A perfect night in America..

Good evening, friends.

Something extraordinary happened here in Waltham this evening. And yet, it's so simple and mundane that we'd expect this to happen everywhere, right?

After supper this evening, I was taking my son Javier out for a short walk to a nearby playground. Just steps outside the door, who should we run into but Toby Fisher, a local candidate for state representative. He was canvassing the neighborhood, passing out flyers, getting his name in front of the people, and generally living the statement, "All politics is local".

Toby's son is in preschool with Javier, and we've met before, so we chatted for a moment before we moved on. The saga of the preschool is listed elsewhere on these pages.

Reaching the playground, I was quick to observe a young white male playing with a remote-control car with what appeared to be his best friend, a young hispanic girl. They were having a grand old time taking turns driving it down the slide. Javi climbed up to the platform to have a look. Meanwhile, a young Asian mother and her two small children were playing on the swings nearby.

After a while, some of the African-American children in the neighborhood wandered by. Remarkably, the previously mentioned children playing with the remote-controlled car took great pains to make sure everybody got a turn to drive it down the slide...and then sensing that the smaller kids wanted to play on the equipment, they moved off.

Now the children were really going at it, climbing up and down the equipment, and taking turns chasing each other. The young Asian mother's youngest child was a mere baby, and I chatted amiably with her for a moment...but then the baby became the star of the playground and all the other children gathered around to take turns playing with her.

The mothers of the African-American children wandered by, and we all stood there, marveling at how well the children played together, and admiring the new baby, when it struck me that right here, in Waltham, MA, at this moment....this is what America is all about.

And yet, there are forces surrounding us that would put an end to all this.

Somewhere, someone has decided that the local politician has no chance, because he does not have an enormous 'war chest', nor any special interest groups backing him, or any corporate donors.

Somewhere, someone has decided that black and white children shouldn't play together, much less live in the same neighborhood.

Somewhere, someone has decided that a young immigrant that does not speak English very well is doomed to life as a second-class citizen.

Somewhere, someone has decided that all hispanics are criminals and bad influences, and all immigration from Latin America must be stopped.

Somewhere, someone has decided that only the white male will have unfettered access to the best that America has to offer, and throughout the rest of his life will have access to the best schools, colleges, and jobs....just because he's caucasian.

We really can't let that happen, can we? If the children, unsupervised by adults, can cooperate, take turns, play fair, and generally get along in a microcosm of society, and by doing so, make me, an embittered warrior, step back and smile and think that sometimes it does all work...we owe it to ourselves and our children to make sure that the kind of cooperation and goodwill I saw on the playground tonight follows them throughout their lives.

I think Thomas Jefferson might have looked down and smiled at us this evening.

Nice work if you can get it

Hey, remember the Iran-Contra scandal?

One of the very few figures to admit to any wrongdoing is back in the news...he's got top-secret security clearance and is the chief of staff to Gordon R. England, acting deputy secretary of Defense!!

WASHINGTON — In 1987, Robert L. Earl told a grand jury that he had destroyed and stolen national security documents while working for Lt. Col. Oliver L. North during the Iran-Contra scandal.

Now, he sits in one of the most coveted offices in the Pentagon as chief of staff to Gordon R. England, acting deputy secretary of Defense. Earl has clearance to review the kinds of classified documents he once destroyed. [emphasis mine-ed]

As England goes through his Senate confirmation process, his hiring of Earl has drawn criticism from government ethics watchdogs. But congressional sources said it was unlikely to affect support for England, who was popular on Capitol Hill but whose nomination was tied up over an arcane financial rule.

President Bush nominated England to replace Paul D. Wolfowitz, who left the deputy secretary's post this spring to head the World Bank.

England's chief of staff is the latest figure from the Iran-Contra scandal to play a role in the Bush administration.

Elliott Abrams, who pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress about the illegal funding of the Nicaraguan Contras during the Reagan administration, serves on Bush's National Security Council as head of the Mideast bureau.

Retired Adm. John M. Poindexter, who as national security advisor under Reagan also was implicated in the scandal, has periodically served as a consultant to the Pentagon.

The Iran-Contra case involved the U.S. supplying arms to Iran as part of a complicated deal to fund anti-Sandinista Contra rebels in Nicaragua. Congress had forbidden direct U.S. aid to the Contras.

A report to Congress by independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh stated: "Earl attempted to conceal evidence regarding the arms sales to Iran and the diversion of profits…. He destroyed [National Security Council] documents, assisted North in the destruction of documents … and made false statements to the FBI."

He was granted immunity for his testimony in the Reagan administration's most damaging scandal and was never prosecuted.

Common Cause spokeswoman Mary Boyle noted that some of President Clinton's nominees got into trouble for hiring illegal immigrants for domestic work.

Boyle said of Earl: "Allowing this guy to become the chief of staff to England sends a message … that paying your nanny under the table is grounds not to get a job, but deceiving the FBI and destroying documents will get you a job."

Source: Confessed Iran-Contra Figure Lands Sensitive Pentagon Post

Resistance is not futile.

Charge me with Treason or STFU!


Dear Dittohead Sheeple:

That will be enough from you.

I have endured your outgassing long enough. You have been heard, and heard, and heard again.

My dissent against this Administration, you say, gives aid and comfort to the enemy. My dissent against this Administration, you say, proves that I hate America. My dissent against this Administration, you say, proves that I am a traitor to my country. A treasonist.

For this, you want me locked up.

For this, many of you want me shot.

Or so you say.

Do you mean it? Think about it long and hard. Because if you do, I have three familiar words for you:

Bring It On.

I'm dead-as-a-doornail serious. Like you read about.

Come knock on my door. It's the one across from the park where the kids play baseball on Saturdays and soccer on Sundays. The one with the well-manicured lawn and the American flag flying out in front.

I'll invite you in and show you the place. I can introduce you to my wife, who runs her own business, and makes sure that people of modest income have a nice place to call home. She was a Republican until 2000, by the way, but came to her senses about that time, so you might have to take her away, too.

Shame for my daughter, though. She's almost four, and she already speaks eloquently about the importance of being kind to people and animals and the environment. But maybe it's better for her. I've been struggling to find ways to explain to her why the government you support so enthusiastically can do such dreadful things to people and animals and the environment. You and the folks down at the reconditioning camp can probably give that speech with a little more uumph.

Oh, my dog is harmless, in case you were wondering. She's of Dutch-African descent, so I assume you'll want to dispose of her as well. She's never said a kind word about our President, I can assure you. Just be merciful. One to the head.

Anyway, as I was saying. Come and get me. I won't resist. There's not much point. I don't have a gun. And maybe this is what needs to happen anyway. Maybe a few good liberals need to be frog-marched and tried for treason before people begin to understand. Maybe if a few of us had our brains blown all over a cement wall, the lines might come into sharper focus. For you, I imagine we'd be an example. For others, maybe martyrs. In what proportion is anybody's guess. But you can't deny it would raise the stakes of the game a little when you bring it all home to taxpaying white folk like me, can you?

I'm ready to take that next step. I'll play that role in your little Passion Play. And I don't even need billing. You deserve the credit for having the idea in the first place.

So like I said, come get me. Trot me out. Try me -- due process, undue process, whatever. Tatoo a number on my neck. And then do with me what you will. Gas me and throw me in a ditch with a bunch of other "unpatriotic" folk and cover us with lye.

...

Wait, what's that?

You say you "didn't really mean it?"

All you were trying to do is get me to shut up?

Oh!

Well, my daughter will be so relieved. Thanks for clearing that up.

And hey, listen, before I let you go, understand something: we're not going away. We're not going to shut the fuck up. We're going to keep fighting until the fight is won, and you can have our rights -- speech among them -- when you pry them from our cold, dead, unpatriotic hands.

And some of us do have guns.

So the next time you feel the urge to bleat about how we deserve to be incarcerated or slaughtered, ask yourself whether you're prepared to go the distance.

We are.




Thanks again to Scoopster from Air America Place for the link.

Who is in charge of the media?

Another liberal column, right?

The mainstream media in this country are dominated by liberals.

I was informed of this fact by Rush Limbaugh. And Thomas Sowell. And Ann Coulter. And Rich Lowry. And Bill O'Reilly. And William Safire. And Robert Novak. And William F. Buckley, Jr. And George Will.

And John Gibson. And Michelle Malkin. And David Brooks. And Tony Snow. And Tony Blankely. And Fred Barnes. And Britt Hume. And Larry Kudlow. And Sean Hannity. And David Horowitz. And William Kristol. And Hugh Hewitt.

And Oliver North. And Joe Scarborough. And Pat Buchanan. And John McLaughlin. And Cal Thomas. And Joe Klein. And James Kilpatrick. And Tucker Carlson. And Deroy Murdock. And Michael Savage. And Charles Krauthammer. And Stephen Moore. And Alan Keyes.

And Gary Bauer. And Mort Kondracke. And Andrew Sullivan. And Nicholas von Hoffman. And Neil Cavuto. And Matt Drudge. And Mike Rosen. And Dave Kopel. And John Caldara.

The mainstream media in this country are dominated by liberals. For instance, did you know there is an ultra-leftist professor at the University of Colorado named Ward Churchill who wrote an essay three years ago in which he called victims of Sept. 11 "little Eichmanns"? Bet you never heard of him, as the liberal media elite likes to put the kibosh on embarrassing stories like this.

The mainstream media in this country are dominated by liberals. Look at how they all gave Bill Clinton a pass on the whole Monica Lewsinsky affair. Remember? It was never in the news. We never heard any of the salacious details. The work of his presidency never came to a virtual halt while he defended himself.

The mainstream media in this country are dominated by liberals. They have so poisoned the electorate that no Republicans can get elected. Republicans don't control the presidency. Republicans don't control both houses of Congress. Republicans don't control 28 of 50 governorships.

Last year, a lot was made of a report released by The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. The report found that 34 percent of national journalists identified themselves as liberal, 54 percent identified themselves as moderate and 7 percent identified themselves as conservative. Twenty-three percent of local journalists identified themselves as liberal, 61 percent identified themselves as moderate and 12 percent identified themselves as conservative.

These figures can be interpreted in a number of ways. First of all, if you actually read the whole report, you'd come across commentary that specifically warned against drawing any easy, across-the-board conclusions: "We would be reluctant to infer too much here. The survey includes just four questions probing journalists' political attitudes, yet the answers to these questions suggest journalists have in mind something other than a classic big government liberalism and something more along the lines of libertarianism."

But pretend you're doing a story on the Pew report, and the nuanced comments above are not sufficiently dramatic for your medium. You need to reduce things into some digestible sound bites. If you wanted to sound the alarm bells on the right, you could say that national journalists were nearly five times as likely to identify themselves as liberal than as conservative. This would be literally true but perhaps a little misleading, as the same poll results tell us that 61 percent of national journalists identified themselves as moderate or conservative.

If you're John Gibson of Fox News, you just make up your own statistics and claim that "80-some percent of reporters are self-described liberals." If you're Rush Limbaugh, you offer up the same lie a day later and specifically cite the poll that proves you wrong: "most of them (journalists) are liberals. Eighty percent of them will admit it in the latest press poll ... ."

Just for the sake of argument, let's assume that the media in America really are predominantly recalcitrant leftists. Say you're a conservative media mogul named Rupert and you have the wherewithal to do something about it. Here are three paths you might take:

1. You could announce your belief that the reporting of news is always subjective and therefore biased, so you are going to start a news network that comes at things from your own perspective in order to balance out what you perceive to be the bias of the left.

2. You could set up your own news network that actually is fair and balanced.

3. You could set up your own news network that's consistently and demonstrably partisan, but call yourself fair and balanced.

Guess which one he chose.

This just in at Fox News ... the mainstream media in this country are dominated by liberals.

Why I loathe Paul Harvey

Paul's homespun charm, and his interesting little tidbits via "The Rest of the Story" belie a hidden mean streak of racism and bigotry in Paul's world...

Radio personality Paul Harvey, one of the most widely listened to commentators in the United States, presented his listeners on June 23 with an endorsement of genocide and racism that would have been right at home on a white supremacist shortwave broadcast.

Harvey's commentary began by lamenting the decline of American wartime aggression. "We're standing there dying, daring to do nothing decisive because we've declared ourselves to be better than our terrorist enemies--more moral, more civilized," he said. Drawing a contrast with what he cast as the praiseworthy nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II, Harvey lamented that "we sent men with rifles into Afghanistan and Iraq and kept our best weapons in their silos"--suggesting that America should have used its nuclear arsenal in its invasions of both countries.

Harvey concluded:

"We didn't come this far because we're made of sugar candy. Once upon a time, we elbowed our way onto and across this continent by giving smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans. That was biological warfare. And we used every other weapon we could get our hands on to grab this land from whomever.

"And we grew prosperous. And yes, we greased the skids with the sweat of slaves. So it goes with most great nation-states, which--feeling guilty about their savage pasts--eventually civilize themselves out of business and wind up invaded and ultimately dominated by the lean, hungry up-and-coming who are not made of sugar candy."

But that's not the hell of it. Would you care to guess what wholesome, family-oriented, gay-friendly company is the distributor of this malodorous claptrap? It's Disney! That's right, Disney recently signed a 10-year, $100 million contract with the 86-year-old Harvey.

This is the same Disney that In 2004, Disney forbid its Miramax subsidiary to distribute Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11, even though Miramax was the principal investor in the film. A Disney executive told the New York Times (5/5/04) that it was declining to distribute the film because, in the paper's words, "Disney caters to families of all political stripes and believes Mr. Moore's film...could alienate many."

One wonders whether Disney executives are worried about alienating families who oppose slavery, nuclear war and Native American genocide.



Like always, you don't have to sit here helpless and seething...

Ask Disney why it finds Paul Harvey's nostalgia for slavery and genocide and his calls for nuclear war acceptable, but deemed Michael Moore's film unacceptable.

CONTACT:
ABC Radio Networks
John.E.McConnell@abc.com
abcradio@abc.com
Phone: 212-456-5387

Paul Harvey
Irma.N.Aviles@abc.com
Phone: (312) 889-4085

Disney Corporation
Phone: 818-560-1000