force capable of effective resistance, determined by the latter's ability to inflict upon the government forces at least 5 percent of the fatalities that the insurgents sustain." (Errol A. Henderson and J. David Singer, "Civil War in the Post-Colonial World, 1946-92," Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 37, No. 3, May 2000.) ' If you want to shut down those Dubya apologists and right-wingers, reading Cole's whole article will give you plenty of ammunition. [Paid sub or ad view req'd at Salon] | | Posted by Magpie at 2:36 PM | Get permalink
Still 'not nice' after all these years.
After a long silence, the Dixie Chicks have a new album coming out. And from their new single, 'Not Ready to Make Nice,' it seems that the controversy over Natalie Maines' comments about Dubya back in 2003 haven't made the Chicks pull any punches: I made my bed and I sleep like a baby You can listen to 'Not Ready to Make Nice' here. This magpie has been a big Dixie Chicks fan since they were just another scuffling country/bluegrass band on the state fair circuit. [Back in the early 1990s, I helped set the weirdest radio interview that the Chicks ever did sometime I'll get around to posting the story.] Back then, they said they were going to move to Nashville and get real famous, and damned if they didn't. I've always been happy to see that they've been able to make it without selling themselves out. Via Atrios. | | Posted by Magpie at 1:56 PM | Get permalink
If you think you're having a rough time in Dubya's US ...
... try being an African American man. While the rest of the country even those at the bottom was getting ahead during the 1990s, the educational, income, and employment status of black men was getting worse. And, if you were a young black man, your situtation was the worst of anyone's in the country. The US is now almost halfway through Dubya's second term and, to no one's surprise, the prez's 'ownership society' hasn't done anything to change the 1990s situtation. In fact, a bunch of new studies show that the possibilities for African American men are far worse than they were a decade ago. Here's some of what the newest studies have found:
Of course, since Dubya's administration doesn't care what happens to any person of color anywhere, it's not surprising that the feds aren't doing anything about the problems faced by black men. But what we find particularly disturbing is that this topic has apparently become so passé that the US press isn't finding these new studies on black men worth reporting. I just googled both the first sentence in the NY Times story cited in this post and the search term 'black men' and found only two dozen hits. Hopefully this story will get more exposure, but I'm not holding my breath waiting. | | Posted by Magpie at 11:28 AM | Get permalink
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Keeping the troops in the dark.
A while back, I posted about how the US Marines have been censoring the web sites that the troops in Iraq are allowed to look at. Today, via PEEK, we found out more aout how news is being kept from servicemembers. Meet dreadcow, who's serving in the Army infantry in Iraq. When he was on the phone to his parents in Minnesota recently, he received an interesting bit of news: Me: "I sure miss home, I really would like some snow just to see it for once? so how's Grandma/rest of family/friends? it's starting to warm up here finally, how's it back home?...." Pretty much speaks for itself, doesn't it? Via Fun with Hand Grenades. | | Posted by Magpie at 1:00 PM | Get permalink
Carnival of Feminists 11.
Is time ever flying this month! It seems like we posted about the last Carnival of Feminists only a couple of days ago, but it's really been two weeks. Which, of course, makes it time for the 11th Carnival. You can read the new edition in all of its feminist bloggy glory if you head over here to Angry for a Reason. If you haven't caught the Carnival before, it's a roundup of the best feminist posts from around the web, appearing twice a month. Hell, it's a roundup of the some of the best posts around, period! As usual, the 11th Carnival shows that it's hard to pigeonhole femininst bloggers, and the post topics go all over the place. This time, there was no way this magpie could pass up a group of posts under the heading 'What the hell is wrong with you?': The Anonymous blogger, at Sivacracy.net, asks why some people think sexist comments are somehow funny when leveled against conservative women in Humorless Feminism. You can read the rest of the 11th Carnival if you go here. The 12th Carnival is coming up on Wednesday, April 5th, and it will be hosted by Written World. The themes for the 12th edition are influences, inspirations, and culture reversal, but any posts that address a woman's place in the world from a feminist point of view are welcome. To nominate a post, and it's definitely okay to nominate one of your own send an eamil to ragnellthefoul AT gmail DOT com or include the Technorati tag carnival12 to your post. The deadline is April 3rd. And if you want to keep posted on what's up with the Carnival of Feminists, bookmark the home page. | | Posted by Magpie at 2:42 AM | Get permalink
Ooooooh, shiny!
Mexican cinema lobby cards by Ernesto Garcia Cabral! Ernesto Garcia Cabral, 1956. From Stephen Worth of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Project: Ernesto Garcia Cabral (nicknamed Chango) was one of Mexico's greatest political cartoonists and illustrators. He studied art in Paris just before WWI, and became well known there as a cartoonist. He returned to Mexico in 1918 and quickly became one of the country's premiere illustrators. He was known for his expressive caricatures, which illustrated the posters for Mexican film comedies throughout the forties and fifties. If you find this stuff as interesting as we do, there's more of Cabral's poster art here and here. Via A-HAA! | | Posted by Magpie at 1:45 AM | Get permalink
All the lies that fit.
Mikhaela puts some perspective on VP Cheney's latest comments about all that 'progress' being made in Iraq. To see the full cartoon full-size, go over here. If you want to see more of Mikhaela's political cartoons, take a look over here. | | Posted by Magpie at 12:46 AM | Get permalink
Helen Thomas nails Dubya to the wall.
As we noted earlier, Dubya made the mistake of calling on Helen Thomas during his press conference on Tuesday. True to form, Thomas asked a basic question that no other member of the White House press corps had the nerve to ask: Given that all the stated reasons for invading Iraq turned out to be untrue, what was Dubya's real reason for attacking Iraq? Watching how uncomfortable that question made the prez was worth suffering through his tortured evasion. on Tuesday's Situation Room. [Image: CNN] Later in the day, Thomas was interviewed on CNN's Situation Room, during which interview Wolf Blitzer eventually got around to asking her whether she believed Dubya's answer: BLITZER: And you asked him a tough question. Did you accept his answer? Namely, that he didn't come into the presidency believing he was going to go to war against Saddam Hussein, but after 9/11 his world view changed? If only the rest of the Washington press was as honest and direct as Thomas. You can watch the Situation Room segment containing both Thomas' question to Dubya and Blitzer's interview of Thomas if you go here. [Thanks to Brad Blog for making the video available.] | | Posted by Magpie at 12:12 AM | Get permalink
Being 'reasonable.'
As the 'debate' over abortion continues in the US, one of its most striking characteristics is the way that ostensible supporters of a woman's right to control her own body are willing to 'moderate' their language and lower their expectations in the guise of 'being reasonable.' Being reasonable when the health, safety, and well-being of untold numbers of women are at stake pisses this magpie off, to be honest. And we're not the only one. Media Girl has been thinking about the subject, too, and she's come up with a list of the assumptions that underly 'reasonableness':
With the exception of some of the religious right, very few people are willing to come out and say that they agree with this stuff even when their actions make it clear that they do. Instead, these assumptions lurk under public statements about abortion even by many people who claim to be 'pro-choice.' Unfortunately, this one case where if you're in by an inch, you're in by a mile. If you buy into the assumptions above to any degree, you've ceded control of the debate to abortion opponents. And, in politics, controlling the terms of a debate gets you most of the way to winning. As I said earlier, what's at stake in whether abortion remains legal and available in the US is the lives of women. Being 'reasonable' is a poor defense of those lives. Via Media Girl. | | Posted by Magpie at 12:04 AM | Get permalink
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
You This is amazing: The FBI has 2000 employees at its New York bureau. About 25% of them don't have email accounts. And they won't all have them until the end of the year. How come? Cost-cutting measures ordered by FBI honchos in Washington. So if you see Osama bin Laden walking around Times Square, don't send the FBI an email, OK? Via AP. | | Posted by Magpie at 2:40 PM | Get permalink
January 20, 2009.
That's the date when the next president of the US will take office. And, if Dubya's words at this morning's press conference are to be believed, it's also the earliest date on which US forces will leave Iraq. Q Will there come a day -- and I'm not asking you when, not asking for a timetable -- will there come a day when there will be no more American forces in Iraq? This magpie suggests that it's anybody's guess as to whether people in the US will fall into line and acquiesce to two more years of the ongoing carnage. Our guess is 'No way.' | | Posted by Magpie at 2:04 PM | Get permalink
If his mouth is open, he must be lying.
Dubya on 19 March 2003: U.S. forces launched an airstrike against "targets of military opportunity" in Iraq, President Bush said Wednesday night. Dubya at his press conference earlier today, responding to a question from Helen Thomas: Q I'd like to ask you, Mr. President, your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime. Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is, why did you really want to go to war? From the moment you stepped into the White House, from your Cabinet -- your Cabinet officers, intelligence people, and so forth -- what was your real reason? You have said it wasn't oil -- quest for oil, it hasn't been Israel, or anything else. What was it? Note that funny pouty sneer that the prez gets when he's lying. {Image: CNN] As Paul Waldman suggests, some reporter needs to ask the prez why, if he didn't want to go to war in Iraq, he was apparently so excited about going to war in 2003? Inquiring magpies sure would like to know, too. [If you have any doubts about whether Dubya's pre-speech behavior really happened, check out the original Knight Ridder story. The version of the story that we found via an online database was carried in the Bergen County [NJ] Record on 20 March 2003.] | | Posted by Magpie at 1:29 PM | Get permalink
Monday, March 20, 2006
Forget about that third anniversary thing.
You know, that marking of the third anniversary of the Iraq war by many of us here in the US [including this magpie], dating it to Dubya's invasion of Iraq in 2003. We were all wrong, says Joshua Holland. He says that the real date slipped by us in January Jan 17, to be exact; the fifteenth anniversary of the beginning of the 'first' Gulf war under the administration of Dubya's daddy. Holland suggests that the earlier war and the current one are really the same extended conflict, which he suggests we call the 'Persian Gulf war.' Because seeing George W. Bush's war as distinct from that of his father is a luxury only Americans can afford. For the Iraqis, it has been fifteen years of hell at the hands of the world's Great Powers, with the U.S. in the lead. Holland suggests that there is an important commonality between the 'first' war and the current one that links them: The stated reasons for each war were lies. Holland's piece is very much worth your time. Read it here. Via The Gadflyer. | | Posted by Magpie at 12:22 PM | Get permalink
What's wrong with the Democratic party?
The Daily Show knows. View the answer here [Quicktime] or here [Windows Media]. Via Crooks and Liars. | | Posted by Magpie at 12:10 PM | Get permalink
Tired of crap from media pundits?
Ted Rall sure is. And he's got a number of modest suggestions for the media, too, which you can read if you go here. And if you want to see more of Rall's work, check out his website. Via Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. | | Posted by Magpie at 1:09 AM | Get permalink |
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