Walking around [the major conference for progressive bloggers] during the weekend, it became clear that only a handful of the 1,500 conventioneers — bloggers, policy experts, party activists — are African American, Latino or Asian. Of about 100 scheduled panels and workshops, less than a half-dozen dealt directly with women or minority issues. …
“It’s mostly white. More male than female,” says the former high school math and science teacher turned activist. “It’s not very diverse.”
There goes the open secret of the netroots, or those who make up the community of the Internet grass-roots movement. …
Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, who is part Latina, … said one reason she came to Yearly Kos was to get an answer to this question: “Why is the blogosphere, which is supposed to be more democratic, reinforcing the same white male power structure that exists?”
Congress is stampeded into another compromise of Americans’ rights.
THE DEMOCRATIC-led Congress, more concerned with protecting its political backside than with safeguarding the privacy of American citizens, left town early yesterday after caving in to administration demands that it allow warrantless surveillance of the phone calls and e-mails of American citizens, with scant judicial supervision and no reporting to Congress about how many communications are being intercepted. To call this legislation ill-considered is to give it too much credit: It was scarcely considered at all. Instead, it was strong-armed through both chambers by an administration that seized the opportunity to write its warrantless wiretapping program into law — or, more precisely, to write it out from under any real legal restrictions.
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Since March, the Bush administration has been building a case for its FISA legislation. But it wasn’t clear until last week why it was pushing so urgently. On Tuesday, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) revealed on Fox News that earlier this year, a judge issued a secret ruling concluding “that the government had overstepped its authority in attempting to broadly surveil communications between two locations overseas that are passed through routing stations in the United States.” Boehner noted that this court order made “a key element of the Bush administration’s wiretapping efforts illegal,” a fact the White House has attempted to conceal from the public and many in Congress. “It clearly shows that Congress has been playing with half a deck,” said Jim Dempsey, policy director for the Center for Democracy and Technology. “The administration is asking lawmakers to vote on a very important piece of legislation based upon selective declassification of intelligence.”
Today is the 62nd anniversary of the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Remember it well and say, “never again.” Say there is a limit, there is a proper place to draw the line. Say that justifications cannot excuse the inexcusable. It would be evil madness to ever, ever, ever use that power again to fry the living.
And yet, Democrats and Republicans alike attacked Barack Obama for expressing a much more dilute sentiment. The insane scream that all cards are on the table, no options are inconceivable. I hope that somewhere in the chain of command there is someone with enough humanity to say, “NEVER AGAIN.”
Oh, well, look around. We’re vile. We’re going to destroy ourselves and the world one way or another. Might as well get it over with in a flash. mjh
PS: I hope you saw Masters of Science Fiction on Saturday. I assume the conservative bloggers are howling for blood.
Twisted, sightless wrecks of men
go groping on their knees
and cry in pain
now the sun has come to earth
— Paul Simon
This morning, Robert J. Samuelson starts his political column with this:
My younger son calls the Toyota Prius a “hippie car.” Not that Prius drivers are “hippies.” Toyota says that typical buyers are 54 and have incomes of $99,800; 81 percent are college graduates. But like hippies, they’re making a loud lifestyle statement: We’re saving the planet; what are you doing?
Isn’t it amazing that nearly 40 years later, people still use hippy as a slur? It says volumes about Samuelson’s character that his younger son uses it that way. Bigotry is hereditary. Worse, it is deliberately passed on to the young, so, it may be more like child abuse. Samuelson and son are bigots.
Moreover, what does Samuelson think became of hippies? Surely some of them finished college and got good jobs. Those that lived would be in their 50’s and older. Does that escape Samuelson?
Say what you will about hippies — though if you’ve never met one, you don’t know what you’re talking about, like a bigot — their core beliefs were that the people can change the nation and that peace and love are more important than war. No wonder conservatives still hate them. mjh
PS: I wonder what Samuelson & Son think about Humvies and the loud lifestyle statement their drivers make. “Good conservative values,” no doubt.
"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." — Sam Adams