Those Dean Bros and the people they have inspired are FIRST!

Well, it's going to be tricky timing this am, what with trying to catch the brief slowing between the morning rush hour and the crush of people heading to the car show that starts at 10 am.

It opened yesterday and is continuing through a week from Sunday. Hybrids are all the rage. Hummers, which I personally consider to be abominations, and other gas-guzzlers will also be there, however. If more space and renewable-resources could be combined, that would be the optimum, IMO.

US car manufacturers have pretty been left in the dust, I'm afraid. They didn't do themselves any favors by not investing in energy-efficient cars MUCH earlier.

================
Car show offers study in contrasts
| 17h36 The biggest annual event on Geneva’s calendar gets under way with something for everyone – large and small.

Swiss President Pascal Couchepin opened the Geneva Motor Show today with more than 1,000 cars on display at Palexpo to meet every taste. At a time when the city’s Green mayor, Patrice Mugny, is calling for restrictions on driving downtown, the 78th annual event presents a study in contradictions. While the show’s organizers are promoting green technology, a large number of gas-guzzling SUVs and sports cars remain key attractions.

[...]
http://www.tdg.ch/pages/home/tribune_de_...(contenu)/202125

Stop fumigation of citizens without their consent in California

Tens of thousands of residents of the State of California are being sprayed under the cover of night with pesticides containing partly unknown chemicals. These sprayings, conducted without adequate health studies, are done not to protect residents from a clear and present public health danger, but rather to protect special interests worried about eradicating the Light Brown Apple Moth.

The spray operations in Central Coast counties of Monterey and Santa Cruz, resulted in over 600 reports of health illnesses. State authorities have not only failed to respond, but now plan new aerial spray operations in the San Francisco Bay Area.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/stop-fumigation-of-citizens-without

This was a big story here and in France last weekend. A group of partying young men, all of whom were inebriated, apparently jostled the door of a ski gondola to the extent that it opened, causing one to fall to his death.

Now the question is whether the gondola itself was defective.

=============
Swiss firm defends gondola safety
| 17h16 While questions persist about how a man fell to his death from a Chamonix ski lift, the Solothurn manufacturer says the cabins meet safety standards.

A justice official has concluded a fatal fall from a Swiss-made ski lift in Chamonix last weekend was not caused by a fight. A 32-year-old man plunged 25 meters to his death after tumbling out of a gondola cabin when a Plexiglas window gave way last Saturday. The man had been descending in one of the cabins with three other friends from the Somme region on the lift at the Brévent resort, an hour’s drive from Geneva.

[...]
http://www.tdg.ch/pages/home/tribune_de_...(contenu)/201850

Ah, I did get tamped down ... but Deans are still FIRST, wherever they fall in the line-up.

****************
I really do despise these people and all those who enable them, both officially and unofficially.

I hope that some day, they will be held responsible for every one of the innocent victims of their nasty trade.

===============
'Lord of war' arms trafficker arrested
Duncan Campbell and Ian MacKinnon in Bangkok
The Guardian, Friday March 7 2008

If Viktor Bout did not exist, a thriller writer would have invented him. A former Russian lieutenant, he became one of the world's biggest arms dealers, flying his ancient Soviet planes into battlefields from Liberia to Afghanistan. His clients have included the Taliban and the US government, African warlords and the UN.

He has as many aliases as an AK-47 has rounds, and has acquired the nicknames Merchant of Death and Lord of War. Pursued for years by the intelligence services of the world, and tracked for months by Thai detectives, yesterday the elusive 41-year-old was finally arrested in a five star hotel in Bangkok.

This time Bout is accused of attempting to buy arms and explosives for leftwing Farc rebels in Colombia but the charge sheet could have listed half a dozen countries where governments might like to interview him.

[...]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar...

Well, some have wondered how some lawyers here ever made the cut to begin with ... perhaps they had this boy take the exam for them.

==============
Brazilian boy, 8, passes law school entrance exam
Tales Azzoni, Associated Press, in Sao Paulo
The Guardian, Friday March 7 2008

Brazil's lawyers have been shocked to find that a boy aged eight has managed to pass the entrance exam to law school.

The Bar Association said the achievement of Joao Victor Portellinha should be taken as a warning about the low standards of some of Brazil's law schools.

"If this is confirmed, the Education Ministry should immediately intervene ... to investigate the circumstances of this case," said the association's president in Goias state, Miguel Angelo Cancado.

Joao Victor is still in fifth grade, two levels ahead of normal for his age, but his mother says he is not a cloistered genius. "He is a regular boy," she told the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper. "He is very dedicated, likes to read and study, but he has fun and makes friends."

[...]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar...

As if climate change were not bad enough ... many will starve to death before then.

================
Food crisis will take hold before climate change, warns chief scientist· Pressures from population growth and affluence
· 'Profoundly stupid' to cut down forests for biofuels
James Randerson, science correspondent
The Guardian, Friday March 7 2008

Food security and the rapid rise in food prices make up the "elephant in the room" that politicians must face up to quickly, according to the government's new chief scientific adviser.

In his first major speech since taking over, Professor John Beddington said the global rush to grow biofuels was compounding the problem, and cutting down rainforest to produce biofuel crops was "profoundly stupid".

He told the Govnet Sustainable Development UK Conference in Westminster: "There is progress on climate change. But out there is another major problem. It is very hard to imagine how we can see a world growing enough crops to produce renewable energy and at the same time meet the enormous increase in the demand for food which is quite properly going to happen as we alleviate poverty."

[...]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/m...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/m...

So much for asylum if you happen to be gay ...

===============
Now Iranian lesbian who fled to Britain faces deportation
By Robert Verkaik, Law Editor
Friday, 7 March 2008

An Iranian lesbian who fled to Britain after her girlfriend was arrested and sentenced to death faces being forcibly returned after losing the latest round in her battle to be granted asylum.

The case of Pegah Emambakhsh, 40, comes a day after The Independent reported on the growing public outcry over the plight of a gay Iranian teenager who fears he will be executed if he is deported to Iran.

Both cases have provoked international protests against Britain and led to calls for an immediate moratorium on the deportation of gay and lesbian asylum-seekers who fear they will be persecuted in Iran.

[...]
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/hom...

Froomkin continues his reporting of the putz-'Cain *moment.*

==============
Bush's Awkward Embrace
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Thursday, March 6, 2008; 1:04 PM

There's something about passing the torch to John McCain that appears to make President Bush very uncomfortable.

At yesterday's pomp-filled endorsement of his would-be successor, Bush came off like a man overcompensating for anxiety with manic bonhomie. Even before McCain's arrival -- when Bush literally began tap-dancing for the press corps as he waited for the Republican nominee's car to pull up to the North Portico -- the president seemed unusually self-conscious and ill at ease.

Which was kind of ironic, given that yesterday's event was far more fraught with peril for McCain than it was for Bush.

When the two men finally emerged for their joint Rose Garden appearance, Bush was rambunctious and domineering. McCain, by contrast, responded to Bush's giddiness with a rigor-mortis smile and some clear indications that he would be keeping Bush at arm's length from this point forward.

[...]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...

Juan Cole's ME tour d'horizon ... definitely worth a looksee.

Thank God for people like Tikkun's Rabbi Michael Lerner.

This is the last for now ... trying to make the gap.

================
Friday, March 07, 2008
Gaza: "Humanitarian Implosion";
Jewish Seminarians Shot Down;
Bush Messes Up Gaza Even More

In the miserable Israeli-Palestinian Hundred Years War, there were several pieces of worse than usual news lately.

[...]
And consider supporting the Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center. Remember, Jesus was a Palestinian Jew and every sixth Palestinian is a Christian who traces his or her roots to the early Christian community in places like Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Why don't most Christians care about them, if they won't just care about human beings in general?

http://www.juancole.com/2008/03/in-miser...

Hope, not Fear.

Obama '08.

Bush and McCain :

Bush is like the school bully - who knows he  deserves to be taken down a notch by those whom he has slurred. When a victim of his does not appear to be bent on revenge it confuses him terribly.

Hello Judy! I never did make it down to the MD/DC area a few weeks ago ~ one of these days... :-D

Hey David ~ no fear here!

3 :14 am est

...or when a potential victim isn't intimidated.
...or when a potential victim stands up.

3:18 am est

3:36 Hi Thankful !

 Off to nee-naw land.

And, as always ........

Stop by when you're in these parts again, Thankful.

Diane said to say "hi" - followed by "Come to bed - do you know what time it is ?"

LOL ~ howdy and big hugs to Diane and yourself. Yes, I'll stop by again for lunch one of these trips. I love her shop and have a couple items on the wish list... not to mention it's always so nice to be among friends :-D Sweet ones atcha both.

3:57 am est

I know what time it is! Time to say...

Night and ♥'s to all

Kindness is free!

4:32 am est

The Machinery of Hope
Inside the grass-roots field operation of Barack Obama, who is transforming the way political campaigns are run

Good morning, everybody 5;22 AM Est

Somehow, pitching McCain with an albatross named Bush doesn't cause a wave of sympathy to crash over me. Regardless how high his station in society, a man who's done evil needs to be shunned.  i've never quite understood the notion that a postion deserves to be honored despite the abject failure of the person who holds it.  It's like that prescription that the discussion of foreign relations not occur in public.  They're strategies that are designed to minimize accountability.  It's amazing what a salutary process it is to make someone tell (account) in public what he's been up to.  Watch Hillary Clinton try to avoid it. 

the dlc crowd must still be punishing Howard:

The Democratic National Committee ended 2007 nearly flat broke, with cash of $2.9 million and debts of $2.2 million. Since then it has raised some money, paid down debt and managed to put $3.7 million in its piggy bank. This compares, however, with $25 million that the Republican National Committee has in cash on hand, after having raised $97 million since the beginning of 2007.

clip... How the costly 50-state strategy — and the cash shortfall that it has created — play out over the coming election will be a referendum on the tenure of Mr. Dean, who has had a prickly relationship with many of the party’s top officials. Under Mr. Dean’s tenure, D.N.C. fund-raising has steadily climbed, along with its expenses. So far, Mr. Dean has spent $170 million since the last presidential election to turn his vision for the party into a reality, with nearly $60 million of that raised in the last year alone.

“He’s doing the job of the party chairman in a very different way,” said Elaine C. Kamarck, a D.N.C. member and lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

“And people don’t like that,” added Ms. Kamarck, who wrote a paper “Howard Dean’s Fifty-State Strategy and the 2006 Midterm Elections.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/us/politics/07donate.html?ex=1362632400&en=15eadca8e454fa77&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

5:24 AM EST

Pennsylvania 4/22/08 - the Archie Bunkers will be bested by the Hope voters ?:

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1720294,00.html?xid=rss-topstories

Mornin' mainefem.  I think obama did fairly well on the ABC evening news.  At least he's got the ability to treat the press without fawning or haughtiness.  He's been blessed with his demeanor.  It's like some people are "natural" stars on the stage.  They command attention without any effort.  Bush Two, for example, has to act up to get noticed.  At the same time, he can't stand to be ignored.

good morning Ladies!  good lookin' mag cover, mainefem! 

it looks like a fairly nice day here today - in the 40s again - but getting nasty and into the single digits again this weekend - lots more snow mixed with sleet - dam that groundhog!

I feel rather strongly that the deceptive use of Obama's image (both in the 'dressed" picture and in the ad about the subcommittee) as well as the flap over the Canada/NAFTA discussion should not be swept under the rug.  Although Obama was the overt object of each fictional rendition, it's the American public that was intentionally deceived.  In a sense, that's one of the advantages of using someone else as a vehicle for a message; it makes it harder to assign responsibility for the deception.  To understand what I mean, consider that there can be no dispute about what Clinton says about herself in an ad, as there can be when her campaign puts out an ad featuring Obama.  The only things that's clear is that it's probably not meant to be flattering.

The "I approved this message" line actually dillutes responsibility when it's not clear what the message actually is.  I think campaigs should be prohibited from using another candidate's image in their ads. 

flooding dangers are getting critical in our part of the country with immense amounts of water in the snow pack in a part of the calendar when we can get a big spring rain, but next weeks storm looks to be snow again

keep your flood insurance up to date  

 the president seemed unusually self-conscious and ill at ease.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

probably got an economic briefing from someone who knows the score instead of a Fox (our troll) rah rah type

sorry I missed you this trip Thankful,next time

BTW Obama won Texas

 So far, Mr. Dean has spent $170 million since the last presidential election to turn his vision for the party into a reality, with nearly $60 million of that raised in the last year alone.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

wOOt!

" It was never my accomplishments it was always our accomplishments. " Brett Favre at yesterdays news conference.

and whichever of the two candidates gets their heads wrapped around that truth will be the nominee

being on the cover of the Rollingstone doesn't help

Judy

a hard winter means a larger feed disappearance and even higher prices for food if spring planting gets late (which appears likely) most of the rise so far is due to the falling dollar and higher energy costs

but the big global increase in demand as second world countries grow a lower middle class by the hundreds of millions who will no longer accept a subsistance diet

and the pull of that promise emptying the countrysides of peasants that used to feed themselves (also by the hundreds of millions) has a much bigger affect than biofuels, not that in the future it won't matter, just doesn't explain the current food shortage worldwide (yet) 

Well, Phil, the problem that African Americans have is that the majority don't want to know what "we" have accomplished.  The majority don't want to credit them with setting labor conditions, demanding civil rights, using the courts to settle disputes and negotiating to achieve a just distribution of public resources.  The majority don't want to hear that African Americans don't perceive themselves as subservient.  The majority exist in a mythic environment from which they don't want to be rescued.  Dorothy is not yet ready to click her heels and go home.

Well, for the record, I object to categorizing a desire for more food to make people fat as an increase in "demand."

If that's how it's going to be defined--as a condition that's distinct from need--then I would argue that demand should never be satisfied.  Moving people from a sustainable, subsistence agriculture to a demand environment just so they can be charged money for their lunch strikes me as immoral. 

March 29: The county conventions, where delegates will be elected for state conventions.


According to the TDP's rules March 29th is the date when we know who really won TX.

  Moving people from a sustainable, subsistence agriculture to a demand environment just so they can be charged money for their lunch strikes me as immoral. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

no doubt

of course it happened here first in the nineteen twenties and as tens of millions left the land caused great disruption to our economy

the crunch comes when they have neither a job or the means to grow their own

I don't think Obama ever caught the "inevitable" disease but some of his supporters sure did.

Clinton made a good feint into Pennsylvania while going all out in Wyoming and Mississippi.

We won't know who won Iowa til June 14th.

7:41 AM EST

NAFTAgate:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOLEK2lr3CM

7:46 AM EST

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOLEK2lr3CM

Keith Olbermann in the video, talking about NAFTAgate impact on upcoming PA contest:

"I can't follow the Clinton campaign anymore"

"at least she's in contention for a vice-presidential spot for John McCain"

Vets descending on DC to protest the Iraq war.

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/78352/...

This is very similar to the same conference in '71 where disgruntled Nam vets aired their war crimes. The crimes were real as I personally gunned down innocent folks for reasons I don't really know why today. It was just so easy to do and it seemed like everyone was our enemy.
We aer doing the same thing now in the name of the mythical GWOT.

[snip]
Iraq Veterans Against the War argues that well-publicized incidents of U.S. brutality like the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the massacre of an entire family of Iraqis in the town of Haditha are not the isolated incidents perpetrated by "a few bad apples," as many politicians and military leaders have claimed. They are part of a pattern, the group says, of "an increasingly bloody occupation."

Phil,

I see nothing wrong in being on the cover of Rolling Stone. I have never heard Obama say it is about him.  It has always been us.  Did you hear his speech when he said we are his inspiration, not the other way around. 

However having confetti thrown  at a victory party in a state you didn't win seems abit much.

That is just MHO of course.

DNC blog is as slow as molasses this morning.  The first time through it cut off half my post and then i couldn't reconstitute it.  So, it sort of falls flat.  I would encourage anyone who's so inclined to promote this theme in their own lte.

Howard Dean peaked the day he was on the cover of Rollingstone. just a cautionary tale

8:00 AM EST

http://digg.com/2008_us_elections/Clinton_s_NAFTA_GATE

youtube.com — Canadian Press: the call to the Canadian embassy was actually from the Clinton campaign, not Obama. Did Clinton win Ohio on a lie? MSNBC's first read also has the story: http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/03/06/ 738264.aspx

...

+9 diggs  by freetvonline 7 hours ago This is just incredible. The mainstream media had the story backwards, and the Clinton campaign knew it the whole time. And yet, Hillary used this false story to win Ohio. Even though she is the one selling out America on NAFTA the whole time. She has no shame.

+7 diggs  by o0lion0o 7 hours ago Classic Karl Rove - take a negative fact about yourself and attribute it to your opponent.

+6 diggs  by bomberger 7 hours ago It will all be over soon. When you try to put down the Clinton Monster, it will scream and kick and it won't be pretty, but it will go down.

+3 diggs  by Greentomato 6 hours ago Wow, I thought politics was dirty. But it still gives me the heart burn to know that this firth was from a person that I actually considered voting for a couple of months ago.

+4 diggs  by FRodriguez719 6 hours ago Hillary Cainton '08: "A bad EXPERIENCE with a SOLUTION to DEMOCRACY"

+1 diggs  by mommacat 11 minutes ago Clinton is an evil monster. This is not the first time she's used something bad that she did and then blamed obama, and i doubt it will be the last. Luckily, I dont think she has a chance no matter what monstrous schemes they dig up. I think she's toast and good riddence when they finally put the straight jacket on her and get her into a padded cell. It cant be soon enough

rather memo NYC bombing? just when the domestic spying comes up for a vote?

Just went to the Obama blog to see what it's like. The top thread was posted about 11 hours ago and has 1651 comments! Can you imagine the frenzy we'd be in here screaming for a new thread. LOL!

Throwing confetti and streamers has long been used as a send-off.  Perhaps we can conclude that Texans were glad to see her go. LOL

We were not as smart, Phil, when Dean was at his peak.  Most of "us" couldn't believe that peaking too early is bad.  LOL

8:02 AM EST

Vets descending on DC to protest the Iraq war.

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/78352/...

...

+++

Indeed, dog soldier -- the same war that the "more" experienced Clinton and McCain voted in favor of authorizing.

Hopefully, voters in WY, MS and Especially PA get in right and pin the tail of shame on the donkey (Clinton).

Chris Matthews shilling for Clinton claiming she will rig the Credentials fight and that it is a "good" thing.

http://www.blogforamerica.com/view/24133

recommend

I now have 188 lte just on this lap-top.  I have also done this year's income tax return.  I am making this announcement because it means that I have no more excuse to delay my next task--putting up my writings from over a decade ago.  They're on the lap top, but "text wrangler" has to reformat them for current web processing programs and the web.  I think I've delayed because I wasn't sure if I wanted to put up the raw stuff or edit it.  Now, in the interest of historical accuracy, I think I'll just re-format and never mind editing to revise thought.

Even when i wrote the stuff, I was never big on editing and re-writing.  The spouse does that endlessly and, i swear, the only way his books got published was by my typing the final draft and the editors setting a deadline.

Anyway, i shall put up a new category on hannah and start posting chapters. 

8:24 AM EST

Will Michael Lorne, and the writers of SNL, do a skit this weekend about NAFTAgate and how that shamelessly helped Hillary win Ohio ?  Will Tina Fey make another guest appearance and this time give equal weight and time to how the media is fawning over Hillary ?

But even then we should not love them. But enough of that. I simply wanted to show you my point of view. I meant to speak of the suffering of mankind generally, but we had better confine ourselves to the sufferings of the children. That reduces the scope of my argument to a tenth of what it would be. Still we’d better keep to the children, though it does weaken my case. But, in the first place, children can be loved even at close quarters, even when they are dirty, even when they are ugly (I fancy, though, children never are ugly). The second reason why I won’t speak of grown-up people is that, besides being disgusting and unworthy of love, they have a compensation—they’ve eaten the apple and know good and evil, and they have become like god.’ They go on eating it still. But the children haven’t eaten anything, and are so far innocent. Are you fond of children, Alyosha? I know you are, and you will understand why I prefer to speak of them. If they, too, suffer horribly on earth, they must suffer for their fathers’ sins, they must be punished for their fathers, who have eaten the apple; but that reasoning is of the other world and is incomprehensible for the heart of man here on earth. The innocent must not suffer for another’s sins, and especially such innocents! 

http://www.bibliomania.com/0/0/235/1030/17183/1/frameset.html

Chuck Todd - not my favorite media person by any means after he was deemed "responsible" for excluding Dennis Kucinich from the MSNBC debate - has been very even-handed in his noting that Clinton cannot mathematically catch Obama on the earned delegate count.

 After picking up maybe 15 delegates on Tuesday, she would presumably need about another eight or nine "Vermont, Rhode Island, Texas and Ohio" events to catch Obama. Does Clinton have another 36 states hidden somewhere ?

At any rate, she'll be further behind after Wyoming and North Carolina. They are a part of Obama's 50-state strategy.

8:57 AM EST

David -

Did you mean to say Wyoming and Mississippi ?