Rutabaga Ridgepole's Blog

From Brooklyn to Afghanistan

2009-11-23T05:15:43Z

"Only the Dead Know Brooklyn"

Dere's no guy livin' dat knows Brooklyn t'roo an' t'roo, because it'd take a guy a lifetime just to find his way aroun' duh goddam town.
So like I say, I'm waitin' for my train t'come when I sees dis big guy standin' deh - dis is duh foist I eveh see of him. Well, he's lookin' wild, y'know, an' I can see dat he's had plenty, but still he's holdin' it; he talks good an' is walkin' straight enough.

So den, dis big guy steps up to a little guy dat's standin' deh, an' says, "How d'yuh get t' Eighteent' Avenoo an' Sixty-sevent' Street?" he says.

"Jesus! Yuh got me, chief," duh little guy says to him. "I ain't been heah long myself. Where is duh place?" he says. "Out in duh Flatbush section somewhere?"

"Nah," duh big guy says. "it's out in Bensonhoist. But I was neveh deh befoeh. How d'yuh get deh?"
"Jesus," duh little guy says, scratchin' his head, y'know - yuh could see duh litle guy didn't know his way about - "yuh got me, chief, I neveh hoid of it. Do any of youse guys know where it is?" he says to me.

"Sure," I says. "It's out in Bensonhoist. Yuh take duh Fourt' Avenoo express, get off at Fifty-nint' Street, change to a Sea Beach local deh, get off at Eighteent' Avenoo an' Sixty-toid, and walk down foeh blocks. Dat's all yuh got to do," I says.

"G'wan!" some wise guy dat I neveh seen befoeh pipes up. "Whatcha talkin' about?" he says - oh, he was wise, y'know. "Duh guy is crazy! I tell yuh what yuh do," he says to duh big guy. "Yuh change to duh West End line at Toity-sixt'," he tells him. "Walk two blocks oveh, foeh blocks up," he says, "an' you'll be right deh." Oh, a wise guy, y'know.

"Oh, yeah?" I says. "Who told you so much?" He got me sore because he was so wise about it. "How long you been livin' heah?" I says.

"All my life," he says. "I was bawn in Williamsboig," he says. "An' I can tell you t'ings about dis town you neveh hoid of," he says.
"Yeah?" I says.

"Yeah," he says.

"Well, den, you can tell me t'ings about dis town dat nobody else has eveh hoid of, either. Maybe you make it all up yoehself at night," I says, "befoeh you go to sleep - like cuttin' out papeh dolls, or somp'n."

"Oh, yeah?" he says. "You're pretty wise, ain't yuh?"

"Oh, I don't know," I says. "Duh boids ain't usin' my head for Lincoln's statue yet," I says. "But I'm wise enough to know a phony when I see one."
"Yeah?" he says. "A wise guy, huh? Well, you're so wise date some one's goin' t'bust yuh one right on duh snoot some day," he says. "Dat's how wise you are."

...

So den duh guy begins to ast me all kinds of nutty questions: how big was Brooklyn an' could I find my way aroun' in it, an' how long would it take a guy to know duh place.

"Listen!" I says. "You get dat idea outa yoeh head right now," I says. "You ain't neveh gonna get to know Brooklyn," I says. "Not in a hunderd yeahs. I been livin' heah all my life," I says, "an' I don't even know all deh is to know about it, so how do you expect to know duh town," I says, "when you don't even live heah?"

"Yes," he says, "but I got a map to help me find my way about."

"Map or no map," I says, "yuh ain't gonna get to know Brooklyn wit no map," I says.

"Can you swim?" he says, just like dat. Jesus! By dat time, y'know, I begun to see dat duh guy was some kind of nut. He'd had plenty to drink, of course, but he had dat crazy look in his eye I didn't like. "Can you swim?" he says.

"Sure," I says. "Can't you?"

"No," he says. "Not more'n a stroke or two. I neveh loined good."

"Well, it's easy," I says. "All yuh need is a little confidence. Duh way I loined, me older bruddeh pitched me off duh dock one day when I was eight yeahs old, cloes an' all. 'You'll swim,' he says. 'You'll swim all right - or drown.' An', believe me, I swam! When yuh know yuh got to, you'll do it. Duh only t'ing yuh need is confidence. An' once you've loined," I says, "you've got nuttin' else to worry about. You'll neveh forget it. It's somp'n dat stays wit yuh as long as yuh live."

"Can yuh swim good?" he says.

"Like a fish," I tells him. "I'm a regulah fish in duh wateh," I says. "I loined to swim right off duh docks wit all duh oddeh kids," I says.

"What would you do if yuh saw a man drownin'?" duh guy says.

"Do? Why, I'd jump in an' pull him out," I says. "Dat's what I'd do."

"Did yuh eveh see a man drown?" he says.

"Sure, " I says. "I see two guys - bot' times at Coney Island. Dey got out too far, an' neider one could swim. Dey drowned befoeh any one could get to 'em."

"What becomes of people after dey've drowned out heah?" he says.

"Drowned out where?" I says.

"Out heah in Brooklyn."

"I don't know whatcha mean," I says. "Neveh hoid of no one drownin' heah in Brooklyn, unless you mean a swimmin' pool. Yuh can't drown in Brooklyn," I says. "Yuh gotta drown somewhere else - in duh ocean, where dere's wateh."

"Drownin'," duh guy says, lookin' at his map.

"Drownin'." Jesus! I could see by den he was some kind of nut, he had dat crazy expression in his eyes when he looked at you, an' I didn't know what he might do. So we was comin' to a station, an' it wasn't my stop, but I got off anyway, an' waited for duh next train.

"Well, so long, chief," I says. "Take it easy, now."

"Drownin'," duh guy says, lookin' at his map. "Drownin'."

Jesus! I've t'ought about dat guy a t'ousand times since den an' wondered what eveh happened to 'm goin' out to look at Bensonhoist because he liked duh name! Walkin' aroun' t'roo Red Hook by himself at night an' lookin' at his map! How many people did I see get drowned out heah in Brooklyn! How long would it take a guy wit a good map to know all deh was to know about Brooklyn!

Jesus! What a nut he was! I wondeh what eveh happened to 'im, anyway! I wondeh if some one knocked him on duh head, or if he's still wanderin' aroun' in duh subway in duh middle of duh night wit his little map! Duh poor guy! Say, I've got to laugh, at dat, when I t'ink about him! Maybe he's found out by now dat he'll neveh live long enough to know duh whole of Brooklyn. It'd take a guy a lifetime to know Brooklyn t'roo an' t'roo. An' even den, yuh wouldn't know it all.

"Only the Dead Know Brooklyn," by Thomas Wolfe

The Phantom of "Corruption" in Afghanistan (Updated)

2009-11-21T19:36:13Z

Chief Ajmal Khan Zazai (second from right) on the way to Kabul

Hillary Clinton has been chattering brightly about fighting "corruption" in Afghanistan, and isn't that a beautiful idea? If you're looking for a target that nobody will defend, "corruption" is just about as unpopular as cancer, which is certainly a very bad thing.

Corruption!

Boooooo!!!

Honesty! Transparency! Good governance!

Hurrah!!!

And how difficult could it possibly be to eliminate what Americans call "corruption" in Afghanistan? Eliminating corruption is everywhere and always a simple two-step process:

1. Create a self-examining bureaucracy with lifetime job-stability and a university-educated bourgeoisie to staff it, and then...

Whoa! What's that first step again?

Create a self-examining bureaucracy with lifetime job-stability and a university-educated bourgeoisie to staff it, and then...

Whoa! How the heck can you create such a thing in Afghanistan, where all good things have inevitably passed through the sticky fingers of tribal chiefs for thousands of years?

And now it's time for a very brief excursion into the reality of Afghanistan...

]]> SP: Your own father was assassinated, I understand, under orders from Mullah Omar. You yourself have survived two attempts on your life. Can you tell us about your father and what you and he are fighting for?

Chief Zazai: My father was Chief Raiss Afzal Khan Zazai; he was murdered in 2000. My father led our Zazi tribes in the fight against the Soviets and later he organized the Tribal Chiefs from three provinces (Paktia, Paktika & Khost) in order to upraise against the Taliban. Some ex-commanders were visiting him at our family home and there they carried out this heinous crime. I have not found who gave the orders yet but the motive behind this was to bring a full stop to this movement and also to frighten the rest.

My father was one of our country's first industrialists. He and my uncle founded the first Afghan transport company, Mrastay Transport, using old British Bedford trucks. His company, Wazir Ltd, exported raisins, dried fruits and Afghan carpets to Russia, Germany and Britain, while importing vehicles, appliances and medicines.

I highlighted the last paragraph of my excerpt from Steven Pressfield's outstanding blog as a relatively simple indication of how money flows in Afghanistan.

The chief owns the trucks.

And Chief Ajmal Khan Zazai of Paktia Province is a star among tribal chieftains in Afghanistan... a good friend of the United States and blood-enemy of the Taliban and all who openly or surreptiously represent the Taliban, and that is what Chief Ajmal Khan Zazai means by "corruption."

Chief Zazai: We are up against a level of corruption that the Coalition commanders still can't or won't understand. You cannot imagine the pressure I, Amir Mohammad [commander of the fledgling 80-man Tribal Police in Chief Zazai's home district] and our Chiefs are under. The TPF guys worked for five months and only received one month's salary. The Tribal Police are totally under-resourced, no weapons [other than their own] or proper clothing. Can you imagine how we are surviving?
SP: Who exactly is the enemy? I don't mean the "far enemy," I mean the "near enemy."

Chief Zazai: The Afghan people ask over and over, "Why don't the Americans do something?" The answer is the Americans' hands are tied by the need to support a corrupt and hopelessly compromised regime. Here is what I mean: in my district, a new border Police Chief has been appointed. This man has been on the payroll of the ISI Pakistani military for 30 years. Two weeks ago the Zazi Chiefs protested against this appointment. About 20 elders went to Kabul to meet with the Interior Minister. He refused to even see them!

SP: What does such an appointment mean in day-to-day terms? How does it affect your Tribal Police Force?

Chief Zazai: These officials go to meet with the Americans and poison their minds against the TPF. I spoke to the [American commander in the Zazi Valley] for two hours over the phone and explained to him why the Tribal Police Force was formed and what is the agenda behind this program, and still he was telling me to talk to the Governor, the District Administrator and the border Police Chief. I said I will not speak to these corrupt men who are doing everything in their power to dissolve the TPF and turn everyone against it.

Details! Who cares about details when Washington has a beautiful new buzz-word, "corruption," which allows our wishy-washy President and the advertising genius who created him to waffle wherever their focus-groups tell them to waffle?

But if you're looking for real resistance to the Taliban which won't dissolve like the morning dew just as soon as the last Marine brigade pulls out of Afghanistan, then what you find is Chief Zazai's union of 11 tribes in Paktia Province, and in every one of those 11 tribes, the chief takes a taste of all good things, and owns the trucks.

That's what Americans mean by "corruption," and I have to confess...

A self-examining bureaucracy with lifetime job-stability and a university-educated bourgeoisie to staff it isn't really the only way to eliminate "corruption."

Instead you could install a gang of self-policing fanatics like the Taliban.

Update: Although the United States continues to make impossible demands on Karzai's national government in Kabul, events have forced our delegation of idiots to recognize the primacy of tribal associations...

American and Afghan officials have begun helping a number of anti-Taliban militias that have independently taken up arms against insurgents in several parts of Afghanistan, prompting hopes of a large-scale tribal rebellion against the Taliban.
The emergence of the militias, which took some leaders in Kabul by surprise, has so encouraged the American and Afghan officials that they are planning to spur the growth of similar armed groups across the Taliban heartland in the southern and eastern parts of the country.

So while our official policy continues to emphasize the creation of a strong central government, we are radically undermining that same project by supporting the establishment of independent militias, a device than which nothing could be more inimical to national control.

"Government is the problem."

2009-11-20T14:06:19Z

Returning to the same article by Scott Rasmussen in the Wall Street Journal that I wrote about yesterday...

Down the campaign homestretch, Mr. Obama's tax-cutting promise became his clearest policy position. Eventually he stole the tax issue from the Republicans. Heading into the election, 31% of voters thought that a President Obama would cut their taxes. Only 11% expected a tax cut from a McCain administration.

The last Democratic candidate to win the tax issue was also the last Democratic president -- Bill Clinton. In fact, the candidate who most credibly promises the lowest level of taxes has won every presidential election in at least the last 40 years.

A Rasmussen survey conducted Oct. 2 found that 59% agreed with the sentiment expressed by Reagan in his first inaugural address: "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Just 28% disagreed with this sentiment.

So tax-cutters won every Presidential election since 1968, and likewise even 35% of voters who identify themselves as liberals agree that "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."

And what was the biggest story in 1968?

2,000,000 Asians were killed...

A generation of orphans was created...

58,209 American soldiers sacrificed their lives for nothing...

And the majority of American voters never trusted their government again.

Vote Reagan/Obama For a Tax-Free America!

2009-11-18T20:20:04Z

Along with a gaggle of progressive news aggregators, I keep an RSS feed from the Wall Street Journal on my desktop for balance, but mostly it's just noise.

Today was slightly different, with a column from Scott Rasmussen, a national pollster whom liberals love to hate, but although his conclusions may skew to the right, he can't really afford to play too fast and loose with facts, and today he showcased a few surprising items... surprising at least to me, because my immersion in the progressive blogosphere and deeply-addicted news-junkie brain-style sometimes makes me forget who else is out there, in the blur of political impressionism.

Down the campaign homestretch, Mr. Obama's tax-cutting promise became his clearest policy position. Eventually he stole the tax issue from the Republicans. Heading into the election, 31% of voters thought that a President Obama would cut their taxes. Only 11% expected a tax cut from a McCain administration.
The last Democratic candidate to win the tax issue was also the last Democratic president -- Bill Clinton. In fact, the candidate who most credibly promises the lowest level of taxes has won every presidential election in at least the last 40 years.

It gets worse.

A Rasmussen survey conducted Oct. 2 found that 59% agreed with the sentiment expressed by Reagan in his first inaugural address: "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Just 28% disagreed with this sentiment. That survey also found that 44% of Obama voters agreed with Reagan's assessment (40% did not).

59% to 28% Americans believe that "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem!"

And what's the alternative, morons?

Corporate oligarchy?

Anarchy?

But pollsters don't ask follow-up questions.

Addis Ababa

2009-11-17T19:24:54Z

Recent Paintings and Photographs

Huge Rise in Birth Defects in Fallujah, and "Squirters"

2009-11-14T11:57:26Z

From the Guardian...

The rise in frequency is stark - from two admissions a fortnight a year ago to two a day now. "Most are in the head and spinal cord, but there are also many deficiencies in lower limbs," he said. "There is also a very marked increase in the number of cases of less than two years [old] with brain tumours. This is now a focus area of multiple tumours."

This is a 700% increase in the course of a year.

Statistics on infant tumours are not considered as reliable as new data about nervous system anomalies, which are usually evident immediately after birth. Dr Abdul Wahid Salah, a neurosurgeon, said: "With neuro-tube defects, their heads are often larger than normal, they can have deficiencies in hearts and eyes and their lower limbs are often listless.

This story only gets worse.

Zainab Abdul Latif moves wearily between her three children, wiping their foreheads and propping them up in their wheelchairs. "Every day, they need intensive care," the 29-year-old Falluja mother says. Neither her two sons, Amar, 5, and Moustafa, 3, or daughter, Mariam, 6, can walk or use their limbs. They speak two words - "mama, baba" - between them. All are in nappies.
One of few people she can turn to is Dr Bassem Allah, the senior obstetrician who is chief custodian of Falluja's newborns. During medical school he had to search Iraq for case studies of an infant with a birth defect. "It was almost impossible during the 80s," he says. "Now, every day in my clinic or elsewhere in the hospital, there are large numbers of congenital abnormalities or cases of chronic tumours."

He pauses, his thoughts seemingly interrupted by the gravity of his words, then slowly continues. "Now, believe me, it's like we are treating patients immediately after Hiroshima."

This nightmare is just another aspect of the legacy of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, and likewise Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who voted to continue funding our genocidal occupation of Iraq year after year after year, and continue to support and direct undocumented and extra-judicial assassinations in Pakistan and elsewhere even today.

According to a just completed study by the New America Foundation, the number of drone strikes has risen dramatically since Obama became President. During his first nine and a half months in office, (Obama) has authorized as many C.I.A. aerial attacks in Pakistan as George W. Bush did in his final three years in office.
"You could see these little figures scurrying, and the explosion going off, and when the smoke cleared there was just rubble and charred stuff," a former C.I.A. officer who was based in Afghanistan after September 11th says of one attack. (He watched the carnage on a small monitor in the field.)

Human beings running for cover are such a common sight that they have inspired a slang term: "squirters."

And isn't that a marvelously appropriate last word for an essay about the American occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan?

"Squirters!"

Soldiers Sue KBR-Halliburton For Toxic Exposure From "Burn-Pits"

2009-11-12T13:08:44Z

A trickle of lawsuits by US soldiers against KBR-Halliburton for toxic exposure from enormous open "burn-pits' at US bases in Iraq and Afghanistan is turning into a deluge as the number of suits more than doubled in the last few weeks.

Dozens of US military personnel have filed 34 lawsuits against US defense contractor KBR for allegedly incinerating toxic waste and releasing it into the atmosphere in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Susan Burke, one of the lawyers bringing the suits, said they have been filed over the past year, 18 of them in recent days.

"All the cases are being put together before a federal judge in Greenbelt, Maryland," she told AFP Tuesday.

"Every type of waste imaginable was and is burned on these pits, including trucks, tires, lithium battery, Styrofoam, paper, rubber, petroleum-oil-lubricant products, metals, hydraulic fluids, munitions boxes, medical waste, biohazard materials (including human corpses), medical supplies (including those used during smallpox inoculations), paints, solvents, asbestos insulation, items containing pesticides, polyvinyl chloride pipes, animal carcasses, dangerous chemicals and hundreds of thousands of plastic water bottles," the lawsuit claims.

This slow-breaking story includes wrongful-death suits from massive exposure to "thick, noxious smoke - coming off of flames sometimes colored blue or green by burning chemicals - to hang over U.S. bases and camps across Iraq and Afghanistan since 2004."

According to the complaints, "U.S. soldiers and other residents of themilitary bases and camps have become seriously ill, been diagnosed withserious and potentially fatal diseases and in some cases have died from the physical injuries and diseases caused by the exposure to hazardous smoke and fumes."
The burn pits are so large that tractors are used to push waste onto them and the flames shoot hundreds of feet into the sky, according to the lawsuits.

We're talking about a lot of waste! For example...

(Joint Base) Balad's average daily output of almost 250 tons of waste is three times higher than the average of 83 tons per day generated by the city of Juneau, Alaska, which has a comparable population.

And of course the US military is fulfilling its primary responsibility to make the world safe for Halliburton, by denying the danger of even (relatively) short-term exposure to toxins like asbestos.

]]> The U.S. military has acknowledged the concerns, but says its own testing of the most notorious facility, the Balad Air Force Base burn pit, concluded that there was no significant or prolonged health risk for those who were exposed less than a year.

None of the three main agencies charged with determining, preventing or evaluating asbestos exposures - OSHA, the CDC, and the American Cancer Society - would agree. In their published opinions, no safe level for asbestos exposure has ever been established, and exposures ranging from a day to a lifetime have equal potential to trigger mesothelioma.

KBR is also being sued for toxic exposure by its civilian employees at US military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the natural expectation has been that KBR would win this battle, like so many others, because it's protected from most private lawsuits under the Defense Base Act...

Settlements are voluntary and no one side can force the other to settle. Like most other workers' compensation systems, there are no damages such as pain and suffering. The amount of the settlement depends on what the employer/insurer could expect to pay if the case is not settled. Also, while there is a program where an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) will mediate a case for the parties, there is no provision in the Act that allows an injured worker or employer/insurer to present the case before an ALJ to determine its value.

But ironically KBR may have undermined its own protection under the DBA with a scheme to avoid paying taxes on its humongous profits from our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

To avoid payroll taxes for its American employees, KBR hired the workers through two subsidiaries registered in the Cayman Islands, part of a strategy that has allowed KBR to dodge hundreds of millions of dollars in Social Security and Medicare taxes.
That gives the workers' lawyer, Mike Doyle of Houston, a chance to argue to an arbitration board that KBR is not an employer protected by federal law, but a third-party that can be sued.

I guess you could call it "poetic justice," except that KBR-Halliburton is vanishingly unlikely to pay out more than a very small fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes which it successfully dodged.

Meanwhile even our weathervane of a President has felt the wind shift against KBR, and on October 28, 2009...

President Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 2647), which includes important provisions authored by Congressman Tim Bishop (NY-1) to protect the thousands of troops exposed to toxic, open burn pits used in Iraq and Afghanistan.
For months, Congressman Bishop has led the fight, along with other Members and national military and veterans organizations, to prohibit the use of these dangerous burn pits and to provide medical support to the thousands of troops who have been exposed to them.

But this bold legislative initiative was only enacted five months after a landmark $12.1 million judicial decision in favor of of US Navy machinist who was exposed to asbestos way back in the Sixties...

The good news for plaintiffs is that a recent case, filed by former U.S. Navy machinist Charles H. Cundiff against two manufacturing firms that used asbestos in their products, has been decided in favor of Cundiff.
The manufacturers, John Crane, Inc. and Lone Star Industries, have been ordered to pay Cundiff and his spouse $12.1 million for asbestos exposure he incurred while handling asbestos-laden products (Insulag and insulating cement) when working on a naval ship in the 1960s. The exposure resulted in mesothelioma, which has so weakened Cundiff that he did not appear at a May 11 hearing and his deposition was used in testimony instead.

This case was the handwriting on the wall for KBR and its open-air incineration of asbestos and other toxic wastes in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the last word belongs almost irretrievably to an obituary in the Booneville (Arkansas) Democrat, an obituary which has now disappeared from their website and only exists online as the fragmentary result of a Google search for Charles H. Cundiff.

Charles H. Cundiff, 66, of Charleston, passed away Friday, Oct. 23, 2009 in Charleston. He was born March 1, 1943 in Eudora to Cary Carl Cundiff and Maude ...

The Long Grind Down

2009-11-11T14:20:38Z

Unemployment statistics typically depend on multiple meanings of "unemployment," but in this nebulous domain, non-farm payrolls are endowed with a certain je ne sais quoi of relative solidity, and the story they told in October was more or less exactly the same as August and September, according to the Bureau Of Labor Statistics' monthly report.

Total nonfarm payroll employment declined by 190,000 in October. In the most recent 3 months, job losses have averaged 188,000 per month, compared with losses averaging 357,000 during the prior 3 months. In contrast, losses averaged 645,000 per month from November 2008 to April 2009. Since December 2007, payroll employment has fallen by 7.3 million.

Perceptive readers will notice that jobs are not disappearing as fast as they disappeared earlier this year, and that's the good news.

The bad news is that there are fewer and fewer jobs, month after month after month.

Meanwhile, back in the cloud of dubious definitions, the flagship unemployment statistic surged past 10.2%, as 558,000 people became "unemployed" in October, either by losing their jobs or unsuccessfully entering the workforce.

Obama and his playmates are claiming that their stimulus has created or saved about 640,000 jobs, but more than half those jobs were in education, and that statistic is even more nebulous than "unemployment."

Indiana, for example, reported saving or creating 13,232 education jobs with its stimulus money, but Cris Johnston, the director of the government efficiency division of the state budget office, said that it was difficult to say whether the state would have actually lost those jobs without the money.
"We can't make the statement that they were created or retained," Mr. Johnston said. Indiana, he said had followed federal guidelines in reporting how many full-time jobs were paid for with the stimulus money, which also paid for education supplies and other expenses. And while New York City officials have said the stimulus helped them save thousands of teaching jobs, it would have been politically difficult for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to actually lay off that many teachers while running for re-election.

So 558,000 people became "unemployed" in October alone, and meanwhile Obama's feeble stimulus has conceivably created or saved a grand total of 640,000 jobs, or about the same as the last five weeks of the long grind down.

The Little People Have Been Demoted On TPMCafe (Updated)

2009-11-10T13:55:20Z

First, readers' blogs disappeared from their box on the front page of TPM, and now we're all squeezed into the left-hand margin, far down on the page at TPMCafe.

What next?

Hard Cold World: A Music-Video Blog

2009-11-09T18:29:01Z

Two Dreamers, by Dorothea Lange

2009-11-08T12:41:40Z

Resettled farm child, New Mexico, 1935

1939

James Nachtwey's Image of Afghanistan

2009-11-07T11:30:00Z

"We can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground."

Governor Bob McDonnell: A Taliban Con-Man To Match Obama

2009-11-04T17:50:55Z

Remember when Candidate Obama promised trillion-dollar give-aways to investment bankers, humongous tax-cuts instead of help for the unemployed, and incomprehensibly wishy-washy healthcare "reform?"

Remember when Candidate Obama promised to maintain "the very same "state secrets" theories of the Bush administration" and "cordon off all secret actions from judicial scrutiny, immunizing the C.I.A. and its partners from the demands and limits of the law?"

Of course nobody remembers anything about the Obama campaign except bullshit, because there is nothing else to remember, and now, for the bullshit-loving voters of America...

A new star has arisen!

And what does the brand-new Republican Governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell really believe?

At age 34, two years before his first election and two decades before he would run for governor of Virginia, Robert F. McDonnell submitted a master's thesis to the evangelical school he was attending in Virginia Beach in which he described working women and feminists as "detrimental" to the family. He said government policy should favor married couples over "cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators." He described as "illogical" a 1972 Supreme Court decision legalizing the use of contraception by unmarried couples.

No more rubbers for you fornicators!

Now McDonnell has changed, he claims.

"Virginians will judge me on my 18-year record as a legislator and Attorney General and the specific plans I have laid out for our future -- not on a decades-old academic paper I wrote as a student during the Reagan era and haven't thought about in years."

But out of 15 proposals for a new Republican policy which McDonnell proposed in his thesis at Pat Robertson's law school in Virginia, McDonnell is still enthusiastic about at least ten of them.

During his 14 years in the General Assembly, McDonnell pursued at least 10 of the policy goals he laid out in that research paper, including abortion restrictions, covenant marriage, school vouchers and tax policies to favor his view of the traditional family. In 2001, he voted against a resolution in support of ending wage discrimination between men and women.

Listen up, ye female fornicators and other feminist trash! Your wages are about to crash!

So maybe it's worth examining that long-forgotten thesis, which Bob McDonnell apparently hasn't forgotten quite as much as he claimed, and since a photocopy of it is available online, and space is cheap on the internet, I extracted and appended McDonnell's 15-point agenda at the end of this diary, to save you the trouble of scrolling through 92 pages of theocratic garbage.

But Bob McDonnell didn't carry Northern Virginia and win the governorship by ranting at voters about fornicators and banning condoms! Instead he played those suckers just like... Barack Obama and David Axelrod play that game.

McDonnell avoided discussion of divisive social issues such as abortion and gay rights, crafting his campaign around particular concerns raised by voters from Alexandria to Aldie. He reached out to minority communities and drilled so deeply into local concerns that he was discussing Lyme disease in one neighborhood and Guantanamo Bay prisoners in another.
At a gathering of Hispanics in Fairfax, he greeted the group with "Buenas noches." In Falls Church, he spoke at a Vietnamese American shopping center draped in the colors of the flag of the former South Vietnam.

"He is a household name here," said Shandon Phan, 30, a nonprofit organization worker and a member of the Vietnamese American National Chamber of Commerce. "He runs ads in magazines and TV and radio, and he comes to meet-and-greet events with his wife. It was a very personal touch."

So watch out, Democrats! The Republicans have got a new guy who knows how to play the new game, and incomprehensibly wishy-washy healthcare "reform" along with double-digit unemployment won't send you back to Congress in 2010, or the White House in 2012.

]]>

Goldman Sachs: Our Pumpin' Dumpin' Repo-Man!

2009-11-02T21:03:02Z

You might think that a Wall Street giant like Goldman Sachs, which has been reporting profits of about $1 billion per month for the last six months, wouldn't waste the time and talent of its fantastically well-remunerated employees on a penny-ante business like single-family foreclosures and evictions.

You would be wrong.

"Goldman spent years buying hundreds of thousands of subprime mortgages, many of them from some of the more unsavory lenders in the business, and packaging them into high-yield bonds. Now that the bottom has fallen out of that market, Goldman finds itself in a different role: as the big banker that takes homes away" from families like Tony Becker, Gladys Aguirre, and thousands of others, as described in McClatchy's excellent investigative article by Greg Gordon.

Meanwhile revelations continue to surface about Goldman's "pump-and-dump" operation with a mountain of financial derivatives which they claimed to believe were rock-solid...

In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages but never told the buyers that it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.
Goldman's sales and its clandestine wagers, completed at the brink of the housing market meltdown, enabled one of the nation's premier investment banks to pass most of its potential losses to others before a flood of mortgage loan defaults staggered the U.S. and global economies.

Only later did investors discover that what Goldman promoted as triple-A investments were closer to junk.

Nasty!

Detroit Demolition Disneyland

2009-11-01T09:11:18Z

In an attempt at building awareness of Detroit's rotting, decaying neighborhoods, the Detroit Demolition Disneyland project finds long-abandoned structures and paints them with Tiggerific Orange paint.

Now almost a third of Detroit - covering a swath of land the size of San Francisco - has been abandoned. Tall grasses, shrubs and urban farms have sprung up in what were once stalwart working-class suburbs. Even downtown, one ruined skyscraper sprouts a pair of trees growing from the rubble.
The city has a shocking jobless rate of 29%. The average house price in Detroit is only $7,500, with many homes available for only a few hundred dollars. Not that anyone is buying. At a recent auction of 9,000 confiscated city houses, only a fifth found buyers.

But Detroit hasn't been totally forgotten by Barack Obama and his wonder-working economic stimulus!

On October 8, 2009, 50,000 people lined up in Detroit to apply for money from the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program.

50,000 people lined up...

But only 3,500 of them will get any money.