For Dems only.

[Soxy]

Yeah, I'm familiar with the assorted marinated-meats-cooked-on-a-skewer wonder of speidies courtessy of a NY friend, but I missed the news item too.

Our congressman was on the Colbert Report last night for his "Better Know a District" series.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Our congressman was on the Colbert Report last night for his "Better Know a District" series.

 

Very cool, that definitely means you have made it when you're on Colbert!

 

A close scientist friend of mine one one of the $ half-million MacArthur "Genius" grants this past year, which she thought was pretty cool and all, but her big thrill was when Colbert mentioned her by name the next night on a segment he called "So Who's Not Honoring Me Now"

[Balta1701]

March 11, 2007

Jodi Kantor

The New York Times

9 West 43rd Street

New York,

New York 10036-3959

 

Dear Jodi:

 

Thank you for engaging in one of the biggest misrepresentations of the truth I have ever seen in sixty-five years. You sat and shared with me for two hours. You told me you were doing a “Spiritual Biography” of Senator Barack Obama. For two hours, I shared with you how I thought he was the most principled individual in public service that I have ever met.

 

For two hours, I talked with you about how idealistic he was. For two hours I shared with you what a genuine human being he was. I told you how incredible he was as a man who was an African American in public service, and as a man who refused to announce his candidacy for President until Carol Moseley Braun indicated one way or the other whether or not she was going to run.

 

I told you what a dreamer he was. I told you how idealistic he was. We talked about how refreshing it would be for someone who knew about Islam to be in the Oval Office. Your own question to me was, Didn’t I think it would be incredible to have somebody in the Oval Office who not only knew about Muslims, but had living and breathing Muslims in his own family? I told you how important it would be to have a man who not only knew the difference between Shiites and Sunnis prior to 9/11/01 in the Oval Office, but also how important it would be to have a man who knew what Sufism was; a man who understood that there were different branches of Judaism; a man who knew the difference between Hasidic Jews, Orthodox Jews, Conservative Jews and Reformed Jews; and a man who was a devout Christian, but who did not prejudge others because they believed something other than what he believed.

 

I talked about how rare it was to meet a man whose Christianity was not just “in word only.” I talked about Barack being a person who lived his faith and did not argue his faith. I talked about Barack as a person who did not draw doctrinal lines in the sand nor consign other people to hell if they did not believe what he believed.

 

Out of a two-hour conversation with you about Barack’s spiritual journey and my protesting to you that I had not shaped him nor formed him, that I had not mentored him or made him the man he was, even though I would love to take that credit, you did not print any of that. When I told you, using one of your own Jewish stories from the Hebrew Bible as to how God asked Moses, “What is that in your hand?,” that Barack was like that when I met him. Barack had it “in his hand.” Barack had in his grasp a uniqueness in terms of his spiritual development that one is hard put to find in the 21st century, and you did not print that.

 

As I was just starting to say a moment ago, Jodi, out of two hours of conversation I spent approximately five to seven minutes on Barack’s taking advice from one of his trusted campaign people and deeming it unwise to make me the media spotlight on the day of his announcing his candidacy for the Presidency and what do you print? You and your editor proceeded to present to the general public a snippet, a printed “sound byte” and a titillating and tantalizing article about his disinviting me to the Invocation on the day of his announcing his candidacy.

 

I have never been exposed to that kind of duplicitous behavior before, and I want to write you publicly to let you know that I do not approve of it and will not be party to any further smearing of the name, the reputation, the integrity or the character of perhaps this nation’s first (and maybe even only) honest candidate offering himself for public service as the person to occupy the Oval Office.

 

Your editor is a sensationalist. For you to even mention that makes me doubt your credibility, and I am looking forward to see how you are going to butcher what else I had to say concerning Senator Obama’s “Spiritual Biography.” Our Conference Minister, the Reverend Jane Fisler Hoffman, a white woman who belongs to a Black church that Hannity of “Hannity and Colmes” is trying to trash, set the record straight for you in terms of who I am and in terms of who we are as the church to which Barack has belonged for over twenty years.

 

The president of our denomination, the Reverend John Thomas, has offered to try to help you clarify in your confused head what Trinity Church is even though you spent the entire weekend with us setting me up to interview me for what turned out to be a smear of the Senator; and yet The New York Times continues to roll on making the truth what it wants to be the truth. I do not remember reading in your article that Barack had apologized for listening to that bad information and bad advice. Did I miss it? Or did your editor cut it out? Either way, you do not have to worry about hearing anything else from me for you to edit or “spin” because you are more interested in journalism than in truth.

 

Forgive me for having a momentary lapse. I forgot that The New York Times was leading the bandwagon in trumpeting why it is we should have gone into an illegal war. The New York Times became George Bush and the Republican Party’s national “blog.” The New York Times played a role in the outing of Valerie Plame. I do not know why I thought The New York Times had actually repented and was going to exhibit a different kind of behavior.

 

Maybe it was my faith in the Jewish Holy Day of Roshashana. Maybe it was my being caught up in the euphoria of the Season of Lent; but whatever it is or was, I was sadly mistaken. There is no repentance on the part of The New York Times. There is no integrity when it comes to The Times. You should do well with that paper, Jodi. You looked me straight in my face and told me a lie!

 

Sincerely and respectfully yours,

Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. ,

Senior Pastor

Trinity United Church of Christ

[Soxy]

So, every time I see Tony snow I always think, who the heck does he remind me of? It's seriously been driving me crazy for the last few weeks. But then, it hit me. The Janitor from Scrubs. I think they look alike and, well, I think their delightful demeanor is also shared. For serious guys.

[NorthSideSox72]

Wow. So that was published in Op Ed of NYT then?

 

I think this points out what I've been trying to say here for some time. The media is going downhill not as a matter of political bias, but as a matter of trashing the basic principles of good journalism in favor of sensationalism. Polarity and conflict sell better. And as newspapers struggle to make money, they succumb to those base tools. How embarrasing for them.

[Balta1701]

Wow. So that was published in Op Ed of NYT then?

 

I think this points out what I've been trying to say here for some time. The media is going downhill not as a matter of political bias, but as a matter of trashing the basic principles of good journalism in favor of sensationalism. Polarity and conflict sell better. And as newspapers struggle to make money, they succumb to those base tools. How embarrasing for them.

No, that was not printed in the NYT. It was an angry letter to them in regards to something that they did print a few weeks ago. I'm pretty sure this is the article he's writing about...one of the attempted NYT hatchet jobs on Barack already. Since it's behind the TimeSelect wall, I'll be nice and post it...just don't tell anyone. Compare this to his description of the interview...and yeah. Damn liberal media.

Disinvitation By Obama Is Criticized

 

By JODI KANTOR; PATRICK HEALY CONTRIBUTED REPORTING FROM WASHINGTON.

Published: March 6, 2007

 

The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., senior pastor of the popular Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and spiritual mentor to Senator Barack Obama, thought he knew what he would be doing on Feb. 10, the day of Senator Obama's presidential announcement.

 

After all, back in January, Mr. Obama had asked Mr. Wright if he would begin the event by delivering a public invocation.

 

But Mr. Wright said Mr. Obama called him the night before the Feb. 10 announcement and rescinded the invitation to give the invocation.

 

''Fifteen minutes before Shabbos I get a call from Barack,'' Mr. Wright said in an interview on Monday, recalling that he was at an interfaith conference at the time. ''One of his members had talked him into uninviting me,'' Mr. Wright said, referring to Mr. Obama's campaign advisers.

 

Some black leaders are questioning Mr. Obama's decision to distance his campaign from Mr. Wright because of the campaign's apparent fear of criticism over Mr. Wright's teachings, which some say are overly Afrocentric to the point of excluding whites.

 

Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, said the campaign disinvited Mr. Wright because it did not want the church to face negative attention. Mr. Wright did however, attend the announcement and prayed with Mr. Obama beforehand.

 

''Senator Obama is proud of his pastor and his church, but because of the type of attention it was receiving on blogs and conservative talk shows, he decided to avoid having statements and beliefs being used out of context and forcing the entire church to defend itself,'' Mr. Burton said.

 

Instead, Mr. Obama asked Mr. Wright's successor as pastor at Trinity, the Rev. Otis Moss III, to speak. Mr. Moss declined.

 

In recent weeks, word of Mr. Obama's treatment of Mr. Wright has reached black leaders like the Rev. Al Sharpton and given them pause.

 

''I have not discussed this with Senator Obama in detail, but I can see why callers of mine and other clergymen would be concerned, because the issue is standing by your own pastor,'' Mr. Sharpton said.

 

Mr. Wright's church, the 8,000-member Trinity United Church of Christ, is considered mainstream -- Oprah Winfrey has attended services, and many members are prominent black professionals. But the church is also more Afrocentric and politically active than standard black congregations.

 

Mr. Wright helped organize the 1995 Million Man March on Washington and along with other United Church of Christ ministers was one of the first black religious leaders to protest apartheid and welcome gay and lesbian worshippers.

 

Since Mr. Obama made his presidential ambitions clear, conservatives have drawn attention to his close relationship to Mr. Wright and to the church's emphasis on black empowerment. Tucker Carlson of MSNBC called the precepts ''racially exclusive'' and ''wrong.'' Last week, on the Fox News program ''Hannity & Colmes,'' Erik Rush, a conservative columnist, called the church ''quite cultish, quite separatist.''

 

In Monday's interview, Mr. Wright expressed disappointment but no surprise that Mr. Obama might try to play down their connection.

 

''When his enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli'' to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, Mr. Wright recalled, ''with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell.'' Mr. Wright added that his trip implied no endorsement of either Louis Farrakhan's views or Qaddafi's.

 

Mr. Wright said that in the phone conversation in which Mr. Obama disinvited him from a role in the announcement, Mr. Obama cited an article in Rolling Stone, ''The Radical Roots of Barack Obama.''

 

According to the pastor, Mr. Obama then told him, ''You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we've decided is that it's best for you not to be out there in public.''

[kapkomet]

Wow, so no one in the Democratic Party could possibly ;) ;) say anything bad about Obama?

[NorthSideSox72]

No, that was not printed in the NYT. It was an angry letter to them in regards to something that they did print a few weeks ago. I'm pretty sure this is the article he's writing about...one of the attempted NYT hatchet jobs on Barack already. Since it's behind the TimeSelect wall, I'll be nice and post it...just don't tell anyone. Compare this to his description of the interview...and yeah. Damn liberal media.

I was aware it was a response, I just didn't know if the response you posted was ALSO in the NYT after the fact (there was no link or source).

[Balta1701]

With one of my usual topic switches...

 

According to that same NYT, both the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State spent January arguing that it was time to close down the prison at Gitmo.

 

The article says they were overruled by...you guessed it...a combination of the AG and the VP.

[Balta1701]

Torrential rains wiped out a quarter of the U.S.' intercontinental ballistic missile interceptors in Ft. Greely, Alaska last summer -- right when North Korea was preparing to carry out an advanced missile launch, according to documents obtained by the Project On Government Oversight.

 

Bmdoalaskasilobg "The flooding occurred during a three-week period between the end of June and early July 2006," POGO notes, in a statement. "The flooding damaged 25% of the U.S. interceptor missiles’ launch capability. These silos house the interceptor missiles that would be used to attempt to intercept a missile aimed at the United States. No interceptors were in the flooded silos."

 

An internal assessment by Boeing, the silos' chief contractor, shows seven flooded interceptor silos, out of the 26 at Ft. Greely. Two silos have more than 62 feet of water; a third has more than 50. Estimated times of repair range from four to 14 months. Boxcar like structures called Silo Interface Vaults (SIVs), adjacent to the interceptor silos, were also flooded, "two of them by as much as 15 feet of water," POGO says. "Three SIVs must have all electronic and mechanical systems replaced. Four other SIVs have partial damage. One SIV was so damaged that it shifted vertically in the ground like a house shifting off its foundation." It's a strange turn of events, considering "an environmental impact study of the facilities at Ft. Greely notes there is 'little rainfall in the region.'"

About $10 billion a year we're spending on this thing. And it can't take rain.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Wow. Dennis Kucinich's wife is hawt.

 

That is all.

[kapkomet]

Wow. Dennis Kucinich's wife is hawt.

 

That is all.

O RLY?

 

/waits

[mr_genius]

O RLY?

 

/waits

 

meh

 

[FlaSoxxJim]

O RLY?

 

/waits

 

SO RLY!

 

Dennis, You Dog!

 

meh

 

 

Meh, yourself.

 

[NorthSideSox72]

SO RLY!

 

Dennis, You Dog!

Meh, yourself.

 

Jeez, she's like a foot taller than he is.

[Rex Kickass]

I think Emmanuel Lewis may be a foot taller than he is.

[Soxy]

From yesterday's Trib.

Teaser: Already, experiments have shown that when people are reminded of their own deaths, they become more patriotic, more conservative, more family-oriented, more security-minded.

[Balta1701]

But there are signs of progress everywhere. ... I am confident that given the opportunity, we can have success. The consequences of failure are catastrophic because if we come home, bin Laden and Zarqawi, they are going to follow us.”

John McCain, yesterday.

[NorthSideSox72]

John McCain, yesterday.

if he's referring to our "war on terror" in general, he may be right. But if he's equating leaving Iraq with failure, then he needs to get his head out of his butt.

[Balta1701]

if he's referring to our "war on terror" in general, he may be right. But if he's equating leaving Iraq with failure, then he needs to get his head out of his butt.

Pay attention to the names.

[NorthSideSox72]

Pay attention to the names.

Heh. Got me. I forgot Zarqawi was dead.

[Balta1701]

Heh. Got me. I forgot Zarqawi was dead.

That makes you qualified to run for the Republican nomination. Good luck!

[jackie hayes]

From the Tribune, Iraqi police are standing up:

BAGHDAD -- Shiite militants and police enraged by massive truck bombings in Tal Afar went on a revenge spree against Sunni residents in the northwestern town Wednesday, killing as many as 60 people, officials said.

Article -- Police Gun Down Dozens Over Iraq Blasts

[Balta1701]

I'm starting to think Mr. McCain's whole campaign is having mental issues. Link.

Visitors to Sen. John McCain's MySpace page were likely surprised Tuesday by a statement that the Senator has reversed his position on gay marriage and "come out in full support of gay marriage ... particularly marriage between passionate females." Most won't be surprised that the statement was apparently posted as a prank.

 

The co-founder of an online news site, who said he designed the MySpace template used for McCain's page, claimed responsibility for changing the site. Mike Davidson, cofounder of Newsvine, said on his Web site that he commandeered the MySpace page because McCain's office used a design template of his without providing him credit. Davidson also said his imagery was used on the page and his server is used serve up McCain's MySpace images.

 

Neither a representative from McCain's office or Davidson could be reached for comment. The altered page was on MySpace from about noon to 1 p.m. EDT.

 

"Every time someone visits the McCain MySpace page, my bandwidth is being used to deliver part of the page!" Davidson noted on the Newsvine site. "I think the idea of politicians setting up MySpace pages and pretending to actually use them is a bit disingenuous, so I figured it was time to play a little prank."

 

Because McCain's office was using Davidson's template he was able to replace a sample image - being used by McCain's page - with the one with the statement on gay marriage.

 

"So, the only thing necessary to effectively commandeer McCain's page with my own messaging was to simply replace my own sample image on my server with a newly created sample on my server," Davidson noted. "No server but my own was touched and no laws were broken. The immaculate hack."

[Balta1701]

Excellent op-ed on the whole "Voter fraud" charade that keeps permeating the media these days.

Allegations of voter fraud -- someone sneaking into the polls to cast an illicit vote -- have been pushed in recent years by partisans seeking to justify proof-of-citizenship and other restrictive ID requirements as a condition of voting. Scare stories abound on the Internet and on editorial pages, and they quickly become accepted wisdom.

 

But the notion of widespread voter fraud, as these prosecutors found out, is itself a fraud. Firing a prosecutor for failing to find wide voter fraud is like firing a park ranger for failing to find Sasquatch. Where fraud exists, of course, it should be prosecuted and punished. (And politicians have been stuffing ballot boxes and buying votes since senators wore togas; Lyndon Johnson won a 1948 Senate race after his partisans famously "found" a box of votes well after the election.) Yet evidence of actual fraud by individual voters is painfully skimpy.

 

Before and after every close election, politicians and pundits proclaim: The dead are voting, foreigners are voting, people are voting twice. On closer examination, though, most such allegations don't pan out. Consider a list of supposedly dead voters in Upstate New York that was much touted last October. Where reporters looked into names on the list, it turned out that the voters were, to quote Monty Python, "not dead yet."

 

Or consider Washington state, where McKay closely watched the photo-finish gubernatorial election of 2004. A challenge to ostensibly noncitizen voters was lodged in April 2005 on the questionable basis of "foreign-sounding names." After an election there last year in which more than 2 million votes were cast, following much controversy, only one ballot ended up under suspicion for double-voting. That makes sense. A person casting two votes risks jail time and a fine for minimal gain. Proven voter fraud, statistically, happens about as often as death by lightning strike.

 

...

Identification requirements often sound simple. But some types of paperwork simply aren't available to many Americans. We saw this with the new Medicaid proof-of-citizenship requirement, which led to benefits being cut off for many longtime citizens. Some states insist that voters provide photo IDs such as driver's licenses. But at least 11 percent of voting-age Americans, disproportionately elderly and minority voters, lack the necessary papers. Required documentation such as naturalization paperwork can cost as much as $200. By contrast, when the poll tax was declared unconstitutional in 1966, it was $1.50 ($8.97 in 2007 dollars).

 

Congress should use this controversy as an opportunity to address true issues of voter protection. Experts have concluded that the most significant threat of fraud comes from electronic voting systems, now used by 80 percent of voters. Legislation introduced by Reps. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.) and Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) would require a voter-verified record along with random audits to double-check against tampering. It would also bar wireless components from machines that could allow a hacker using a PDA to stage an attack. Lawmakers should also immediately stop pushing ID measures that would turn away legitimate voters.