Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

I just saw an article at AfterDowningStreet.org claiming that Hillary Clinton, when employed by the House Judiciary Committee in investigating Watergate, was dishonest and unethical. The writer spoke to, among others, the committee’s chief of staff, Jerry Zeifman. Clinton was working on a memo supporting the position that Nixon had no right to counsel before the committee; Zeifman told her she should read and cite a recent case that gave the opposite precedent; when she finished the memo, he found that she had (a) ignored that case, and (b) removed it from the committee’s files. Apparently, she was taking this position in the first place because her political patron was tied to the Kennedys, who didn’t want Nixon defending himself too well—he could have excused his own abuses of power by digging up JFK’s.

There’s more (including from the chief Republican counsel), but, to me, that’s the worst of it. If this is true, then Clinton probably committed a crime, in order to strengthen her patron’s political standing.

What’s really going on at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City?

The cover stories for the repeated failures of the opera Tristan und Isolde are appearing increasingly thin. Five different actors have had to be used in the title roles of Tristan and Isolde:

Gary Lehman
Ben Heppner
Mac Master
Deborah Voigt
Janice Baird

Now, there is to be a sixth: Roger Dean Smith… or so he says.

What’s going on? Performances of Tristan und Isolde have had to be cancelled more than once, due to “mishaps”.

The tenor has fallen off the stage. Scenery has nearly killed the singers. There have been mysterious plagues that the publicists are dismissing as “stomach ailments” and “viruses”.

Nobody believes it, of course, and Manhattan’s elite opera scene is abuzz with rumor of what is really happening behind the curtain of the newest production of Tristan und Isolde.

To understand today’s dramatic events, one needs to go back to the time of the composition of Tristan und Isolde. It was in 1849, and Richard Wagner had to flee the city of Dresden because of what the establishment describes, euphemistically, as The May Uprising. Conventional history says that the May Uprising was a political battle between a repressive government and a mob seeking democratic rule. Conventional history is wrong.

The truth is that Richard Wagner had been dabbling in ancient folklore a little bit too deeply, and he came across some folkways that should have been forgotten: The dark arts of necromancy. Richard Wagner thought that he was writing a new opera to celebrate the culture of teutonic peoples, but really, he was casting a black spell to raise the dead. The May Uprising was not about politics. The truth is that the battle was an attempt to defend the living residents of Dresden from a zombie seige.

Just look at the history books. After the zombies started rising out of Dresden’s cemeteries, Richard Wagner ran away, because he didn’t know how to control his creations. The government soldiers in Dresden are then recorded as making a last stand in the Zeughaus.

Do you know what Zeughaus means, when translated into English? It means “House of the Undead”. The government soldiers went to the heart of the problem, to find the answer for the dreadful question: How do you kill somebody when they’re already dead?

The answer to that question was lost to history, but obviously they found some kind of way to control the zombies.

Richard Wagner, in the meantime, set up his operations again in Zurich, and this time he finished what he had started. He finished a final, revised draft of Tristan und Isolde, which still included some elements of necromancy, but not as much as in his first draft.

So, that’s what the people at the Met are facing right now: Black magic. It’s not as strong as when Richard Wagner first tried it in Dresden, but it is potentially deadly nonetheless.

I can’t tell you what’s going to happen for certain, but I can tell you this: There are just a few more performances of Tristan und Isolde at the Met, and I won’t be setting foot in Manhattan until after they are done.

I just found the results of the Green Party caucuses in California on Super Tuesday, provided by the League of Women Voters. I have to say that I’m pretty disappointed in the results.

The candidates who have been out and hustling their way around the Green Party state meetings for months and months now got a minority of the vote.

Cynthia McKinney got 26.0%

Elaine Brown 1,330 got 4.6%

Kat Swift got 3.1%

Kent Mesplay got 2.0%

Jesse Johnson got 1.8%

Jared Ball 467 got 1.5%

Along comes Ralph Nader, waltzing in at the last minute, with his surrogate Howie Hawkins, suggesting that he just might, maybe, run for President, but he’s not sure. How much of the California Green vote did Nader get? 61 percent.

I’m groaning. Ralph Nader fails pathetically in his Green Party presidential run in 1996. So, what does the Green Party do? They nominate him again in the year 2000. Then, in the year 2004, Ralph Nader ran as an independent candidate, courted Republican support, and trashed the Green Party. So, now, in 2008, what are the Greens doing? Nominating Ralph Nader for President again.

Pardon me, is the Green Party really a political party, or is it just a stage upon which we all get to watch the Ralph Nader melodrama unfold in excruciating slow motion?

In 1972 I was 21 years old,  town campaign manager for the McGovern Presidential campaign,and as idealistic and devoted to McGovern as any young Obama supporter today.  What a high we experienced the night that McGovern won the nomination; what disappointment we felt the night of the election.  In time, information was discovered that the Republicans had hoped for, indeed, planned on a McGovern candidacy, as they viewed him as the weakest candidate. Yes, McGovern enjoyed tremendous support from a new generation of young voters; and yes, we couldn’t have made the Republicans — and I do mean Richard Nixon et al — happier.

One of the most disillusioning revelations post-election 1972 was that many Republicans had influenced the outcome of primaries by registering as Democrats precisely in order to vote for McGovern. It was, in fact, the first time that voters were allowed to switch their party on primary day in NJ, and the Republicans evidently took advantage of it. Over time, I learned the painful truth that political decisions do not necessarily reflect the will of the supporters of any position or candidate; elections and voters can be and are manipulated in many ways. Voter idealism is an opportunity for exploitation by manipulators with less than idealistic goals.

In 2008, I see this blind idealism again in the young, first-time-voters and caucus participants in Iowa and elsewhere. And it raises for me the same concerns that I wish I had seen in 1972 but could only perceive and understand retrospectively some years later.

Specifically, I find it alarming that, as of January 2nd,  70-something-% of Iowans who supported Obama and were polled were first time caucus-participants. 20% were reported to be Republicans who planned on changing party to support Obama in the caucus. And I believe around 30-40% were Independents who had not been drawn into a caucus ever before.

While this all sounds quite positive for Obama, lets stop and consider, first of all, that 20% of his supporters are Republicans. How likely is it that Republicans in Iowa — a state which has never elected a woman governor, congressman or senator, no less a Black one — are switching parties to vote for the first serious Black Democrat contender? Were they closeted progressives all these years, just waiting for the most sincere and true Democrat for change to run? If so, how did they miss Howard Dean in 2004? I think that the 20% Republican support can be explained as well if not better by the hypothesis that the Republicans are again trying to tip the caucus in favor of a candidate who ultimately would have great difficulty in winning the national election.

The 30-40% Independents who have never before found a candidate of either party to support at a caucus are equally, if not more, suspect. Mind you, these are people who would have not even come out  to support Iowa favorite son Tom Harkin when he ran in the past in Presidential primaries. Most Independents I know are proudly and stubbornly independent — they’re suspect of politics in general, eschew registering allegiance to ANY party, Dem, Repub or 3rd party, and do not mind one bit not being able to choose a party candidate during the primaries by maintaining their independent status. Are we to believe, without question, that such a large number of Independents have somehow shaken loose from their prized independent status because Obama is such a great candidate? I don’t think so.

Which brings us down to the great NON-QUESTION of the 2008 primaries: are Caucasian Americans really ready to vote for a Black/minority president? Well maybe this is less of a non-question than it is the non-discussed question of the season. Listening to a panel of supposed election experts from the far-right Enterprise Institute discussing possible primary outcome scenarios, I was almost convinced, as they insisted, that there just was no reason at all to think that race would influence voter preferences. I actually had to stop and think: wait a minute, there still is a serious underclass in the U.S., isnt there? and that underclass contains most of the 16% of Americans who are Black, right? (As Obama correctly noted recently, there are still more college-age young Black men in prison than there are in college — a statistic that has not changed since I first heard it reported 20 years ago.)  Of course other minorities are found in the underclass, but the majority of Blacks are found there.

Who keeps Blacks in the underclass? Certainly predominately white communities, companies, law firms, professional schools, etc.  But it happens daily in many ways and is ignored and hence implicitly supported by most Caucasian Americans.  Support for Obama is very real in some sectors, very politically correct in others. Don’t tell me that MANY Americans, of both parties, have not considered the possibility of and experience some trepidation when they envision a government dominated by Black Americans.

I’m not saying I’m among them. But when it comes to evaluating Obama’s true chances for winning a national election that requires winning the hard South and Conservative Western states, one simply can’t ignore the issue of race and how it could influence the outcome of the election.

Prove me wrong. Let’s start a real discussion of this important issue NOW, while the primary season is in its infancy. Let’s be conscious of the possibility of cynical manipulation of our youngest and often our most idealistic voters. Let’s pick a presidential candidate with our eyes, ears and minds open to the most critical question of electibility in November 2008.

Right wingers like to talk about traditions, assuming that what has been traditional must support what they want to do. Sadly, they have forgotten the American tradition of preserving liberty in spite of all threats. After our nation was attacked for one morning of one day, the right wing couldn’t move fast enough to wreck America’s freedoms in the name of security, starting with the Patriot Act and moving quickly on from there until the Bill of Rights was full of holes wide enough for any tyrant to glide through with ease.

One of America’s true patriots, Sam Adams, had harsh words for that kind of cowardice: “The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending against all hazards.”

Sam Adams didn’t say that the liberties of our country, based on our Constitution, are worth defending unless we get scared, or unless a hazard seems particularly troublesome. He said that the liberties of our country are worth defending against all hazards.

What part of all hazards does the right wing not understand? It’s progressives who truly honor the American tradition of liberty. Right wingers disrespect the tradition with their trembling Homeland Security.

December 1, 2007 - Saturday

1705 days into the war

U.S. MILITARY DEATHS IN IRAQ: 3881
U.S. MILITARY WOUNDED IN IRAQ: 28582

IRAQI CIVILIAN DEATHS
(MINIMUM): 77353
(MAXIMUM): 84502
(LANCET ESTIMATE) 600,000

COST OF THE WAR SO FAR (ROUNDED TO THE NEAREST MILLION): $473,314,000,000

Please note that the above figures, from the IBC website, are NOT estimates of total Iraqi civilians killed as a result of the US invasion and its aftermath. Rather, they are a count of Western-reported verifiable violent deaths, and likely to be a small percentage of the true figure. Les Roberts, author of the Lancet Report, believes the actual number may now be as high as 1,000,000.

RED DAVE

November 25, 2007 - Sunday

1700 days into the war

U.S. MILITARY DEATHS IN IRAQ: 3875
U.S. MILITARY WOUNDED IN IRAQ: 28530

IRAQI CIVILIAN DEATHS
(MINIMUM): 77327
(MAXIMUM): 84244
(LANCET ESTIMATE) 600,000

COST OF THE WAR SO FAR (ROUNDED TO THE NEAREST MILLION): $471,621,000,000

Please note that the above figures, from the IBC website, are NOT estimates of total Iraqi civilians killed as a result of the US invasion and its aftermath. Rather, they are a count of Western-reported verifiable violent deaths, and likely to be a small percentage of the true figure. Les Roberts, author of the Lancet Report, believes the actual number may now be as high as 1,000,000.

RED DAVE

November 23, 2007 - Friday

1699 days into the war

U.S. MILITARY DEATHS IN IRAQ: 3874
U.S. MILITARY WOUNDED IN IRAQ: 28530

IRAQI CIVILIAN DEATHS
(MINIMUM): 77323
(MAXIMUM): 84240
(LANCET ESTIMATE) 600,000

COST OF THE WAR SO FAR (ROUNDED TO THE NEAREST MILLION): $471,065,000,000

Please note that the above figures, from the IBC website, are NOT estimates of total Iraqi civilians killed as a result of the US invasion and its aftermath. Rather, they are a count of Western-reported verifiable violent deaths, and likely to be a small percentage of the true figure. Les Roberts, author of the Lancet Report, believes the actual number may now be as high as 1,000,000.

RED DAVE

November 20, 2007 - Tuesday

1696 days into the war

U.S. MILITARY DEATHS IN IRAQ: 3873
U.S. MILITARY WOUNDED IN IRAQ: 28489

IRAQI CIVILIAN DEATHS
(MINIMUM): 77305
(MAXIMUM): 84222
(LANCET ESTIMATE) 600,000

COST OF THE WAR SO FAR (ROUNDED TO THE NEAREST MILLION): $470,210,000,000

Please note that the above figures, from the IBC website, are NOT estimates of total Iraqi civilians killed as a result of the US invasion and its aftermath. Rather, they are a count of Western-reported verifiable violent deaths, and likely to be a small percentage of the true figure. Les Roberts, author of the Lancet Report, believes the actual number may now be as high as 1,000,000.

RED DAVE

Pentagon Cover Up

By MIKE WHITNEY

The Pentagon has been concealing the true number of American casualties in the Iraq War. The real number exceeds 15,000 and CBS News can prove it.

CBS’s Investigative Unit wanted to do a report on the number of suicides in the military and “submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Defense”. After 4 months they received a document which showed–that between 1995 and 2007– there were 2,200 suicides among “active duty” soldiers.

Baloney.

RED DAVE

November 17, 2007 - Saturday

1693 days into the war

U.S. MILITARY DEATHS IN IRAQ: 3867
U.S. MILITARY WOUNDED IN IRAQ: 28489

IRAQI CIVILIAN DEATHS
(MINIMUM): 77225
(MAXIMUM): 84140
(LANCET ESTIMATE) 600,000

COST OF THE WAR SO FAR (ROUNDED TO THE NEAREST MILLION): $469,377,000,000

Please note that the above figures, from the IBC website, are NOT estimates of total Iraqi civilians killed as a result of the US invasion and its aftermath. Rather, they are a count of Western-reported verifiable violent deaths, and likely to be a small percentage of the true figure. Les Roberts, author of the Lancet Report, believes the actual number may now be as high as 1,000,000.

RED DAVE

November 16, 2007 - Frinesday

1691 days into the war

U.S. MILITARY DEATHS IN IRAQ: 3865
U.S. MILITARY WOUNDED IN IRAQ: 28451

IRAQI CIVILIAN DEATHS
(MINIMUM): 77213
(MAXIMUM): 84128
(LANCET ESTIMATE) 600,000

COST OF THE WAR SO FAR (ROUNDED TO THE NEAREST MILLION): $469,081,000,000

Please note that the above figures, from the IBC website, are NOT estimates of total Iraqi civilians killed as a result of the US invasion and its aftermath. Rather, they are a count of Western-reported verifiable violent deaths, and likely to be a small percentage of the true figure. Les Roberts, author of the Lancet Report, believes the actual number may now be as high as 1,000,000.

RED DAVE

Through the Military Commissions Act, right wing Democrats and Republicans in Congress have helped George W. Bush revoke the writ of habeas corpus, which requires governments to provide specific information about the reason that prisoners are being held. Habeas corpus is an essential tool in the prevention of arbitrary imprisonment.

What would America’s founding fathers think of the Military Commission Act’s removal of this protection? Alexander Hamilton certainly wouldn’t have approved of it. In the Federalist Papers, Hamilton wrote that “arbitrary imprisonments have been in all ages the favourite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.”

Hint to Young Republicans: Tyranny is a bad thing.

I’ve been browsing through some fundamentalist religious quotes on Fundies Say The Darndest Things and from what I can tell most of those quotes can be broken up into five basic categories:

-Anti-Evolution
-Anti-Homosexuality
-Anti-Abortion
-Anti-other religions
-Miscellaneous

Now, while I could go and tackle each and every one of those points and their reasons behind them, I want to focus on the Anti-Homo part of it during this entry.

I’ve heard many justifications for this type of bigotry and they’ve come in many forms from calm explanations to near hysterical SHOUTING IN ALL CAPS-LOCK!!!1!111!!

But whatever form it takes on it always seems to come back to one thing: “Its an abomination against God” and to support this stance and their own bigotry they’ll site Leviticus 18:22. However most of these same people, when you point anything else out they’ll say that the New Testament did away with the Old Testament and therefore the Old Testament is now invalid. Except, just now to confirm what I was already pretty sure of, I looked up the book of Leviticus, and guess what I found?

Leviticus is a part of the Old Testament.

Now, rather than use the point of eating shell-fish to counter their argument and show them as hypocrites, I’m just going to start pointing out what they already believe; that Jesus’ sacrifice rendered the Old Testament obsolete (seeing as they seem so intent on ignoring Matthew 5:18-19 and Luke 16:17 when it suits them) and that therefore Homosexuality must be just fine so long as those damn homos except Jesus as their savior. After all, the Old Testament is invalid according to them, right?

Now, if they somehow claim that homosexuality is a sin and yet the Old Testament is still void, I feel I’d be well justified in pointing out their hypocrisy.

Read this one. Last week, on “60 Minutes,” one of Bush’s LIES, that’s LIES, not faulty intelligence, LIES, was clearly exposed. Three weeks before the invasion of Iraq, the primary source for “intelligence” about chemical weapons of mass destruction was exposed. Not after the invasion but before.

Faulty Intel Source “Curve Ball” Revealed

60 Minutes: Iraqi’s Fabricated Story Of Biological Weapons Aided U.S. Arguments For Invasion

(CBS)*Did Saddam Hussein have weapons of mass destruction? No, he did not. We’ve known that for some time now. So where did the intelligence come from that he was building up his arsenal? Fantastically, the most compelling part came from one obscure Iraqi defector who came in and out of history like a comet. His code name, ironically, was “Curve Ball” and his information became the pillar of the case Colin Powell made to the United Nations before the war. Who is Curve Ball and how did he fool the world’s elite intelligence agencies?

…

U.N. inspectors in Iraq visited a suspected WMD location — Djerf al Nadaf, Curve Ball’s secret site. And what did they find there? A wall — the very wall that had appeared on the overhead imagery back in 2001. Curve Ball had claimed the mobile bio-weapons trucks entered through doors at one end of a warehouse.

“When the inspectors examined the facility, they found that this was an impossibility,” explains Jim Corcoran, whose job it was to relay intelligence to the inspectors in Iraq.

Corcoran learned the wall blocked any entrance to the warehouse. As for Curve Ball’s hidden doors at the other end that would allow the trucks to exit?

“Again, there was a wall there, no doors. And outside there was a stone fence that would have made it impossible for this to have occurred,” Corcoran says.

Corcoran knew Djerf al Nadaf was of great importance, so he sent inspectors back 20 days later to take samples, to see if any traces of biological agents were there. “They proved negative,” Corcoran tells Simon. “There was nothing there.”

But the inspectors’ findings in Iraq made no impact; the war began three weeks later.

RED DAVE

November 7, 2007 - Wednesday

1683 days into the war

U.S. MILITARY DEATHS IN IRAQ: 3857
U.S. MILITARY WOUNDED IN IRAQ: 28385

IRAQI CIVILIAN DEATHS
(MINIMUM): 76226
(MAXIMUM): 83042
(LANCET ESTIMATE) 600,000

COST OF THE WAR SO FAR (ROUNDED TO THE NEAREST MILLION): $466,567,000,000

Please note that the above figures, from the IBC website, are NOT estimates of total Iraqi civilians killed as a result of the US invasion and its aftermath. Rather, they are a count of Western-reported verifiable violent deaths, and likely to be a small percentage of the true figure. Les Roberts, author of the Lancet Report, believes the actual number may now be as high as 1,000,000.

RED DAVE

Tonight I was researching various topics on paganism and ancient revivalism when I came across a Wikipedia article about a group of pagans in Greece who were trying to gain equal rights in the eyes of the Greek government. It seems that prior to 2006, all religions except Christianity, Judaism and Islam had been banned. An Athenian court seems to have overruled that.

The story regarding this can be found here (I may post a separate diary entry about this later).

When I read about their desire to be allowed to worship in the Parthenon, I looked it up on Wikipedia for clarification. The article listed pollution hazards and I found myself curious enough to read on. It seems that acid rain from the growth of Athens and the exhaust from cars has caused irreparable damage to the sculptures in the Parthenon.

Pollution is a bad thing, not only for the harm it does to ourselves and our environment but for the harm it does to our history. When historical landmarks and wonders of the ancient world are threatened by our pollution, isn’t it time to do something?

I see this and then I see conservatives calling for less restraints put on pollution control and I find it hard to believe that they could be so caviler and arrogant not to see the harm that is already happening. Is there nothing at all more important than grabbing for that extra dollar?

November 4, 2007 - Sunday

1680 days into the war

U.S. MILITARY DEATHS IN IRAQ: 3849
U.S. MILITARY WOUNDED IN IRAQ: 28385

IRAQI CIVILIAN DEATHS
(MINIMUM): 76075
(MAXIMUM): 82883
(LANCET ESTIMATE) 600,000

COST OF THE WAR SO FAR (ROUNDED TO THE NEAREST MILLION): $465,712,000,000

Please note that the above figures, from the IBC website, are NOT estimates of total Iraqi civilians killed as a result of the US invasion and its aftermath. Rather, they are a count of Western-reported verifiable violent deaths, and likely to be a small percentage of the true figure. Les Roberts, author of the Lancet Report, believes the actual number may now be as high as 1,000,000.

RED DAVE