BLACK-BROWN TENSIONS IN LA

DAVEY D, FNV NEWSLETTER - For those of you reading this who live outside of Los Angeles you should note the that folks are on edge cause of increasing racial tension between blacks and Mexicans. Over the past month there have been a few brawls at local high schools which were widely reported on the news down here.

Now the tensions have been inflamed by a letter that has been circulating around the city claiming that in retaliation for some beef between black and latino gangs, 500 black kids wearing white t-shirts would be targeted and killed by Mexican gangs on Cinco de Mayo which is today. For the most part, the letter appears to be a hoax. Folks who work closely with the gangs down here have not heard of any craziness jumping off, but because the letter has been so widely circulated, it has led to some town hall meetings and increased police presence on all the high school campuses down here. A lot of parents are refusing to let their kids come to school...read on

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Propose Constitutional Amendment Against "Thanksgiving Gay Parades"

A gay Spongebob eyes a new candidate for unnatural marriage.

"Only in New York," said Senator Rick Santorum, who alleged that, since the addition of Spongebob to the parade, he had seen the Sesemae Street Grover balloon in unnaturally close proximity to Scooby-Doo's tail.

The allegation that Spongebob Squarepants, a cartoon character who appears on the Nickelodeon TV Network, is homosexual, caused a great deal of controversy among fans. "Spongebob is not gay," said Anita Physic, a viewer from Oklahoma. "He's just a kid, really."

Republicans scoffed at the assertion. "Oh, please," said Santorum. "It's obvious. He lives in a pineapple under the sea."

Video Clip of the Day

Amy Goodman appears with Chris Matthews on "Hardball"

Video

She talks about the failure of the media in it's coverage of the runup to the Iraq war.

Judson Philips of Tea Party Nation sent out an email blast this morning to mobilize members against Elena Kagan. While it's not a big surprise to discover they object to anything Obama does, their logic on this one is surprisingly thin.

They oppose Kagan on three points. The first point mirrors the objections of the left: Kagan does not have time on the bench. Never mind that she would have been an appellate court judge if Clinton's nominees had not been blocked by Republicans.

Their second point of opposition may be the most laughable:

Second, Obama has chosen someone who is as radical as he is. Remember, Obama wants to transform this country from a right of center country, to a European style socialist country. He knows the congress is going to go from Democratic controlled to either Republican controlled or split evenly. To get much of his agenda enacted or saved, he is going to need control of the judiciary.

Oh, from Philips' keyboard to the left's ears. Don't we all just wish Obama were the radical they say he is. Glenn Greenwald's case against Kagan centers on her "centerness", her lack of a strong record of progressive statements, writings, and papers. Greenwald indicts thus:

Acquiescing to a Kagan nomination would mean accepting someone who could easily move well to the Right of Stevens, thus taking the whole Supreme Court with her.

So, we have TeaParty Nation saying she's radical and Glenn Greenwald concerned that she's conservative. I could be wrong here, but I'm going out on a limb and saying it's probably neither of the above.

Point three is really the heart of the matter, and it has absolutely nothing to do with Elena Kagan at all. It is all her age, and the idea that she could serve on the court for a very long time to come.

Right now, the court is divided, with a minority liberal block consisting of Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg and Sotomayor. Stevens is retiring. Breyer and Sotomayor are young and healthy, by Supreme Court standards. Ginsburg has had some health problems. By replacing Stevens with Kagan, there will be at least three liberal members on the court for the next 20 years. If Ginsburg were to retire, he could solidify the liberal wing of the court in place for the next 20 years.

The Conservative wing of the court is made of of Chief Justice Roberts, Justices Alito, Thomas and Scalia. Justice Kennedy remains a "swing" vote.

Kennedy and Scalia are both 74. Age is a consideration and if one of them were to leave the court, O

bama could have the opportunity to remake a liberal court that would severe our judicial system from all remaining ties to the Constitution.

Hyperbole, much? But here is the essence of the fear. Conservatives have tried to stack the Supreme Court with ideologues and they've very nearly succeeded. The thorn in the teabaggers' side is the possibility that Barack Obama will leave as his most lasting legacy a Supreme Court which actually rules on questions of law rather than ideology.

That would be a very, very good thing for us, and definitely frustrate the extremists who see the Supreme Court as their ticket to time travel back to the 1800s.

Kidnap subject. Strip off his clothes and dress him in a tracksuit. Blindfold and shackle him. Force headphones over his ears. Fly him to an unknown location to be interrogated, tortured, and imprisoned. Repeat.

This is the practice of "extraordinary rendition," and the experience of 35-year-old U.K. resident Binyam Mohamed on his journey home to London from Pakistan in July 2002. He was kidnapped to Morocco, where he was held for 18 months and tortured repeatedly. "They cut off my clothes with some kind of doctor's scalpel," he wrote in his diary. "I was totally naked…One of them took my penis in his hand and began to make a cut…He did it once, then stood still for maybe a minute, watch my reaction. It was an agony, [I was] crying, trying desperately to suppress my feelings, but I was screaming. There was blood all over."

This was just one of 20 to 30 incidents in which Mohamed was cut on his genitals while detained in Morocco. Interrogators routinely beat him, breaking bones and sometimes knocking him unconscious. He was frequently threatened with rape, electrocution and death, drugged repeatedly, and forced to listen to loud music day and night.

In January 2004, he was handcuffed and blindfolded again, placed in a van and driven to an airfield, then stripped, photographed extensively and put on a plane to a "Dark Prison" in Kabul, Afghanistan. Mohamed endured similar torture and daily interrogations in Kabul. In May, he was sent to Bagram. In September, he was sent to Guantánamo Bay. Mohamed was in Guantánamo for more than four years, and was released in February 2009. His military commission charges were dropped in October 2008.

Continue reading »

In which Andrew Bacevich schools David Frum on strategic defense policy issues. David Frum asks Dr. Bacevich how he would advise Obama (just around 11 minutes in):

What I would say is, Mr. President, you need to stop having meetings about Afghanistan. You need to start having meetings in which your national security team will help you identify what are the core principles that are informing US strategy that will deal with the problem of jihadism. And Mr. President, if you indeed give into this impulse to obsess about Afghanistan, ... then your administration will continue to have no strategy. You'll have a "Long War," so-called, he certainly going to run for re-election based on his record in Afghanistan, assuming that he does some variant of the options that are on the table, but he won't have a strategy. And I think that that's a tragedy, for the United States of America, at this stage of the game, to not have a strategy.

From his lips to Obama's ears. Highly recommended, if not only to watch Bacevich calmly and confidently destroy Frum, as Frum wriggles uncomfortably in his seat.

Paul Rieckhoff from IAVA gave me a heads up on this yesterday. Ralph Peters is one of those wacko military hawks that FOX News uses to ramp up the Rambo style militia movement they hold so dear to their hearts. He was prattling on (almost spitting up as he spoke) about how this soldier might be a deserter and if that was the case--he should be executed by the Taliban. Yea, real sane analysis by Peters.

Peters: Now look, Julie, I want to be clear. If, when the facts are in, we find out that through some convoluted chain of events, he really was captured by the Taliban, I'm with him. But, if he walked away from his post and his buddies at wartime... I don't care how hard it sounds, as far as I'm concerned, the Taliban can save us a lot of legal hassles and legal bills.

Antman11 has more:

I couldn't believe my ears, but just minutes ago on "America's News HQ," guest pundit Ralph Peters suggested something to the effect that the Taliban should "save us the headache" and execute captured 23 year-old American soldier Bowe Bergdahl, because "it looks like" Bergdahl deserted his unit. While prefacing his comments by stressing that a military decision should not be made until all of the facts surrounding Bergdahl's capture are determined, Peters then ignored his own advice and encouraged the Taliban to kill this young man. Fox News' Julie Banderas was visibly shocked at the words coming out of Peters' mouth, but did not challenge any of his statements before awkwardly ending the segment.

You might have forgotten that Ralphie boy also thinks the media should be murdered by our troops too. He's a real psycho. Just the kind of pundits FOX loves.

Peters: Rejecting the god of their fathers, the neo-pagans who dominate the media serve as lackeys at the terrorists’ bloody altar.

Pretending to be impartial, the self-segregating personalities drawn to media careers overwhelmingly take a side, and that side is rarely ours. Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media.

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We already knew that Griff Jenkins' attempt to ambush ACORN officials earlier this week on behalf of Glenn Beck didn't exactly produce any scintillating video moments -- except when Adam Green pinned his ears to the wall for pretending to be a legitimate journalist. (As though any legitimate journalist would bring a prop intended to humiliate his interview subjects.)

So Jenkins went on Beck's show last night and presented what little decent video he had. As you can see, no one was interested in helping his little stunt along, and most of the people who actually talked to him did little to advance the narrative he wanted to create.

Verdict: Fail. Epic Fail.