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Since he has abandoned his Presidential bid (the stars must have been against him), how much money does he have and will he be disbursing it out to candidates in need?
Have Kos and Jerome called for Warner to dole out the money?
As many of you know, DhinMI appointed himself recommend policeman and even if you unrecommended (before he posted his incendiary diary) or if you didn't (which is your right as a member here), he posted your user name as someone mindless.
I have been posting on dkos a long time. Shit, I remember when it was just kos and then Gilliard and then Billmon, and I have never seen a greater abuse of a person's position within this community then I saw yesterday with DHinMI diary. Seriously, so much for self policing when we have the unelected DHinMI to tell us what is right or wrong.
I think it has been over a year since I wrote a diary, but still I think this community (is it still a commmunity?) serves a purpose and should be protected for a place of free speech and community opinion, but in anycase there are many other places to crash the gates, just don't put me beside DHinMI when the orders are given.
If this is my my last post on dkos, I don't care. It was a nice four year run and like I said dkos is not the only place to start a revolution.
He touches on the growing strength in the insurgency, the inability at this time to carry out elections in four provinces, and the obvious strain on our military, particularly the National Guard.
A must read.
Just wanted to let folks know I've been banned, apparently over
Upon re-reading the thread, I feel like my criticism was quite valid,
although admittedly at a high volume level. But I thought I was
responding to things said at a pretty high volume level.
I'll let folks judge what I was saying in that thread for themselves.
---
This is my third time I've been banned over the past year, so I'll
take that as meaning I'm out.
While this place hasn't turned out to be quite what I had been hoping
for when I first found it, that failing certainly hasn't been because
of the community.
I ended up enjoying my time with all of you, oddly enough, both
the folks I've agreed with and the folks I've never agreed with.
I've learned some stuff and hopefully taught some stuff. And I'll
truly miss the community as things get crazy over the next 48 days.
Let's work our asses off between now and November. Don't forget
what's at stake. As some short surly guy once said, "Let's Take Our
Country Back."
- Petey
The holding in RALPH HOWARD BLAKELY, Jr., PETITIONER v.
WASHINGTON is short and sweet: "Because the facts supporting petitioner's exceptional sentence were neither admitted by petitioner nor found by a jury, the sentence violated his Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury."
Where the variuos Justices came down on the decision is fascinating:
Scalia, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Stevens, Souter, Thomas, and Ginsburg, JJ., joined. O'Connor, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Breyer, J., joined, and in which Rehnquist, C. J., and Kennedy, J., joined except as to Part IV-B. Kennedy, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Breyer, J., joined. Breyer, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which O'Connor, J., joined.
You can read the NY Times take on it Here
Or the decision itself here
And the Apprendi decision rendered by the Court in 2000 is interesting as similar voting blocks appeared in the decision as in this one.
Yes the energy task force decision will get the bigger headlines today, but the Blakely decision is also very important (as decisions all are to someone).
Moore says three national chains have declined to show his film without offering a reason. Initially, Fahrenheit 9/11 was to open in 1,000 theatres. That has shrunk to 500, and he describes it as a daily battle to convince theatre owners not to be intimidated.
Is he surprised the Republicans would stoop to these kinds of political dirty tricks? "I'm not surprised," Moore says. "I respect their side. They're committed in a way we aren't. They're up at the crack of dawn trying to find a new way to screw people, and the only way our side can see the crack of dawn is if we've stayed up all night."
Perhaps it is time to start another round of contacting theatres encouraging them to not be intimidated.
While U.S. troops facing ambush in Iraq for months demanded more armored Humvees, top Army officials insisted they were ordering as many of the trucks as could be made in Indiana and armored in Ohio.
They turned out to be wrong. Last fall, Army officials insisted that 80 armored Humvees could be produced a month, then raised that estimate to 220. In reality, AM General Corp. of South Bend and Armor Holdings of Fairfield, Ohio, are capable of turning out hundreds more a month, according to company officials.
...
Urged by Bayh and others on the Armed Services Committee, the Army raised procurement orders to 220 a month in November, Mecredy said.
Troops in Iraq pleaded for more.
"My son called me the week before he was killed," said Brian Hart, of Bedford, Mass. "He said they were getting shot at all the time. They were in unarmored Humvees and were out there exposed to the fire. He was concerned they were going to get hit. He was literally whispering this into the phone to me. He was right. That's how he died."
John Hart, a private first class in the Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade, was killed in a Humvee on Oct. 18 near Kirkuk.
Brian Hart said he met Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., at his son's funeral Nov. 4 at Arlington National Cemetery. Hart passed on his son's message.
Well, well, well, Kennedy attends funerals of dead soldiers and listens to the concerns of greiving fathers and takes action.
Senators Bayh and Reed do a bang up job of following up on this as well, no doubt after Sen. Kennedy had a word with them. But my gawd, hats off to Ted Kennedy!!!!! Someone who actually cares about this country and its men and women in uniform.
Read it here
Competitive pressures and a fear of appearing unpatriotic discouraged journalists from doing more critical reporting during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq (news - web sites), according to reporters and others at a conference on media coverage of the war.
...
Much of the criticism focused on a Sept. 8, 2002, New York Times article by Judith Miller and Michael Gordon, which said Iraq was importing aluminum tubes that could be used in centrifuges to enrich uranium, a critical step in making an atomic bomb.
Massing said nuclear experts or weapons inspectors would have refuted the evidence had the Times consulted them. Experts later verified the tubes were not used for nuclear weapons, but The New York Times and other papers buried that news in their inside pages, he said.
Buried the news?!?!?! Buried the NEWS?!?!?! ... sigh ...
One is left wondering what the Anti-War Movement would have looked like had we had a free press in this country rather than frightened mouth-piece for a corrupt government.
Just further evidence of the rotting of America?
I hate to see Nader at 6% this early. I hate to say this but the Democrats might have to go nuclear (harshly negative) on Nader if these numbers continue into the Summer. Take the poll.
I am not surprised by this epidemic of rapes in the Persion Gulf. I lived in the Persion Gulf countries and it is not the place to be if you are a single, Western man, in your 20s and 30s. Unlike, say Korea, Japan or Europe, the Middle East is a place where the local female population are for the most part unavailable as dating partners and where the servicemen are typically confined to their bases. You combine this with the stresses of war and being deployed for months (years in some cases) and, while still shocked that it happened, I am not surprised. Take Kuwait, for example, prior to the build up to war, the US army camp at Doha housed about 5,000 soldiers who were typically on 90-day deployments - it is by all acounts a hard-ship posting - so they keep the deployment short. Now, we have 10s of thousands of soldiers in that theatre for much longer periods of time.
The Pentagon is of course at fault for not taking these factors into consideration in planning and enforcing protective measures for our servicewomen in the Persian Gulf/Iraq/Afghanistan, and this seemed to be the thrust of the Committee's criticism in today's hearing.
Another by-product of our DoD and their total inability to do something about the culture of sexual violence in the military and the short-signtedness in planning for what should be a very obvious concern. We aren't talking about a handful of incidents - we are talking DOZENS of incidents!!!
Considering that Mr. Haines is soliciting donations from the dKos community in the form of his ad on the front-page, I am impressed that Mr. Haines took the time to answer questions. In fact, he started a Q&A thread on his site in response to dKos users asking for information on the positions of candidates advertising on dKos.
The Q&A included Iraq, foreign policy (in general), the Patriot Act, the death penalty, mandatory sentencing, space exploration, Bush's tax cuts, Social Security, health care, education, civil unions, and gun control.
See for yourself here (scroll down about 1/3)
Mr. Haines has started a thread on his blog soliciting questions from folks that would like to know more about where he stands on the issues, considering that he is asking dKos users to donate to his campaign. This is something that myself and a few other dKossacks, including Carl Nyberg, have made an issue considering in the coming months we will be seeing ads from many candidates. I am impressed that Mr. Haines has noticed the concerns of posters here and has offered to take questions. So slide on over there, get your answers and then decide whether you wish to donate to his campaign.
As many here already know, Bush spent part of 1972 working for "Red" Blount's Senate bid. The Progressive Southerner bring us this investagative report, "George W. Bush's Lost Year in 1972 Alabama".
Excerpts follow:
Those who encountered Bush in Alabama remember him as an affable social drinker who acted younger than his 26 years. Referred to as George Bush, Jr. by newspapers in those days, sources say he also tended to show up late every day, around noon or one, at Blount's campaign headquarters in Montgomery. They say Bush would prop his cowboy boots on a desk and brag about how much he drank the night before.
...
They also remember Bush's stories about how the New Haven, Connecticut police always let him go, after he told them his name, when they stopped him "all the time" for driving drunk as a student at Yale in the late 1960s. Bush told this story to others working in the campaign "what seemed like a hundred times," says Red Blount's nephew C. Murphy Archibald, now an attorney in Charlotte, N.C., who also worked on the Blount campaign and said he had "vivid memories" of that time.
...
Many of those who came into close contact with Bush say he liked to drink beer and Jim Beam whiskey, and to eat fist-fulls of peanuts, and Executive burgers, at the Cloverdale Grill. They also say he liked to sneak out back for a joint of marijuana or into the head for a line of cocaine.
...
"He was an attractive person, kind of a 'frat boy,'" Blount said. "I didn't like him." He remembers thinking to himself, "This guy thinks he is such a cuntsman, God's gift to women," he said. "He was all duded up in his cowboy boots. It was sort of annoying seeing all these people who thought they were hot shit just because they were from Texas."
...
Bush also made an impression on the "Blue-Haired Platoon," a group of older Republican Women working for Blount. Behind his back they called him "the Texas soufflé," Archibald said, because he was "all puffed up and full of hot air."
...
Bush avoided Vietnam by using family connections to move ahead in line for acceptance into the National Guard in Texas, where he was assigned to train as a pilot on the F-102 Delta Dagger, a plane the military had schedule for the scrap heap. It never made it into service during Vietnam, which guaranteed Bush would never have to go himself.
...
Perhaps the reason he didn't log any time toward his six-year commitment was because the base had no Delta Daggers, although that would not explain why he was granted an after-the-fact transfer there in the first place. Or perhaps it had something to do with the military's new policy of mandatory drug screening, implemented in April.
Bush's required physical exam officially came up in August due to his birth date, but records indicate he never showed up for a physical in Montgomery or when he returned to Houston after the election.
...
"I think he's run the country into the ground economically, and he comes out with these crazy ideas like going to Mars and going to the moon," said Richard Bidlack, a 78-year-old retiree from Boonton, N.J., who says he voted for Bush in 2000. "I'm so upset at Bush, I'll vote for a chimpanzee before I vote for him."
And for the first time, more voters in this poll's two years of tracking the question said they would definitely vote against Bush than said they would definitely vote for him.
...
Bush's approval rating stood at 47 percent in the AP-Ipsos poll taken in early February, down from 56 percent approval just a month ago. Half, or 50 percent, said they disapproved in the latest poll.
...
Democrats are now as intensely opposed to Bush as Republicans are intensely supporting him. By a 2-1 margin, political independents were more likely to say they would definitely vote against him than definitely support him.
Some of this is reflected in the focus on the primary assuredly and I suspect that Bush's approval rating will swing back, but if somehow we can keep those political independents who would definitely vote agaisnt Bush on our side, then we will be sitting quite nicely come November.
Yet, Democrats can't let up and must maintain the offensive against Bush. The Republicans also have a lot at stake in this election and expect them to pull out all the stops.
For months we have known with increasing degrees of certainty that there were, contrary to expectations, no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Yet the fact that David Kay has now stated this baldly has suddenly put this reality at the center of the national debate in a way it wasn't only a couple weeks ago.
He has also said two other things.
First, he's said that the CIA was not pressured to reach its erroneous conclusions. Second, he has said that rather than the president owing an explanation or apology to the American people, the CIA owes an explanation or apology to the president.
As to the first point, how would he know?
To the best of my knowledge, Kay wasn't involved in any of the relevant inter-agency processes and he hasn't investigated this question after the fact. So how would he know? I think the answer is clear: he doesn't.
The rest is HERE
The Times does a profile of him and "his shrewd practice of the 'political black arts'." I have no comment one way or the other on Lehane or his reputation. I just think its an interesting article adding some details and insight into at least on of the operatives working behind the scenes.
Preview:
Every campaign has people who work behind the scenes, feeding unflattering facts about opponents to the news media. But Mr. Lehane -- a veteran of Al Gore's 2000 campaign and the Clinton White House, where his specialty was blunting queries from investigative reporters -- is such a shrewd practitioner of what one admiring strategist called "the political black arts" that lately, when a negative story appears, rivals point to him.
"He can spread both joy and pain," said Donna Brazile, who managed Mr. Gore's campaign and calls herself a fan of Mr. Lehane. "It's important to know what side you're on when Chris Lehane is coming at you."
More here
Richard Gephardt's campaign manager, Steve Murphy, said a Dean field organizer told a Gephardt staff member that some of the expected 3,500 out-of-state Dean supporters coming to Iowa to turn out the caucus vote would try to infiltrate the process.
Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi denied the accusation and told Murphy in a letter that "sleazy tactics like yours are exactly the reason that people have stopped participating in the political process."
John Kerry's Iowa state director, John Norris, also said two out-of-state Dean supporters posing as undecided Iowans had tried to get information about campaign voter calling scripts from a Kerry office in the southeastern town of Creston.
...
Participants in the caucuses, sponsored by the state Democratic Party, must be registered Democrats who will be old enough to vote in November, but they can register on the spot and identification or proof of residence is not required.
Since it is a party event, Murphy said, there is no legal penalty attached to the fraud and he would not challenge the results if Gephardt lost.
State party officials sent a warning to the campaigns in November after a Dean staff member in Vermont called and asked if a hotel address was sufficient grounds to participate. At the time, Dean officials dismissed the significance of the call and attributed it to a teen-age intern.
Trippi, who worked for Gephardt in 1988 as a deputy campaign manager, said the latest charge was "ridiculous" and that voters were tired of "this type of campaigning."
"We understand that the grassroots enthusiasm this campaign has generated and the over 3,500 volunteers who are canvassing in Iowa this month is threatening to Dick Gephardt," Trippi said.
Serious accusations - I truly hope there is nothing to this story. There are no proof of residency requirements for caucus participation, which seems outlandish, so this kind of thing must be taken seriously.
Now on a lighter note - there is this Trippi "clever trick", which is a far cry from allegations of abusing the Iowa caucus system.
But on Sept. 12, 2001, Dean had quite a different reaction. He told the Vermont press corps he believed the terrorist hijackings would "require a re-evaluation of the importance of some of our specific civil liberties. I think there are going to be debates about what can be said where, what can be printed where, what kind of freedom of movement people have and whether it's OK for a policeman to ask for your ID just because you're walking down the street...I think that's a debate that we will have."
...
At the time of Dean's post-9/11 comments, Michael Mello, a Vermont Law School professor, called them "terribly irresponsible." In an interview this week, he gave a broader critique of Dean's approach to legal issues. "Whenever law is involved, he's been dreadful," Mello said. "He just doesn't get the Constitution or what lawyers do or what the courts are for." The exception, he added: Some "surprisingly good" Vermont Supreme Court appointments.
Dean made it clear early in his tenure that he thought alleged criminals were cut too much slack. "My view is that the justice system is not fair," Dean said in 1991 during his first week as governor. "It bends over backwards to help defendants and is totally unfair to victims and to society as a whole." Robert Appel, former head of the state's public defender system, said he had constant clashes with Dean over funding for the service. According to Appel, Dean said on at least one public occasion that the state should spend less money providing the accused with legal representation, saying that "95% of criminal defendants are guilty anyway." (Carson says the comment was meant as a joke, but Appel counters that even if it was, "the underlying message was pretty clear.")
Which may be one reason why Dean, in 1999, wanted to refuse a $150,000 federal grant to the public defender's office for aiding mentally disabled defendants. "That was unusual, to say the least," says Appel. The state legislature overrode Dean's opposition. Dean spokesman Carson responded that Dean didn't want to create a program that the state couldn't afford to fund if federal money disappeared in the future. But he did not disavow Dean's anti-defendant bent. "This is a governor who was tough on crime and is a big believer in victims' rights," Carson says.
Full story from Time Magazine here:
LINK
After reading this article, why am I suddenly pleased that so many Demcratic politicians have degrees in law rather than in medicine?
Dean's views on the death penalty don't worry me as I have long ago understood the political reality and expected the expediency of switiching positions on the death penalty debate in this country (see Clinton), but Dean's views on defendants and legal aid, particularly as someone who has worked in legal aid, are disturbing. And given his views on defendant rights - I am not sure I would excuse or dismiss Dean's post-9/11 civil rights comments as just emotional bluster.
Thanks to dieharddem for pointing me to this article.
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