"Rove Indictment in Leak Case Remains A Possibility" (Democracy Now):
This update on the CIA leak case -- a reporter from MSNBC has publicly said he is convinced Karl Rove will be indicted in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. The reporter, David Shuster, made the comment last night, a week after Rove made his fifth appearance before the grand jury investigating the outing of Plame, the wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Shuster is the same reporter who revealed on MSNBC that Plame was working undercover investigating Iran’s nuclear program at the time of her outing. On Monday the Washington Post reported that Rove had advised his colleagues at the White House on the importance of defending prewar intelligence and countering Wilson's critique of the war.
Rebecca told me that Mike's sick (chicken pox -- Mike, are you ten-years-old, dude!) so for my sick friend, I'll include something from his favorite show at the top of this post and wish him a speedy recovery.
That'd be great if Rove had to do a perp walk.
On a similar/different note, a new family left our church. They moved to the area and started attending about six Sundays ago. It's a Black Church (mainly African-American but we do have other races). The family was nice enough in many ways but they kept making these offensive remarks about Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. With the immigration issue in the news, that might have been part of it. But people were telling them they were offensive and they'd just blow it off. (Comments about how Mexican-Americans couldn't drive, were thieves, etc.)
Our pastor went to talk to them -- for the second time -- and this Sunday, they didn't show up at church. They had really offended Three Cool Old Guys because they felt that after all our race went through to get as far as we have (which still isn't equality), there was no justification for any African-American to "traffic in stereotypes and slurs."
I agree with that. Unless we delude ourselves, we know what is still said about us and it's not as bad as it once was, but it's still bad. There's no reason for us to join in attacks on others.
We have one family that is Mexican-American as well as a woman who comes to church by herself who is Cuban-American. Anybody wanting in the church better realize that everyone who's a member is family and there's no room for new members to bring their hate in.
Three Cool Old Guys are going to make this the topic of their column for Friday's gina and krista round-robin and they've got a lot to say on the topic. Be sure to read it.
What else is going on?
Jim's asked if I would jot some stuff down about the latest edition of The Third Estate Sunday Review? I told him I would but I would note why. He said that was cool.
Why? Ava and C.I. were right. If they wrote the piece he wanted them to write, it would overwhelm everything in the edition -- and it has. But here's what's in the latest edition:
"Radio highlights for Sunday (and one for Monday)" -- if you missed any of the programs highlighted, you can catch archived broadcasts of them (for free) so look at the highlights.
"Why He Took On Rumsfeld: Ray McGovern Talks to Democracy Now!" -- this is about something that really angered a bunch of us. Ray McGovern was on a number of shows, including Democracy Now!, talking about what he did last Thursday -- confronted Donald Rumsfeld -- but if you surfed online, it was all CNN, MSNBC and corporate outlets. If you don't support independent media, who are you helping?
"TV commentary takes a back seat this week to Colbert" -- is the piece everyone's e-mailing about. This is the piece Ava and C.I. didn't want to write but Jim and Ty say it's getting a huge positive reception (and overshadowing everything else in the edition) as well as 20 of the nastiest e-mails (at least half include physical threats) that site's ever received. For the record, I agree with every word in that commentary. I also (and Jim knows this) do not think it was fair or appropriate in what was supposed to be an easy week to tell them the day before, "Oh, we're going to need you to weigh in the whole Colbert thing." They'd already planned their commentary for the week, viewed a show, called friends who worked on it, and roughed out their main points. Ava and C.I. are both hugely involved in about three thousand issues at once and they did all their work for their commentary early in the week in the hopes that they could actually get some sleep. Didn't happen. What did happen, as they suspected, was that they'd end up with the attention getting piece for the edition.
"Book: Anthony Arnove's IRAQ: The Logic of Withdrawal" -- we were tired but we needed to note this book. It's a great book and one you should read and pass on to your friends.
"Shame of the Week (Musical)" -- three mothers saw a commercial and lobbied us to write about it. It is pretty shameful, this shame of the week. If you haven't read it, go read it to find out what offended three mothers. (And those of us writing were offended by it as well.)
"Where do you get your information?" -- this is getting the word out. KPFA has a show called The Morning Show and this is giving you a rundown of that as well as noting Guantanamo. This was actually the start of two pieces but, due to lack of time, it got blended into one piece.
"Head on Home (a musical in four scenes)" -- this is pretty good. More than pretty good. This is one of the things I'm most proud of and point to and say, "Yes, I helped with that." You expect the extreme right wing to call for military solutions to any problem. You don't expect the same from groups like Working Assets. This is a look at the peace movement and quite a bit more. There were actually melodies to the lyrics. Jess, Kat, Rebecca and C.I. came up with this idea and lobbied for it. It had my support right away and I hope we try something similar again. (It doesn't have to be a musical or a play, but just something out of the norm for what we usually do.) Three Cool Old Guys made me sing it to them tonight because they wanted to hear it. Need more music? Check out Kat's "Kat's Korner: Richie Havens: The Economical Collection."
"Darfur" -- is the place that Working Assets and others on the left are calling to be turned over to NATO. With regards to Africa, I get a little bothered anytime the "answer" is to send in troops from the "developed" (read: White) nations. If genocide is going on, what's a way to address that without matching bullets for bullets and turning it even more into a war zone? This proposes one possible means of addressing the conflict and it's one I support strongly. I doubt most people will. Like we say, it's easier to send guns and bullets then to welcome anyone to your country. I think Wally's "THIS JUST IN! IT TAKES A COWARD --- SOMETIMES TWO!"
goes with the piece, so check it out.
"TV: The Urine Stains of David Mamet" -- is the review that Ava and C.I. had roughed out, made calls on, etc. They almost didn't write this. But there were a number of technical problems with posting so they ended up grabbing a few minutes (I think 15) and wrote it up.
It made me laugh. It made my cousin laugh. He's seen the show (because he skips church on Wednesdays) and he said they captured it "to a t."
"Editorial: Bully Boy Thinking?" -- we had another topic for the editorial but no one was in the mood and just wanted to get done. So Dona came up with the idea for this which is pulling together a point that was made in the edition and around the community websites all week: the need for perspective.
"A Note to Our Readers" -- is where Jim gets to offer his thoughts each week.
Except for Ava and C.I.'s two commentaries and Jim's notes, the rest of it was worked on by the following:
The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Jess, Ty, Ava and Jim;
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude;
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man;
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review;
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills);
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix;
Mike of Mikey Likes It!;
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz;
and Wally of The Daily Jot
So that's about it for me tonight. I'll probably have pleasant dreams tonight, thinking about Karl Rove getting indicted.
No comments:
Post a Comment