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July 21, 2005
Pentagon Requests Raise in Recruitment Age to 42
Uncle Sam wants you – even if you’re 42 years old
(The Army Times)
The Defense Department quietly asked Congress on Monday to raise the maximum age for military recruits to 42 for all branches of the service.
Go to article.
(Thanks Rachel Maddow!)
Posted by MJuhre at 01:25 PM | Comments (0)
Burn Baby Burn - It's Finger-Licking Good!
The Huey P. Newton Foundation, named after the late founding member of the Black Panthers, announced this week it will market a new "Burn Baby Burn" hot sauce to raise money for the not-for-profit group's literacy programs.
Man. This seems so wrong on so many levels. "It was a catchy phrase, and I thought it would be reminiscent of the '60s," said Fredrika Newton, Huey's widow, on Tuesday. "I sure didn't want it to be a call to burn anything other than our taste buds." Coined by Los Angeles R&B disc jockey Magnificent Montague, who often said "burn baby burn" when playing a hot track, the adage was seared into the American lexicon during the 1965 Watts riots, when crowds turned the DJ's motto into a rallying cry as they set neighborhood businesses ablaze.
On the other hand, if co-opting revolution will raise money for educational purposes, I suppose they should totally exploit that. Lord knows plenty of revolution has been co-opted for less benevolent purposes. I just hope this doesn't inspire any profiteers to make "Black Panther" malt liquor or anything.
And for that matter, I must admit that since, coincidentally I happen to be flying to Oakland tonight, I'm totally gonna try to see if the foundation is already selling the sauce locally.
Check out the foundation's trademark application here. I find it curious that they filed the mark for use in "sauces, excluding apple sauce and cranberry sauce." While I agree it is unlikely they would choose to make apple or cranberry sauce, such disclaimers are usually reserved for a situation wherein another party is already using the trademark for the same goods -- and I'd venture to guess that no one else is using the brand for apple or cranberry sauce.
Two other parties are, however, also using or planning to use "Burn Baby Burn" as a brand name.
Pascal Communications uses the brand for its CD and DVD burning services, while New York designer Norma Kamali apparently plans to use the brand for a women's clothing line.
Kamali's trademark application is interesting because it was filed eight months before the Newton Foundation's. This means that if the foundation ever decides to make t-shirts or hats of their new hot sauce brand, it could end up having to license the name (for use on clothing anyway) from Kamali. Kamali, having prior rights could conceivably even block the foundation from using the name on clothes altogether.
Wow. How amazing would that be if, 40 years after the Watts riots, a New York fashion designer forced former Black Panthers to cease and desist from selling "burn baby burn" clothing? A truly American story.
Read this San Francisco Chronicle article to get the full story the Newton Foundation's new hot sauce brand. (However, please note that, while the headline reads "barbecue sauce," the body of the story, and every other one I've seen, says it is hot sauce).
Posted by MJuhre at 11:05 AM | Comments (2)
July 20, 2005
Supreme Court Nomination Provides Media Reprieve from 'Plamegate'
I have to acknowledge that Bush's nomination of Judge John G. Roberts to take Sandra Day O'Connor's seat on the Court was strategically brilliant to the point that I'm almost just prepared to give up on my anger with this Administration and just bow down to its political savvy. Roberts is almost certain to sail through the Senate-approval process. And, since he is young, in judicial terms, he might sit on the court until 2040.
I’ll hold off on other comment on this nomination -- at least for now.
That said, one rather deplorable decision Roberts made as a judge was in February, when he decided in favor of the Bush administration, which sought to prevent Gulf War veterans that were tortured under Saddam Hussein's regime from collecting the nearly $1 billion from Iraq previously awarded to them by a federal judge.
The Administration essentially argued that since the U.S. had conquered Iraq, the government that owed our soldiers compensation as per a court order no longer existed.
On the legal side, that may be a sound argument. Quite honestly, I don't really understand how a U.S. court can order a foreign government to pay our citizens compensation for torture in the first place (anyone?), although I suppose that is just part of the spoils of war.
However, the real reasons the Bush administration sought this decision were (1) now that it dominates and funds the Iraqi government, it didn’t feel like ponying up the cash to our troops, and (2) more importantly, the Administration was worried that the original Federal Court decision might set a precedent that could bolster future lawsuits against the U.S. government for mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
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By the way, in case you’re wondering. The pic above is not actually John Roberts, but former Vice President Dan Quayle. But all those conservative white-bred types look the same to me. The big difference, of course, is that John Roberts is no moron.
Posted by MJuhre at 04:09 PM | Comments (0)
July 13, 2005
Journalists Smell, and Finally Draw, Blood
On July 12, Fox News's most sniveling worm of a news anchor, John Gibson, said, "I say give Karl Rove a medal, even if Bush has to fire him. Why? Because Valerie Plame should have been outed by somebody and nobody had the cajones to do it. I'm glad Rove did, if he did do it, and he still says he didn't...You wouldn't send a peacenik to see if we should go to war, if we need to go to war, now would you? That's exactly what happened."
This morning, Air America Radio's Isaac-Davy Aronson reacted to those words: "Ahhhhh-are you serious? I can't stand it. Listen. Peacenik? Joe Wilson -- they are still slamming Joe Wilson after all of this -- Joe Wilson worked for the [elder] Bush Administration. He was sent to Iraq by Bush one. He was the last person authorized to meet with Saddam Hussein...He supported the Gulf War and then when Saddam Husseing threatened to hang all the Americans in Iraq leading up to the war, Joe Wilson went outside the embassy -- after hiding all the Americans in Iraq in the embassy -- with a noose around his neck and said 'Saddam, I'm right here. Come and hang me.' This man is a great American."
Gibson's Rove-shining, Wilson-smearing rant is in line with the GOP spin identified this morning on the Rachel Maddow Show. Every day Air America's Rachel Maddow gives her update on the right wing's backdoor strategies and talking-point PR. Filling in while Rachel vacations this week, Aronson said the GOP spin on the Rove revelations are twofold:
1) Legalese wrangling: i.e. saying that what Rove did was technically not illegal, since he didn't actually mention Valerie Plame's name, only that "Wilson's wife" was with "the agency" (CIA). This nonsense we all expected.
2) Talking points that what Rove did was a good thing (hence Gibson's oratory).
Strategy one might well prevent Rove or anyone else in the administration from indictment, even though what Rove allegedly did is a federal crime. But I'm curious to see whether strategy two can really stick.
Anyone who saw the White House press briefing on July 11 can see that the normally cowed mainstream media smells blood. Can the right wing media really fend them off with torches? (If you have a half hour, I really encourage you see/listen to that press briefing. Go to C-SPAN, do a text search for McClellan, and click on the July 11 news briefing with Scott McClellan. Otherwise, I provide a link the transcript below.)
The press corps really gave Scott a reaming over his shoddy non-answers to questions about Rove's involvement in the Plame affair. After years of brown-nosing and/or being cowed by the Bush adminstration, the White House press corps actually asked tough questions and call the White House on its BS. I could hardly believe it.
This may be wishful thinking, but I can't help but feel like the current generation of reporters are now fantasizing about having their Watergate story. So many other outlandish things this White House has done have disappeared in the media cracks. But the Rove-Plame thing looks like it has legs.
The fact that this all comes on the heels of journalist Judith Miller going to jail for refusing to name her source on the Plame affair (for a story she never wrote) is probably what really gave the press back its bite. Over the past year the government and the right-wing pundits have trounced the mainstream press. We had Memogate, the "Kenneth Tomlinson vs. Bill Moyers and the CPB" affair, the Newsweek story on koran desecretion (which, by the way, was reviewed and given the OK by the Pentagon before it printed, even though Rumsfeld and the entire Bush Administration then condemned it 11 days after publication).
After all that, and now that the Administration has been caught in such a blatant lie (asserting last year that Bush wanted more than anything to "get to the bottom" of who leaked Plame's name, and insisting that Rove was not involved), it appears that the journalists may finally close ranks and not let the Administration off the hook. Could the Bush Administration veneer be fracturing? Are its many PR victories over? Or am I naive? We shall see.
The overreach by the GOP over the Schiavo issue may have been the turning point for the victory of right-wing hubris. Then came the Downing Street memo. Now we know that Rove outed a CIA operative as payback to Joe Wilson's telling the truth that the Niger-Saddam-yellowcake story Bush used to justify the invasion against Iraq was poppycock.
Please Jesus, send in the wolves.
Links:
Transcript of the July 11 White House press briefing with Scott McClellan. If you can't watch the video READ THE TRANSCRIPT. Skip McClellan's opening remarks and go straight to the Q and A.
Transcript of the July 12 White House press briefing with Scott McClellan. Things didn't get too much better for Scott yesterday:
Q All right, you say you won't discuss it, but the Republican National Committee and others working, obviously, on behalf of the White House, they put out this Wilson-Rove research and talking points, distributed to Republican surrogates, which include things like, Karl Rove discouraged a reporter from writing a false story. And then other Republican surrogates are getting information such as, Cooper -- the Time reporter -- called Rove on the pretense of discussing welfare reform. Bill Kristol on Fox News, a friendly news channel to you, said that the conversation lasted for two minutes and it was just at the end that Rove discussed this. So someone is providing this information. Are you, behind the scenes, directing a response to this story?
MR. McCLELLAN: You can talk to the RNC about what they put out. I'll let them speak to that. What I know is that the President directed the White House to cooperate fully with the investigation. And as part of cooperating fully with that investigation, that means supporting the efforts by the investigators to come to a successful conclusion, and that means not commenting on it from this podium.
The Rachel Maddow Show -- If you don't already listen to her show on Air America Radio, you should! It's only an hour and, if you download the podcast later in the day (like I do, since the show is on from 5:00-6:00 a.m. Eastern Time), it's shorter, because the commercials are taken out. Rachel Maddow kicks ass and my fiancee and I are both in love with her. Every day Rachel combs the domestic and foreign press to find the important political stories that those of us with busy lives might otherwise miss.
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update...
Crap. Maybe the GOP veneer will hold after all.
A couple things worry me about how the Rove story is developing today:
One, almost every major paper's headline today seems to be "Bush will withold judgment on Rove" or "Bush Declines Comment" rather than "Bush Refuses to Comment on Rove," which is, of course, what he is refusing to do.
Of the big names, so far only the Los Angeles Times had the balls to tell it like it is: Bush Refuses to Discuss Rove's Role.
Two, the typical, wussy, Democratic gum flapping like this from Senator Biden, (who normally I like, but who has been annoying me a lot lately -- and just about the time he started thinking about running for president...hmmm) doesn't exactly bolster the wave of public opinion that could crash over Rove and the adminstration.
"The fact [Rove] he didn't give her name, but identified the ambassador's wife ... doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out who that is," Biden said on CNN's Inside Politics. "If that occurred, at a minimum, that was incredibly bad judgment, warranting him being asked to leave."
Bad judgment? Ask him to leave? Thanks Joe. Lame ass talk like that are essentially a concession in the war of words, and will sink any chance of indictment.
Back in the late 90s, the GOP's lockstep crooning over "obstruction of justice" got President Clinton impeached for lying about a blow job. Your job as a Democratic leader is to say the following over and over again: "Rove committed a crime by disclosing the identity of a CIA operative (you don't have to name someone to effectively identity him or her). He and possibly others in the Bush Administration then lied about it to the American people for two years."
Whether or not the court ends up agreeing with you is irrelevant. Don't you get it? No, but Rove does.
On the other hand, the continously repeated line from Bush and his spokesman, Scott McClellan, that they "won't comment until this "ongoing investigation is closed" does evince a notion that the White House believes it could be in potentially serious legal trouble.
The administration's refusal to discuss the matter because it might be the smartest legal move means it has to decline to spin the matter at this time, and could look shoddy in the court of public opinion.
Lucky for Rove and Bush, the administration has other outlets to spin for it.
The GOP footsoldiers are on the job. In an interview on said on MSNBC's Scarborough Country, New York Congressman Peter King talked about shooting reporters who questioned the integrity of the Bush Administration. "People like Tim Russert and the others, who gave this guy [Joseph Wilson] such a free ride and all the media, they're the ones to be shot, not Karl Rove."
Posted by MJuhre at 01:41 PM | Comments (0)