Uncategorized – Page 32

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Published on September 16, 2006

Meet The New Punditocracy, Just Like The Old Punditocracy

. I see that some of the Kool Kidz got a Guardian mention. But only the extra-special ones:

When historians come to write the definitive account of the rise of the liberal blog in the US, it is quite possible they will identify a small meeting in Harlem this week as a tipping point. The gathering looked unremarkable enough, a group of about 20 men and women sitting round a boardroom table, but it represented something highly significant.

The people assembled were the elite, if that’s not a contradiction in terms, of the Democrat-leaning blogosphere. And the man at the centre was Bill Clinton.

Yes, indeed, the Kool Kidz got to meet to meet the Big Dog, in his Harlem, NY office no less. Yay for the progressive, inclusive blogging future! The new elite, eh? Coool.

But… they’re all white! And middle aged! Just fancy that. Well, one might be Hispanic if you squint, but that’s nearly white, so that’s OK, phew, they nearly got caught being equable there.

Other, less hideously caucasian and coincidentally non-Hillary supporting bloggers who weren’t invited are understandably not very happy, notably Liza at Culture Kitchen:

To Peter Daou and the DailyKos crowd, there are no black bloggers in New York City or Harlem

Submitted by liza on 15 September, 2006 – 12:17.

Blogosphere Blogs Politics Race Racism Triangulation

I honestly do not know what to make of this.

These are the 20 liberal bloggers that met with Bill Clinton in Harlem. As you can see, not one of them is black or latino.

Via Republic of T.

This photo proves that It’s official : Hillary to run for President, so she kills the Liberal Blogosphere first.

I am just shocked at the glee with which Peter Daou has shown his disrespect for Pam Spaulding, Steve Gilliard, Louis Pagan, Chris Rabb, Earl Dunovant and me when he decided to not invite neither of us, or for that matter, any other black or latino bloggers.

Yes, Steve Gilliard, Pam Spaulding, and me have been vocal about Hillary’s run for the presidency. You’d think though our opinions would be given the weight they deserve within the blogosphere itself –let’s not even talk about the Clintonites or Washington.

Which is why I stand by what I said : In order for Hillary Clinton to run for president, she will do anything and everything to squash the voices of dissent raised through the progressive netroots. Stuffing their faces with lunch is one tasty way to go about it.

The more pressing question remains :

What does it mean though that there are 20 bloggers invited to this lunch and not one is black or latino? What does it mean for this group of bloggers to be patting themselves on the backs for being with Clinton when they are all in Harlem and not one of them is a person of color? What does it mean for these people to be there and have not one of them raise this issue in their blogs? Feministing

Seeing the forest
Liberal Oasis
AmericaBlog

Mahablog

MyDD

The Carpet Bagger Report
TalkLeft

DailyKos

FireDogLake

Well, why haven’t they spoken up? The Democratic power structure is not stupid and has cleverly picked on some (though I hasten to add not all the 20 can be so characterised) of the most reformist, the most likely to suck up to power and the most personally ambitious of the supposed ‘left’ bloggers to attend their all-white lovefesr. Same old same old – divide and conquer, don’t consult the competition, co-opt it.

It’s been said that one of the advantages of the blogosphere is that no-one can tell your race or sex. Well, the Clinton event organisers seem to have managed it allright.

Do I think the individual bloggers are racist or elitist? No, probably not, though there are those who could do with a bit of assumption-challenging, as could most of us. It’s no shame to be played by the flattery and blandishments of a smooth political operator like Clinton. Many have been and will be again, he’s a pro.

What is a shame is not to speak up about it when it’s pointed out to you that what you’ve been involved in is an event that just upholds the white-privilege status quo. Did anyone attending even enquire about the diversity, or lack of it, of the invitees?

But then why would you? Wow, Clinton wanted to meet you. You’ve arrived. It’s all gravy now.

Torture A-OK – Official

Published on September 16, 20061 Comment

“My husband doesn’t wish he was Jack Bauer.
He wishes I was Jack Bauer.”

Washington Post:

“…the administration no longer conceals what it wants. It wants authorization for the CIA to hide detainees in overseas prisons where even the International Committee of the Red Cross won’t have access. It wants permission to interrogate those detainees with abusive practices that in the past have included induced hypothermia and “waterboarding,” or simulated drowning. And it wants the right to try such detainees, and perhaps sentence them to death, on the basis of evidence that the defendants cannot see and that may have been extracted during those abusive interrogation sessions.

Something I’ve been wondering: has this administration started issuing its smaller fry, the apparatchiks, spies and torturers, with cyanide pills yet? It might be wise to do so.

US torture protege Augusto Pinochet, now in his dotage, had his immunity from prosecution removed this week. Old as he is, he’ll face the music in some way for what he did in Chile. I’ve no doubt Bush & Cheney didn’t miss that report.

CIA interrogators are having their indemnity insurance paid by the government because they’ll need their own private lawyers when they’re put on trial; the US Justice department (prop. A. Gonzales) won’t be able to defend them. Why? Because its senior lawyers’ll be in the dock too.

It’s plain that Bushco and everyone associated with them know damned well that a reckoning is coming, so they’re making preparations. This frantic strong-arming of torture legislation through Congress is one of them. the WH desperately trying to stave off the evil day when nemesis calls by changing the law so that what they’ve done and what they continue to do is legal.

They know they won’t get away with that sort of thing for much longer, but desperation is the spur for everything they do now and so the steps they have to take get more and more outrageous and unconstitutional. It has to come to a crisis.

They must be feeling this desperation inside the beltway. I expect, too, that Ken Lay’s recent sudden death gave many in DC Republican circles pause to reconsider their position should the whole Republican edifice, as it must eventually from its own corrupt momentum, come tumbling down.

I wonder which eventuality has the members of this administration lying awake fretting at night – the prospect of a very public trial, or dying painlessly and thus helping Bush escape justice?

Bush, Cheney, Addington, Yoo and Gonzales – who as we know are pure sociopaths – never worry at all, but there are many others in the administration, government and armed forces, Good Germans all, who went along with them through sheer expedience and self-interest. Now they’re scared.

It’s their fear and desperation that’s pushing Bush & Cheney to these extremes.

Well, that and Bush and Cheney’s sick fixation with homoerotic sexual violence and their untrammelled lust for power.

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Published on September 15, 2006

How Ambitious Is Gordon Brown?

Ruthlessly ambitious enough to use the death of his own child to advance his political career:

The Independent
‘She died in our arms’ – Brown on his daughter

By Andrew Grice, Political Editor
Published: 15 September 2006

A tearful Gordon Brown has spoken at length about the death of his “beautiful” baby daughter Jennifer Jane four years ago.

His emotional interview suggests that the Chancellor, a notoriously private man, has decided to “open up” to display his human side to both the Labour Party and the wider public. In the past, he has distanced himself from what his allies have described as Tony Blair’s “touchy-feely stuff” .

In a long interview with Sky News, Mr Brown explained: “The public need to know who you are. The public need to know where you came from.”

[…]

Is this really the sort of person who should lead a country or a party? A man who’d make such a calculated decision to expose his and his partmer’s most private emotional moments to the the prurient press and public, purely to further his own personal advantage and lust for power?

Not that Brown would or could ever admit that this is all about his pride and ambition. He of course says that all this tortured soul-baring is done entirely for the greater good of humanity. How very noble of him. The fact there’s a leadership fight on is of course just coincidence. Scandalous to suggest anything else.

He said the memory of Jennifer had inspired he and his wife, Sarah, to help make life better for others, “so some good can come out of the tragedy”.

Oy, pass the sickbag.

Other than the obvious cosmetic and circumstantial differences and a couple of ridiculous seersucker suits I see little in his ambitious and prideful sanctimoniousness to separate Gordon Brown from that well-known US political dead baby and family pimper Ricky Santorum. The only difference is in degree.

Father First, Senator Second

For Rick Santorum, Politics Could Hardly Get More Personal

By Mark Leibovich

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, April 18, 2005; Page C01

In his Senate office, on a shelf next to an autographed baseball, Sen. Rick Santorum keeps a framed photo of his son Gabriel Michael, the fourth of his seven children. Named for two archangels, Gabriel Michael was born prematurely, at 20 weeks, on Oct. 11, 1996, and lived two hours outside the womb.

Upon their son’s death, Rick and Karen Santorum opted not to bring his body to a funeral home. Instead, they bundled him in a blanket and drove him to Karen’s parents’ home in Pittsburgh. There, they spent several hours kissing and cuddling Gabriel with his three siblings, ages 6, 4 and 1 1/2. They took photos, sang lullabies in his ear and held a private Mass.

“That’s my little guy,” Santorum says, pointing to the photo of Gabriel, in which his tiny physique is framed by his father’s hand. The senator often speaks of his late son in the present tense.

It’s no co-incidence that the Brown interview took place on Sky News, a wholly owned subsidiary of US citizen Rupert Murdoch’s News International Corp.

Murdoch, no commercial fool, knows soapy sanctimony sells – he’s built a whole worldwide media empire on it. The Murdoch-orchestrated morphing of UK into US politics continues apace with this calculated bit of bathos, demeaning the public discourse and reducing debate to National Enquirer-style headlines and ssentimental soundbites – not that this absolves Brown in any way. He knows damned well what Murdoch is about and he also knows he needs the Murdoch press’ support for the leadership, hence this Santorumesque emotional striptease.

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Published on September 15, 2006

Wormtongue Strikes Again

Proof, as if much more were needed, that Karl Rove can spin anything:

It was billed as a device that would change the world, with the cities of the future designed around its revolutionary capabilities.

But the Segway electric scooter now seems to be heading the way of the Sinclair C5, after its manufacturers announced that all 23,500 models would be recalled today because of a software problem that causes it to throw off its riders.

Read more: Transport, Technology, Sinclair, Segway, Recall, Bush, Rove, Spin

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Published on September 15, 2006

Friday Cat Blogging

Find the kitten…

Read more: Friday cat blogging, Cats, Kittens