See no vets, heal no vets
From Steve Gilliard's News Blog:
Usually, we wait a few years to forget veterans, but not under Bush. We forget about them while they're still in the hospital. We warehouse them while still in unform. Hell, we ignore them if they aren't seriously wounded enough in Germany and make them fly home on their own. Then, kick them out of the military and charge them to ship their goods home. Then we play games with their disablity payments. And if the enemy tortures them, screw it, they can't sue.
See no protests, hear no protests…
From the BBC we learn that activists in London will be greatly restricted during Bush's upcoming visit:
Jeremy Corbyn, MP for Islington North and a Stop the War activist, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We've had long discussions with the police and one gets the feeling that there is a bigger hand somewhere that is trying to prevent a march going along Whitehall and past Parliament Square.
"The Americans are actually running the security operation in London as well... I'm getting a bit alarmed about the degree of invasion of our capital by the Americans.
"The idea of closing off large parts of London to ensure that President Bush is taken well away from any protests or demonstrators seems a little insensitive and an enormous inconvenience to an awful lot of people."
MorningWood update
Had a very well received show today. Lots of thoughtful calls with comments and questions. Then there was the guy who was obviously fuming over the political content of the show and apparently was pushed over the edge by a Wu Tang cut that I dared play after 5am. Here’s a partial transcript of his call. Although the transcript is partial, it contains all of the actual words used during the entire conversation, which was fairly one-sided.
Me: WMNF...
Caller: Hello? Are you that DJ?
Me: Yes... I’m Norw...
Caller (cutting me off): FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU MOTHER FUCKER FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU COCKSUCKER MOTHERFUCKER FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU PLAY RAP SHIT FUCK YOU FUCK YOU MOTHERFUCKER COCKSUCKER...
Again, this is a partial transcript, but the callers entire vocabulary is on display. His volume level was quite elevated, and he seemed rather agitated. Oh well, guess you can’t make everyone happy.
Oh, and thanks to everyone who called in with kind words: you outnumbered the lone dissenter by a great margin.
Today on MorningWood
Today on MorningWood, on Community Radio WMNF 88.5 fm, Tampa, and streaming at wmnf.org.
4 to 6 am every Tuesday!
In the words of Ben Tripp, You want to support our troops, get Bush in front of them. They'll be home on the first transport out of Kuwait.
Welcome to the MorningWood Veteran’s Day special. Dedicated to everyone’s favorite Vet, George W. Bush, who got his Daddy to keep him away from the fighting during Vietnam. He managed to actually serve part of his commitment to the Texas National Guard before going AWOL about the time that mandatory drug tests were being phased in. Hmmm.... some might say W was born with a silver spoon up his nose.
Selected tracks from today’s show can be found at protest-records.com.
WMNF is a non-commercial community radio station that celebrates local cultural diversity and is committed to equality, peace and social and economic justice. WMNF provides broadcasts and creates other forums to serve the community by the exposure and sharing of these values.
Good for Gore!
Al just called for the repeal of the PATRIOT act! See MoveOn.org for more.
No child left unbeaten
The Houston schoole district, already under fire for falsifying dropout rates, seems to be playing games with violent crime as well:
It was one of the most unforgettable of schoolhouse crimes: a disabled 17-year-old student was shoved into a boys' bathroom in her wheelchair by a classmate at Yates High School here, dragged to the floor and raped. Her attacker was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Yet the Houston Independent School District did not include that rape, committed two years ago, when it came time to report the school year's campus crimes to the state as required by Texas law. And that is not the only school crime that appears to have been airbrushed from the official record.
On Oct. 3, 2000, a boy named Joseph Hamilton was "stomped and beaten" by another student in the cafeteria of Williams Middle School and was left injured on the floor, according to a school district memorandum, but the assault went unreported to Texas authorities. Last April, a 16-year-old boy was stabbed in the chest by another student at Washington High School; that attack was not reported, either.
In the last four school years, the Houston district's own police, who patrol its 80 middle and high schools, have entered 3,091 assaults into a database that is shared with the Houston city police but not with the Texas Education Agency in Austin.
In the same period, the Houston district itself has listed just 761 schoolhouse assaults on its annual disciplinary summaries sent to Austin. That means that the school authorities either have not reported or have reclassified 2,330 incidents described as assaults by the district's police.
The district maintains that its reporting has been entirely proper. Those who disagree point to damage they say can be inflicted on the careers of principals who accurately report a high incidence of disciplinary problems, and to the financing sacrificed by schools that lose student population to expulsion.
School violence reports have taken on new importance since President Bush made a national goal of holding schools accountable for test scores and campus crime. At his insistence, a new federal law requires states to use violence data to identify "persistently dangerous" schools, and Education Secretary Rod Paige, former schools superintendent here, is in charge of enforcing that law.
......Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, said, "I can guarantee you that there is a lot of underreporting" of school crimes in Houston.
"Principals are very prone not to report crimes, not if they can avoid it," Ms. Fallon said in an interview.
The problem is at its worst each fall before Oct. 30, she said, when Texas authorities count students at each school to allocate per capita financing. In the weeks before this "snapshot day," principals are especially reluctant to expel bullies and report their offenses, she said, because the loss of one student can cost the school thousands of dollars.
"A student would damn near have to kill somebody," Ms. Fallon said, "to be expelled before that snapshot date."
Schools open in Iraq!
And it looks like they're teaching the kids to aim high and be straight shooters:
An Army Black Hawk helicopter crashed Friday into a riverbank near Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, killing six U.S. soldiers, the military said. It probably was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, an officer said.
Two Americans also were killed in separate attacks Thursday and Friday in the northern city of Mosul, raising concerns that the insurgency was spreading north.
It was not immediately clear whether the chopper was brought down by hostile fire or a mechanical failure, a spokeswoman said. But an officer who asked not to be identified said it was probably hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.
"Six soldiers were on board and all of them were killed," said Maj. Josslyn Aberle, a spokeswoman for the 4th Infantry Division based in Tikrit. They were all from the 101st Airborne Division, she said.
Bush: “Ask me no more questions…” (but the lies will keep coming)
From washingtonpost.com
The Bush White House, irritated by pesky questions from congressional Democrats about how the administration is using taxpayer money, has developed an efficient solution: It will not entertain any more questions from opposition lawmakers.
The decision -- one that Democrats and scholars said is highly unusual -- was announced in an e-mail sent Wednesday to the staff of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. House committee Democrats had just asked for information about how much the White House spent making and installing the "Mission Accomplished" banner for President Bush's May 1 speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.
The director of the White House Office of Administration, Timothy A. Campen, sent an e-mail titled "congressional questions" to majority and minority staff on the House and Senate Appropriations panels. Expressing "the need to add a bit of structure to the Q&A process," he wrote: "Given the increase in the number and types of requests we are beginning to receive from the House and Senate, and in deference to the various committee chairmen and our desire to better coordinate these requests, I am asking that all requests for information and materials be coordinated through the committee chairmen and be put in writing from the committee."
He said this would limit "duplicate requests" and help answer questions "in a timely fashion."
It would also do another thing: prevent Democrats from getting questions answered without the blessing of the GOP committee chairmen.
"It's saying we're not going to allow the opposition party to ask questions about the way we use tax money," said R. Scott Lilly, Democratic staff director for the House committee. "As far as I know, this is without modern precedent."
Bucs player claims $70,000 loss
Buccaneers' offensive lineman Kenyatta Walker may want to tackle whoever swiped $70,000 worth of jewelry from his 2002 Ford Excursion, police said.
Someone jimmied a lock of Walker's sport utility vehicle after the 24-year-old parked outside Malio's Steak House, 301 S. Dale Mabry Highway, about 12:30 p.m. Monday, Tampa police said.
Walker flagged down a passing officer to report a $2,000 entertainment system and a video game missing, police said. He did not notice the jewelry missing until he returned home about 30 minutes later, police said.
Investigators plan to check with pawn shops to recover Walker's $20,000 diamond-faced Rolex watch and a $50,000 platinum necklace with two charms, a diamond-studded football and Walker's initials, police said.
The Super Bowl star is earning $540,000 with the Bucs this year, records show, and often starts at right tackle. He could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Auto burglaries are a citywide problem but have increased along Dale Mabry Highway between Interstate 275 and Swann Avenue, police said.
``Had Mr. Walker taken these valuables with him, he would not have experienced a loss of this magnitude,'' police spokesman Capt. Bob Guidara said.
Uh, so, this guy took $70,000 worth of jewelry with him to Malios so he could look good and pick up on some drunken South Tampa Bucs groupies, and then he decided to leave said jewelry in the car, 'cause, like, you know, he didn't wanna like come across as too flashy or anything, right?
His Ford Excretion gets broken into. Somehow, he notices his VCR and Nintendo missing, but doesn't notice the jewelry's gone until he gets home? Can anyone say "Insurance fraud"?
And while I’m on the subject of Bucs and the law, what the fuck is Michael Pittman still doing playing for this team, or any team, for that matter, after ramming his own kid with an SUV?
W: “Hide the bodies, show the money!”
W is ignoring death and destruction in favor of fundraising. Maureen Dowd sums things up”
There are those who say Mr. Bush should have emulated Rudy Giuliani's empathetic leadership after 9/11, or Dad's in the first gulf war, and attended some of the funerals of the 379 Americans killed in Iraq. Or one. Maybe the one for Specialist Darryl Dent, the 21-year-old National Guard officer from Washington who died outside Baghdad in late August when a bomb struck his truck while he was delivering mail to troops. His funeral was held at a Baptist church three miles from the White House.
But let's look at it from the president's point of view: if he grieves more publicly or concretely, if he addresses every instance of bad news, like the hideous specter of Iraqis' celebrating the downing of the Chinook, he will simply remind people of what's going on in Iraq
.......If he gets more explicit, or allows the flag-draped coffins of fallen heroes to be photographed coming home, it will just remind people that the administration said this would be easy, and it's teeth-grindingly hard. And that the administration vowed to get Osama and Saddam and W.M.D., and hasn't. And that the Bush team that hyped the presence of Al Qaeda in Iraq has now created an Al Qaeda presence in Iraq. And that there was no decent plan for the occupation or for financing one, no plan for rotating or supporting troops stretched too thin to guard ammunition caches or police a fractious society, and no plan for getting out.
......The ball for fall is fund-raising. President Bush has been going full throttle since summer, spending several days a week flying around the country, hitting up rich Republicans for $2,000 checks. He has raised $90 million so far out of the $175 million he plans to spend on a primary campaign in which he has no opponent.
......Raising $1.8 million at lunch, he stuck to the line that "we are aggressively striking the terrorists in Iraq, defeating them there so we will not have to face them in our own country." He didn't want to depress the donors by mentioning the big news story, the loss of 15 American soldiers, or sour the mood by conceding the obvious, that the swelling horde of terrorists fighting us there will not prevent terrorists from coming after us here. Maybe we should all be like President Bush and not read the papers so we don't get worn down either.