Hillary Clinton and my Visa bill

I just got my Visa bill for my final election donations-all those click-and-donate appeals in my email box and on the Web. I gave more than I thought I had, more than I'd intended to spend, and more than I'd ever given before. You make enough $25 to $50 contributions, and soon you're talking real money, a tenth of my annual income.

But I feel just fine about my giving. I'm proud to have helped support Dean's 50-state strategy by donating to the Democratic National Committee early enough to help build key infrastructure, and then again and again as new opportunities emerged. I felt great about giving to Jon Tester six times, including for his final election week push. Between my donations and my volunteering with MoveOn's CallforChange program, I felt like I'd personally helped elect Tester, Jim Webb, Claire McCaskill, Sherrod Brown, Bernie Sanders, Sheldon Whitehouse, and half the Congressional candidates from the NetRoots Act Blue page. I'd have felt proud to do my part even if the close races had gone the other way.

What doesn't please me, in fact disturbs me immensely, is discovering that

Dear Mr. O’Reilly, THIS is culture: the search for the heart of New Orleans, part III

It was early evening when my assistant, Little Red, and I disembarked. Coming into New Orleans I felt like a lost character from the set of the Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Jack Nicholson film romp motorcycle classic “Easy Rider”. The vibe was light despite the abrupt fatal ending of the sixties epic. But these thoughts quickly slipped into the ether as we picked up our luggage and caught a cab to our hotel, The Royal Sonesta, which is located right on Bourbon Street. I was still feeling the ill effects of head congestion which was compounded with wicked cabin pressure and left me hard of hearing. The poor cab driver attempted to have a conversation with me, but I simply didn’t hear most of what was said. Little Red jumped in and tried to discreetly tell me what he was saying so I could respond, but my responses came out in whispers that the driver in turn could not hear. Unfortunately, I believe the man was left with a bad impression, but I tipped him a Jackson so that should assuage any and all slight my unfortunate condition might have caused.

Intolerable questions: the search for the heart of New Orleans, part II

Over a year after hurricane Katrina ripped through New Orleans and the Golf Coast region at large, a multitude of problems still exist. Some of the troubles currently facing the Crescent City include high rent, FEMA/insurance companies being slow to pay, contractor scam artists, squabbles over land rights, the West Nile Virus, citizens not returning from their “surrogate” cities, lack of employment opportunities, and the oh-so-popular and pervasive government inaction. While brilliant political pundits will debate the veracity and severity of the multitude of problems, I really have no desire to throw my hat into that ring. Instead, my dispatch from the former flooded plane of the Mississippi delta attempts to get to the bare, naked truth of the matter. At the heart of this story are the human hearts of the people and the very soul of the New Orleans area.

Bread, bread, everywhere, yet not a morsel to eat

Pelted by a perpetual hail of electrons fired through a cathode ray tube, the pixels on my PC monitor feed me a generous intellectual bounty of words and images emanating from virtually infinite points dotting the globe. Enabling me to interface with the Internet at will, my computer serves as my window to the world and as a portal through which I can unleash my writings upon the unsuspecting.

Earlier this week as I peered into cyberspace through my ostensibly one-way aperture, I happened upon a picture that my imperialist indoctrination had conditioned me to reflexively dismiss or ignore. However, I’ve grown increasingly resistant to the “charms” of the pathological delusions of American superiority, invulnerability, impunity, and entitlement to decadence. Something about this particular assemblage of glowing pixels left me flailing in a raging river of emotion. As I negotiated the tempestuous feelings surging within me, I made the conscious decision to forgo the American Way of dismissal and distraction. Instead, I connected and contemplated.

The Tin Man Challenge: Overcoming technology without Heart

In the Wizard of Oz tale, the Tin Man is in search of a heart to make himself more human. Our technology faces a similar challenge.

Not only has our intellectual capacity for invention shot way ahead of our physical and psychic need for the latest and greatest gadgetry, but most current technological advancement has little to do with what we care about most: connecting with ourselves and others in a meaningful, heart-felt way. It''s not just that we still can''t figure out how to program the VCR (now DVR), but you can''t get a hi-5 or a hug from one even when you have figured it out.

Our tech wizardry can help us see or talk to another person across the globe in real time, or shoot us into outer space, but does little to help us relate better to our loved ones. Nor does it console us in times of suffering, and offers us no great solutions to ending war after millennia of repeating our brutal mistakes.

Muslim war

BANGKOK, Thailand -- The horror of 78 Muslim men who were forcibly tied up, laid out like logs in army trucks, crushed until their eyes bled and they suffocated to death, has not been forgotten despite the coup regime's apology.

Ethnic Malay Islamist insurgents continue to unleash fresh attacks against Thailand's Buddhist establishment, pro-government Muslim collaborators, and innocent people.

More than 1,700 people have been killed on all sides since 2004.

Southern Thailand's Narathiwat, Yala, and Pattani provinces suffer one of the world's bloodiest Islamist rebel wars outside of Iraq.

America gave helicopters, weapons, technical assistance, and training to Thailand's confused military to kill Muslim rebels in the south.

But some U.S. weaponry, including M-16 assault rifles and Humvees, were used by a Thai army faction when they staged a bloodless coup in Bangkok on Sept. 19.

Now the worried coup leaders are enforcing nationwide martial law, stifling free speech, blocking political activity, and installing a pliant government and constitution to defend themselves.

An easy way to help fund AIDS research

Bristol-Myers is donating a dollar to AIDS research each time someone goes to their website, moves the match to the candle and lights it. Please forward this to your friends to spread. It takes a second to raise a dollar.

Click on the link below or copy and paste the link below in your browser and please light the candle. https://www.lighttounite.org/.

Light to Unite

Flirting with fascism on CNN Headline News; Host Glenn Beck threatens Muslims with concentration camps

The New York Times (12/4/06), profiling new CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck, called him "brash" and "opinionated," with an "unfiltered approach." The conservative talk-radio host-turned-cable news announcer, the paper reported, "take[s] credit for saying what others are feeling but are afraid to say."

The Times mentioned one of the things Beck has said recently, to newly elected U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a Muslim: "Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies." But as press critic Eric Alterman pointed out (Altercation, 12/4/06), as offensive as that question is, it doesn't begin to suggest the poisonousness of Beck's rhetoric about Muslims.

On his August 10 radio show, distributed by Clear Channel's Premiere Radio Networks, Beck told listeners, "The world is on the brink of World War III," then issued this warning:

Permanent bases and temporary presidents

Did you notice something about the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group Report?  It recommends all sorts of changes, all of them far short of actually ending the war, but it recommends them all to the same person responsible for the disastrous situation we're in now.  It doesn't suggest what Congress should do to rein in an out-of-control president.  Rather, it recommends that the President do dozens of things.  Here's one of them:

"RECOMMENDATION 22: The President should state that the United States does not seek permanent military bases in Iraq. If the Iraqi government were to request a temporary base or bases, then the U.S. government could consider that request as it would in the case of any other government."

The Baker Boys: stay half the course. Iraq Study Group or Saudi Protection League?

James Baker III and the seven dwarfs of the "Iraq Study Group" have come up with some simply brilliant recommendations. Not.

Baker's Two Big Ideas are:

1. Stay half the course. Keeping 140,000 troops in Iraq is a disaster getting more disastrous. The Baker Boys' idea: cut the disaster in half -- leave 70,000 troops there.

But here's where dumb gets dumber: the Bakerites want to "embed" US forces in Iraqi Army units. Question one, Mr. Baker: What Iraqi Army? This so-called "army" is a rough confederation of Shia death squads. We can tell our troops to get "embedded" with them, but the Americans won't get much sleep.

2. "Engage" Iran. This is a good one. How can we get engaged when George Bush hasn't even asked them out for a date? What will induce the shy mullahs of Iran to accept our engagement proposal? Answer: The Bomb.

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