Accountability

Last night I saw a flurry of emails blanket my inbox with a series of "unbelieavable", "still in shock" and the not so occasional "I'm angry".

I had spent most of the afternoon trying to sort out my thoughts fast enough for an Op/Ed, and I would always come back to the misgivings I've had since he took office a little over a year ago. That Eliot Spitzer's problem and weakness has always been his success because he never really needed anything other than a vote from you or me to get elected.

Eliot Spitzer didn't really need a million New Yorkers giving $5 or $10 donations to his campaign to get elected. He never needed to learn how to get people out on the streets to support his campaign to get him elected. He never needed to swallow his pride and shut up and take criticism from his own base in order to gain political influence. And he certainly never had to pound the pavement and get people out on election day to make sure people would get out of their homes and offices to cast a vote.

"The power to end the war is in the people's voices, not in Congress' ability to fund the war".
John Edwards

I just got off a conference call between John Edwards and several members of the blogosphere.

John Edwards has just launched an initiative to end the war in Iraq. With Support The Troops, End The War, Edwards is asking Americans to reclaim patriotism from the Bush Administration on this Memorial Day by holding events all across the country that show We The People's support of the troops by demanding an end of the war :

Take Action May 26th, 27th, 28th
As citizens, we honor and support our troops for their service and sacrifice.

As Americans, we are blessed by that sacrifice and support, which keeps us safe and keeps us strong.

As patriots, we call on our government to support our troops in the most important way it can - by ending this war and bringing them home.

This Memorial Day weekend, we will all take responsibility for the country we love and the men and women who protect it. We will volunteer, we will pray, and we will speak out. Each of us has a responsibility to act, a duty to our troops and to each other. Support the troops. End the war.

In the Q&A Arianna Huffington asked if he was going to ask other Democrats in Congress to put pressure on those who didn't vote against Bush's veto. He said that, indeed, that was part of the strategy of this call to action. He has been running ads in DC focused on members of Congress; yet the second veto makes it clear that unless the American people take the war into their own hands, we will continue to have the political push and pull going on between Congress and the White House.

Press Release after the jump

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This year I have received more invitations to inauguration parties than I can count. Couldn't make any of them. Well, I could have made Hakeem Jeffries' Brooklyn party, but I didn't think it quite appropriate.

Last night, though, I got just the slightest taste of the energy that must permeate such parties. Last night was the annual Independent Neighborhood Democrats party, this year hosted by District Leader Jo Anne Simon. Two of our local Congress Critters were there and the excitement they were giving off was palpable!

IND throws a good party. They are dessert parties held at 5:30 PM, leading to essentially dessert coming before dinner for us, but awkward timing aside, everything was great! Good turnout, good food and good energy.

For those who have followed my past posts on IND you know that this year was a very divisive one. The NY-11 Congressional primary divided the club pretty much in three and led to some very heated arguements and late night balloting for endorsements (Note to IND: instant runoff voting really works and makes voting far more efficient so that those of us with small children can get home at a reasonable time!).

Members of all three factions were there last night (though none of the candidates who sparked the battles) all amicably eating and anticipating a good year. Shows how we can come together after the storm and move on. They even seem to have forgiven me my kiss-and-tell blogging about the endoresement meetings!

It's an article of faith among many Progressive activists that electronic voting machines are a thing of evil, that these machines are somehow programmed to steal votes from Democrats, and that any and all Democratic election losses are directly attributable to this electronic menace. And who knows, this contention may very well be accurate.

The problem with this perception is the same as that afflicting the arguments of so-called "Intelligent Design" advocates, namely that faith-based assumptions rest on thin evidentiary reeds. Despite what is alleged to be a massive, nationwide and ongoing fraud that would constitute a federal crime, no successful court case has yet been brought, let alone litigated successfully, that would support the assertions of the Dieboldistas. Now, this may be because everyone is in on the conspiracy; but the more natural conclusion, and one more in line with Occam's Razor, is that this vast conspiracy does not exist. The test may very well be the litigation underway over the contested results in Fl-13. But as things stand today, the verified-voting crowd is setting up an argument which is essentially not falsifiable – "votes are being stolen in ways we can't see or verify", and that should, in my mind, offend the reality-based community.

My personal argument with the Dieboldistas is this: there is, as noted, a bit of a disparity between the fervor with which they advance their claims, and the underlying evidentiary record; and more importantly, by engaging in a small-bore faith-based conspiracy theory, they're discrediting and hindering a realization that should be manifest to everyone, namely that our system of elections is deeply and perhaps irredeemably flawed. I'd go further and say that the Diebold crowd, by positing fraud as the proximate cause of every problem with the electoral process, weakens the case that must be made for fixing the system itself. Ironically, they argue for fraud in exactly the same way that, as noted, advocates of "Intelligent Design" argue for their designer, as the root default cause that explains everything. Tin foil hats are fashionable across the political spectrum, it seems.

Americans woke up and realized their government had been lying to them for 6 years. They saw the depth of Republican lies and corruption and they voted accordingly.

The Republicans forgot a very important lesson:

“You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.”

--Abraham Lincoln, the best Republican President

Hacking Democracy on Google Video

UPDATE!
A major hat tip to Prometheus6.

Our own Michael is upset that I have published these because he feels they will scare people away from voting. I see the issue differently : Better to go armed with a heavy dose of skepticism and information than to go blinding trusting the current system to protect your right to vote.

What do you think?

This is not a reason not to vote. This is a reason for you, as a citizen, to protect your right to vote and be counted.

If you are going to have a Diebold machine, I honestly feel you should find out if you can go with a paper ballot. Why? Computer engineers not only have demonstrated how easy it is to hack Diebold Voting Machines; they also demonstrated how it's possible to do so without leaving a trace.

Here are the main findings of their experiment :

1. Malicious software running on a single voting machine can steal votes with little if any risk of detection. The malicious software can modify all of the records, audit logs, and counters kept by the voting machine, so that even careful forensic examination of these records will find nothing amiss. We have constructed demonstration software that carries out this vote-stealing attack.

2. Anyone who has physical access to a voting machine, or to a memory card that will later be inserted into a machine, can install said malicious software using a simple method that takes as little as one minute. In practice, poll workers and others often have unsupervised access to the machines.

3. AccuVote-TS machines are susceptible to voting-machine viruses — computer viruses that can spread malicious software automatically and invisibly from machine to machine during normal pre- and post-election activity. We have constructed a demonstration virus that spreads in this way, installing our demonstration vote-stealing program on every machine it infects.

4. While some of these problems can be eliminated by improving Diebold's software, others cannot be remedied without replacing the machines' hardware. Changes to election procedures would also be required to ensure security.

Obviate some (not all) of the tin-hat foolery interspersed by the people of Pluri Media Group (no relationship, by the way, with ePubluribus Media), and what you get is a solid Lou Dobbs special report on how to steal elections this coming Tuesday.

The kicker? "Unfortunately for democracy, there is no paper trail with the new electronic voting machines, so a recount is impossible".

Republican corruption is becoming so blatant that even Congressional Republicans are deciding not to block an investigation of it. Jack Abramoff may be in jail, but the Republican scandals surrounding his empire of sleaze continue to grow.

From Salon.com:

Senate Questions Nonprofits' Tax Status

- - - - - - - - - - - -

By JOHN HEILPRIN Associated Press Writer

October 12,2006 | WASHINGTON -- Five nonprofit groups, including one of President Bush's biggest supporters, may have broken tax laws and put their tax-exempt status at risk by helping convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a Senate Finance Committee report concludes.

The 600-page report issued Thursday was prepared by the committee's Democratic staff. Majority Republicans, however, had agreed to its release and joined with Democrats in issuing subpoenas for documents and e-mails cited in the report.

It has become HIGHLY unusual for the Republicans to allow this kind of honest investigation of corruption. They have generally used their domination of both houses of Congress to block all Congressional investigation of Republicans. And, more often than not, they have covered up for their cronies like they did for six years after finding out about Foley's solicitation of sex from minors. So this is a real change for Republicans and shows that even they can't stop the public from knowning what is going on within their own ranks.

Israel just went through a highly contentious war, and many of its citizens are questioning the way the war was conducted. Here in America, those dissidents would merely be intimidated, denegrated and ignored. In Israel, those dissidents have forced an actual investigation of the government.
From Guysen Israel News:

Ehud Olmert finally succumbed to public pressure. The former judge Eliyahu Vinograd will head the commission of inquiry into the handling of the war in Lebanon. He will have the power to summon witnesses and grant them immunity...

Former Judge Eliyahu Vinograd will head the commission of inquiry into the handling of the war. His appointment was approved by the Attorney General Meni Mazus this afternoon and will be submitted for government approval on Sunday. (Guysen.Israël.News)
Ehud Olmert finally succumbed to public pressure and dismissed former Mossad head, Nahum Admoni who had been appointed to the position. However he will remain on the commission.

Now why can't we get a REAL investigation of the way Bush and Co. have conducted the Iraq Fiasco?

Twenty two years after losing his parents and 5 siblings to Union Carbide's criminal negligance at Bhopal, India, activist Sunil Kumar Verma has committed suicide after fighting for years with paranoid schizophrenia an illness which affected many Bhopal survivors.

Meanwhile, Union Carbide and its successor, Dow Chemical, has largely gotten off scott free.

From the International Capaign for Justice in Bhopal:

On the night of Dec. 2nd and 3rd, 1984, a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, began leaking 27 tons of the deadly gas methyl isocyanate. None of the six safety systems designed to contain such a leak were operational, allowing the gas to spread throughout the city of Bhopal.[1] Half a million people were exposed to the gas and 20,000 have died to date as a result of their exposure. More than 120,000 people still suffer from ailments caused by the accident and the subsequent pollution at the plant site. These ailments include blindness, extreme difficulty in breathing, and gynecological disorders. The site has never been properly cleaned up and it continues to poison the residents of Bhopal. In 1999, local groundwater and wellwater testing near the site of the accident revealed mercury at levels between 20,000 and 6 million times those expected. Cancer and brain-damage- and birth-defect-causing chemicals were found in the water; trichloroethene, a chemical that has been shown to impair fetal development, was found at levels 50 times higher than EPA safety limits.[2]Testing published in a 2002 report revealed poisons such as 1,3,5 trichlorobenzene, dichloromethane, chloroform, lead and mercury in the breast milk of nursing women.[3] In 2001, Michigan-based chemical corporation Dow Chemical purchased Union Carbide, thereby acquiring its assets and liabilities. However Dow Chemical has steadfastly refused to clean up the site, provide safe drinking water, compensate the victims, or disclose the composition of the gas leak, information that doctors could use to properly treat the victims.

First off, a hearty congratulations to Ned Lamont. I didn't think he would pull it off. But he did. Congratulations as well to the many people on and off line who made Lamont's win possible.

But I honestly think many people have been unfair to Joe Lieberman. He is not and never has been like Zell Miller. Zell Miller's entire voting record was right in line with the most rabidly right wing Republican. He was in every way a nut case.

Lieberman's political career may now be dead. Perhaps even more so if he runs as an Ind and the Democratic Party does the right thing and turns its back on him. Maybe his career will survive, but I don't think so. But I think we should be fair to Lieberman.

Lieberman, more than many Democrats, was a man of conviction and strong beliefs. This affected how he viewed politics. He viewed politics as a conservative, religious man, yet managed to maintain (in sharp contrast to Zell) a reasonable voting record on choice, the environment and labor, at least according to LCV, NARAL and AFL-CIO. He was on our side in many fights throughout his career. And when he wasn't on our side it wasn't because he was triangulating. It was because he believed that what he was doing was the correct thing to do. I admit that I admire that about Lieberman. He did what he thought was right.

Not long ago I was chided for targeting Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio. I considered him a target while the person who chided me said he was unassailable, too hard to defeat.

Well, once again events prove that no politician is safe if they are corrupt. Bob Ney is going down. And if we play our cards right, we can win big in Ohio this year because of Republican corruption.

I keep saying that even in districts where Republicans seem safe, the corruption issue can be huge. No one seemed safer in their corrupt complacency than Tom DeLay (TX), Randy Cunningham (CA) and Bob Ney (OH). DeLay is dropping out in disgrace, Cunningham is in jail and now I am happy to report that Bob Ney is following in DeLay's footsteps. Bob Ney, who I have included in some of my Ohio diaries, will drop out in disgrace in November. From BBC News:

A leading US Republican lawmaker facing corruption allegations has said he will not run for re-election in November.

Ohio congressman Bob Ney said he would stand down from the seat he has held for 12 years because of his family.

Some of you may have followed my various analyses and Act Blue pages covering several key states in 2006. My goal has been to not only target close races, but also to generate momentum to actually SWEEP some states, or at least come close. My personal favorites to focus on have been NY and NV, but today Salon.com is telling us what their picks are for top races of 2006. I want to use their analysis and build on it to discuss what some of our really important fights are. Please read, discuss and, if you feel it is worth it, donate.

This is adapted from the Salon.com analysis with additions and comments of my own.

1. CT. Senate race: Lamont stirring up trouble for the lame, timid Democratic leadership. I think you all know about this one already! I was avoiding getting involved with this one because I considered it tilting at windmills. But Lamont is mounting a strong challenge to Mr. Kisseyface, so what the hell!

2. Iowa House races: Iowa, where my father was born and where the Kunkel Sporting Goods store in Davenport, co-founded by my great-grandfather, still stands today. One of the most up-for-grabs seats in the nation is the open Repub-held seat IA-1. Then Leonard Boswell in Des Moines, who always faces a daunting reelection fight in a district that split 50-50 in the 2004 presidential race, is considered the Democratic Party's "most vulnerable incumbent." Iowa is considered one of the "purplest" of states and this year is a chance to shift it much more solidly blue. Finally add a race for Sec. of State and Elesha Gayman, a Democracy for America rising star, and you have many races well deserving of our attention. I urge you to help turn Iowa solid blue, defending one of our most vulnerable seats and targeting an open seat now held by a Repub. Help me turn my father's state blue.

So Standardized School is the opposite of World-Class Education,
not its divine incarnation?
Good then.
Let's hear no more about the necessary sacrifice of consigning all children to one-dimensional forehand factories for high-priced, high-stakes stamping into quality-controlled widgets, by has-been and never-were corporate charismatics and labor union drones.

Do you know what words of advice inspire the greatest players in the world as they enter Centre Court for Wimbledon, to show what they know and can do?

“If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same”-
“If” by Rudyard Kipling.

IF we inscribed this on every standardized test booklet for every child our Congressional Coaches promise never to leave behind languishing in the locker room, IF we took it to heart ourselves, then we still might not win 'em all but maybe we could stop feeling like such losers?

I've long called test score mania (in both triumph and disaster) the two-edged sword, but "two-edged imposter" could work even better, might at least shut up the most rigid standard skunks -- clever fellow Kipling.

Some have criticized NY State for being behind in compliance with the Federal government's HAVA requirements for new voting machines, but in reality our state may be slow because we are being more careful. While many states are simply taking vendor statements at face value (something I NEVER do in my job and our government shouldn't either), NY State has been standing its ground, even if in some cases it has only been because of a lack of decisiveness among our legislators. From Vote Trust USA:

The history of New York's purported non-compliance with Help America Vote Act (HAVA) is a long one. Much has been made of HAVA's lack of requirements for voter-verified paper audit records (VVPARs) or paper ballots that can be used to allow independent verification of e-voting system tallies produced by Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) and Optical Scan (OS) systems (paper ballots provide this capability inherently of course). But bills in the New York State legislature from both sides of the aisle have required VVPARs with random audits since at least 2004. New Yorkers may be stubborn but they're not stupid.

It would be patently absurd to replace a transparent, statewide, non-proprietary, low-tech mechanical lever voting system that even prevents write-in overvotes and can only be corrupted the old fashioned way -- one machine at a time -- with opaque, proprietary, computerized e-voting systems, programmed en masse by as few as a single insider, with no means of independent verification whatsoever. And contrary to popular belief the potential for programming error or malfeasance applies equally to DRE and Optical Scan technologies. Fortunately, the independent verification issue was resolved here years ago; the legislature declared, "There shall be paper." So too was the issue of source code escrow, which recently prompted at least one major e-voting vendor (Diebold Election Systems) not to compete in the state of North Carolina. As in the Tarheel State, the escrow of vendors' proprietary software has been a requirement in New York's legislation for years.

Time is the most used noun in the English language, says the new Oxford Dictionary.
Most abused too?

Have you noticed Big Government and Big Business have effectively taken over all our time, one way or another? -- colluding to micromanage jobs and markets, most of which become ossified and inescapable School requirements 'round the clock and calendar:

Back to School: A Time to Rethink Time
By Milton Chen

Another year has passed, and schools are still captives of an outdated calendar. . .

The news (why do we call it that? Because we're controlled by TIME!) often makes me want to stage a clock-and calendar burning on the steps of some capitol building -- anywhere in the western world will do.

Time that used to belong between doctors and patients belongs to the UK government now. Busy bureaucrats do random appointment book checks, to guarantee every individual an appointment on either short or long notice, 48-hours being the magic time of demarcation, yada yada (another Oxford term in the news.)

UPDATE:
HARVARD ENDS EARLY ADMISSION although I note it was a mere handful of years ago that Ivy Educrats claimed to have rejected early admission in favor of "early decision" (or the other way around?) and so what? This new claim to care about kids and parents isn't much less convoluted. . . to me, the only real news may be that Harvard and her ivy-covered sisters come across as skittish and hard-glittery, apparently feeling the pressure to seem to be doing SOMETHING -- even if in the end, the trumpeted splendor of their insular "new" attitude amounts to little more than deigning to serve the clamoring rabble of parents and kids one afternoon of cake.

Here's the published recipe for what they've cooked up:

Harvard’s decision — to be announced today — is likely to put pressure on other colleges, which acknowledge the same concerns but have been reluctant to take any step that could put them at a disadvantage in the heated competition for the top students.

“We think this will produce a fairer process, because the existing process has been shown to advantage those who are already advantaged,’’ Derek Bok, the interim president of Harvard, said yesterday in an interview.

Mr. Bok said students who were more affluent and sophisticated were the ones most likely to apply for early admission. . .

On 9/11/2001 the consequences of ignoring the threat of al-Qaeda was driven home dramatically. America, NYC in particular, had the lesson slammed home on that day. President Clinton had warned us, Bush included, that al-Qaeda was the threat to watch. His warnings were ignored. We paid the price on 9/11.

But has the lesson been learned? Did the Bush administration realize that its agenda had to focus on defeating al-Qaeda? At first it seemed that they had. The invasion of Afghanistan and the toppling of the al-Qaeda-allied Taliban was clearly the right first step. I was heartened when Bush took that first step.

But then came Tora Bora. Bush abandoned the War Against Terrorism, pulled out a large chunk of our troops and let Osama bin Laden get away. Why? To invade Iraq, a nation that had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11. Bush let his attention wander from the war against those who attacked NYC and America. Bush dropped the ball.

As I have written recently, and perhaps at too great a length, that decision by Bush to abandon the real war in favor of his directionless war on Iraq has allowed al-Qaeda and the Taliban not only to regroup, but to expand. They are stronger than ever by our own admission. Bush dropped the ball and the enemy that attacked NYC and America is stronger than ever. Bush is losing the War Against Terrorism, just as he is losing his directionless war against Iraq, "Mission Accomplished" not withstanding. In fact, the Iraqis are taking Bush up on his offer and are "Bringing it on." And now we have even given al-Qaeda its long-desired foothold in Iraq.

From BBC News:

Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, former bosses of energy trader Enron, have both been found guilty of fraud.

The two presided over the spectacular collapse of the energy giant in 2001 and are also accused of lying to investors about its financial problems.

Randy Cunnnigham, Tom DeLay, Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, Karl Rove, Jack Abramoff...

Slowly we are chipping away at the Halliburton/Enron Republican culture of corruption.

I have been harping against Republican corruption for a couple of years now. The Republican culture of corruption is deep rooted, disgusting and widespread, spanning from John Seweeny in NY, to Katherine Harris in Florida, to the now imprisoned Randy Cunningham in California and is most concentrated in the states of Ohio, Missouri and Kentucky. And when one of their most corrupt members, Tom DeLay, resigns, he is replaced by an almost equally corrupt Republican. And that isn’t even counting their immoral sex scandals! The names of Cunningham, DeLay, Ney, Blunt (father and son), Taft and many others have become synonyms for blatant and immoral corruption.

America claims to be fighting for democracy and freedom worldwide. Yet we condone torture and refuse to comply with the UN.

From BBC news:

A U.N. panel said Friday the indefinite detention of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo violates the world's ban on torture. In issuing its report, the Committee Against Torture said the United States should ensure that no prisoner is tortured.

Why did we invade Iraq? Well, among the many reasons we gave in our desperate attempt to jutstify an illegal invasion was that Hussein committed torture and that he violated basic human rights and UN resolutions.

And now we, the United States, are justifying torture, violating basic human rights and violating UN resolutions.

The article goes on to report how Condaleezza Rice and John McCain see Guantanamo's detention camp a dilemma for the United States. A dilemma? A camp where we detain hundreds of people from around the world illegally (according to the United Nations) under conditions considered by international law as torture, with no legal due process whatsoever is a dilemma for the United States?

Crack open your umbrellas ... there may be pigs flying.

Doug McIntyre, star of McIntyre in the Morning is a republican apologist who has woken up to reality and apologizes for, not just voting for Bush but using his radio show to ennable his administrations lies and abuses of power.

I'm speechless:

[via McIntyre in the Morning 790 KABC-FM]:

It was the wrong course. All of it was wrong. We are not on the road to victory. We’re about to slink home with our tail between our legs, leaving civil war in Iraq and a nuclear armed Iran in our wake. Bali was bombed. Madrid was bombed. London was bombed. And Bin Laden is still making tapes. It’s unspeakable. The liberal media didn’t create this reality, bad policy did.

Most historians believe it takes 30-50 years before we get a reasonably accurate take on a President’s place in history. So, maybe 50 years from now Iraq will be a peaceful member of the brotherhood of nations and George W. Bush will be celebrated as a visionary genius.

But we don’t live fifty years in the future. We live now. We have to make public policy decisions now. We have to live with the consequences of the votes we cast and the leaders we chose now.

After five years of carefully watching George W. Bush I’ve reached the conclusion he’s either grossly incompetent, or a hand puppet for a gaggle of detached theorists with their own private view of how the world works. Or both.

I wrote just yesterday how one can look at Somalia and see how the Republicans are leading us not to victory in the war against terrorism, but rather into a long, eternal war against what just might be an emerging new Caliphate. Everything that the Republicans have done since they prevented Clinton from taking out bin Laden when he wanted to has led us in the wrong direction and has done nothing but strengthen the hand of the most extremists elements of Sunni Islam.

And with the nascent war in Iran, possibly already starting through the Kurdish conflict, we are once again looking in the wrong place for our enemies. The people who attacked us are alive and well and are thriving right where Bush claims we have won.

Remember that we pulled large numbers of troops out of Afghanistan and Pakistan so we could invade Iraq, a nation that had nothing to do with 9/11 and was as opposed to al-Qaeda as we were.

Now the Taliban are regrouping right under the watch of the Paksistan army and al-Qaeda is being lauded as heros within the borders of our supposed ally.

From the BBC News:

Ratner supporters are very passionate about his Atlantic Yards Project. They often brook no criticism whatsoever of his plan, always coming back to the promised benefits of the project. Bruce Ratner’s development schemes could indeed address real development needs of Brooklyn. The problem is that for the most part his actual plans DON’T address them. The “affordable housing” is defined such that poorer residents would be quickly priced out as the overall value of the area goes up. The promise of jobs is in no way guaranteed and would mainly be white collar or very low paid jobs, not solid, union jobs. There is no plan for new schools and firehouses in an area where schools and firehouses are already too few and far between. And no one has yet addressed the problems of the massive increase in traffic in an already packed area or where the sewage will go with our already overtaxed sewer system. The already smelly Gowanus canal will be the ultimate destination of large chunks of the sewage from Ratner’s 17 skyscrapers and giant arena.

But all practical problems aside, one thing not one single Ratner supporter has ever been able to explain away are the blatant lies and almost as blatant corruption that surrounds Ratner and his business dealings. Let’s face facts. The practical problems like whether the affordable housing is REALLY affordable and for how long, whether the city’s infrastructure will be upgraded adequately to deal with the increased traffic, population and sewage can all be negotiated and worked out if Ratner would actually negotiate in good faith. But what is clear is that Ratner and his business are NOT dealing in good faith. Mostly he gives the community lies and corruption and THAT is something that none of his supporters, from Bloomberg and Pataki to Marty Markowitz, have been able to justify.

Today is the third anniversary of Bush's infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech, quite possibly the dumbest speeches in American History. Since then, the quagmire has stretched on and on and there is no end in sight.

Let's reflect on then and now...

May 1st, 2003, in the New York Times (via Editor and Publisher):

By Elisabeth Bumiller

WASHINGTON, May 1 -- President Bush's made-for-television address tonight on the carrier Abraham Lincoln was a powerful, Reaganesque finale to a six-week war. But beneath the golden images of a president steaming home with his troops toward the California coast lay the cold political and military realities that drove Mr. Bush's advisers to create the moment.

The president declared an end to major combat operations, White House, Pentagon and State Department officials said, for three crucial reasons: to signify the shift of American soldiers from the role of conquerors to police, to open the way for aid from countries that refused to help militarily and -- above all -- to signal to voters that Mr. Bush is shifting his focus from Baghdad to concerns at home….

According to the Constitution of Brooklyn's supposedly reform club the Independent Neighborhood Democrats (IND), several members, Executive Board members and Offiers should be expelled from the club.

May 4th is the endorsement vote for the NY-11 Congressional primary. Yesterday I received a letter signed by the following individuals asking IND members to join them in support of David Yassky in this race:

Debra Scotto, identified as being on the Executive Board
Joe Ringston, identified as Treasurer
Marisa Ringston, identified as Member
Tom McMahon, identified as Member
Eleanor Cunningham, identified as Recording Secretary
Bob Zuckerman, identified as being on the Executive board
Ira Cure, identified as past President
and Stephen DiBrienza, with no noted identification with the club

The letter is addressed to "Dear Fellow IND meber." According to the Constitution of IND, these individuals, by using their affiliation with IND in written material connected with a campaign that has not received the endorsement of the general membership, are violating IND bylaws.

Here are some comments from outsiders on the actions of IND insiders in the recent disenfranchisement of nearly 100 new memebrs by the Independent Neighborhood Democrats executive board:

From a Brooklyn activist and organizer who is watching this from as much of a distance as he can:

“If I were advising IND, I would have said that there really isn't much that they can do if the process they set out makes it possible, except change it for the future; but to change the rules of engagement during the process, as it appears they did, is simply un-democratic with a small "d". As you note, that has Tammany Hall written all over it, and it's sad to have that happen; it might be preferable to have IND make an endorsement that the 'old guard' does not agree with rather than to acquire the reputation they seem intent on getting. Short-sighted and knee-jerk, that response, in my view.

The Independent Neighborhood Democrats (IND) has been one of the pinnacles of integrity within Brooklyn politics. A reform club specifically designed to fight against the corruption of the Brooklyn Democratic Machine.

I regret to inform you that the integrity of IND is in critical condition if not outright deceased as of last night. I recently wrote about one aspect of their decline, a move by the executive board that had the stated purpose of fighting club packing, but was interpreted by many as being a move to protect the interests of favorite candidates over the wishes of newcomers to the club. Last night’s IND meeting confirmed our worst fears about the new executive board and their intentions.

To put it quite pointedly, last night's IND meeting was a giant pile of stinking donkey dung and the inescapable conclusion is that the integrity that IND was so well known for has been replaced by outright corruption as soon as the new executive board took control. Last night confirmed my worst fears, but the signs of impending corruption have been accumulating.

Independent Neighborhood Democrats (IND) has been a club I have been involved with for nearly two years. I have publicized it and petitioned for them. Now, I have only recently gotten around to joining as a paid member and, as endorsement time approached, I pushed harder to get all who read my blogs and who attend meetings I host to join IND and other reform clubs. Some of those I have been pushing agree with me on candidates, some don't. I have urged all of them to join before the deadline to be able to vote in endorsement votes. I have not always agreed with IND, but I have always respected IND and been proud to work with them.

IND has a reputation of standing up to the corrupt Brooklyn machine. That is one reason I have plugged them so avidly. They have been efficient, and honorable compared to many other clubs.

IND has just taken an action that makes me feel betrayed and which makes me wonder what has become of the reform movement in Brooklyn. The executive board of IND, in a contentious move, has disenfranchised nearly 100 new members with the sole intention of manipulating the endorsement process.

I favor certain candidates that are not favorites in IND. Naturally I hope to see their endorsement go the way I want it to. But, I know enough members of IND to know that they will be supporting some candidates who are not my favorites. I was prepared for this and accepted it. What I was not prepared for was a move by the newly elected IND executive board that will screw nearly 100 new, dues paying members. For the record, my wife and I are not being screwed. We are already able to vote. They have not been able to disenfranchise our vote. But many who have heeded my call to join the reform clubs of Brooklyn have now been screwed by the very "reformers" I recommended.

If A equals open communication between parent and teen as the "best" answer, then what the hell is up with B, C and D?

Passage A:

Stopping teenagers from using a home computer may not be a viable solution. Teenagers know they can get Internet access in other ways . . .
“If a kid wants to get on there, they’re going to do it,

Democracy for America wants us to all join together in sending Tom DeLay some "fare-thee-well" gifts. Today ONLY, you too can donate to Democracy for America and have them send Tom DeLay a rubber chicken in your name.

From Jim Dean:

Tom DeLay announced he's quitting Congress today because he's afraid of losing his seat to a Democrat.

Democracy for America has dogged DeLay for years. With TV commercials and billboards, at rallies and online, DFA has been on the front lines of the battle to clean up Congress. But we didn't think DeLay would "cut and run" like he did.

If he did nothing wrong -- as he claims -- then Tom DeLay shouldn't be afraid of a re-election campaign in a district he drew for himself. But he is quitting by mid-June.

Let's help send Tom DeLay the rubber chicken award he so richly deserves.

For every $50 Democracy for America raises today, we'll send Tom DeLay an authentic rubber chicken for his mantle. It'll be our goodbye present.

If you can't donate today, you can still sign the Thanks for the Memories" card that will go along with the chickens being delivered to his office in Texas.

Maybe I got it wrong before, and moving school nurses to mega-grocery stores is a good idea?

I didn't see the disaster-preparedness angle when I wrote:

We're getting one of these fancy food-clinic combos in my state, right in Miami where school corruption is a more popular sport than football and jai alai put together. Miami is the perfect place to play around with anything that disadvantages schoolkids to generate ill-gotten profits for greedy grownups.

So now I'm thinking, what's best for kids if their school can't be accessed, maybe isn't there at all?

Where are we wiser to place expensive institutional electric generators, to avoid Katrina-scale misery -- in schools or grocery stores?

It could be that South Florida culture is doing something smart for survival preparedness even if they didn't exactly plan it that way, haven't recognized it and never admit it.

HURRICANE SEASON
By Elaine Walker

The next time a major hurricane strikes South Florida, shoppers should be able to find their local Publix stocked with milk, cheese and ice even before the power returns.

Most kids won't become pro sports stars; obviously the only proper public response to this terrible problem is to force all potential pro athletes to acquire standardized academic skills in public school, to guarantee that all those wayside wannabes can still make some basic kind of living after they flunk out (with their algebra skills? - never mind, that's another rant.)

Betraying Student Athletes
The national effort to raise educational standards — especially for the inner-city poor — is besieged by advocates of mediocrity and the bad old status quo. A vivid example of that can be found in the growing number of dubious "prep schools" where barely literate athletes earn bogus grades, often by taking no real courses to speak of. The athletes can then move on to universities that care nothing about them and value winning teams above all else.

This deception exploits the athletes . . the prep school scam cries out for action from the National Collegiate Athletic Association and from the state legislatures and education departments that have turned a blind eye to this growing educational fraud.

But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

We are the descendents of Eve. We have eaten of the apple. And we know good and evil, so we should be gods. And yet, good and evil persist, and now, in this modern age, we can take photographs of it being perpetrated in our  name, and still, we do not see
There are new photographs at Salon today. Photographs of men being humiliated and tortured in our name. We will look. Some of us will turn away, horrified. Some of us will flinch in recognition of the pain. Some will laugh, call it fraternity pranks.

I weep in frustration and rage. Why do the photographs not immediately cause 300 million people to call to an immediate end to the horror that is Iraq? Why do we not rail and rage and take to the streets?

Who you calling we, kemosabe?

"No "we" should be taken for granted when the subject is looking at other people's pain."