Friday, December 30, 2005
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Cross Plain Texas Fire forces Towns Evacuation
Fire burns many structures in Cross Plains; residents forced to leave
By Celinda Emison / Reporter-News Staff Writer
December 27, 2005
Updated 7:10 p.m. Residents of Cross Plains fled into Brown County and other places Tuesday after being told they must leave their town because of a massive fire.
Cross Plains residents who gathered at the E-Z Mart convenience store at Highway 279 north of the Lake Brownwood bridge Tuesday evening said a number of buildings in their town had burned, including a church, a store, a school and homes. They said they were ordered to leave Cross Plains.
Unknown was the fate of Cross Plains' most notable site, the home of pulp fiction writer Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian and other characters. An annual event celebrating the life and career of Howard is one of the largest activities in Callahan County each year.
A steady stream of vehicles, some laden with furniture, some containing only people and their pets, gathered at E-Z Mart, one of the first places to pull off the highway south of Cross Plains.
Cross Plains resident Mike McClure said that the smoke around 1:30 p.m. Tuesday was so thick near his home that he could hardly see to get inside to rescue his three dogs. They made it out safely.
"This is a firestorm," he said.
Greg Hutchins, whose home was a mile east of Cross Plains, took a few valuables and family photos from the house before the fire reached it.
"It's gone," Hutchins said.
A tearful Brenda Willars was evacuating her family to Brownwood. She believed her house was destroyed.
"All I saw was flames," she said. She was unable to rescue several cats, dogs and sheep.
Tonie Kemp, 13, said he heard propane tanks exploding throughout Cross Plains.
Cross Plains is about 47 miles southeast of Abilene, and about 34 miles northwest of Brownwood. The population is about 1,070.
Posted 6:50 p.m. An uncontrolled grass fire has forced the evacuation of residents in the city of Cross Plains, located about 40 miles southeast of Abilene.
Abilene Reporter-News staff members are in the area to provide further details to this developing story.
source: http://www.reporter-news.com/abil/nw_local/article/0,1874,ABIL_7959_4345110,00.html
Saturday, December 24, 2005
Thursday, December 22, 2005
" Speaks for itself ! " and yes it's found in Brownwood !
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as it relates to this type of attitude and behaviour found in Brownwood.........
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Sounds like he's describing the majority of Brown County Republicans !
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
One conservative blogger gets it
by John in DC - 12/21/2005 11:01:00 PM
The Maytag repairman of conservative bloggers weighs in on modern conservatism:
I almost feel I don't know these people anymore. It seems now they feel government cannot have nearly enough power. Secret courts, secret warrants, secret prisons, suspect torture, massive data gathering on all aspects of US citizens including medical records, library records, and financial records are all wonderful things. They hold up the Patriot Act as a great piece of legislation that the Bush Whitehouse pushed through to combat terrorism (little seem to understand most of it was written during Clinton's years).
I truly and honestly do not understand. People who once proudly quoted Franklin's "Those who give up essential liberty for a little safety deserve neither" now cheerlead the executive branch on in removing any judicial oversight, congressional oversight, and in fact ANY oversight (as most of these laws are secret) from the land. Far from the transparent government the founders imagined, we are now entering a system where laws are kept secret, prosecutions are kept secret, and national security is a password to removing any and all liberty that stands in the way of anything government wishes to do....
People who support a clandestine program of warrantless domestic spying are not “conservatives” or “libertarians.” Neither are people who support the creation of a worldwide archipelago of secret torture sites. Neither are people who support the usurpation of the functions of government by the executive branch; who espouse the theory that the executive branch is the final arbiter of the legality of the actions of the executive branch; and who call for the investigation or prosecution of a free press that dares to report on the executive branch’s secret programs of domestic spying and outsourced torture.
Those people, my friends, are called the radical right.
source: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/12/one-conservative-blogger-gets-it.html
MERRY FESTIVUS & MERRY FITZMAS TOO !
TV: Festivus isn't just for the 'Seinfeld' faithful anymore
08:27 AM CST on Thursday, December 22, 2005
By DARLA ATLAS / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
Can you believe it? Just one more shopping day until Festivus!
Luckily, the only thing you have to buy is an aluminum pole, and that's assuming you don't already have one. And some would also say there's no such thing as Festivus, anyway. But they would be wrong.
The holiday was made famous by a 1997 Seinfeld episode, in which George's dad, Frank Costanza, describes the traditions he created as a comeback to commercialism. There is the Airing of Grievances, in which family members get to describe the many ways others have wronged them that year; the Feats of Strength, a wrestling tournament that ends when the head of the household is pinned; and the aluminum pole, upon which tinsel is forbidden.
Jerry Stiller, who played Frank Costanza, says he's constantly reminded of his Seinfeld days by strangers on the street.
"You get a lot of people screaming at you, 'There's a Festivus for the rest of us!' " he says in a phone interview from New York.
But if there's a deeper meaning behind Festivus, he's happy to be associated with it.
"We send gifts, wait for a thank-you – why not just put up an aluminum pole with no tinsel or thought to it and leave it alone? I have nothing against giving, but sometimes, a phone call is just as good."
Still, even he can't always embrace the true spirit of Festivus.
"I want to tell you: Right now I'm on a show [CBS' The King of Queens] and I'm sending gifts to everybody that walks on the set," he says. "The grips, the costume people, the hair, the makeup – I have such a need for their love and for them to laugh during the course of rehearsing. It really wrecks me, and I haven't licked it yet."
The holiday – officially celebrated on Dec. 23 – has its roots in real life. Seinfeld writer Daniel O'Keefe's dad is the true father of Festivus. In 1966, as legend has it, the elder Daniel O'Keefe created the holiday to commemorate the first date with his wife, and the family continued celebrations each year through the 1970s. When young Daniel grew up and mentioned it one day at work, the concept was put into the script.
Now Mr. O'Keefe's vision is being adopted by the masses. According to the book Festivus: The Holiday for the Rest of Us (Warner Books, $14.95), there's a Festivus disc-golf tournament in Oregon, a Festivus wine in Oklahoma and Festivus parties across the country, all of which have creative ways of interpreting the rituals. In Missouri, for example, partygoers write down their grievances and put them inside a cardboard, silver-painted pole, which is broken like a piñata at the end of the night so the complaints can be read aloud.
As for local bragging rights, the book notes that the first "O Festivus!" song was overheard last year at Dick's Last Resort in Dallas. Sung to the tune of "O Canada!", the book recites the lyrics, which include:
"Thy feats of strength are glorious to me.
Frank Costanza, we tip our hat to thee.
O Festivus, we'll pin you first, you'll see."
No holiday is complete without commercial tie-ins, of course, so a Milwaukee company has begun selling Festivus Poles. A 6-foot floor model is $38 plus shipping at www.wagnercompanies.com.
Like "yada yada yada," double dipping and sparing a square, Festivus is a Seinfeld gift that keeps regifting. Mr. Stiller says his time on the show "was the freest form of theater I've ever in my life experienced. ... I love basketball, and at its best, that's what the show was like. We passed from one guy to another; it didn't matter who scored the points."
And what are Mr. Stiller's Festivus plans for this year? He chuckles and says, "I think we're going to just let it pass."
Darla Atlas is a Fort Worth freelance writer.
E-mail darlajatlas@yahoo.com
Seinfeld's Festivus
8 tonight, Seinfeld mini-marathon, starting with Festivus episode.
TBS. 2 hrs.
source: http://www.guidelive.com/sharedcontent/dws/ent/stories/DN-festivus_1222gl.ART0.State.Edition1.10288c55.html
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Merry Fitzmas ? You'll find out soon enough !
Brownwood Republican vs Any Republican North of the Red River !
Senator Hagel is the type of Republican that is contiounsly attacked on the airwaves of KXYL (Brownwood Talk Radio). " Weak Willed Weeinie Republicans " is the term that Former Brown County Republican Talking Head, James Williamson, applied to any Republican who did not fall into James', and the majority of Brown County Republican voters, hard right positions ! The mantra was/is: Southern Republicans Good -Northern Republicans Bad. I agree with Senator Hagel's assesment below from the CSM as it relates to the Republican Bush Administration.
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Sen. Chuck Hagel (R) of Nebraska, a member of the US Senate's
Intelligence and Foreign Relations committees, was the guest at
Friday's Monitor Breakfast.
He is on the long list of possible Republican presidential candidates
in 2008. A decorated Vietnam War veteran and a close friend of Sen.
John McCain (R) of Arizona, Sen. Hagel has been critical of US policy
in Iraq and one of a handful of Republican senators who voted against
reauthorization of the Patriot Act unless changes are made to better
protect civil liberties.
Here are excepts from his remarks:
On a New York Times report that President Bush, to fight terrorism,
secretly authorized the National Security Agency to spy on Americans
inside the US without a court warrant:
"Confidence and trust in one's government is the only currency there is
in life in a democracy. If citizens do not have confidence and trust in
their government, that their government is protecting their rights, and
those that they send to represent them in Washington are protecting
their rights, then there will be a very severe breakdown in
society....This is in my opinion a very serious issue, a very serious
story. If in fact this is true, then it needs to stop."
On progress in Iraq based on his visits there:
"I found it interesting every time I am back, there is more security,
more concrete, more sandbags and you can go into [fewer] places."
On the Bush administration's explanation of the rationale for war in
Iraq:
"The last two weeks, I think this administration has been more honest
than I have heard it in three years about Iraq. The president has
actually given speeches saying we had bad intelligence and we made
mistakes and we made big mistakes. [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld
is talking about it. They all are talking about it."
The role of the press:
"A free press is the only real guarantee [of] freedom in this society
because power does corrupt and big government corrupts. Big government
is an institution that has no conscience, it has no feelings, it has no
brains. And it doesn't read constitutions and it doesn't understand
liberties.... A free press is the only thing that keeps us free."
On the ethics issues facing the Republican party:
"There are very large dark clouds hanging over the party in the area of
being captives to big business and corruption."
On running for president:
"I will make a political decision on my future after the election next
year."
source: http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1219/p25s01-usmb.html
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Hagel unloads on Cheney and Bush
by kos
Thu Dec 22, 2005 at 11:31:18 AM PDT
It's a thing of beauty:
"Every president, that we know of, has complied with the law (FISA)," Hagel said. "No president is above the law. We are a nation of laws and no president, majority leader, or chief justice of the Supreme Court can unilaterally or arbitrarily avoid a law or dismiss a law. If the vice president holds a different point of view, then he holds a different point of view."
Based on the facts that are out there concerning whether domestic spying abuses were taking place, Hagel said, there was a "breakdown."
"I take an oath of office to the Constitution," he said. "I don't take an oath of office to the vice president, a president or a political party. My obligation and responsibility are to the people I represent and the country I serve. I do what I think is right for the people I represent and the country I serve." [...]
Hagel, referring to President Ronald Reagan, said people trusted him because he was not a "vitriolic person or one to impugn the motives of people who disagreed with him."
"Never did he do that," Hagel said. "There is no place for that in politics because it debases our system and our process. You can agree or disagree with your leaders and say whatever you like about your elected leaders and throw them out, but I do draw the line on the vilification and impugning of motives because someone disagrees with you."
He said the American people are "sick and fed up" with that type of politics.
"Cheney's poll numbers are very, very low," Hagel said. "This should be about elevating the debate and enhancing America and finding the solutions that we need to move forward. It doesn't help when you characterize people who disagree with you or threaten them or characterize them as unpatriotic or not caring about our people or our security. The American people see through that and it is beneath the dignity of this country."
The administration and its sycophants have placed their party above the Stars and Stripes the entire five years they've held power. What's shocking is how few Republicans like Hagel have spoken out about it.
source: http://www.dailykos.com/
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Ed Schultz on American Forces Radio.
(12/08/2005 ) The Ed Schultz Show finally hits AFR airwaves daily
WASHINGTON — American Forces Radio this week began airing “The Ed Schultz Show,” nearly two months after the controversial host was originally scheduled to hit the airwaves.
The first hour of Schultz’s daily show, along with the first hour of the Al Franken radio show and the Sean Hannity show, will be broadcast Monday through Friday over the network’s Voice Channel. The decision to add the shows is designed to “provide a balance of popular political viewpoints,” AFR officials said in a statement.
American Forces Radio and Television Services director Mel Russell said all three shows have substantial U.S. audiences, and that officials try to reflect that popularity in their programming decisions.
But Russell said not everyone may be able to hear the new shows.
Anyone living on a military base with cable or satellite service receives all AFR stations, and will be able to listen to the new additions. But Russell said regional affiliates, who offer just a sampling of the AFR programs through over-the-air broadcasts, will decide on their own whether to add the new shows.
AFN Europe is receiving the three programs but has not decided which, if any, it will be putting on its AM Power Network, which broadcasts across Germany.
Air Force Capt. Jeff Clark, public affairs officer for AFN-Europe, said that the radio station has to decide how great the demand is for the three programs, because if it decides to broadcast one or more of them, it will have to remove programs on the schedule, and it thinks it has a popular lineup.
He said the staff uses a variety of tools to gauge interest, including surveys and listener feedback, and will be considering the new programs but cannot give a timeline on when a decision will be made.
Clark said AFN has “lots of services available that we do not air” over the radio, but that are available to listeners through audio channels on TV decoder boxes or through cable-TV services on military bases. He said the programs are listed on www.afneurope.net, although exact times and channels can vary from place to place.
That has been a point of contention for congressional Democrats, who have accused defense officials of keeping liberal voices off the military radio network.
In October, producers for “The Ed Schultz Show” were preparing to debut their show on AFR after months of negotiations with network officials. But on the day the show was scheduled to premiere defense officials put those plans on hold, saying the proper paperwork was not yet finished.
Show producers accused the Bush administration of political payback, since Schultz had been critical of the Defense Department’s handling of a White House press conference just days before. House Democrats have called for an investigation into the department’s actions.
On Monday, when the show premiered, Schultz spent his first segment criticizing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and then spoke to retired Gen. Wesley Clark about U.S. failures in Iraq.
Show producer James Holm said he is still concerned with the premiere delay and with the possibility that many affiliates might not pick up the show.
“But this is a start,” he said. “We’re pretty much going to do the same show, because we feel it’s the one progressive talk show out there that really has a handle on military issues. We think that will speak to those (AFR) listeners.”
AFR’s Voice Channel already features other controversial talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Laura Schlessinger, as well as news and sports updates.
Franken is a liberal comedian who helped launch the Air America Radio in 2004; Hannity is a conservative co-anchor of a Fox News talk show.
source: http://www.wegoted.com/EdInTheNews/more.asp?ID=70
" Enviromental Wackos "
According to tonights KXYL caller from Lake Brownwood, " Enviromental Wackos ", are Democrats and Liberals ! Talk about drinking the Cool Aide !
The story linked below is most likely a prime example of what the caller will not want to discuss or hear. This knowledge will bring pain to such individuals because these "enviromental wackos" do not fit tightly into their narrow point of view ( their view being "enviromental wackos" are Democrats and Liberals ) ! What's that saying, "Repeat the lie often enough" ?
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Now this will really be painful for those who define and label with such bias, prejudice and partisanship !
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
" George Bush is not above the law." Or is he ?
Published on Tuesday, December 20, 2005 by The Olympian (Olympia, Washington)
Bush Must Be Held Accountable
George Bush Cannot Protect Democracy by Destroying It.
Editorial
Every American should be outraged by the president's attempt to justify domestic spying. It's wrong, and the president should acknowledge that fact. He must be held accountable.
Congress should immediately launch a truly bipartisan investigation into the administration's spying campaign. If the Constitution and laws of the United States were broken, Congress should censure the president. And if the lies, the deceit and lawbreaking continue, Congress should take even more drastic action.
Either we are a nation of laws and moral values or we are not. We cannot pick and choose which laws to abide by and which to ignore for the sake of convenience or expediency.
George Bush is not above the law.
This is a military community, with thousands of active duty and retired members of the armed forces among our friends and neighbors. The presidents' actions undermine their service to this nation.
The soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are fighting for true democracy, not a democracy that condones domestic spying, or secret prisons or subversion of the Constitution. President Bush has played right into the hands of ter-rorists and diminished the reputation of the fine men and women who wear this nation's uniforms.
President Bush is the one sending the wrong message to our soldiers and our enemies. Under his leadership, we are becoming known as a nation of hypocrites.
Lies and exaggerations
President Bush has built an administration founded on lies and exaggerations and fear. And he has gotten away with it. It's unconscionable.
President Bush promised to take action against any White House official leaking classified information. Yet Karl Rove remains.
When CIA director George Tenet said weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were a “slam dunk,” he was dead wrong. How was he punished? He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
George Bush says the United States does not torture, yet his administration fought tooth and nail against an ex-plicit ban on torture. Abu Ghraib was an exception, we were told. But then we learned there were secret prisons abroad where who knows what goes on.
The president excoriated congressmen Monday for not blindly passing the overbroad USA Patriot Act because they didn't trust that there were adequate safeguards against abuses. Ironically, that happened at the same time as President Bush promised to continue the illegal wiretaps. He seemed to be saying, “Trust me.”
Well, Mr. President, we are sorry to say that we don't trust you or your administration because you have abused that trust so often in the past.
Big Brother
His effort this week to turn around his abysmal poll numbers should fall on deaf ears. The American public knows that domestic spying is something out of George Orwell's “1984.” Yet George Bush has made that “Big Brother” fantasy a reality.
Attempting to justify the indefensible, the president on Monday said he would continue the program of moni-toring phone calls and e-mails “for so long as the nation faces the continuing threat of an enemy that wants to kill American citizens” and added that it included safeguards to protect civil liberties.
Baloney!
The president could have gone to Congress and asked for permission to spy on citizens in the United States. The Republican-controlled Congress would have given the president permission in a heartbeat. Or he could use exist-ing wiretap laws that allow a court order 72 hours after the taping has begun. That way, our vital system of checks and balances would have been preserved.
In his arrogance, President Bush did not go to Congress or to the courts for permission (although he claims that he did tell select members of Congress what he was doing — as if that is enough). He sees himself above the law. As commander in chief, he believes he is not bound by the Constitution and its guarantees of civil liberties. In his view, the warrantless spying conducted by the National Security Agency under his direction is an essential ele-ment in the war against terrorists. In that belief he has lowered himself to their level. And there is a disturbing pattern to his behavior.
It's OK to lie about the reasons to go to war.
It's OK to hold hundreds, maybe thousands of prisoners without charges, without legal representation and for an indefinite period of time,
It's OK to have secret prisons.
It's OK to say the provisions of the Geneva Convention don't apply in a war on terror.
It's OK to treat detainees inhumanely, because we can define them as we see fit.
It's OK to use the Patriot Act to pry into library records and lord knows what else.
It's OK, as NBC News reported, for the Pentagon to spy on peace activists.
It's OK to trample on the rights of citizens.
Unchecked powers
At Monday's news conference, President Bush angrily denied that he is using unchecked or dictatorial pow-ers. But how else can you characterize his behavior? What tyrant hasn't claimed the need to use extra legal pow-ers to protect the motherland or fatherland from some threat? How much Orwellian doublespeak can this coun-try tolerate?
Congress impeached former President Clinton for lying about consensual sex with a White House intern.
No one died. No prisoners were tortured. Clinton simply tarnished his own reputation and sullied the stature of the Oval Office.
This is not a liberal or conservative issue, a Democrat or Republican issue. It's an issue of fundamental civil rights.
We repeat: Congress must muster the courage to hold this president accountable. A bipartisan commission investigation is warranted. And if the lies and deceit continue, Congress should consider the ultimate step and impeach President George Bush. It's all about accountability and protecting, not destroying, democracy.
source: http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1220-35.htm
Bush's Spy Court Judge Quits In Protest
Spy Court Judge Quits In Protest
Jurist Concerned Bush Order Tainted Work of Secret Panel
By Carol D. Leonnig and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 21, 2005; Page A01
A federal judge has resigned from the court that oversees government surveillance in intelligence cases in protest of President Bush's secret authorization of a domestic spying program, according to two sources.
U.S. District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, sent a letter to Chief Justice John D. Roberts Jr. late Monday notifying him of his resignation without providing an explanation.
Two associates familiar with his decision said yesterday that Robertson privately expressed deep concern that the warrantless surveillance program authorized by the president in 2001 was legally questionable and may have tainted the FISA court's work.
to read the entire article please visit: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/20/AR2005122000685.html?sub=AR
Brownwood Reserves ?
Published on Tuesday, December 20, 2005 by USA Today
Army Allows Reserve Officers to Leave Rather Than Go to War
by Gregg Zoroya
Almost two-thirds of the Army officers in a special Reserve program have been allowed to resign rather than go to war, the Army has disclosed. The 265 officers are among 410 reservists who had orders that likely would have sent them to Iraq or Afghanistan.
Faced with growing unrest among soldiers called back to active duty from the rarely used Individual Ready Reserve, the Army took the unprecedented step last month of granting a way out for officers who had received orders for duty but did not want to go: They could resign.
That option has not been granted to enlisted soldiers who also have been called back to duty from the Ready Reserve. Eighty remain in open defiance of orders to appear. Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, an Army spokesman, said the Army may soon take action against them.
The possible repercussions range from less-than-honorable discharges to declaring them AWOL or deserters, Hilferty said.
to read the entire article please visit: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1220-06.htm
Hard R's "Pushing" the same Clinton argument over the Brownwood Airwaves !
The Echelon Myth
Prominent right-wing bloggers – including Michelle Malkin, the Corner, Wizbang and Free Republic — are pushing the argument that President Bush’s warrantless domestic spying program isn’t news because the Clinton administration did the same thing.
The right-wing outlet NewsMax sums up the basic argument:
During the 1990’s under President Clinton, the National Security Agency monitored millions of private phone calls placed by U.S. citizens and citizens of other countries under a super secret program code-named Echelon…all of it done without a court order, let alone a catalyst like the 9/11 attacks.
That’s flatly false. The Clinton administration program, code-named Echelon, complied with FISA. Before any conversations of U.S. persons were targeted, a FISA warrant was obtained. CIA director George Tenet testified to this before Congress on 4/12/00:
I’m here today to discuss specific issues about and allegations regarding Signals Intelligence activities and the so-called Echelon Program of the National Security Agency…
There is a rigorous regime of checks and balances which we, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the FBI scrupulously adhere to whenever conversations of U.S. persons are involved, whether directly or indirectly. We do not collect against U.S. persons unless they are agents of a foreign power as that term is defined in the law. We do not target their conversations for collection in the United States unless a FISA warrant has been obtained from the FISA court by the Justice Department.
Meanwhile, the position of the Bush administration is that they can bypass the FISA court and every other court, even when they are monitoring the communications of U.S. persons. It is the difference between following the law and breaking it.
Filed under: Intelligence
Posted by Judd at 12:13 pm
Permalink | Comment (164)
read the comments here: http://thinkprogress.org/2005/12/20/the-echelon-myth/
This "Chuck" sounds like a "Chuck" heard on the Brownwood airwaves !
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You Go Big Eddie !
posted as a courtesy for the local "Chucks" who don't know the law and FISA
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Now you know why Brownwood Propaganda Ministers don't want their sheeple to hear this kind of talk radio. "Goose stepping" requires limited information flow !
Kudos RJ's: 'Real Texas Barbecue', Texas Monthly & San Angelo Chamber Diversity Recognition.
'Real Texas barbecue'
By ERIN QUINN, equinn@sastandardtimes.com or 659-8260
December 19, 2005
It's about 11:20 a.m., and the lunch crowd at RJ Restaurant & Catering is in full swing.
Owners Charles and JoAnna Thomas are bustling from the kitchen to the counter, squeezing past each other through narrow walkways and juggling the drive-through window, ringing phones and hungry customers at the counter. That's not to mention the Christmas parties for which they are making food.
''Take it easy, girl,'' one customer tells JoAnna. ''You're getting swamped.''
She laughs and keeps moving.
The 10-table eatery on North Bryant Boulevard is swamped. But the Thomases like it that way. Their work has paid off in the form of local and state culinary awards, and recognition from Texas Monthly magazine.
Last month, the Thomases received the Diversity Recognition Award from the San Angelo Chamber of Commerce at the 7th Annual ''Celebration of Our Diversity'' Awards Luncheon.
to read the entire article please visit: http://www.sanangelostandardtimes.com/sast/bu_local/article/0,1897,SAST_4920_4326174,00.html
Bush, in his own words !
Bush was against illegal wiretaps before he did them ! Bush says he was against illegal wiretaps while he did them !
White House: ...there are such things as roving wiretaps. Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.
source: www.crooksandliars.com
Prop 2 Supporters: Have you sent your " Thank A Democrat " Note Cards yet ?
Here are the 18 Elected Texas Democrats who voted Yes on HJR 6 which made it possible for Texas voters to vote on Proposition 2.
Voting YES
Rep. Stephen Frost, D-Atlanta
Rep. Mark Homer, D-Paris
Rep. Chuck Hopson, D-Jacksonville
Rep. Jim McReynolds, D-Lufkin
Rep. Robert L. Cook, D-Eagle Lake
Rep. Allan B. Ritter, D-Nederland
Rep. Dora Olivo, D-Rosenburg
Rep. Ryan Guillen, D-Rio Grande City
Rep. Yvonne Gonzalez Toureilles, D-Alice
Rep. Richard Raymond, D-Laredo
Rep. Juan Manuel Escobar, D-Kingsville
Rep. Patrick Rose, D-Dripping Springs
Rep. David Farabee, D-Wichita Falls
Rep. 'Chente' Quintanilla, D-Tornillo
Rep. Joseph Pickett, D-El Paso
Rep. Tracy Ogden King, D-Batesville
Rep. James 'Pete' Laney, D-Hale Center
Rep. Al Edwards, D- Houston
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While you're licking your stamps for your Thank You Notes, take a gander at this
Posted as a courtesy for the Democrat Bashers heard on the Brownwood airwaves !
Posted on Thu, Jul. 28, 2005
From real war to the political fray
Iraq veterans, including Bucks County's Patrick Murphy, are running for office. They bring a measured tone when talking about the conflict.
By Gaiutra Bahadur
Inquirer Staff Writer
Like John Kerry, Democrat Patrick Murphy, an Iraq veteran running for Congress in Bucks County, is straight out of Central Casting: earnest, clean-cut, a lawyer, an officer in war.
But while Kerry was the poster boy for veterans who came home to denounce the war they fought, Murphy is reluctant to criticize: "I'm not antiwar. I'm not pro-war," he says. "I'm pro-troops."
Eight Iraq war veterans have run or announced runs for political office across the country, according to the two major parties. Although all but one are Democrats, none has spoken out against the war or stated support for a troop withdrawal.
to read the entire article please go here: http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/12240238.htm
Conservative Scholars Argue Bush’s Wiretapping Is An Impeachable Offense
Let the local Neo-Con Republicans argue and debate these guys on the airwaves of KXYL 96.9 FM Brownwood Talk Radio ! Now that would make entertaining radio !
" 12. Sacrifice your country so 30% of the people can have a false sense of security. Yeah that’s the ticket. "
QUOTE
“I'm angry at politicians who use Jesus Christ as a marketing tool” ~ Kinky Friedman - Candidate for Texas Governor - DMNews October 24, 2005
Bush's Poll #'s & Brownwood Media Push: All Hat, No Cattle !
If your listening to Brownwood Talk Radio (KXYL) your only hearing the poll that reflects positively on the President's #'s ! You've got to love it when the callers and talking heads dismiss the poll #'s when they do not favor their party, but immediately & continously, run the poll #'s (coming from the "Liberal Media" that they bash on a daily basis!) when they benefit their party or their guy ! We have a saying here in Texas for such acts: "All Hat, No Cattle" !
Polls conflict on Bush's approval
WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 (UPI) -- Two U.S. media polls were at odds Tuesday in interpreting public support for President George Bush, with one citing a surge, and the other claiming no change.
Economy boosts Bush's approval rating (December 8, 2005) -- U.S. President George Bush's slumping approval rating got a boost based on economic performance in a New York Times/CBS News poll published ... > full story
New poll puts Bush rating at all-time low (November 15, 2005) -- President Bush, faced with an unpopular war and an increasingly less trusting nation, has the lowest approval rating of his presidency, a new poll ... > full story
Bush approval falls to 39 percent in poll (October 18, 2005) -- U.S. President George Bush's job approval rating has fallen to its lowest-ever level at 39 percent, in a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll published ... > full story
Bush approval ratings up after Rita effort (September 30, 2005) -- President George W. Bush's public approval rating has improved after his highly visible efforts with Hurricane Rita, a new poll ... > full story
U.S.Congress approval rating at 36 percent (September 6, 2005) -- The U.S. Congress, returning to Washington this week after its summer recess, has a disapproval rate of 58 percent, a Gallup Poll released Tuesday ... > full story
The Washington Post-ABC News Poll said Bush's "approval rating has surged in recent weeks, reversing what had been an extended period of decline," while the CNN/USA Today Gallup poll said "Bush's approval ratings do not appear to have changed significantly."
In the Post-ABC poll, Bush's overall approval rating rose to 47 percent, from 39 percent in early November, with 52 percent saying they disapprove of how he is handling his job. His approval rating on Iraq jumped 10 percentage points since early November, to 46 percent.
By contrast, the CNN/USA Today Gallup poll found his approval rating stood at 41 percent, while more than half (56 percent), disapprove of how the president is handling his job. A majority -- 52 percent -- say it was a mistake to send troops to Iraq, and 61 percent say they disapprove of how he is handling Iraq specifically.
The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points, while the Post-ABC poll's margin was 4.5 points.
Copyright 2005 by United Press International. All Rights Reserved.
source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/?feed=TopNews&article=UPI-1-20051220-07294500-bc-us-bushpoll.xml
Chet Edwards- A Democrat, in Brown County's sideyard, who stays the Course !
Waco's $3 million PTSD study safe in defense budget
By Dan Genz and David Doerr Tribune-Herald staff writers
Monday, December 19, 2005
Waco leaders were poised to dub 2005 a "win-win year" for the embattled Waco Veterans Affairs Hospital as Congress late Sunday night neared passage of a defense appropriations bill that includes $3 million for a study in Waco of post traumatic stress disorder.
However, a late move by Republicans to attach a controversial proposal to open up Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil drilling -– a measure unrelated to the defense bill – left the package in limbo in the Senate.
The GOP's tactical move involving ANWR outraged environmentalists and some Democrats, coming as lawmakers rushed to conclude business and adjourn for the holidays.
Funding for the PTSD study, which would be conducted by the local VA hospital, the Olin E. Teague Veterans Center in Temple and nearby Fort Hood, was set for passage just a month after Congress awarded the 73-year-old Waco facility the distinction of being the first "Center of Excellence" for mental health.
It was a distinction that local hospital supporters sought fervently, along with a renewed focus on mental health problems created by war in Iraq. They hope to enhance the local VA hospital's mission at a time when federal officials contemplate downsizing or even closing the facility.
The PTSD program's funding is part of $10.9 million for the Waco VA Hospital and area defense programs in the final 2006 Defense Appropriations bill. The bill was still expected to pass the House by today, but the inclusion of ANWR drilling left opposition in the Senate resolute.
Late Sunday night, a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, who secured the PTSD funding, voiced confidence it would remain intact, whatever warring broke out in the Senate: "Negotiations are wrapped up and our projects are secure."
Democratic critics attacked the ANWR bill's chief advocate, Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, for adding the oil provision to legislation providing $453 billion for the Pentagon. They also accused him of offering enticements to skeptical senators in the form of funds for hurricane relief and other programs.
"Isn't that what the game really is here?" said Rep. David Obey, D-Wis. He said Stevens was "trying to make Gulf Coast states an offer they can't refuse."
"That's not the point," replied the Alaska Republican, who said expanding domestic production of oil is a matter of national security.
The defense bill had already been approved by a conference committee made up of members from both chambers before ANWR's inclusion triggered renewed opposition.
Edwards said the PTSD funding was crucial as the war on terrorism continues. Pentagon studies indicate 17 to 19 percent of Iraq war veterans face mental health issues and up to 3 percent show “full symptoms of PTSD,” he said.
"To me, the real significance, and I've talked to VA people about this, it's a culmination of what Sen. (Kay Bailey) Hutchison wrote and I supported in the House, to give a 'center of excellence' designation for the Waco VA, plus now, on top of that, a $3 million research project for PTSD for the Waco VA to work directly with Fort Hood," Edwards said.
The congressman said the combination "sends a real clear message to the VA leadership that we want the VA's resources (in Waco) better utilized and not shut down." He said shuttering the 127-acre facility would be "a tragic mistake."
Edwards has previously voted to open up ANWR to drilling.
Coke Mills, an attorney who sits on a local task force dedicated to saving the Waco VA Hospital as well as a federally appointed advisory panel charged with studying its future, voiced faith in the defense bill and the inclusion of a PTSD study.
"With more people coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan with those kind of problems," Mills said, "it is important that we have that availability here."
Mills said he believed the research would be conducted in Waco because of its proven expertise in treating PTSD.
"This is probably the only veterans mental health hospital within the state of Texas that has a real effective PTSD treatment center," he said. "They couldn't re-establish it somewhere else."
Efforts to pass the defense bill came as President Bush spoke to the nation about the increasingly controversial war and Vice President Dick Cheney paid a surprise visit to Iraq.
Besides funding for PTSD studies, the defense bill contains $7.9 million for Waco-area defense employers, including:
— $4.1 million to Waco's largest private employer, L-3 Communications, to improve power and environmental control systems on the aircraft the president and secretary of defense would use in case of nuclear attack.
— $1.5 million, also to L-3 Communications, to improve internal communications systems on Navy Special Projects Aircraft.
"Specifically, L-3 will replace large amounts of heavy cable on these airplanes and replace them with much lighter fiber optic systems," Edwards said. "This will allow the Navy to install more computer and intelligence-gathering equipment on their special projects aircraft."
— $1.3 million to McDowell Research Company, which employs approximately 140 people in Waco, to develop fuel cells to serve the critical need of charging batteries for Army vehicles, computers and other electronic equipment in combat situations.
— $1 million to Advanced Concepts and Technologies, International (ACT I), to improve detection systems for chemical and biological contaminants in water, a need identified by both the Department of Defense and the Homeland Security Agency.
"These priority programs will strengthen our nation's defense, improve our homeland security and support jobs and economic growth in our district," Edwards said.
Edwards also praised the House for adding $9.7 million for defense research projects at Texas A&M University.
Included among the $50 billion for the Iraq War are funds hiking annual troop pay 3.1 percent and the death benefit to survivors of troops killed in the line of duty as well as military life insurance policies.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
dgenz@wacotrib.com
757-5743
source: http://www.wacotrib.com/news/content/news/stories/2005/12/19/20051219wacdefensebill.html
Big Country Republicans Playing the "Christian" Card !
Monday December 19, 2005
Op Ed: Letters To The Editor - Brownwood Bulletin
Support for county constable
To the editor:
I have known Donnie Barnum and his family for several years. He is one of the most honest, trustworthy, and hard-working young men I have ever had the pleasure to meet. His family is top of the line, with a wife of over 20 years and two of the nicest and most intelligent daughters a father could ask for.
They are a Christian family that has been in Brown County all of their lives.
In the law enforcement field, Donnie has over 20 years of experience and has an extensive knowledge of the law. If I needed an officer in an emergency, I would hope that Donnie would be one of the officers to respond.
I have read the accusations against Donnie, and I am convinced he is innocent.
Donnie has been wrongly accused in the past and knowing Donnie’s reputation and moral character I have developed serious doubts concerning the validity of the accusations.
I think Donnie is a good officer and we must all remember that he is innocent until proven guilty. I believe that he will be acquitted in the end, but unfortunately, Donnie and his family will have to deal with all of the negativity that will come from this. I hope that as a community we will work together to minimize the negative effect that this incident has on this family.
Steve Adams
Brown County Commissioner Pct. 1
source: http://www.brownwoodbulletin.com/articles/2005/12/18/op_ed/letters%20to%20the%20editor/letter01.txt
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Abilene Reporter News Letter to the Editor
Right candidate
December 20, 2005
I am proud to call Abilene my home and am proud to have grown up in a city where Christian and family values still rule the day. I am even more proud to know there are individuals with the same convictions who desire to lead and represent our community at the state level. That's why I fully support Kevin Christian for State Representative District 71.
Kevin possesses the integrity, knowledge and experience to represent all citizens of District 71 with equal regard. Kevin's experiences as executive director for the Governor's Office of Economic Develop-ment and as a former chief of staff for Representative Bob Hunter are key to our district in today's political climate.
His experience with legislative agendas sets him apart from any other announced candidate.
Kevin's support for local education, property tax relief, local job creation and his strong conservative Christian values make him the right candidate for Nolan and Taylor counties.
I urge you to visit Kevin's Web site, www.electchristian.com to learn more about Kevin and his values.
Mark Perkins
Abilene
source: http://www.reporter-news.com/abil/op_letters_editor/article/0,1874,ABIL_7984_4328228,00.html
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" Shane Britton is a wonderful Christian man who is very good at what he does."
Based on my experience with Brown County Republican County Attorney Shane Britton, I have serious doubts about his credibility and ability to be truthful !
Monday, December 19, 2005
Welcome to Brownwood: Brokeback Mountain Territory
Brokeback Is Everyone's Mountain
If it weren't for gay people and gay bashers would anyone know about Wyoming? Sure, it is a beautiful state with some fine folks. But Matthew Shepard, Mary Cheney and now the movie Brokeback Mountain are the only reasons it makes news.
One would think the state would be so ecstatic about the national attention generated by the gay cowboy movie, it would produce custom "Brokeback Mountain" vanity plates. But no, the movie has yet to find an exhibitor in the state. Aren't Wyoming's residents the slightest bit curious why the rest of the nation can suddenly find their state on the map?
Wyoming isn't alone in miscalculating America's readiness to embrace this cinematic masterpiece. I've been getting e-mails from people who are furious that they are being treated like children and denied the opportunity to share in the Brokeback experience.
"It would be sad that I would have to get on a plane and travel to larger, distant cities to see this wonderful movie that's long overdue," a man wrote me from South Carolina. "I wonder if it will be on sale when it comes out on DVD or will I have to special order it especially when there are more lewd and sexually graphic straight movies on display for all to see?"
Theatres that won't show this movie will ignorantly cite "community standards." This reminds me of efforts to close strip joints in small towns citing the same reason, yet conveniently overlooking that people who live in the community pack these places.
This is not to draw an equivalent between stripping and Brokeback, but to make the point that the complexion and complexity of communities is far different than often presented. Having traveled throughout America, I can say that the whole blue/red state conventional wisdom is misleading. In all corners of this nation you find substantial numbers of gay people and thoughtful, progressive straight people. So, to deny a substantial minority enriching cultural opportunities, such as Brokeback Mountain, does not reflect community standards, but rather tyranny of the slight majority.
Try as some might to suppress the movie, Brokeback Mountain is an unstoppable force. The acting is superb, the cinematography magnificent and the message piercingly honest. But most important, it was released in a diffuse media age where the real impact won't be felt until the movie goes from the big to little screen.
As the man who e-mailed me said, he will see Brokeback Mountain on DVD if the local yokels deny him the theatre experience. The movie will also be available on digital cable's multitudinous channels. And now, people will be able to literally watch the gay cowboys from the closet on their easily concealed video I-Pods.
While the Hollywood media machine's unveiling of Brokeback Mountain has been as dramatic as Wyoming's Grand Teton mountains, the long-term effect on American culture will have more in common the rolling hills of the Great Plains.
Mainstream Americans will watch this movie in the coming years in the privacy of their own homes. Attitudes about gay people will be transformed and greater acceptance will follow. People will learn how destructive the closet is, not only on gays, but also on the people caught up in the sham families created to protect these closets. It will also help undermine the right wing's promotion of ex-gay ministries. The dramatization of shattered families in Brokeback Mountain exposes these groups for the divorce mills they truly are.
Indeed, "ex-gay" leader Stephen Bennett in USA Today talks about how his program is so feckless that merely seeing Brokeback Mountain caused one of these arranged marriages to nearly shatter.
"I just spoke with a married man on the telephone who is contemplating leaving his wife and children," said Bennett. "He says he's gay, and Brokeback Mountain has influenced his decision."
What has not been talked about is the profound affect the movie is having on the already out gay community. It has caused many people I know to reevaluate their lives and ponder the meaning of life, love and relationships. Watching the struggle of the two protagonists Jack Twist and Enis del Mar makes today's gay people stop and think, "I really have it easy. Given this freedom, have I lived true to myself and opened myself to the possibility of love?"
The main reason that Brokeback Mountain will be a crossover hit is because of its universal message. Its success comes down to the ending scene where Enis del Mar is alone in his bare-bones trailer overlooking the haunting prairie. He opens a closet and wistfully touches the hanging clothes of Jack Twist, who has been murdered.
It is a gut wrenching moment for the character, but also for moviegoers. They are forced to confront fears of loneliness and to ask themselves if they have lived life to the fullest and expressed their love to the people who matter most?
Gay or straight, the answer to this question is all to often, no. In essence, we all have our own secret Brokeback Mountain and the movie subconsciously asks people to find their purpose and embrace their passion, because life is short and fragile. It is the searing, powerful message more than the fact the messengers are gay that will ultimately help people understand the struggles of gay people, and more importantly, themselves.
source: www.waynebesen.com
QUOTE
“based on my three years of listening to Iraqis who have suffered the pain of war, US and Iraqi forces 'on the offensive' means continued mass arrests, house raids and bombing of civilians, continued illegal detentions, torture, and abuse.” ~ Peggy Gish, Christian Peacemaker Teams,Baghdad, Iraq, and Amman, Jordan
As it relates to Ben's call on KXYL this evening !
Illiteracy On The Increase In The US
Prensa Latina - Havana
12-17-5
WASHINGTON (PL) -- About 30 million US citizens are below the basic level of education, among them, 11 million who do not know how to read and write properly in English, institutional sources reported Friday.
Seven million individuals -3.1 percent of the population- is at the lowest educational category because they are completely illiterate.
Thirteen percent of US people have barely enough literacy to sign a document, according to government research testing elementary grammar and simple arithmetic.
The National Center for Educational Statistics (CNEE) found a slightly positive change between 1992 and 2005 as far as the ability of semi-literate adults to read and understand complex phrases.
The center noted the lack of bilingual teachers in the United States, which causes a considerable increase of immigrant students leaving school before the legal age.
According to Darlene Brown, director of a program of pedagogical alternatives in Texas, between 33 and 38 percent of foreign students leave school before the legal age every year and this statistic has increased over the last 10 years.
The government is doing nothing to end this situation; on the contrary, the difficulties become greater, complained Brown.
http://www.plenglish.com
" Selective use " : Sounds like Brownwood Talk Radio !
Bush Leaves Out the Bad News in Iraqi Poll
WASHINGTON - President Bush is making selective use of an opinion poll when he tells people that Iraqis are increasingly upbeat.
The same poll that indicated a majority of Iraqis believe their lives are going well also found a majority expressing opposition to the presence of U.S. forces, and less than half saying Iraq is better off now than before the war.
source:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051219/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_fact_check
Republicans & Their Tomfoolery ! Would this type of chacanery get by the Brownwood Press ?
Republican Bounced From Ballot in Minnesota
by mmcintee
Mon Dec 19, 2005 at 03:27:28 PM PDT
The Minnesota Supreme Court today ruled that Republican Sue Ek did not establish residency in time for next week's special legislative election in St. Cloud (15B)and can not be listed on the ballot. Link to the ruling is on the Inside Minnesota Politics website.
On Friday, a lower-court judge ruled that Ek did not meet the residency requirement to run for the Legislature in St. Cloud. The Supreme Court agreed with the findings. State law requires a candidate to live within a district for six months. Ek signed an affidavit July 9 saying she lived in St. Paul.
The court did not make any ruling about replacing Ek on the ballot.
Reaction and more in extended copy
mmcintee's diary :: ::
Reaction
This is what DFL (MN Democratic Party) Chair Brian Melendez had to say:
"Today the Supreme Court of Minnesota confirmed what the facts have already shown: Sue Ek doesn't live in St. Cloud, and wasn't telling the truth when she ran for elected office saying that she did.
"From day one, the Republicans have been playing political games with the people of St. Cloud. Gov. Pawlenty scheduled the special election two days after Christmas, which would ensure low voter turnout, and disfranchise the students of St. Cloud State University. Then the Republicans advanced a candidate who didn't even live in the district. The Supreme Court wasn't fooled. The voters won't be fooled either.
"The voters have a clear choice in Larry Haws. Haws has proven himself with over 32 years of public service to the people of the St. Cloud area. He is honest, trustworthy and the best choice to represent the Granite City at the State Capitol."
source: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/12/19/172728/00
Bush’s Snoopgate
Bush’s Snoopgate
The president was so desperate to kill The New York Times’ eavesdropping story, he summoned the paper’s editor and publisher to the Oval Office. But it wasn’t just out of concern about national security.
WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek
Updated: 6:17 p.m. ET Dec. 19, 2005
Dec. 19, 2005 -
Finally we have a Washington scandal that goes beyond sex, corruption and political intrigue to big issues like security versus liberty and the reasonable bounds of presidential power. President Bush came out swinging on Snoopgate—he made it seem as if those who didn’t agree with him wanted to leave us vulnerable to Al Qaeda—but it will not work. We’re seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator, or in his own mind, no doubt, like Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.
No wonder Bush was so desperate that The New York Times not publish its story on the National Security Agency eavesdropping on American citizens without a warrant, in what lawyers outside the administration say is a clear violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. I learned this week that on December 6, Bush summoned Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office in a futile attempt to talk them out of running the story. The Times will not comment on the meeting,
but one can only imagine the president’s desperation.
to read the entire article please visit: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10536559/site/newsweek/
Is buying the News a Republican Value ? Seems to be !
Newspapers to drop columnist who took cash
Mon Dec 19, 2005 1:13 PM ET
By Andy Sullivan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two U.S. newspapers said on Monday that they would no longer publish opinion pieces by a conservative commentator who has admitted taking payments from lobbyist Jack Abramoff to write op-ed pieces favorable to Abramoff's clients.
The Manchester Union Leader and the Washington Times, which run influential conservative opinion sections, said they did not know that Peter Ferrara took undisclosed payments for his op-ed pieces and did not think the activity was appropriate.
"Anybody who misrepresents or doesn't voluntarily reveal that they are being paid to write the article by an interest obviously has fallen below the standard that we would hold any published author to," said Washington Times editorial page editor Tony Blankley.
Ferrara, a prominent advocate of Social Security reform, told BusinessWeek Online last week that he takes payments from lobbyists "all the time" to write articles favorable to their clients and did not see anything wrong with the practice.
Ferrara did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Abramoff is at the center of two criminal influence-peddling investigations that have implicated top Republican lawmakers.
Former Abramoff partners have pleaded guilty to fraud or conspiracy charges for overbilling Indian tribes by millions of dollars and falsifying loan payments in the purchase of a Florida casino cruise line.
Justice Department indictments against Abramoff's partners detail trips taken by at least one lawmaker to exotic locales, underwritten by Abramoff clients, and frequent free dinners at a restaurant he owned.
Abramoff paid at least one other opinion-maker to write columns favoring his client's positions. Doug Bandow had his column suspended by Copley News Service and resigned from the libertarian Cato Institute last week.
The think tank where Ferrara works as a senior policy fellow, by contrast, defended him. The Institute for Policy Innovation said Ferrara did not work there when he took payments from Abramoff and has not identified himself as an IPI fellow when writing articles paid for by others.
The Bush administration has also paid commentators who support its views. Armstrong Williams took $240,000 to tout Bush education policies in TV appearances and in his column, while the Pentagon has secretly paid Iraqi newspapers to run pro-American stories.
source: http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyid=2005-12-19T181343Z_01_SPI965571_RTRUKOC_0_US-MEDIA-ABRAMOFF.xml&rpc=22
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Note from Steve: Wonder if the buying of the news is confined to the Northeast or has it made its way to Brokeback Mountain Territory ?
" Bright Red " Brownwood & " Veterans " of all Stripes !
Note from Steve: Isn't it interesting that returning United States Military Veterans of Iraq/Afganistan are running as Democrats but that local " Veterans of Political Office " have decided to run as Republicans ( Guess they got tired of being
" * defined " daily by their pew peers (with the help of Brownwood Talk Radio ) as baby killers, sodomite lovers, pimps, cockroaches, pornographers, & pedophiles ! I'm surprised, uncovered WHITE HOUSE reporter & Republican Spinster, JEFF GANNON
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Here's a Democrat running for office just East of Brown County near Fort Hood, Mary Beth Harrell, INTEGRITY, ACCOUNTABILITY AND FAITH IN THE FUTURE. Here's her site
and look, here's another Democrat
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West, Wood, Brown running in GOP primary
Three longtime Brown County public officials who have held office as Democrats are changing parties in the March 7 primary elections.
Brown County Judge Ray West, County Clerk Margaret Wood and District Clerk Jan Brown filed for re-election in the March 7 Republican primary, according to information from Brown County Republican Party Chairman Brad Locker’s office.
Brownwood Bulletin
Friday December 16, 2005 Front Page
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Some of our U.S. Military Veterans running as Democrats. I bet they will not allow themselves to be shamed ! Visit their sites and and see if you agree !
http://www.lentzforcongress.com/
http://www.dunnforcongress.com/
http://www.davidasheforcongress.com/
http://www.murphy06.com/
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Veterans take on new battle: run for office
'Fighting Dems' see options in the war against terrorism
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | November 27, 2005
(Correction: Because of a graphic artist's error, a map accompanying a Page One story in the Sunday paper about veterans of the Iraq war running for office misidentified the state of Wisconsin as Minnesota.)
(Correction: Because of reporting errors, a Page One story Sunday about Iraq War veterans running for Congress misstated that Bryan Lentz of Pennsylvania served in the 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq. He was a member of that unit from 1987 to 1990, but was a major in the 416th Civil Affairs Battalion during his Iraq tour. Also, the Seventh Congressional District outside Philadelphia where he is a candidate does not include Bucks County.)
PHILADELPHIA -- Bryan Lentz, toting an Army-issue duffel bag, slips into the booth.
Over the din of a bustling downtown coffee shop, the 41-year-old infantry officer and lawyer leans across the table, and outlines his latest mission.
''You either have to buy into the rhetoric or stand up. I am standing up."
Lentz, who as a major in the 82d Airborne helped to rebuild the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, is running for Congress. He is one of at least nine veterans vying to become the first soldiers of the post-9/11 military to be elected to the House of Representatives, according to party leaders.
They say their experience makes them well-suited to help successfully extricate the United States from Iraq and to more effectively fight the war on terrorism, which they fear is being lost in the Muslim world's court of public opinion.
Eight of the nine are running as Democrats. At least three are lawyers. Most went to the front lines from the Reserves or the National Guard. Some have been recruited for office by party leaders; others say they are trying to get the national parties to pay attention to them.
But they are all running on their wartime experience and against the prevailing political hierarchy in Washington -- both Republican and Democrat.
They are expected to inject a pivotal voice into the debate next year, a midterm election season that is likely to focus heavily on security issues such as US involvement in Iraq and homeland defense.
''We will have a very strong voice and instant credibility," said Tim Dunn, a Marine Corps lieutenant colonel and a Deomcrat who served in Iraq and is now running in North Carolina's Eighth District, a seat held by four-term Republican Robin Hayes. ''We bring to the table the experience and the knowledge gained through our service, whether active duty or Reserve, so that when these decisions are made in the future we have people who can stand up and ask the right questions. People will listen to us."
The veterans are running in Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, Maryland, and Minnesota. More are likely to announce as the primary season heats up, party officials predict.
Several are seeking to defeat first-term incumbents in highly competitive districts. Others face an uphill battle, including Lentz, who is seeking to unseat 10-term Republican Curt Weldon in the Philadelphia suburbs of Bucks County.
Using their wartime service to burnish their credentials, most are banking on voters' disillusionment with the war in Iraq to catapult themselves into the House, where Republicans now hold a narrow majority.
Their views on Iraq are not universal. Some believe a withdrawal is necessary. Others say more troops are needed. Lentz, for one, says the key to success in Iraq is a nationwide rebuilding effort that includes cracking down on US war profiteers.
But they all agree that US policy needs an overhaul.
''Being a military veteran is not a prerequisite for serving in Congress, but I can ask the penetrating questions," said David Ashe, 36, a major in the Marine Corps Reserve who was the deputy legal counsel to a three-star general in Iraq, and who is running in a three-way Democratic primary in Virginia's heavily military Second District. The seat is now held by a first-term Republican, Thelma Drake, who defeated Ashe by 10 percentage points in 2004.
US military conflicts have historically molded new breeds of veterans who return to join the political fray. Many of them have had an enduring impact.
In 1946, when the World War II generation entered politics, two neophytes, John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon, came to define their parties for a generation. Since, leading presidential contenders such as George McGovern, Robert Dole, and George H.W. Bush all held up their service in World War II as a key selling point.
More than three decades after he was the first Vietnam veteran elected to Congress, Representative John Murtha of
Pennsylvania was still shaping the debate this month when the senior Democrat stirred up Washington with a call for a withdrawal from Iraq.
But the number of lawmakers with military experience has dropped dramatically since Murtha was first elected in 1974, when nearly 80 percent of members of Congress had served in uniform.
Now, less than 30 percent in Congress have military experience, according to congressional statistics.
Veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are hoping to make their own mark in 2006, an election season the liberal web log DailyKos.com has already labeled the ''year of the veteran."
''The fact that so many are running as Democrats is a reflection of the public disillusion with the powers that be," said Michael Duga, a Democratic strategist. ''Who best to speak for the military on an exit strategy than guys who have been there?"
They all speak from experience. Patrick Murphy, a 32-year-old former Army captain and West Point professor, helped train the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps.
A self-described progressive, he is running in Pennsylvania's Eighth District, in the Philadelphia suburbs, a seat now held by freshman Republican Michael Fitzpatrick.
''Those in power are arrogant and don't want to listen to the experts," said Murphy. ''We can speak truth to power."
Andrew Duck, 43, is running in rural Maryland's Sixth District, a seat held by seven-term Republican Roscoe Bartlett. Describing himself as a Democrat who is opposed to abortion, the former Army intelligence officer still works in the Pentagon as a contractor.
''I am very proud I helped get rid of Saddam Hussein, but I am also embarrassed at how badly we have messed it up since then," he said in a recent interview in a pizza shop near the Pentagon.
''People say there wasn't a plan. I know there was a plan," Duck said. ''Our problem was we were told [by Pentagon leaders] we can't use it."
Duck, who served as an intelligence liaison officer between ground forces in Iraq, believes the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detainee prison camp is illegal and should be closed. But he said what ''broke the camel's back" was seeing firsthand the failure to provide adequate armor to protect US troops from insurgent attacks.
Indeed, others cite what they consider to be incompetent leadership as pushing them into politics.
''We were paying Iraqis 20,000 dinars a month and the looters were paying them 20,000 dinars a night," Ashe said in a telephone interview from his headquarters.
''I had a street-level view of the failures of postwar planning. We failed in setting up a bureaucracy, let alone a democracy."
Their concerns extend beyond Iraq. Chris Carney, a lieutenant commander in the Naval Reserve running in Pennsylvania's 10th District, said he has seen leaders mismanage the war on terror.
Carney, who was a senior Pentagon counterterrorism adviser, said: ''I have come to realize our country is no safer than it was before 9/11. We need to be spending far more resources in homeland security than we have been."
Tim Walz, a 41-year-old school teacher and 24-year veteran of the National Guard who was called up to active duty after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, said he has decided to run in Minnesota's First District, a seat held by six-term Republican Gil Gutknecht, because of what he sees as ''the politicization of the military and politicians using them as a backdrop."
The Democratic candidates, labeled the ''Fighting Dems" by liberal Internet bloggers, say they are hoping to pool their resources and to rely on their collective power and influence to raise money and gain nationwide media attention.
''They are becoming an entity in and of themselves, almost a caucus," said Duga, the Democratic strategist.
Carl Forti, a spokesman for the National Republican Campaign Committee, said he believes most recent veterans are running as Democrats because the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ''is seeking to find as many vets as possible to run."
He said the Republicans, on the other hand, are looking for the best candidates, whether military veterans or not.
At least one new veteran will be appearing on the ballot as a Republican. In Texas's 17th Congressional District, now filled by an eight-term Democrat, Chet Edwards, 33-year-old Van Taylor, a Marine Corps major who led reconnaissance missions during the invasion of Iraq, is running in the GOP primary.
''It can only help to send people to Washington who have firsthand experience in the war on terror," Taylor said of his campaign effort.
''After 10 years in the Marine Corps I've learned a lot about the military and the war on terror," said the Harvard graduate, experience he said will be useful for ''many years to come."
Regardless of political party, most say they are running against the current political order, which they believe has failed to collaborate on a unified strategy.
''Both parties have pursued policies of division, and there is this gaping whole in the middle where I think most Americans reside," said Carney, who until recently served as an adviser to the deputy defense secretary's office, and who now is vying to unseat four-term Republican Don Sherwood.
''Those people need to be represented," he said. ''I don't know how we go from a country as united as it was on Sept. 12, 2001, to one as divided as we are today. That is what is propelling me in this race."
Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com.
source: http://www.boston.com/news/politics/us_house/articles/2005/11/27/veterans_take_on_new_battle_run_for_office?mode=PF
It's in the Details !
Note from Steve, the following story below is a prime example of the talk radio bias found in Brownwood Texas. This story was mentioned several times on this mornings program at KXYL and not a mention that this candidate was running as a Democrat. Paired with their coverage of the three former Brown County Democrats who are changing to the Republican party (political survival?) it's not really surprising that they would avoid informing their listeners that Tammy Duckworth was running as a Democrat. I believe this is a prime example of Media Bias starting at the local level. Regarding the three former Democrats who are running as Republicans, I believe they know that the majority of Brown County Voters get their "Corn Pone" from Brownwood Talk Radio, Fox News, and Politically Driven Pulpits !
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Iraq vets making a run for Congress
Democrats see hopes in GOP strongholds
By John Biemer
Tribune staff reporter
Published December 17, 2005
In little more than a year, Tammy Duckworth has gone from a casualty in Iraq to a congressional candidate at home, her campaign a symbol of the partisan battle being waged at the highest reaches of the U.S. House.
By seeking the west suburban 6th Congressional District seat being vacated by retiring Republican Rep. Henry Hyde of Wood Dale, Duckworth joins a host of military veterans running as Democrats for House seats in GOP-leaning districts, seizing upon war as a chief campaign issue.
Duckworth, who lost her legs when a rocket-propelled grenade blew up in the helicopter she was piloting, calls the Iraq war "a mistake."
"Nobody in Congress right now has the perspective that those of us who've served in Iraq have," Duckworth said Friday as she sought signatures for her candidacy petitions from the lunch crowd at a Streamwood restaurant.
"Only those of us who've served on the ground over there understand the dynamics that are truly going on over there right now."
In formally announcing her campaign this weekend, Duckworth, 37, joins two Democrats in the March 21 primary--Rolling Meadows software engineer Christine Cegelis and Wheaton College professor Lindy Scott. Republican state Sen. Peter Roskam of Wheaton is the odds-on favorite in the traditionally GOP-dominated district, which Hyde has held for 16 terms.
Her candidacy has already drawn attention and controversy.
The effort to get her to run, spurred by North and Northwest Side Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, has drawn fire from some local Democrats who accuse him of meddling from Washington.
At the same time, Emanuel's vaunted public-relations skills, honed during his tenure in the Clinton White House, have pushed Duckworth to the national stage. Despite being a political novice, on Sunday she will gain a prized spot on a Washington-based network news show typically reserved for lawmakers and policy experts.
The show is ABC's `This Week' with George Stephanopoulos, who once worked with Emanuel for Clinton.
Republicans contend the Duckworth candidacy is an effort by Emanuel to boost his own standing nationally among his colleagues by trying to make a strong showing in the back yard of the nation's top congressional Republican, U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Oswego.
The sprawling 6th Congressional District, which encompasses much of eastern and central DuPage County, sits between the districts of Hastert and Emanuel.
Duckworth, a resident of Hoffman Estates, lives outside the district. That has caused consternation among some local Democrats, particularly those backing Cegelis, who got 44 percent of the vote last year against Hyde--the best showing for a Democrat in three decades.
For her part, Duckworth denied that she was drafted to run for the seat and said she's ready for whatever is thrown at her.
"I know about hard years," she said Friday. "I've already survived what is probably the hardest year in my life. After you've had an RPG blow up in your lap, everything else isn't that tough. I'm not going to shirk away from what I think is right. I'm going to fight aggressively."
At least 10 other veterans who served in the military after the Sept. 11 attacks now are running for Congress as Democrats.
Duckworth said she wants the Pentagon to implement a system of aggressive benchmarks to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq.
She said the war was a misguided response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"We should've been going after the enemies that attacked us on our soil," she said. "We should've been going after Osama bin Laden."
The model for Duckworth's candidacy, and of the campaigns of other vets, was the candidacy this summer of Paul Hackett, a former Marine Corps major. Hackett came close to winning a special election for an Ohio congressional seat that had been held by the GOP for decades.
Hastert contended Democratic leaders are focusing too singularly on turning anxiety over the war into a popularity contest featuring a war veteran.
"I have a great deal of respect for Tammy Duckworth," Hastert said recently. "I think she's given a great contribution to her country, obviously, and she's a great patriot.
"But you know, just to bring those people in wholesale to run in districts because of the popularity issue, I wish the Democratic Party would rethink that."
Pat Durante, a longtime Hyde aide and chairman of the Addison Township Republican Party, conceded that, "one has to tread very carefully in this kind of a campaign." But the way to do that, he advised, is to "run on the issues."
"In the 6th District it is still leaning the Hyde way. It is still Republican," he said. "She has this handicap, this problem from the war, but is she going to be a one-issue candidate? You don't just vote for the war every day when you show up in Congress."
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jbiemer@tribune.com
source: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0512170054dec17,1,7037576.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Isn't that Special !
Note from Steve: Have you ever noticed when a Republican "Christian" Conservative is caught in a scandal, fellow Republican "Christian" conservative supporters chalk it up to "Missing the Mark" and when it's a Democrat they're a Communist ! From the sound of it (not that you'll hear about it from Neo-Conservative Brownwood Talk Radio), there's a abundance of Republican "Christian" Conservatives missing the mark ! Come on Ralph, be a Christ like example, return the multi-million dollar fee you secretly received from the gambling industry ! Why not do it in front of TeenPact too !
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Reed admits misstep in work
Says he shouldn't have taken job for Abramoff
By JIM GALLOWAY
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 12/16/05
Ralph Reed, the political strategist and candidate for lieutenant governor, said recently that his work for disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff was a mistake that — if given the chance — he wouldn't repeat.
"Had I known then what I know now, I would not have undertaken that work," Reed said, according to the text of a speech posted on his campaign Web site this week.
Campaign manager Jared Thomas said Reed, a Republican and former Christian Coalition leader, made the speech last Friday before a Christian youth group at a home in Alpharetta.
The teenagers were members of TeenPact, a group that introduces Christian teens to government and politics, often through internships.
Reed's remarks, posted at www.ralphreed.com under "speeches," are his most extensive yet on his relationship with Abramoff — whom Reed did not name.
In his speech, Reed predicted his work for the lobbyist would become fodder for next year's election campaign. Two rivals, Republican Casey Cagle and Democrat Greg Hecht, have already established Web sites focusing on Reed's ties to Abramoff, a long-time friend now the subject of several federal investigations.
But Reed's remarks to the youth group may also be a reaction to rising Christian concerns about his connections to the Abramoff scandal.
Last month, the evangelical weekly World, with a national circulation of 140,000, published a critical piece about Reed that portrayed the former head of the Christian Coalition as a "shrewd businessman who has spent years leveraging his evangelical and conservative contacts."
For three years, Reed conducted anti-gambling campaigns in Texas, Louisiana and Alabama, on behalf of Abramoff. Two of Abramoff's tribal clients, eager to preserve their casino markets, funneled Reed more than $5 million toward his efforts.
"In 1999 I was building my small business, Century Strategies," Reed said in the speech.
"A friend of almost 20 years, then working at one of the most prestigious law firms in the nation, came to me and offered the opportunity to serve as a grassroots subcontractor to the firm."
"I knew the law firm had tribal clients who had their own reasons for opposing new casinos. I was assured by the law firm at the outset of the work that the funds contributed to our efforts would not derive from gambling activity," Reed said.
The speech does not address the fact that in several e-mails between Reed and Abramoff, made public by the U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee, the tribal sources of some of the money were discussed. Reed never disclosed the origin of the cash to his religious allies.
Reed pointed to the good he said his work had accomplished: "We will never know how many marriages and lives were saved, or how many children were spared the consequences of compulsive gambling."
But the fact that his campaigns were secretly fueled with gambling funds has raised the ire of many religious groups, which Reed said he regrets.
"I cannot change the past, but I can certainly learn from it," Reed said. "I am a better man and a better leader as a result."
A spokesman for Cagle, Reed's Republican rival, said more penance is required.
"If Ralph is serious about accepting responsibility for his choices, then he'll return the multi-million dollar fee he secretly received from the gambling industry," said Cagle spokesman Brad Alexander.
source:http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/1205/16metreed.html
All "Media docility" is local: "Nothing to see here, folks, just move along,"
Fact Checking the Feds in Airport Shooting
Two air marshals gunned down an American citizen last week in Miami, and the press swallowed the government's now-flawed explanation of a "bomb threat" hook, line, and sinker.
By James Bovard
(December 12, 2005) -- In the weeks after the Hurricane Katrina debacle, many media commentators gushed about how the Fourth Estate had finally rediscovered its courage in exposing government debacles. However, the reports of spinal recovery were premature.
Two air marshals gunned down an American citizen last week in Miami and most of the establishment media seemingly couldn't care less. Immediately after 44-year-old Rigoberto Alpizar died on Dec. 7 in a hail of bullets from two air marshals, Dave Adams, a spokesman for the Federal Air Marshal Service, told CNN that Alpizar had shouted "I have a bomb in my bag" as he ran up and down the aisle of the plane as it sat on the runway. This was the version of events that the vast majority of the media repeated unquestioningly in the first days after the killing.
However, online articles on Dec. 8 by Time.com and CNN.com contained quotes from passengers debunking the feds' story. The Orlando Sentinel reported on Dec. 9: "Seven passengers interviewed by the Orlando Sentinel -- seated in both the front and rear of the main passenger cabin -- said Alpizar was silent as he ran past them on his way to the exit." No passenger the Sentinel spoke to offered any account akin to what the feds claimed.
It is not yet clear exactly what happened on Dec. 7 at the Miami airport. But the primary justification the feds offered for using deadly force did not survive even two full news cycles.
Regardless, the conservative press rushed to exonerate. Investors Business Daily, in a Dec. 9 editorial, hailed the marshals' action: "The Miami incident lets all Americans know -- and puts would-be terrorists on notice -- that we are able and willing to use lethal force to kill someone viewed as a potential threat." The Washington Times derided any "second-guessing" and drew the happy moral to the story: "Mr. Alpizar's death is a reminder of how seriously the marshals treat airline security. We should all take due notice."
But other publications also raced to take the government's word. A Washington Post editorial on December 9 proclaimed, "There is, at this stage, no reason to doubt the official account of the slaying Wednesday of Rigoberto Alpizar by federal air marshals in Miami." The Post editorial was reprinted in numerous papers the following day. Apparently, the official account had instantaneously become sacrosanct.
The Boston Herald on Dec. 10 used the killing to slap down anyone who would grouse about TSA checkpoint delays: "The shooting of a passenger on an American Airlines flight bound for Orlando is a reminder to passengers harping on frustrating lines at security checkpoints, that aviation security is a deadly serious business." The Herald did see one risk from the killing: "Members of Congress ought not use the excuse of the Miami incident to stick their noses into a layer of security that is clearly the most effective defense we have against future hijackings." But oversight has been an unnatural act for members of Congress since at least 9/11, so the Herald has little to fear.
Newspaper editorial writers were hell-bent on promulgating the government version of events. The Louisville Courier-Journal announced in a Dec. 10 editorial: "The passenger, Rigoberto Alpizar, a naturalized American citizen said to be suffering from bipolar disorder, shouted that he had a bomb and ran from a plane." The crucial medical problem in this case was not Alpizar's bipolar disorder but the pervasive attention deficits among American editorial writers.
A Memphis Commercial Appeal editorial on Dec. 12 explained the marshals' dilemma: "A youngish [44 years old?] male bolts from his seat in the rear of the plane and sprints toward the cockpit, yelling that he has a bomb." This is an interesting hypothetical but the only people who report that Alpizar claimed he had a bomb are spokesmen for federal agencies. Regardless of how many passengers directly contradict this key claim, the feds' version of the killing is correct because the government said so.
The Daily Oklahoman, on Dec. 12, asked, "when Alpizar became agitated and began running down the aisle of the airplane, claiming he had a bomb in his bag, what were marshals to think?" The Oklahoman assured its readers that "We're not about to second guess" the marshals. Or to fact check the feds.
The Brahmins at PBS NewsHour announced in an online article on Dec. 12: "No serious questions have been raised about the actions of the air marshals who killed the passenger last week." Apparently, it is not serious if federal officials apparently make false claims in a case in which an American citizen is killed.
A Dec. 13 Pittsburgh Post Gazette editorial relied on a slightly different quote to buttress the killing: "According to law enforcement officials, Alpizar 'uttered threatening words that included a sentence to the effect that he had a bomb." It is a long ways from someone running up and down aisle shouting about having a bomb to using threatening words to the effect that he had a bomb. What sort of sentence includes threatening words "to the effect" that one has a bomb -- but apparently does not include the word bomb? Alpizar was not an English professor giving a lecture on deconstructionism at the time he was shot. The feds may be backtracking -- and newspaper editorial writers are rolling out the red carpet for every step.
The Post-Gazette concluded: "But by all initial accounts, the marshals did their job." Except for the accounts of the passengers on the plane who said they never heard Alpizar mention a bomb. But mere private citizens don't count, since they do not provide exclusive access and hot tips to newspaper writers and editors.
Some editorials called for an independent investigation of the shooting. This is a triumph of hope over experience, given how such investigations over the past 15 years almost always whitewashed federal action. Perhaps some truth will seep out as a result of jurisdictional conflicts between the Federal Air Marshal Service and the FBI or Miami police. If the media continue acting like the cop on South Park -- "Nothing to see here, folks, just move along," the odds of any such revelation go from slim to none.
Perhaps if Alpizar had regularly attended Georgetown dinner parties, the media would show more curiosity about his fate. In the old days, Americans were taught that the media would serve as a check and a balance on government powers. The same media docility that helped the Bush administration sell the war in Iraq is still there, now serving Leviathan on the homefront.
James Bovard (letters@editorandpublisher.com) is the author of the forthcoming "Attention Deficit Democracy" (Palgrave, January 2006), "Terrorism & Tyranny" (Palgrave, 2003), and seven other books.
source: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/shoptalk_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001699287
Saturday, December 17, 2005
The Domino Effect: Explosion & Brownwood Verizon DSL Outage
Crews battle natural gas explosion
Drilling activity apparently 'blew out' old well in Palo Pinto County
By Celinda Emison / Reporter-News Staff Writer
December 17, 2005
Fires caused by a natural gas explosion about 75 miles east of Abilene were still burning Friday night, according to officials in Palo Pinto County.
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" Verizon officials confirmed that the explosion caused a major cut in an AT&T fiber optic line, resulting in DSL high-speed Internet outages for more than 9,000 Verizon customers in Brownwood and San Angelo, according to spokesman Bill Kula."
to read the entire article please go here:
http://www.reporter-news.com/abil/nw_local/article/0,1874,ABIL_7959_4322463,00.html
The "Brownwood Moons" : What are they "Brewing" ?
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FUNDAMENTALISM AND DEPENDENCY
Fundamentalists create a religious environment of legalistic judgmental fear that makes their followers dependent on a flawed religious system for their peace of mind and sense of security. Abusive sick religion wounds people and then plays the role of healer to fix something that was never broken to begin with. It may be an obvious retreat from reality, but it makes a lot of money, a whole lot of money!
It is bad enough that the misinformed homophobic fundamentalists lead many GLBT people to commit suicide in fear and despair, but for them to amass great financial profit from their evil works is beyond any possible justification. The same can be said for all abusive religion.
Fundamentalists encourage and create dependence on their system by teaching their own misinformation, opinions and prejudices instead of teaching their followers to think for themselves.
SICK RELIGION AND DESPERATION
Legalistic homophobic fundamentalism also makes people desperate, desperate for change, desperate to change themselves to fit the unrealistic demands of sick religion, and desperate to please other desperate people who are out of touch with spiritual reality.
When any kind of stress makes us desperate, we become victims of our own feelings, and being cool, calm and collected becomes a great challenge.
Remember the statement in "Blazing Saddles" about something being "The last act of a desperate man"? The comic reply was, "I don't care if it's the first act of Henry the Fifth!" Desperate acts get us into a lot of trouble, like losing our jobs, losing our money, getting married, acting crazy, and joining abusive churches.
What does it take to make you desperate? Have you ever done destructive things to yourself because you were desperate? I have. Desperation is never a pretty picture. Fear and desperation often go together. Fear of losing your lover, your job, your health, your reputation, your friends, your family, your possessions, or your life can fill you with dread and make you desperate.
source: http://www.truluck.com/html/the__ex-gay__fraud.html
Who's "Brewing" this in Brownwood ?
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If Wayne were in town I'd buy him a cup of coffee at one of Brownwood's Coffee Shops within walking distance of "Historic" Downtwon Brownwood !
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Friday, December 16, 2005
Good Fences Make Good Neighbors ?
Monday 7th November 2005, by Sean Chadwell
An analysis of the recent proposal, by Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, to build an 1800-mile triple fence along the border with Mexico.
It’ll be cheap to build an 1800-mile fence between the United States and Mexico, says Representative Duncan Hunter of California. Here’s a snippet from an interview with NBC’s Rita Cosby:
COSBY: That was what I was going ask you. Is that what you’re asking for, the whole stretch, all 2,000 miles?
HUNTER: Yes, we propose to extend that fence all the way the 1,800 miles from San Diego, California to Brownsville, Texas and Matamoros, Mexico. It could be done quickly. You can start the sections in different places. For example, you could start a section — what we ought to do with the murder and the killing and the violence in Nuevo Laredo is to immediately build a triple fence on the American side of the border and cut that route off to the drug industry, which is using Nuevo Laredo as a jump-off point.
In case you missed it: "What we ought to do with the murder and the killing and the violence in Nuevo Laredo is to immediately build a triple fence on the American side of the border . . ."
Ignore the split infinitive. The redundancy here (not murder and killing! Surely!) is the least imaginative, but, let’s face it, the most scary way of describing the on-going fighting in Nuevo Laredo. I don’t claim it isn’t scary; I used to spend a lot of time in Nuevo Laredo—as I live quite close—and I admit it’s kind of crazy right now, kind of like the poorer, ignored sections of a lot of larger American cities themselves embroiled in drug-related violence.
More importantly, his conflation of drug-related violence with illegal crossings is typical of our collective wish to simplify the issue. This is not "what we ought to do with" the problems in Nuevo Laredo. What I suspect Hunter means is this is "what we ought to do about our fear" of those problems.
I want to expand on both points:
Right: the drug-cartel violence is scary in Nuevo Laredo at the moment. But that drug violence has much more to do with I-35’s role as a major NAFTA corridor than the fact that the border is unusually porous here. Were the drug trade as lucrative everywhere we lack triple fences, we would see lots more drug violence along most of the border. So what’s unique about Nuevo Laredo/Laredo? It is the busiest land port in the country, at present. Despite the real poverty of South Texas and Northern Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon, millions of dollars in freely traded commodities are moving through here daily. Daily, trains laden with Chevrolets built in Saltillo plow noisily north. Daily, tankers of high-fructose corn syrup head south. This is a trade route quickly on its way to becoming a legend. CAFTA and FTAA only mean more traffic north—to all kinds of traders, including drug cartels. What happens when you make the trade route even more difficult to access? Supply? Demand? Don’t the risks—and violence—inherent in the drug trade become more lucrative? What we ought to do "with" the violence in Nuevo Laredo is confront our complicity in that violence, to begin to address the phenomenal demand for drugs in the United States, to admit, first, that we have a problem. Having accomplished that, we need to admit that "free trade" is burdened by real complexities, that at least part of the economic windfall resulting from free trade comes from our reluctance to deal with the problems fomented by free trade, such as intense fighting in Northern Mexico about access to vitally important trade routes.
More importantly, drug violence and illegal immigration are not the same thing. It is easy but sloppy to believe this, and it makes us feel justified perhaps, in keeping "them" out. Most Americans—however they feel about illegal immigration—understand that the Mexicans and Central Americans who struggle to make it into the United States are here to work. What most of us are unwilling to acknowledge, however, even as we complain bitterly about the cost of social services for immigrants, is that such immigrants make our lives less expensive. Finally, what few of us are willing to admit—perhaps the cost is simply too great—is that many of the Mexicans now working illegally in the United States were driven here by the trade liberalization (in the form of NAFTA) that meant they could no longer compete with heavily-subsidized U.S. agribusiness. But we don’t count labor as a freely-tradeable commodity. So we need a fence for that one.
Trade liberalization, American-style, does not necessarily cause these problems, and I’m not deeply opposed to free trade. But inherent in the U.S. approach is a penchant for simplicity: free trade makes everything better for everyone. Were we willing to learn from NAFTA before we tried to bully our way into CAFTA and FTAA, we might recognize that such liberalization is bound to have big consequences in labor markets (I’m speaking not as an economist, but as a regular guy); that trade liberalization leads to new, profoundly important trade routes; that trade routes are obviously prone to being used for the movement of goods we don’t necessarily want to flow freely.
If nothing else, it ought to make lots more people angry that Representative Hunter speaks as though we were stupid enough to be persuaded that a fence is going to address drug violence or trade and that either of those things has anything to do with trekking your way from El Salvador in an odds-against-you attempt to achieve the American Dream.
Hunter should be ashamed of himself, then, not for wanting to build a fence. It’s among the oldest of human impulses, after all, and he’s just looking to protect his country. He should be ashamed for being unwilling to understand or (having understood), to express the complexities of the commodities and the peoples crossing the border. In the end,
[ . . .] I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
(From Robert Frost’s "Mending Wall")
source: http://www.selvesandothers.org/article12094.html
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City agrees to oppose Minutemen 16 hours after critic's biting words
By Sarah Coppola
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, December 17, 2005
The Austin City Council meeting began Thursday morning with a stinging remark and ended 16 hours later with calmer words, all centered on one subject: the Minutemen.
Council Member Raul Alvarez had sponsored a resolution to oppose the Minutemen, a group that is trying to stop illegal immigrants at the Texas-Mexico border. The resolution, like all city resolutions, is largely symbolic, with no regulatory oomph.
But Liberty Hill resident Jim Dillon, a carpenter who considers himself a Minuteman member and said he plans to run for governor, wasn't fond of the idea. He interrupted Mayor Will Wynn twice as Wynn tried to read the consent agenda, a housekeeping activity at the beginning of council meetings.
Then Dillon signed up to speak on an unrelated item, and proceeded to blast the resolution and rail against new roads that he claimed are bringing illegal immigrants through Texas. Dillon capped his remarks with the comment that Alvarez "should go back to Mexico where he came from," and Wynn ordered Dillon to leave.
The council didn't take up the resolution again until 1:30 a.m. Friday — its final item. By then, the nine people who had signed up to speak against it and 26 in favor had left.
The council passed the resolution 7-0, with Wynn saying he supported President Bush's stance that "dramatic immigration reform" is needed that would still allow for trade across the border.
Alvarez offered this to his earlier critic: "I think the first speaker today who made a comment that I should go back to Mexico shows there is a problem with folks who are not trained enforcing the laws of the United States," he said. "There is a risk they may engage in use of force or threat of force.
"We respect the rights of these groups to express free speech but not to the extent that they violate the rights of our community," he said.
As for his family, Alvarez said, "We were here when the state was created. . . . It was sort of a case of, we didn't cross the river, the river crossed us."
scoppola@statesman.com; 912-2939
Jeremy Schwartz also contributed to this report
source: http://www.statesman.com/news/content/metro/stories/12/17minutemen.html
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Group opposing illegal immigration gains national foothold
By ARTHUR H. ROTSTEIN
Associated Press Writer
TUCSON, Ariz. — The Minuteman Project started earlier this year amid fears that racist extremists would confront and possibly injure illegal immigrants crossing into Arizona.
But there were no significant confrontations — no fights, and rarely any excitement — when hundreds of people traveled to the Arizona desert during April to watch for border crossers and report them to immigration agents.
Since then the movement has taken hold, with Minuteman-inspired organizations springing up in several states, including Texas, and even critics acknowledge the participants are more than just a band of misfits, bigots and extremists.
Attention surrounding immigration problems helped attract "a fairly broad cross-section of middle Americans," said Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project, which monitors hate groups. "This is partly driven by politicians falling all over each other over an issue that they feel had some real resonance."
Potok said that, according to his group's research, "there are real strains of racism and anti-Semitism in this movement.
"Nevertheless," he said, "the movement has attracted people who are not Klansmen or neo-Nazis."
The Minuteman Project was the brainchild of Jim Gilchrist, a retired accountant from Orange County, Calif., and an unsuccessful congressional candidate there, who recruited participants through the Internet. He tied his efforts to an existing group, Civil Homeland Defense, which was already patrolling the Arizona-Mexico border.
The idea, according to project organizers, was partly to draw attention to problems on the Arizona-Mexico border, the most porous stretch of the 2,000-mile southern border.
The group said about 900 people showed up for the April monitoring project.
School teachers and retired veterans, businessmen and former corporate executives, some of them armed, parked their pickup trucks and even RVs along a dusty, rutted border road near Naco, Ariz., sitting in lawn chairs with binoculars to look for anyone trying to slip illegally into the country.
Organizers said the volunteers' calls helped lead authorities to about 330 illegal immigrants; critics say the group was little more than a nuisance.
In October, still more volunteers repeated the exercise in other states on the Mexican and Canadian borders.
Chris Simcox, one of the movement's co-founders, said three dozen new chapters had formed by mid-November, "with another 100 waiting in the wings, for us to come up with a national strategy."
"It has moved into politics on the local, state and federal level, what we hope is in every district in this country," Simcox said. "We mean business."
Organizing requests have come from all 50 states, said Minuteman spokeswoman Connie Hair. Some groups focus on internal vigilance, such as an operation that uses volunteers with cameras to document people hiring illegal immigrants.
Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which advocates limits on immigration, said the Minuteman Project reflects a visceral reaction to the "national intrusion" by illegal immigrants.
"There's a genuineness to this that has won over the hearts and minds of the American public," Stein said.
Celestino Fernandez, a sociologist at the University of Arizona, said it is the latest iteration of this country's history of reaction and resistance to waves of immigration — first to an influx of Chinese immigrants and later to people from southern and eastern Europe.
"They're reasonable people, yes, they're good people, but they're also reacting against demographic changes, just like every prior generation has reacted against demographic changes of people whom they perceive as different," he said.
The Minutemen see Latinos everywhere — "more in their states, whether it's the South or the Midwest or East or New York City," Fernandez said. "There are more Mexicans in the country. They keep reading about the border and it's like a sieve — people coming across, and aren't they going to control it, and the government's not doing anything."
Tim Donnelly of Twin Peaks, Calif., who spent five nights on watch along the Arizona border in early April and now heads the California chapter of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, said that support for the Minuteman organizations is growing among political groups, citing in particular Republican women's organizations.
"They're so angry at the president and his shenanigans (in endorsing a guest-worker program) that they're celebrating people like myself and Chris Simcox and Jim Gilchrist," Donnelly said. "They see our movement as perhaps their only and last bastion of hope."
"Illegal immigration doesn't cause every problem," Donnelly added, "but it exacerbates many other issues."
___
On the Net:
Minuteman Project: http://www.minutemanhq.com/project/
Federation for American Immigration Reform: http://www.fairus.org/
Southern Poverty Law Center: http://www.splcenter.org/index.jsp
National Immigration Forum: http://www.immigrationforum.org/
source: wacotrib.com
What's being written.....
Letter to the Editor - Austin American Statesman
Keep religion out, please
Based on Sunday's editorial page, there appear to be a growing number of calls for greater control by clergy and politicians over society's "moral values." Well, thanks, but no thanks. Ever since organized Christianity went to bed with the Republican Party, the poor are hungrier, gay people have been relegated to second-class status, the rich have gotten richer, the environment has gotten filthier, the national debt has hit all time highs and we're hated the world over more than ever. The religious wingnuts have had their chance, and they've lost all credibility with me. I'll be my own moral guide.
JOHN COOPER
Austin
source: http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories/12/17Letters_edit.html
Brokeback Mountain: Will it play in Brownwood/Early ?
Gay-Rights Activists Elated by 'Brokeback'
By DAVID CRARY
AP National Writer
NEW YORK — Gay-rights leaders are elated that a tale of same-sex love and heartbreak is reaching mainstream filmgoers in the form of acclaimed "Brokeback Mountain," while some conservatives are dismayed by the film's glowing reviews and rooting for it to fail at the box office.
The story of two Wyoming cowboys in the 1960s has drawn capacity crowds in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Its big test, though, starts Friday when — on the heels of seven Golden Globe nominations — it expands to more than 20 other cities.
"This film has tremendous potential to connect with audiences gay and straight alike," said Neil Giuliano, president of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
"What `Brokeback Mountain' does," Giuliano added, "is allow audiences to experience, on an intensely emotional level, how ignorance and intolerance can force people to deny their love and deny who they are."
But Robert Knight, director of Concerned Women for America's Culture and Family Institute, hopes the film flops.
"I can't think of a more effective way to annoy and alienate most moviegoing Americans than to show two cowboys lusting after each other," Knight said on his group's Web site. "It's a mockery of the Western genre embodied by every movie cowboy from John Wayne to Gene Autry to Kevin Costner."
Knight contrasted "Brokeback Mountain" with "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," a family-oriented film with underlying Christian themes.
"That's why it will make zillions while `Brokeback' will impress the critics and some fringe audiences in urban centers, but that's about it," Knight said.
The men in "Brokeback Mountain" are played by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. Another Hollywood star, Felicity Huffman of "Desperate Housewives," plays a transsexual in the new movie "Transamerica."
Susanne Salkind of the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay-rights group, urged gays to take straight friends, relatives and co-workers to both movies, which she said were capable of shattering stereotypes.
"The more people who are exposed to authentic stories about our lives, the more support we'll get throughout the fabric of American culture," Salkind said.
There has been vibrant discussion in gay-oriented media about how "Brokeback Mountain" will fare in the U.S. heartland.
Ryan James Kim, writing for Advocate.com, likened the film's romantic appeal to "Titanic" and predicted young straight women will flock to it.
"Most viewers will remember `Brokeback' not as a movie in which cowboys kissed but as a love story they cannot forget — straight guys included, if they're mature enough, or at least smart enough, to follow the lead of the women they love," Kim wrote.
However, Matt Hennie of the Atlanta-based gay weekly Southern Voice predicted the film will be a box-office bust.
"Don't misunderstand, I'm a big fan of the movie," he wrote. "But America isn't ready and willing to flock to theaters to watch a two-hour film about two gay cowboys. ...a movie that will put faces on issues that silently make them shudder."
Tom Neal, former editor of a gay monthly in Tulsa, Okla., said he was pleased that a local theater operator has pledged to show "Brokeback Mountain," apparently undeterred by denunciations of the film on a Tulsa radio talk-show.
"The issues in the film would resonate in a place like Tulsa," said Neal, a descendent of Oklahoma Land Rush settlers. "That model of men who fall in love with each other but get married to women — I know a lot of people who went through that."
Seattle filmmaker Michael Culpepper, who recently completed a documentary about gay couples in a tiny Idaho farming town, believes rural audiences will be receptive to "Brokeback Mountain."
"The honesty of it — that's something these people will respect, though it's definitely a struggle for some of them to understand what a gay relationship is like," Culpepper said.
Those upset by "Brokeback Mountain" include men who say they moved away from homosexuality through prayer or therapy and are now active in what is known as the "ex-gay movement."
Alan Chambers, president of an evangelical network of former homosexuals called Exodus International, said the film portrays emotions "that I and thousands of others who have left homosexuality are well familiar with."
"We hear from thousands of individuals who are grappling with the same problems and are tired of messages, such as the ones presented in this film, that only further add to their confusion and desperation," Chambers said.
The Christian group Focus on the Family has an article about the film on its Web site — headlined "Gay Love Story Carries a High `Ick' Factor" — that summarizes opinions of several conservative critics.
One, Ted Baehr of a Web site (movieguide.org) aimed at pointing out family fare, called the film "boring neo-Marxist homosexual propaganda" and predicted its scenes of gay sex would repel audiences.
And Dick Rolfe of the Dove Foundation, which encourages production of family-friendly films, cautioned: "If Christians protest too loudly, they can end up making the mistake of calling attention to a movie that otherwise may not do very well at the box office. We have to be very careful not to use our anger strategies to a point where they boomerang on us."
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December 15, 2005 - 6:12 p.m. CST
source: http://www.austin360.com/movies/content/shared-gen/ap/Movies/Film_Brokeback_Gays.html
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INTERVIEW - Can Texas brave 'Brokeback?'
Lone Star scribe Larry McMurtry is confident that his gay cowboy movie will change the way Perry and Proposition 2 supporters think about queer issues
By Daniel A. Kusner
Life+Style Editor
A tragedy about lost opportunity, repression, finding love and the importance of never letting it go, “Brokeback Mountain” is a powerful drama. And the momentum behind the film builds on a day-to-day basis.
Critics groups in Boston, Los Angeles and New York recently named the gay cowboy drama as the year’s best film. And on Tuesday, it dominated the Golden Globes with seven nominations, including one for best screenplay, written by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana.
A lifelong Texan, McMurtry is a Pulitzer Prize winner and the literary treasure who created “The Last Picture Show,” “Lonesome Dove,” “Hud” and “Terms of Endearment.” A few hours after the Golden Globe nominations were announced, McMurtry conducted phone interviews while in Austin promoting the film.
Based on Annie Proulx’s 1997 near-perfect short story, “Brokeback” is about the doomed love between two men who fall in love while herding sheep together. It’s also partially set in the Lone Star State.
And just as the film’s marketing campaign was gearing up, Texas was hit with two historical anti-gay blows: the overwhelming victory of a state amendment to ban same-sex marriages and Governor Rick Perry essentially telling gay soldiers returning from Iraq that a more “lenient” state would be a better place to live.
“If the governor wants to say foolish things, I can’t stop him. And it’s too bad about the proposition. But that’s not forever,” McMurtry says. “Five years from now, Governor Perry won’t be there. And we’ll see about the rest.”
When it comes to statements on Western culture and history, McMurtry is perhaps the most qualified authority. Even Governor Perry seems to agree — in 2003 and 2004, he declared May as Texas Writers Month and, fittingly, McMurtry’s image emblazoned the campaign’s commemorative posters for those years. But in 2005, is Texas’ image shifting toward intolerance and homophobia?
“I don’t see it that way. I’m not pessimistic. I’m from the plains of Texas — the part that connects the Midwest with the Rocky Mountains,” McMurtry says. “I think there’s more decency in the great American middle class than most homophobic legislation would indicate. Sure, right now these are hot-button issues, but these things are not permanent.”
Raised in Wichita Falls, McMurtry became familiar with gay cowboys when he was 8 years old. That’s when he was introduced to his gay cousin’s boyfriend. Coincidently, McMurtry’s cousin resembles Jack Twist, the fictitious “Brokeback Mountain” character played by Jake Gyllenhaal: Both worked the rodeo circuit and both were from the same area of Texas — near Childress, a small town not far from Wichita Falls.
His cousin came to mind while working on the screenplay. “I was supposed to say ‘gentleman friend’ when referring to my cousin’s lover,” McMurtry remembers.
McMurtry’s parents encouraged him to be nice to his cousin’s partner.
“We had no reason not to be nice to him. He was a perfectly nice man,” McMurtry says. “There might have been a little awkwardness, maybe. But my parents were never angry about my cousin. Everyone’s lives went on. And they went on for 20 years.”
That’s the attitude that shapes McMurtry’s vision of the acceptance of gays in Texas.
“Many American families, millions, have a gay member — like our vice president,” he says. “I’m not going to give up on the capacity of Texans to deal with controversy in a fair and compassionate way.”
The big challenge for the film is for people like Governor Perry and the folks who voted for Proposition 2 to actually watch “Brokeback Mountain.”
“I absolutely believe the film will challenge their views,” McMurtry says. “If they go see it, it will have to give them pause.”
Even with a truckload of film critics’ awards, McMurtry says the success of “Brokeback Mountain” depends solely on one thing: word of mouth. Already, word of mouth is spreading — and some right-wing critics have blasted the film, saying it should win an Oscar for promoting the “gay agenda.” That type of criticism fuels McMurtry’s ire.
“I know what I’m confident of, and I’m totally confident,” he says. “The right wing will not win on this issue. This movie is stronger than they are.”
Even if “Brokeback Mountain” wins an Oscar for best picture, is strong enough to play in Crawford, Texas?
“Well, the screening room is actually in the White House,” McMurtry says. “The president and his wife have gay friends. In fact, they have gay friends who stay in the White House. So I’m sure they’ll see it.”
source: http://www.dallasvoice.com/articles/dispArticle.cfm?Article_ID=7045
"Operation Gear Grinder": The supply appears to be Mexican and the demand appears to be American !
US makes major steroid bust
16/12/2005 08:34 - (SA)
Washington- The US Drug Enforcement Agency on Thursday announced the arrest of a leading anabolic steroids manufacturer in what it called the biggest crackdown in US history on performance-enhancing drugs.
Albert Saltiel-Cohen, owner of three of the world's largest anabolic steroid manufacturers, and four other steroid trafficking suspects, were arrested after a 21-month investigation, the DEA said in a statement.
The arrest of Saltiel-Cohen was part of "Operation Gear Grinder," which the DEA described as the "largest steroid enforcement operation in US history" and involved the cooperation of the Mexican Federal Agency of Investigation (AFI).
The probe targeted eight major steroid manufacturers, their owners, and trafficking associates, the DEA said, adding that 82% of the steroids seized and analysed during the operation were of "Mexican origin."
It said the eight companies sold their steroids over the internet and had a combined $56m in total US steroid sales a year.
The DEA said the makers marketed their products as being developed and sold for use in animals. They were smuggled into the United States and shipped to customers.
Among the steroids produced by the firms were nandrolone, testosterone decanoate, nandrolone decanoate, testosterone enanthate, stanozolol and methandrostenolone, the DEA said.
source: http://www.news24.com/News24/Sport/More_Sport/0,,2-9-32_1851783,00.html
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Dec 15, 2005 5:16 pm US/Pacific
DEA Announces Biggest Steroid Bust Ever
(CBS Newspath) SAN DIEGO The Drug Enforcement Administration has announced the largest steroid bust in history. DEA Administrator Karen P. Tandy announced the arrest of Albert Saltiel-Cohen, owner of three of the world's largest anabolic steroid manufacturers, as part of the largest steroid enforcement operation in U.S. history.
82 percent of all DEA-seized steroids in U.S. are manufactured in Mexico; the large majority of those come from targets in "Operation Gear Grinder."
Operation Gear Grinder is a 21-month Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) investigation that targeted eight major steroid manufacturing companies, their owners, and their trafficking associates.
This investigation was a collaborative effort involving DEA, numerous U.S state and local law enforcement agencies, and the Mexican Federal Agency of Investigation (AFI).
The products were primarily ordered over the Internet and shipped across the border.
The indictments mark the first time Mexican companies have been indicted for trafficking in the United States.
source: http://cbs5.com/national/local_story_349201808.html
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Mexican Drug Makers Indicted for Selling Steroids
Thursday, December 15, 2005
WASHINGTON — A U.S. grand jury has indicted eight Mexican drug makers on charges they sold steroids to Americans via the Internet in what the Drug Enforcement Administration said Thursday was its largest operation against suppliers of the banned substances.
Indictments in U.S. District Court in San Diego include charges against the eight companies and 11 executives after a 21-month investigation, the DEA said. The businesses sell $56 million worth of steroids to U.S. customers annually, the DEA said.
Alberto Saltiel-Cohen, described by the DEA as a Mexican citizen who owns three of the companies, was arrested in San Diego on Wednesday, the agency said.
Two people suspected of trafficking in steroids were arrested in San Diego and two others were picked up in Laredo, Texas, the DEA said.
Federal agents also have identified more than 2,000 people in the United States who bought steroids from the companies over the Internet. Importing anabolic steroids can be a felony.
"Drug traffickers prey on the belief that steroids enhance ability, but steroids only rob that ability, as we have seen so often from the affected lives of too many youth and professional athletes," DEA Administrator Karen P. Tandy said.
The DEA said 82 percent of the steroids it tests in its laboratories come from Mexico. The indicted companies account for more than half the Mexican supply, it said.
According to the DEA, the steroid manufacturers tried to mask their intent by marketing their products for use in animals. The companies set up Web sites and facilitated ordering via e-mail, the DEA said.
Saltiel-Cohen's companies, Quality Vet, Denkall and Animal Power, are significant U.S. suppliers of Nandrolone, the DEA said. Quality Vet's English-language Web site indicates its products are for veterinary use only.
The other companies and their products are:
-- Laboratorios Tornel, Testosterone Decanoate.
-- Laboratorios Brovel, Nandrolone Decanoate.
-- Pet's Pharma, Testosterone Enanthate.
-- Syd Group, Stanozolol.
-- Loffler, Methandrostenolone.
source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,178853,00.html
Will illegal immigrants be gays of 2008 ? Yes, just listen to Brownwood talk radio !
Will illegal immigrants be gays of 2008 ?
Monday, Dec 5, 2005
By John Brummett
Democrats of more cynical persuasions believe that George W. Bush took out after illegal Mexican immigrants last week not only for the obvious reason, which was to change the subject from his vast failings.
They think Republicans are preparing for 2008 an equivalent of the gay marriage issue of 2004. They surmise that Republicans intend to try to inflame emotions against illegal immigrants to inspire pro-GOP turnout among otherwise unsophisticated voters, sometimes referred to as "values voters" or "red-state voters."
The idea would be to mimic the inflammation of emotions against gays that ensued after one isolated state court, in Massachusetts, issued one isolated ruling about the rights of homosexuals to marry that meant nothing real to anybody in the 49 other states.
First thing you knew, Bush-leaning states far and wide had on their general election ballots citizen-initiated state constitutional amendments banning what was banned already, meaning the marriage of a set of human body parts with the same set. Voters fearful of a modern-day United States of Sodom and Gomorrah poured out of fundamentalist and evangelical pews and straight to the polls.
Last week, King George II strutted along the Mexican border talking about getting tough on those trying to cross that border. Coincidentally, efforts were disclosed in Colorado - which is something of a bellwether Western state - to get a state constitutional ban on services for illegal immigrants on a forthcoming ballot.
Arizona already has enacted such a citizen initiative. A religious right-winger proposed such a law through normal legislative channels last year in Arkansas, and, having failed, might be expected to take it to the people next.
An oddball extremist, this same fellow rode the gay hatred to a 44 percent showing in a seemingly quixotic bid for the U.S. Senate in 2004 that the national Republican Party pretty much ignored. This fellow called the Chamber of Commerce a liberal and pro-tax outfit.
What I'm saying is that he makes Pat Robertson seem circumspect. If he could get 4.4 of every 10 voters to support him, anyone could - except, maybe, an illegal immigrant trying to marry within his gender.
If Republicans indeed intend such a thing, they likely will fail.
So-called values voters don't fear and hate illegal immigrants the way they fear and hate people who do their sex differently. So-called values voters aren't inordinately concerned that illegal immigrants are going to be recruiting their children to become motel maids, chicken-pluckers and lawn-maintainers.
These illegal immigrants tend to be devout Catholics, or maybe Pentecostals. They work hard, generally speaking. They stick with their families, generally speaking. They marry male to female, overwhelmingly.
The issue is complicated for Republicans by the fact that their big-business underwriters know the value to the American economy of immigrant labor, even illegal immigrant labor.
That has forced Bush to try to cut this issue a bit too fine. He wants to get tough on the border while also letting illegals get three-year guest worker cards that they could renew for an additional three years.
But it makes no sense to ask illegal workers to turn themselves in for what would amount to deportation in three to six years.
Only amnesty and a well-assisted path to citizenship would work. But the Republican right flank would never go for it.
The best thing to happen to this issue would be for John McCain to get the Republican nomination and bring his party kicking and screaming into moderation, pragmatism and compassion.
He sponsors with Ted Kennedy a bill to provide not direct amnesty, but a process for illegals the goal-line of which would not be self-inflicted deportation, but American citizenship.
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John Brummett is an award-winning columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock and author of "High Wire," a book about Bill Clinton's first year as president. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com.
source: http://www.arkansasnews.com/archive/2005/12/05/JohnBrummett/331612.html
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QUOTE
“It is almost 4 years after 9/11 and we are not safer in our own land. We have over 60,000 total troops on the border in Korea, Bosnia, and Iraq. A small number of them could secure our borders but Washington wants to protect other nations’ borders more than our own.” ~ Shannon McGauley, a co-founder of the Texas Minutemen Source http://euphoria.jarkolicious.com/journal/2005/07/06/599/
So, I Wonder how Bush feels about The Bill of Rights ?
DECEMBER 16, 2005
ACLU Praises Senate For Standing for Freedom, Rejecting White House Pressure; Calls Cloture Vote a Victory for Civil Liberties
WASHINGTON - December 16 - "Today, fair-minded Senators stood firm in their commitment to the Constitution and rejected the White House’s call to pass a faulty law," said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "The Senate was our last, best hope to preserve our fundamental freedoms, and it did not fail. The Senators who voted to continue debate saw through the empty rhetoric and dismissed the notion that this damaged bill was in the best interests of the country. This was a victory for the privacy and liberty of all Americans."
The ACLU noted that Senators from both parties vowed to continue to press for reforms and stood up for the protection of the fundamental freedoms of all Americans. 47 Senators voted against cloture, and both Democrats and Republicans spoke passionately about the need to protect ordinary Americans from government misuse of these broad powers governed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Many pointed to evidence that the secret records search powers expanded by the Patriot Act are being used with increasing frequency to gather the financial and Internet transaction records of innocent Americans.
The motion for cloture failed only hours after the New York Times revealed that the White House had directed the National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on people in the United States in violation of the FISA law. Congress passed the FISA rules in response to revelations during the Nixon administration of NSA spying on Americans on these shores in contravention of Fourth Amendment rights.
Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI), who was the lone Senator to oppose the Patriot Act in 2001, and John Sununu (R-NH) led the Senate’s opposition. Others instrumental in the vote against the cloture motion were Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Harry Reid (D-NV), Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Larry Craig (R-ID), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Ken Salazar (D-CO), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Chuck Hegel (R-NE), Max Baucus (D-MT), Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Carl Levin (D-MI).
Had opponents of Patriot reform succeeded, their version of the bill would have allowed the government to continue seizing law-abiding Americans' most sensitive personal records without requiring a link between the records sought and a suspected foreign terrorist. It would also have left in place the automatic gag order that makes it difficult to challenge the government's secret record demands. The ACLU and its bipartisan allies, along with 400 communities, including seven states, continue to call for meaningful changes to be made. Also contained in the legislation is a proposal to revisit two Patriot Act powers in 2009. The ACLU urged lawmakers to renew negotiations to ensure that precious anti-terrorism resources are not wasted on innocent Americans unconnected to a suspected terrorist.
"The White House used every means to protect easy access by the FBI to the private information of innocent Americans unconnected to suspected foreign terrorists," said Lisa Graves, ACLU Senior Counsel for Legislative Strategy. "Today’s vote is a beacon of hope for the continuing vitality of our Bill of Rights. As Congress continues its examination of the Patriot Act, it must add common sense protections to preserve our privacy. Americans from across the political spectrum insist that this law be reformed so America will both be safe and free."
source: www.commondreams.org
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Bush on the Constitution: 'It's just a goddamned piece of paper'
By DOUG THOMPSON
Dec 9, 2005, 07:53
Last month, Republican Congressional leaders filed into the Oval Office to meet with President George W. Bush and talk about renewing the controversial USA Patriot Act.
Several provisions of the act, passed in the shell shocked period immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, caused enough anger that liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union had joined forces with prominent conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly and Bob Barr to oppose renewal.
GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.
“I don’t give a goddamn,” Bush retorted. “I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.”
“Mr. President,” one aide in the meeting said. “There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.”
“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”
I’ve talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they all confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution “a goddamned piece of paper.”
And, to the Bush Administration, the Constitution of the United States is little more than toilet paper stained from all the shit that this group of power-mad despots have dumped on the freedoms that “goddamned piece of paper” used to guarantee.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, while still White House counsel, wrote that the “Constitution is an outdated document.”
Put aside, for a moment, political affiliation or personal beliefs. It doesn’t matter if you are a Democrat, Republican or Independent. It doesn’t matter if you support the invasion or Iraq or not. Despite our differences, the Constitution has stood for two centuries as the defining document of our government, the final source to determine – in the end – if something is legal or right.
Every federal official – including the President – who takes an oath of office swears to “uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says he cringes when someone calls the Constitution a “living document.”
“"Oh, how I hate the phrase we have—a 'living document,’” Scalia says. “We now have a Constitution that means whatever we want it to mean. The Constitution is not a living organism, for Pete's sake.”
As a judge, Scalia says, “I don't have to prove that the Constitution is perfect; I just have to prove that it's better than anything else.”
President Bush has proposed seven amendments to the Constitution over the last five years, including a controversial amendment to define marriage as a “union between a man and woman.” Members of Congress have proposed some 11,000 amendments over the last decade, ranging from repeal of the right to bear arms to a Constitutional ban on abortion.
Scalia says the danger of tinkering with the Constitution comes from a loss of rights.
“We can take away rights just as we can grant new ones,” Scalia warns. “Don't think that it's a one-way street.”
And don’t buy the White House hype that the USA Patriot Act is a necessary tool to fight terrorism. It is a dangerous law that infringes on the rights of every American citizen and, as one brave aide told President Bush, something that undermines the Constitution of the United States.
But why should Bush care? After all, the Constitution is just “a goddamned piece of paper.”
source: http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7779.shtml
Thursday, December 15, 2005
* Blameit, Texas ?
Dallas Morning News Editorial
'It's Our Problem': Border doesn't keep out drug corruption
07:18 AM CST on Thursday, December 15, 2005
Texas and the nation needed a waker- upper.
The pathetic case of former Cameron County Sheriff Conrado Cantu fits the bill.
His sentencing to 24 years in a federal penitentiary this week is a strong antidote for anyone starting to feel superior after months of dire reports of Mexican corruption and chaos.
Those problems clearly don't stop at the border.
Awash in money from the illegal drug trade, our southern neighbor shows signs of accelerating social and institutional decay, most prominently near the Rio Grande. It's been an alarmingly bloody year, with more than 1,100 drug-related slayings. Federal troops moved into Nuevo Laredo after the entire police force was suspended on suspicion of corruption.
Now a prominent lawman on the U.S. side stands in court and apologizes for his own sickening level of corruption – drug trafficking, extorting money from drug dealers, bribery, etc.
The saving grace was the ongoing federal anti-corruption effort, now responsible for sending a string of four Texas sheriffs, including the brazen Cantu, to prison in recent years.
This fall, top U.S. and Mexican officials announced cooperative efforts against drug lords, whose open warfare has claimed casualties in both countries. We would still like to see the FBI list top traffickers on its Most Wanted list, a tactic that has previously delivered key Mexicans into federal custody and prisons.
The harder task for Americans is recognizing the real enemy – this country's insatiable need for a high, the source of the corrupting money.
State Rep. Aaron Peña, of Edinburg, took up the fight against drugs after his 16-year-old son's drug-related death. He told this newspaper recently: "It's a problem we can't blame on the Mexicans. At its root, it's our problem. It is the demand for drugs that causes this to happen."
source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/editorials/stories/DN-cantu_15edi.ART.State.Edition1.186d96a9.html
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* Note From Steve,
When you visit Brownwood Texas be sure to listen for all the residents of Blameit Texas who care calling in to "the most talked about radio station in Central Texas" ! You'll know them by their attitudes ! They've got to be citizens of Blameit Texas because they're continously blaming their problems on someone else. You know it's the Mexican's fault, it's the Queer's fault, it's the Democrat's fault, it's the Liberal's fault, it's the Media's fault, it's Hollywood's fault, it's the Politician's fault, it's the ACLU's fault, it's the "outsider's" fault, it's the Enviromentalist's fault, it's Austin's fault, it's France's fault, it's the Food's Fault, it's the Union's fault, it's the NorthEast Republican's fault, and finally, it's everybody elses fault ! Blameit, Texas - Population - Too many to count !
Cal & Scot must not be familiar with Brownwood Talk Radio ! Or maybe they are !
Christians can't speak for Jesus
By Cal Thomas
December 15, 2005
The effort by some cable TV hosts and ministers to force commercial establishments into wishing everyone a ''Merry Christmas'' might be more objectionable to the One who is the reason for the season than the ''Happy Holidays'' mantra required by some store managers. I have never understood why so many Christians feel the need to see and hear ''Merry Christmas'' proclaimed to them at stores by people who may not believe its central message. While TV personalities, junk mail letters and some of the ordained bemoan the increasing secularization of culture; perhaps some teaching might be helpful from the One in whose behalf they claim to speak.
Jesus - the real one, not the Republican-conservative-Democrat-liberal one made in the image of today's fractured political culture - said His kingdom is not of this world. Why, then, are so many who claim to speak for Him demanding that this earthly kingdom celebrate Him and His Kingdom? Paul the Apostle said, ''We live by faith, not by sight.'' (2 Cor. 5:7). Jesus spoke a parable about the Kingdom of Heaven resembling a treasure hidden in a field (Matthew 13:44). The Apostle John warned, ''Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world - the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does - comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.'' (1 John 2:15-17)
Let's see: Should the crass commercialization of ''Christmas'' and the focus on accumulating and giving stuff (each sold separately; batteries not included) be part of this indictment? Even a casual observer or biblical illiterate might reasonably draw such a conclusion. The classic Christmas carol ''O Little Town of Bethlehem,'' composed in 1868 by Phillips Brooks and Lewis H. Redner, rebukes those who have transformed Christmas from what it is into what it is not. This rebuke is not to the ''world'' and the way it has cashed in on Christmas, but to those who are committing spiritual adultery by embracing the world, while simultaneously claiming fealty to their ''first love.'' About Bethlehem, Brooks says, ''How still we see thee lie.'' There is nothing ''still'' about the cacophony surrounding the modern Western observance of Christmas. How about this verse: ''How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is giv'n.''
Oh, that the shouters would become silent and let the only voice that matters speak for Himself. The rest of the verse is also a slap in the face to modern man: ''So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of His Heav'n.'' Human hearts, not sellers of things made in China. There's more: ''No ear may hear His coming but in this world of sin, where meek souls will receive Him still, the dear Christ enters in.'' Oh, my. Meek souls? How many of the self-proclaimed defenders of Christmas appear meek? In our era of nonstop sound and endless sound bites, the carol writers say you won't recognize the voice of Jesus through the physical senses.
I do not care if a mall employee wishes me a ''Merry Christmas,'' or not, or if mall managers favor snowpersons over manger scenes, or erect trees they call ''holiday'' and not ''Christmas.'' It isn't about their observing this event, giving us a ''religious rush'' and creating a false sense of security that culture is better than it is. It is about people who believe in this historic event observing it in a way that recalls the birth of the Savior of the world (not the savior of the bottom line): silently, wondrously and worshipfully. Let the world get drunk at its office parties. Let it consume material things, pile up credit card debt and embrace other trappings of this counterfeit ''Christmas'' road show.
I prefer the ''original cast.'' Another carol, less familiar, but even more to the point: ''Let all mortal flesh keep silence, and with fear and trembling stand; ponder nothing earthly-minded, for with blessing in his hand, Christ our God to earth descendeth, our full homage to demand.'' We should expect that homage only from those who ''believe in His name,'' not from the Santa Claus worshippers.
Readers may also leave e-mail at www.calthomas.com.
Tribune Media Services, Inc.
source: http://www.reporter-news.com/abil/op_columns/article/0,1874,ABIL_7981_4315793,00.html
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Abilene Reporter News Letter to the Editor
Christians focusing on wrong problems
December 15, 2005
I am fed up with the so-called ''Christians'' who are offended because some businesses don't have ''Christmas'' items during this holiday season. You know what offends me? The fact that a child in Texas is born into poverty every 7 minutes; that every 12 minutes a child in Texas is abused or neglected; that every four hours a child in Texas dies before her first birthday; that a child or teen in Texas is killed by gunfire every day. (Source: Children's Defense Fund, ''Children in Texas,'' January 2003, childrensdefense.org).
I thought a Christian was a follower of Christ, someone who actually follows Christ's example by comforting the hurting and feeding the hungry and visiting those in prison. I didn't realize that a Christian was someone who whines because the rest of the world doesn't utter the words ''Merry Christmas'' in December. I wish that the so-called Christians that want to put ''Christ back in Christmas'' would start acting in Christ-like ways instead of grumping about the words that people use in this season. As the adage goes, actions speak louder than words.
Scot Miller
Abilene
source: http://www.reporter-news.com/abil/op_letters_editor/article/0,1874,ABIL_7984_4315796,00.html
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Note from Steve, I agree with both Cal and Scot ! They should listen to all the whining going on on the talk radio airwaves of Brownwood !
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Car-makers caught in US culture clash
Car-makers caught in US culture clash
By Francis Harris in Washington
(Filed: 14/12/2005)
Jaguar and Land Rover became the latest casualties of America's "culture wars" yesterday after saying they would stop advertising in the gay press.
The decision sparked a furious response from homosexual activists.
Ford, which owns both British car-makers, said the move was in no way connected to a threatened boycott by Christian Right-wingers angered by its "support of homosexual causes".
The firm argued that the new policy, affecting publications such as Out and The Advocate, was in fact a business decision linked to financial losses at the companies. "During these budget-tightening times, our brands must make tough choices where to advertise and how to spend limited sponsorship dollars," it said.
Gay and lesbian groups demanded meetings with Ford executives, insisting that the firm reinstate the advertisements and dissociate itself from the American Family Association, which issued the boycott threat.
Ford later issued a statement from its chairman, Bill Ford, saying that the firm "values all people regardless of their race, religion, gender, sexual orientation and cultural or physical differences".
America's homosexual bloggers remained outraged and attacked the car-maker for "cowardice".
One site, Americablog.com, threatened retaliation: "[If] Ford wants to dance with bigots, that's fine. But you don't get to do that in the year 2005 and remain a prosperous company in America.
"I want phone numbers and e-mail contacts for all of Ford's top executives and public relations people. Go to it folks."
Within hours, the telephone numbers and e-mail addresses of senior executives were posted on the site.
AFA objected not only to Jaguar's and Land Rover's advertising policy but also Ford's embrace of "diversity in the workplace" and donations to gay pride events. Earlier this month, it withdrew the boycott threat after Ford's response to its concerns.
The dispute underlined the difficulties of doing business in a country bitterly divided over social issues such as sex outside marriage, homosexuality and abortion.
Other targets of America's influential Christian churches have included Procter & Gamble and Disney.
source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/12/14/wgay14.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/12/14/ixportal.html
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read more on the AFA here.......
Family Upset Over Soldier's Body Arriving As Freight
What your Brownwood Talking Heads are not talking about !
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Bodies Sent To Families On Commercial Airliners
POSTED: 4:46 pm PST December 9, 2005
UPDATED: 10:19 am PST December 12, 2005
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SAN DIEGO -- There's controversy over how the military is transporting the bodies of service members killed overseas, 10News reported.
A local family said fallen soldiers and Marines deserve better and that one would think our war heroes are being transported with dignity, care and respect. It said one would think upon arrival in their hometowns they are greeted with honor. But unfortunately, the family said that is just not the case.
Dead heroes are supposed to come home with their coffins draped with the American flag -- greeted by a color guard.
But in reality, many are arriving as freight on commercial airliners -- stuffed in the belly of a plane with suitcases and other cargo.
John Holley and his wife, Stacey, were stunned when they found out the body of their only child, Matthew John Holley, who died in Iraq last month, would be arriving at Lindbergh Field as freight.
Matthew was a medic with the 101st Airborne unit and died on Nov. 15.
"When someone dies in combat, they need to give them due respect they deserve for (the) sacrifice they made," said John Holley.
John and Stacey Holley, who were both in the Army, made some calls, and with the help of U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, Matthew was greeted with honor and respect.
"Our familiarity with military protocol and things of that sort allowed us to kind of put our foot down -- we're not sure other parents have that same knowledge," said Stacey Holley.
The Holleys now want to make sure every fallen hero gets the proper welcome.
The bodies of dead service members arrive at Dover Air Force Base.
From that point, they are sent to their families on commercial airliners.
Reporters from 10News called the Defense Department for an explanation. A representative said she did not know why this is happening.
source:http://www.10news.com/news/5504608/detail.html
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Family, Friends Mourn Local Soldier
Holley Killed In Iraq
POSTED: 2:50 pm PST December 2, 2005
UPDATED: 4:00 pm PST December 2, 2005
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SAN DIEGO -- Family and friends of a soldier from Chula Vista gathered Friday and paid tribute to the man during a memorial, 10News reported.
Matthew John Holley was killed Nov. 15 when his military vehicle struck a roadside bomb in Iraq.
The 21-year-old was born in Idaho, but grew up in Chula Vista. Holley enlisted into the Army following the footsteps of his parents.
He was remembered as an incredibly bright, talented and patriotic man. Holley was a three-time AAU national champion in karate and a medic with the 101st Airborne with a knack for art.
"(He had an) extremely artistic talent. No one will ever be able to know the extent of to which that talent could've gone. We're very proud of him," said Stacey Holley, Matthew Holley's mother.
"It made me very proud that he actually wanted to be like his dad," said John Holley, Matthew Holley's father.
Both his parents are veterans of the 101st Airborne.
Friday morning, his parents said goodbye to their only child.
Matthew Holley received full military honors, including three medals for his service.
Holley was known as "Doc" his fellow soldiers and was engaged to be married.
Days before he died, he asked his family to send him crayons so he could teach the Iraqi children how to draw.
source: http://www.10news.com/news/5454689/detail.html
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Tuesday, December 13, 2005
FYI Big Country Farmers, Families & Friends: Republican led Congress poised to break contract with rural America !
December 13, 2005
Last modified December 12, 2005 - 11:17 pm
Guest opinion: Congress poised to break contract with rural America
By BROOKS DAILEY
Montana Farmers Union
America's farmers and ranchers thought they had a contract with the federal government. When the 2002 farm bill was negotiated, it was intended to be in place for six years – adequate time for farmers and ranchers to make prudent business plans that they could take to the bank and that lenders could count on.
Recently, however, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives passed individual budget reconciliation packages that outline budget cuts that place a disproportionate share of the burden on rural America.
When thinking about this issue, one should keep in mind that agriculture spending is less than 1 percent of the federal budget, yet is being asked to shoulder nearly 10 percent of the overall cuts. And the budget cut recommendations come at a time when agricultural producers are suffering skyrocketing energy costs, declining commodity prices and their own weather disasters.
In light of these problems, the need for USDA nutrition and conservation programs has never been greater, but the proposal is to cut these vital programs. In the meantime, Congress still proposes major tax cuts for the nation's wealthy. We believe that reducing or completely eliminating agricultural programs via the reconciliation process breaks the farm bill contract.
American agriculture, not unlike much of the rest of the nation's economy, is facing tremendous challenges, with the most crucial, perhaps, being the potential detrimental action of Congress. A wave of disasters, including the hurricanes of this fall, an ongoing, expensive war, and an out-of-control federal deficit have left Congress looking for a budget fix. And, surprise, the budget makers are looking at rural America to bail them out.
Here at the Montana Farmers Union, and also through our national organization, we have expressed our disappointment and disapproval of these proposed cuts. While we are willing to shoulder our fair share, we believe there are other steps that should be taken first.
We have sent letters to our congressional delegation asking that they oppose budget cuts that are vital to agriculture, conservation, rural and nutrition programs when the final consideration of the FY 2006 budget resumes.
Given that we are entering into a new election cycle, now is the time to make sure our current congressional lineup is truly representing the best interests of Montana. We'll be watching, and hope you will be too.
Brooks Dailey, Montana Farmers Union president, lives in Great Falls and farms north of Chester.
source: http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2005/12/13/build/opinion/40-guest-op.inc
Monday, December 12, 2005
QUOTE
"I think it's something that's now just being more understood," Murray said. "Hopefully, this movie helps people further understand it." ~ Seven-time world champion cowboy Ty Murray, who is straight, actually welcomes the movie Brokeback Mountain Dec. 11, 2005 ABC News
Sunday, December 11, 2005
Governor Rick, Political Payments, and Electric Rates ?
Perry's energy push gets mixed readings
Governor's office says moves are meant to aid ratepayers, not utilities
12:00 AM CST on Sunday, December 11, 2005
By SUDEEP REDDY / The Dallas Morning News
Gov. Rick Perry's efforts this fall to quell the uproar over soaring electricity bills could prove helpful in next year's gubernatorial race. They also should help TXU Corp. – well beyond the election season.
After hurricanes Katrina and Rita rocked energy markets, Mr. Perry won concessions from TXU Energy and other companies to help consumers being hit with the largest rate hikes ever.
Weeks later, Mr. Perry directed state agencies to accelerate approval of new power plants, possibly saving developers hundreds of millions of dollars. The order dovetailed with TXU's plans to become a major developer of coal plants.
Were these farsighted, pro-consumer initiatives, as the governor and industry leaders say? Or were they mutual back-scratching that got Dallas-based TXU favorable treatment and Mr. Perry some political cover, as critics assert?
The questions go to the heart of the long-running debate over how to structure the state's power industry: regulation vs. deregulation; the right mix of generation from nuclear, coal, natural gas and renewable fuels; ensuring that low-income Texans can afford electricity.
The governor's office and industry officials say the recent initiatives will help consumers cope with high prices and encourage long-term solutions to the state's power problems.
"The governor continues to fight hard to protect consumers as much as possible against rising costs of energy," said Kathy Walt, a spokeswoman for Mr. Perry. "His interest is making sure that we have competitive and alternative energy markets for consumers."
Critics say the agreements between Mr. Perry and TXU – parent of TXU Energy – were designed to help the governor deflect any attacks over high energy prices in his 2006 campaign.
"We believe this is part of a political payment to the electric utilities for their large contributions to Perry," said Tom "Smitty" Smith, the Texas director for Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group. "We'll all pay the high price for this decision" through higher electric bills, more pollution and global warming, Mr. Smith said.
to read the entire article please visit http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/DN-txuperry_11bus.ART.State.Edition1.3df0637.html
Wonder how many OTM's were entering the US while "peaceful protesters" were under FBI surveillance ?
Posted on Sat, Dec. 10, 2005
FBI put peaceful protesters in terrorism files
By Anslee Willett
COLORADO SPRINGS GAZETTE
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - The names and license plate numbers of about 30 people who protested three years ago in Colorado Springs were put into FBI domestic-terrorism files, the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Colorado says.
The Denver-based ACLU obtained federal documents on a 2002 Colorado Springs protest and a 2003 anti-war rally under the Freedom of Information Act.
ACLU legal director Mark Silverstein said the documents show the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force wastes resources generating files on "nonviolent protest."
"These documents confirm that the names and license plate numbers of several dozen peaceful protesters who committed no crime are now in a JTTF file marked 'counterterrorism,'" he said. "This kind of surveillance of First Amendment activities has serious consequences. Law-abiding Americans may be reluctant to speak out when doing so means that their names will wind up in an FBI file."
FBI Special Agent Monique Kelso, the spokeswoman for the agency in Colorado, disputed the claim the task force wastes resources gathering information on protesters.
The documents cover the June 2002 protest of the North American Wholesale Lumber Association convention at the Broadmoor hotel and an anti-war protest at Palmer Park in February 2003, the ACLU said.
The FBI files contain the names and license plate numbers of 31 people at the 2002 protest, Silverstein said.
Activists accused the lumber association, a trade organization of about 650 forest products and building-material wholesalers, of destroying endangered forests and needlessly logging on public land.
A few of the activists were arrested after sneaking onto the Broadmoor's roof to unfurl a 45-foot banner.
The FBI documents indicated agents planned surveillance in Denver where protesters gathered to carpool to Colorado Springs for the 2003 anti-war protest at Palmer Park, the ACLU said.
FBI agents also collected information on three Web sites that listed details of the planned protest, the ACLU said.
The file was classified as domestic terrorism and acts of terrorism, Silverstein said.
The 2003 rally was part of an International Day of Peace to oppose possible U.S. military action against Iraq.
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Illegal migrant captures surge
Authorities' data show boost among OTMs: 'other than Mexicans'
11:20 PM CST on Saturday, December 10, 2005
By DAVID McLEMORE / The Dallas Morning News
The number of immigrants caught entering the country illegally through Texas and New Mexico jumped by nearly a fourth this year, a leap that coincides with the nation's increasing focus on its porous southern border.
The Border Patrol said 411,221 immigrants were captured by agents working from Brownsville to New Mexico in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, numbers not seen since before a massive federal crackdown in 2001. In fiscal year 2004, the figure was 336,376.
A recent statewide poll found that 79 percent of Texans say the government isn't doing enough to stop illegal immigration.
About three-fourths of those who participated in the Texas Poll said more illegal immigrants are coming to Texas from Mexico. But Customs and Border Protection officials said more than a fourth of apprehensions this year involved illegal crossings by non-Mexican immigrants, listed as "other than Mexicans," or OTMs, the majority Central and South Americans.
South Texas residents and border sheriffs saw the new figures coming.
"We're not surprised. ... It's what we've been talking about," said Rick Glancey, executive director of the Texas Border Sheriff's Coalition, which formed this year to seek help in securing the perimeter.
"Immigration remains a federal responsibility. But our concern at the county level remains with the crime that increasingly accompanies the smuggling of immigrants, crime generated by the dope gangs who also smuggle people," he said.
Local law enforcement officials aren't the only ones concerned. The sheer volume of illegal crossings and the escalating violence just across the Rio Grande have become a key political issue in Congress and the White House.
Nationwide, Border Patrol agents apprehended and detained 1.1 million illegal immigrants in 2005, the vast majority in Texas and Arizona. The sectors covering Texas' border include the El Paso sector, which also covers all of New Mexico.
In the Arizona sector alone, authorities caught nearly 439,000, an 11 percent drop over the previous year. Officials credited tougher enforcement, but that might be leading immigrants instead to cross into Texas.
"We've seen for a long time that anything we do along the border affects someone up and down the river," said Mr. Glancey of the sheriffs' coalition.
Nearly 135,000 people were caught crossing illegally in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, along with another 122,656 in the El Paso sector, two long-established smuggling trails into the state. The Del Rio sector, which covers nearly 60,000 square miles of brush and rocky terrain, had 68,512 captures, a 27 percent increase. Nearly half of all crossers were OTMs.
"The actual number of Mexican nationals caught crossing is actually down," said Hilario Leal, a supervisory agent with the Del Rio sector.
When caught by the Border Patrol, illegal crossers from Mexico are generally sent back across the border. OTMs are held for deportation hearings, but because of a shortage of detention space, most are released into the United States with orders to appear later for legal proceedings.
The Department of Homeland Security recently announced a new border security initiative that temporarily closes that loophole as officials work out arrangements with foreign governments for the return of their citizens.
On Dec. 1, just three days after President Bush laid out his newest strategy for border control – a combination of tougher security measures and a modified guest-worker plan – Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff repeated the White House commitment to a secure border.
The government plans to put 1,700 new Border Patrol agents along the 2,000-mile U.S. border with Mexico, roughly a 10 percent increase. This second manpower addition in as many years would add about 450 agents along the Texas border, for a total of about 5,100. Nearly half those new agents would be placed in El Paso and Hudspeth counties, based on predictions of increased traffic there.
Gov. Rick Perry also has his eye on the border. The governor recently announced $6 million in grants to the 16 counties along the Texas border to help beef up security. According to a study by the Pew Hispanic Center, there are an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States today, up from 8.4 million five years ago.
SURVEY SAYS
A new poll shows that Texans consider illegal immigration a major, growing problem and blame both government and business. Some highlights:
84% consider illegal immigration from Mexico a serious problem (15% don't)
76% believe more illegal immigrants are coming to Texas from Mexico over the past few years (19% say it's about the same, 1% say the numbers are dropping)
49% believe illegal immigrants take jobs Americans don't want (37% say they take jobs away from Americans)
79% say the government isn't doing enough to stop illegal immigration (15% say it is)
83% want to force businesses to identify and report illegal immigrants (13% disagree)
86% say businesses contribute to the problem by hiring illegal immigrants (11% disagree)
47% favor private-citizen patrols on the border (49% oppose)
Percentages may not equal 100 because of rounding or some who gave other answers in poll.
SOURCE: The Texas Poll of 1,000 adults was conducted Nov. 14-30, with an error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
E-mail dmclemore@dallasnews.com
source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/121105dnteximmigrants.29cd860.html
Tis the Season !
'Tis the season to just be nice
By Ken Ellsworth
December 11, 2005
As if there weren't enough reasons to be grouchy at this time of year, we've now made the words ''merry Christmas,'' and ''happy holiday'' and ''seasons greetings'' code words that affirm one's faith or one's secularism.
For Pete's sake, aren't we all sick of this word war?
There are plenty of other things to be grinchy about - rising gas prices (again), hungry children, toyless children, cold families, failing families, drug and alcohol addiction, corruption in politics, international terrorism, suicide bombers, a war, brave American soldiers losing their lives, torture, AIDS, disease, crowded malls and long lines at the post office - without worrying about ''happy holidays,'' which apparently they no longer are, because we use the expression to bicker about words instead of celebrating.
Being a writer, I consider myself to be a word-sensitive person. For example, I get icy chills when I hear anyone constantly mispronounce the word ''nuclear'' as ''nuculer.'' My icy chills are icier yet when the man who controls our nuclear arsenal, President George W. Bush, who should know better, says the word as he does.
Despite, my sensitivity to word use and pronunciation, the debate over merry Christmas and happy holidays on radio and television talk shows, opinion pages, blogs, letters to the editor and on the political scene, leaves me cold, if not freezing.
Both merry Christmas and happy holidays once were merely hopeful, warm expressions of goodwill, peace and happiness. Now they are code words, with both expressions bound to offend somebody, but they don't offend me. You can say ''happy Hanukkah'' to me, too, and I'll consider the expression to be one of kindness, not secret code in a cold war of words.
We should lighten up and fight our wars over things that matter. ''Sticks and stones ... but words ... etc.'' I don't like it when people make judgments about other people, or businesses, based on the flimsy evidence of merry Christmas or happy holiday greetings. I'm certainly not about to boycott any businesses that prefer to use the term holiday in their advertising. Nor, would I boycott a business that prefers the word Christmas.
I wouldn't boycott a business that sells ''holiday trees'' either, though I don't like the term. A Christmas tree is absolutely a Christmas tree, like a rose is a rose is a rose by any name. But if the store wants to sell holiday trees, it won't lose my business for that petty reason alone.
For one thing, the commercial use of the term happy holidays allows the season to begin at or near Thanksgiving and extends it to New Year's Day. It's good marketing. I don't object to that. Like probably 99 percent of us, I'm a capitalist, too, though not a pure one like Libertarians profess to be.
I'll say this for people who say happy holidays: In most cases, they are probably not saying ''I'm secular,'' but merely trying to be respectful of others' beliefs, whatever they might be. They are just trying to be considerate and thoughtful, not politically correct.
It's a shame that some are offended by that.
For goodness sake, let's all be nice again. It's the season for it.
Contact Ken Ellsworth at ellsworthk@reporternews.com
source: http://www.reporter-news.com/abil/nw_lc_columns/article/0,1874,ABIL_8856_4306866,00.html
Saturday, December 10, 2005
As it relates to im-posters ( past/present ? ) at Brownwood's COB website !
Psychiatry Ponders Whether Extreme Bias Can Be an Illness
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 10, 2005; Page A01
The 48-year-old man turned down a job because he feared that a co-worker would be gay. He was upset that gay culture was becoming mainstream and blamed most of his personal, professional and emotional problems on the gay and lesbian movement.
These fixations preoccupied him every day. Articles in magazines about gays made him agitated. He confessed that his fears had left him socially isolated and unemployed for years: A recovering alcoholic, the man even avoided 12-step meetings out of fear he might encounter a gay person.
Darrel A. Regier of the American Psychiatric Association favors research but says it is not clear that establishing a diagnosis would be useful. (By Marvin Joseph -- The Washington Post)
"He had a fixed delusion about the world," said Sondra E. Solomon, a psychologist at the University of Vermont who treated the man for two years. "He felt under attack, he felt threatened."
Mental health practitioners say they regularly confront extreme forms of racism, homophobia and other prejudice in the course of therapy, and that some patients are disabled by these beliefs. As doctors increasingly weigh the effects of race and culture on mental illness, some are asking whether pathological bias ought to be an official psychiatric diagnosis.
Advocates have circulated draft guidelines and have begun to conduct systematic studies. While the proposal is gaining traction, it is still in the early stages of being considered by the professionals who decide on new diagnoses.
If it succeeds, it could have huge ramifications on clinical practice, employment disputes and the criminal justice system. Perpetrators of hate crimes could become candidates for treatment, and physicians would become arbiters of how to distinguish "ordinary prejudice" from pathological bias.
Several experts said they are unsure whether bias can be pathological. Solomon, for instance, is uncomfortable with the idea. But they agreed that psychiatry has been inattentive to the effects of prejudice on mental health and illness.
"Has anyone done a word search for 'racism' in DSM-IV? It doesn't exist," said Carl C. Bell, a Chicago psychiatrist, referring to psychiatry's manual of mental disorders. "Has anyone asked, 'If you have paranoia, do you project your hostility toward other groups?' The answer is 'Hell, no!' "
The proposed guidelines that California psychologist Edward Dunbar created describe people whose daily functioning is paralyzed by persistent fears and worries about other groups. The guidelines have not been endorsed by the American Psychiatric Association, which publishes the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM); advocates are mostly seeking support for systematic study.
Darrel A. Regier, director of research at the psychiatric association, said he supports research into whether pathological bias is a disorder. But he said the jury is out on whether a diagnostic classification would add anything useful, given that clinicians already know about disorders in which people rigidly hold onto false beliefs.
"If you are going to put racism into the next edition of DSM, you would have enormous criticism," Regier said. Critics would ask, " 'Are you pathologizing all of life?' You better be prepared to defend that classification."
"I think it's absurd," said Sally Satel, a psychiatrist and the author of "PC, M.D.: How Political Correctness Is Corrupting Medicine." Satel said the diagnosis would allow hate-crime perpetrators to evade responsibility by claiming they suffered from a mental illness. "You could use it as a defense."
Psychiatrists who advocate a new diagnosis, such as Gary Belkin, deputy chief of psychiatry at New York's Bellevue Hospital, said social norms play a central role in how all psychiatric disorders are defined. Pedophilia is considered a disorder by psychiatrists, Belkin noted, but that does not keep child molesters from being prosecuted.
"Psychiatrists who are uneasy with including something like this in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual need to get used to the fact that the whole manual reflects social context," said Belkin, who is planning to launch a study on pathological bias among patients at his hospital. "That is true of depression on down. Pathological bias is no more or less scientific than major depression."
Advocates for the new diagnosis also say most candidates for treatment, such as the man Solomon treated, are not criminals or violent offenders. Rather, they are like the young woman in Los Angeles who thought Jews were diseased and would infect her -- she carried out compulsive cleansing rituals and hit her head to drive away her obsessions. She realized she needed help but was afraid her therapist would be Jewish, said Dunbar, a Los Angeles psychologist who has amassed several case studies and treated several dozen patients for racial paranoia and other forms of what he considers pathological bias.
Another patient was a waiter so hostile to black people that he flung plates on the table when he served black patrons and got fired from multiple jobs.
A third patient was a Vietnam War veteran who was so fearful of Asians that he avoided social situations where he might meet them, Dunbar said.
"When I see someone who won't see a physician because they're Jewish, or who can't sit in a restaurant because there are Asians, or feels threatened by homosexuals in the workplace, the party line in mental health says, 'This is not our problem,' " the psychologist said. "If it's not our problem, whose problem is it?"
Opponents say making pathological bias a diagnosis raises the specter of social engineering -- brainwashing individuals who do not fit society's norms. But Dunbar and others say patients with disabling levels of prejudice should be treated for the same reason as are patients with any other disorder: They would feel, live and function better.
"They are delusional," said Alvin F. Poussaint, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who has long advocated such a diagnosis. "They imagine people are going to do all kinds of bad things and hurt them, and feel they have to do something to protect themselves.
"When they reach that stage, they are very impaired," he said. "They can't work and function; they can't hold a job. They would benefit from treatment of some type, particularly medication."
Doctors who treat inmates at the California State Prison outside Sacramento concur: They have diagnosed some forms of racist hatred among inmates and administered antipsychotic drugs.
"We treat racism and homophobia as delusional disorders," said Shama Chaiken, who later became a divisional chief psychologist for the California Department of Corrections, at a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association. "Treatment with antipsychotics does work to reduce these prejudices."
* * *
Amid a profusion of recent studies into the nature of prejudice, researchers have found that biases are very common. Almost everyone harbors what might be termed "ordinary prejudice," the research indicates.
Anthony Greenwald, a psychologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, and Mahzarin R. Banaji, a psychologist at Harvard, developed tests for such biases. By measuring the speed with which people make mental associations, the psychologists found that biases affect even those who actively resist them.
"When things are more strongly paired in our minds, we can respond to them more quickly," Banaji said. "Large numbers of Americans cannot as swiftly make the association between 'black' and 'good' as they can between 'white' and 'good.' "
Similarly, psychologist Margo Monteith at the University of Kentucky in Lexington found that people can have prejudices against groups they know nothing about. She administered a test in which volunteers, under time pressure, had to associate a series of words with either "America" or a fictitious country she called "Marisat."
Volunteers more easily associated Marisat with such words as "poison," "death" and "evil," while associating America with "sunrise," "paradise" and "loyal."
"A large part of our self-esteem derives from our group membership," Monteith said. "To the extent we can feel better about our group relative to other groups, we can feel good about ourselves. It's likely a built-in mechanism."
If biases are so common, many doctors ask, can racism really be a mental illness?
"I don't think racism is a mental illness, and that's because 100 percent of people are racist," said Paul J. Fink, a former president of the American Psychiatric Association. "If you have a diagnostic category that fits 100 percent of people, it's not a diagnostic category."
But Poussaint said there is a difference between ordinary prejudice and pathological bias -- the same distinction that psychiatrists make between sadness and depression. All people experience sadness, anxiety and fear, but extreme, disabling forms of these emotions are called disorders.
While people with ordinary prejudice try very hard to conceal their biases, Solomon said, her homophobic patient had no embarrassment about his attitude toward gays. Dunbar said people with pathological prejudice often lack filtering capabilities. As a result, he said, they face problems at work and home.
"Everyone is inculcated with stereotypes and biases with cultural issues, but some individuals not only hold beliefs that are very rigid, but they are part of a psychological problem," Dunbar said.
The psychologist said he has helped such patients with talk therapy, which encourages patients to question the basis for their beliefs, and by steering them toward medications such as antipsychotics.
The woman with the bias against Jews did not overcome her prejudice, Dunbar said, but she learned to control her fear response in social settings. The patient with hostility against African Americans realized his beliefs were "stupid."
Solomon discovered she was most effective dealing with the homophobic man when she was nonjudgmental. When he claimed there were more gays and lesbians than ever before, she presented him with data showing there was no such shift.
At those times, she reported in a case study, the patient would say, "I know, I know." He would recognize that he was not being logical, but then get angry and return to the same patterns of obsession. Solomon did not identify the man because of patient confidentiality.
Standing in the central yard of the maximum-security California State Prison with inmates exercising around her, Chaiken explained how she distinguished pathological bias from ordinary prejudice: A prisoner who belonged to a gang with racist views might express such views to fit in with his gang, but if he continues "yelling racial slurs, assaulting others when it's clear there is no benefit" after he leaves the gang, the behavior was no longer "adaptive."
Prison officials declined to identify inmates who had been treated, or make them available for interviews.
Chicago psychiatrist Bell said he has not made up his mind on whether bias can be pathological. But in proposing a research agenda for the next edition of psychiatry's DSM of mental disorders, Bell and researchers from the Mayo Clinic, McGill University, the University of California at Los Angeles and other academic institutions wrote: "Clinical experience informs us that racism may be a manifestation of a delusional process, a consequence of anxiety, or a feature of an individual's personality dynamics."
The psychiatrists said their profession has neglected the issue: "One solution would be to encourage research that seeks to delineate the validity and reliability of racism as a symptom and to investigate the possibility of including it in some diagnostic criteria sets in future editions of DSM."
source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/09/AR2005120901938.html
----------------
Notice any similarities ?
Friday, December 09, 2005
Poll: Americans losing faith in lawmakers: Yes, Even in Brownwood Texas !
Poll: Americans losing faith in lawmakers
Investigations, scandal lead majority to condemn Washington
07:56 PM CST on Thursday, December 8, 2005
Associated Press
WASHINGTON – Indictments, investigations and a congressman's guilty plea for taking millions in bribes have left most Americans convinced that political corruption is a deeply rooted problem, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll.
Missteps and misconduct that have reached all levels of government – from the White House and Congress to governors' offices in Connecticut and Ohio – have helped drive 88 percent of those surveyed to say the problem is a serious one.
Scandal has touched all politicians. President Bush's approval rating was 42 percent, slightly better than in the previous AP-Ipsos poll, due in part to improvements in the economy. Still, 57 percent of those surveyed disapproved of Mr. Bush's handling of the presidency.
More ominous as the 2006 elections loom was the public's opinion of the Republican-controlled Congress.
Sixty-five percent of respondents disapproved of lawmakers' work in Washington and only 31 percent approved, the worst numbers since AP-Ipsos began asking the question in January.
Several of those interviewed said corruption was endemic to a political system awash in colossal amounts of lobbying money and beset by an insatiable demand for campaign cash.
"It's kind of the nature of politics, working with money and finance, things happen every day that are questionable," said David Innerebner, a conservative-leaning missionary from Hayward, Wis.
People surveyed had no trouble reciting the names associated with offenses and inquiries:
•Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, faces money-laundering charges.
•Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., is under a federal investigation for a well-timed stock sale.
•Lewis Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, has been indicted on five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI in the outing of a CIA officer.
Mr. DeLay, Dr. Frist and Mr. Libby have said they have done nothing wrong.
•Last month, Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., resigned after pleading guilty to taking $2.4 million in bribes in exchange for steering government work to defense contractors. His list of excess included money for a Rolls-Royce, antique furniture and two Laser Shot shooting simulators.
•A Justice Department investigation of lobbyist Jack Abramoff threatens to ensnare at least a half dozen Republicans and Democrats and Bush administration officials.
VIEWS ON CORRUPTION
The perception of corruption in government is widely held, with 88 percent of the public saying it is a serious problem, according to an AP-Ipsos poll.
57% of those surveyed disapproved of President Bush's handling of the presidency. Still, a 42 percent approval rating Mr. Bush received is slightly higher than previous AP surveys.
65% of respondents disapproved of lawmakers' work in Washington, the worst numbers since AP-Ipsos began asking the question in January.
91% of women consider corruption a serious problem, compared with 84 percent of men.
36% said Democrats were more ethical; 33 percent cited Republicans. That difference is within the poll's 3 percentage-point margin of error, meaning the two could be roughly equivalent.
The Associated Press-Ipsos poll on public attitudes about political corruption, conducted Dec. 5-7, is based on telephone interviews with 1,002 adults from all states except Alaska and Hawaii and areas heavily damaged by Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma. Margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
SOURCE: Associated Press
source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/120905dnnatcorruption.1c19c6b5.html
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Dec. 8, 2005, 5:37PM
Kinky Friedman files papers to run for governor
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau
AUSTIN — Humorist Kinky Friedman took his first formal step toward the governor's office today, promising, on a bitterly cold day, to work hard at putting "a chill up the spine of every politician."
The musician-turned-mystery writer officially filed his declaration of intent to run as an independent candidate for governor with the secretary of state.
But to get on the ballot next November, he needs to collect at least 45,540 voters' signatures — or 1 percent of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election — from people next spring who don't cast ballots in any party primary or runoff.
Friedman told a few dozen supporters and reporters huddled for a brief, sidewalk announcement that his real opponent was not Gov. Rick Perry, but voter apathy.
Only 29 percent of Texas' voting age population cast ballots in the 2002 gubernatorial general election.
"If we can get the 29 percent who voted last time up to 39 percent, it'll all be over, and there will be a whole new spirit blowing through Texas," he said. "There will be a smile on everybody's face and a chill up the spine of every politician."
Wearing his trademark, black cowboy hat and puffing on a cigar, Friedman said his heroes were the legendary American humorists Will Rogers and Mark Twain, who often used their humor and satire to critique the culture and politics of their times.
"They were truth-tellers," he said.
"The point of humor and the point of fiction that I write is to sail as close to the truth as you can without sinking the ship."
Friedman, who has been campaigning for months after announcing his candidacy in front of the Alamo, said his campaign has about 20 staffers, thousands of volunteers and offices in Austin and Fort Worth.
Chris Bell, a former congressman and city councilman from Houston, plans to file for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination today . Felix Alvarado, an educator from Fort Worth, also has said he will run for governor as a Democrat.
Democrat Bob Gammage, a former Houston-area congressman and state legislator and former Texas Supreme Court justice, also is considering a gubernatorial race.
Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn is challenging Perry in the March Republican primary.
clay.robison@chron.com
source: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/3512681.html
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Obviously, Some "Christian" Boycotters Don't Need Facts ! ( Bearing False Witness ? )
Abilene Reporter News Letters to the Editor
Christmas message
December 8, 2005
Wednesday's letter to the editor from Art Green that indicates that ''Research has shown'' that JC Penney is not using the word Christmas in their advertising. I have already taken several calls this morning from customers advising me they will no longer shop at our store if this statement is true. Of course, the statement is completely false.
In fact, Christmas icons such as trees and Santas are reflected both in our stores and on our Web site. The word ''Christmas'' is used several times on www.jcpenney.com. Perhaps most obvious is our traditional Christmas catalog book. (entitled ''Christmas 2005 Big Gift Book'')!
Our company has no corporate guidance or policy that prohibits stores or associates from wishing customers a ''Merry Christmas'' or using the word Christmas in ANY messaging.
I am not well-versed on the ARN's policies or guidelines for reviewing or qualifying statements presented as fact within the ''Letters to the Editor'' column. I do feel, however, that when the letter addresses specific local businesses (and certainly when the author urges readers to boycott specific local businesses), at least a cursory review of the facts should be required.
It would have taken just a few moments to call our store or to log onto our Web site in order to realize that the facts stated in Mr. Green's letter regarding JC Penney were completely untrue.
Merry Christmas!
Don Pittman
JC Penney
source: http://www.reporter-news.com/abil/op_letters_editor/article/0,1874,ABIL_7984_4297527,00.html
----------------------
By any other name
December 7, 2005
On the radio last Saturday, I first heard about Target and Lowe's stores not using the name ''Christmas'' in their advertising. Research has shown that many more stores such as Kmart, Sears, Home Depot, Walgreen's, J.C. Penney, Best Buy, Wal-Wart, Office Max, Staples and others are taking the same action this year.
The reasoning used for this politically correct speech is, ''We don't want to offend anyone.'' Of course they mean, anyone other than Christians. It is acceptable to offend Christians.
The purpose of this letter is to encourage you to shop for ''Christmas'' presents at the stores that sell ''Christmas'' gifts. Buy your ''Christmas'' tree at a store that sells ''Christmas'' trees not ''Holiday'' trees. Michael's and Garden Place are two business that still sell Christmas trees, and they should be commended for this.
Due to this issue we broke a many-year family tradition of buying our Christmas tree at Lowe's. I then called the store and told a manager about our action. Please do the same to the stores you do business with. We should not put up with this effort to change the name of Christmas. It appears the Grinch is alive and well.
Art Green
Abilene
source: http://www.reporter-news.com/abil/op_letters_editor/article/0,1874,ABIL_7984_4294302,00.html
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Religion & Values
Posted on Sun, Dec. 04, 2005
Putting Christmas back in season's greetings
For some Christians, the current holiday season has raised a big question of semantics.
BY STEPHEN KIEHL AND ABIGAIL TUCKER
Baltimore Sun
Bob Chance cultivates seven sweet-smelling acres of trees -- Douglas fir, Norway spruce, Colorado blue -- and he can rattle off their names with precision. He doesn't care what his customers call them.
''I plant them in the spring, I dig them in the fall, and in the winter I sell them as a symbol,'' says Chance, owner of a Harford County, Md., tree farm. ``But I don't micromanage the terminology.''
This year, there are plenty of others to do that for him.
In a campaign led by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Christian conservatives have come to the defense of the term ''Christmas tree'' this holiday season.
They have lambasted governments that have put ''holiday trees'' on display and targeted retailers that wish customers ''Happy Holidays,'' threatening them with boycotts and pestering them with phone calls and online petitions.
The groups say Christmas is under attack, and they have amassed an army of more than 1,500 lawyers to defend it.
''We want to make sure that Christmas is safe, but we know that it is not,'' said Mat Staver, president of the Liberty Counsel, a group endorsed by Falwell that offers free legal services to those fighting limits on Christmas displays.
''The renaming of Christmas trees to holiday trees is symbolic of what's happening with Christmas,'' Staver said. 'When people seek to rename what otherwise is a secular symbol simply because of the name `Christmas,' that shows the depths of political correctness run amok.''
Thursday night, city leaders in Boston lighted what until a few days ago had been called a ''holiday tree.'' Under pressure from conservative groups, Mayor Thomas M. Menino changed the evergreen's name to ``Christmas tree.''
Last week, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, ordered the Capitol Holiday Tree, so called since the 1990s, be renamed the Capitol Christmas Tree.
And Lowe's home improvement stores, which had put up a ''Holiday Trees'' banner at all its locations, took down the banners last week after getting more than 1,000 phone calls lodging complaints. A spokeswoman said Lowe's has ``proudly sold Christmas trees in our stores for decades.''
The movement to defend the term Christmas has been led by Falwell and Bill O'Reilly, a Fox News talk-show host. Falwell launched a ''Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign'' with a stated goal of preventing religious discrimination. He sent an e-mail to 500,000 supporters asking them to stand up against those who try to squelch use of the term Christmas.
Falwell has said he wants to take back Christmas from ''grinches'' such as the American Civil Liberties Union. ''The fact is,'' Falwell told ABC News, ``we've gone on the offense now. We've put them on the defense. We're kicking their butts and they're unhappy.''
O'Reilly has been documenting a so-called ''war'' on Christmas on his Fox program, pointing out retailers that don't use the word ''Christmas'' in their ads. He said the war's goal is ``to get Christianity and spirituality and Judaism out of the public square.''
''The town square is there to reflect the nature of the country,'' he said on his show, adding that ''85 percent of the country is Christian.'' According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 77 percent of Americans say they are Christian.
In any case, groups such as the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State say Christmas is under no threat from them or anyone else.
''Christmas seems to be widely observed in this country,'' said Joseph Conn, a spokesman for Americans United. ``I don't know if [Falwell] has been to the mall lately, or any number of houses of worship, but it seems to me that Christmas is perfectly safe.''
Conn said Falwell is using the Christmas campaign in an effort to restore his public image, which was damaged in 2001 after his comments that the Sept. 11, terrorist attacks were partly the result of ''the abortionists and the feminists and the gays.'' Conn also said Falwell is trying to get media attention to help his fundraising efforts.
''I hope he gets a lump of coal in his stocking for stirring up all this trouble, because he certainly deserves it,'' Conn said.
Several stores that have been targeted in the Christmas campaigns say they have never had an anti-Christmas policy.
But Wal-Mart got caught in the fray when a seasonal worker sent an e-mail to a customer who had complained that employees were saying ''Happy Holidays'' instead of ``Merry Christmas.''
According to a copy provided by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, the e-mail read: 'Walmart is a world wide organization and must remain conscious of this. The majority of the world still has different practices other than `christmas' which is an ancient tradition that has its roots in Siberian shamanism. The colors associated with 'christmas' red and white are actually a representation of the aminita mascera mushroom.''
After the league threatened a boycott of Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer apologized and said the employee who wrote the e-mail no longer works for the company.
When it comes to greeting customers, Wal-Mart spokesman Dan Fogelman said, 'Our associates are free to wish customers whatever is appropriate in their communities. If that's `Merry Christmas,' that's perfectly fine by us.''
Target stores have also been a focus of the campaign. The conservative American Family Association has called for a boycott of Target because the retailer does not mention ''Christmas'' in its advertising. The association said 600,000 people have signed its online pledge to observe the boycott.
In a statement, Target said there is ''no trend or intent to ban the use of Christmas in our holiday advertising and marketing.'' The store said that, as recently as last year, the word ''Christmas'' was used in its in-store marketing and music. This year the retailer's holiday theme is ''Gather Round,'' which is used in its ads.
Target said its employees can say ''Merry Christmas,'' ''Happy Holidays'' or whatever they choose when greeting customers.
source: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/religion/13320466.htm
-----------------
Bill, Don't let the facts hit you in the a__ on your way out !
Saginaw Township On The O'Reilly Factor Radio Program
(TV5) -- A Mid-Michigan Township makes national news but there's a problem, local officials say the whole thing was made up.
Bill O'Reilly is making the claim that Saginaw Township officials banned residents from wearing red and green during the holiday season. Local officials say he's dead wrong.
Syndicated controversial talk show host Bill O’Reilly said on his radio show:
“In Saginaw , Michigan , the township opposes red and green clothing…on Anyone, In Saginaw Township they basically said anybody, we don’t want you wearing red or green. I would dress up from head to toe in red to green if I were in Saginaw Michigan .”
-- Bill O’Reilly
WNEM TV-5 Talked to Saginaw Township supervisor Tim Braun who says O’Reilly’s comments are flat out not true. Braun goes on to say the township hall has red and green Christmas lights adorning the building at night.
On December 12th the Fox News Channel which broadcasts O’Reilly’s Cable TV show “The O’Reilly Factor” told TV5 it was a radio issue and had nothing to do with the Fox News Channel. TV5 is contacting O’Reilly’s radio producers for their side of the story.
source: wnem - tv 5
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And Mr O doesn't seem to mind bearing false witness again. Just substitute another Town's name !
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
QUOTE
"The first casualty when war comes is the truth" ~ California Senator Hiram Warren Johnson in a speech to the US Senate on February 3, 1917
Are you getting comfortable with all the lies ?
Military Misleads Press, Families, About How 10 Marines Died Last Week in Iraq
By E&P Staff
Published: December 06, 2005 10:00 PM ET
NEW YORK Why did the U.S. military mislead the media and the families of ten Marines killed near the Iraqi city of Falluja while "on patrol" last week about how they were killed? The military announced on Tuesday that it actually happened at a "promotion" ceremony and they were not on foot patrol as initially reported.
Families of the victims immediately raised questions about the incident and it was unclear whether the site had been properly swept for explosive devices.
The Marines were in a disused flour mill on the outskirts of the city to celebrate the promotion of three soldiers, a military statement said on Tuesday.
As the ceremony ended, the Marines dispersed and one of them is thought to have stepped on a buried pressure plate linked to explosives that caused the devastating blast.
But CNN, for example, reported four days ago, based on military reports, that the dead Marines "were conducting a nighttime foot patrol when a roadside bomb fashioned with large artillery shells detonated."
Misreporting up the chain of command led to the incorrect reporting of the location to the media, Marine officials said.
The death toll was the largest suffered by U.S. soldiers in Iraq in a single incident since August.
Last Friday the Marine Corps had announced that the 10 Marines were on foot patrol and hit in an ambush on Thursday by a roadside bomb, an improvised explosive device, or IED, "made from several large artillery shells," the Marines said, according to the Associated Press dispatch. Eleven Marines were wounded in the explosion.
The attack came was just a day after President George W. Bush had given a speech outlining his strategy for Iraq and saying he would settle for "nothing less than complete victory."
source: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001615483
Right's Claim to Moral High Ground Exposed as Fraud
Published on Wednesday, December 7, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
Right's Claim to Moral High Ground Exposed as Fraud
by Robert Scheer
Call it Tonto's revenge: The outrageous rip-off of Native American tribes by a top Republican lobbyist is leading inexorably to a reckoning for the allegedly morally superior religious and political right.
"I don't think we have had something of this scope, arrogance and sheer venality in our lifetimes," Norman J. Ornstein, of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, wrote in Roll Call. "It is building to an explosion, one that could create immense collateral damage within Congress and in coming elections."
Selling firewater to the natives -- or in this case charging them $82 million for government breaks on slot machine and other gaming licenses -- is not exactly what the high-minded prophets of the Republican revolution promised. And to see behind the scenes as Christian right superstar Ralph Reed, bought off by top Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, dupes his grassroots "pro-family" followers into unwittingly supporting casino-rich Indian tribes under the guise of anti-gambling initiatives, is to glimpse moral corruption of biblical proportion.
Reed, now a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor in Georgia, at first denied knowing the $4 million he acknowledges receiving from Abramoff and his closet associate, public-relations expert Michael Scanlon, to run the pseudo anti-gambling campaigns in the South came from tribes hoping to retain local monopolies for themselves. Once the investigation picked up steam this past summer, however, he changed his mind and said he was assured that the tribal money didn't come directly from casino proceeds -- a hair-splitting attempt at face-saving ethics, indeed, since the goal of the payments was so clearly to benefit the casinos.
Furthermore, the release of a treasure trove of documentation on the Abramoff investigation to the Internet by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chair of the Senate's Indian Affairs Committee, makes it clear that Abramoff and his colleagues had no interest in the finer points of morality when they were transferring huge sums of cash from the tribes to the accounts of such allegedly high-minded heavyweight pro-Republican outfits as Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform.
"This town has become very corrupt, there's no doubt about it,'' McCain said Sunday on "Meet the Press," adding that he expects "lots" of indictments and that there is "strong evidence" of "significant wrongdoing" by some legislators.
Reading the documents, in fact, is a horrifying look at democracy for sale. For example, an Abramoff e-mail to Reed about a conversation the lobbyist had with Nell Rogers, a Choctaw representative: "Spoke with Nell. They have a budget issue. They want to know if we can get through to October on $1 million. Can we? If not, let me know."
In response, Reed lays out what it costs, in very precise amounts, to kill legislation on Capitol Hill to favor of a wealthy entity:
"I believe [$1 million will be enough]. If we can kill it in the House [,] definitely. If it goes to the Senate, the worst case scenario is what the pro-family groups spent to defeat video poker and the lottery -- each about $1.3 million. . . . We will be doing all we can to raise money from national anti-gambling groups, Christian CEOs and national pro-family groups."
Overall, both Reed, once the religious right's boy savior, and Abramoff, the former head of the College Republicans, a "pioneer"-grade fundraiser for President Bush, and a stalwart friend of Texas Rep. Tom DeLay, come off as morally degenerate political savants in the Senate committee's files. Reed seems possessed by the gods of greed as he exults, "I need to start humping in corporate accounts!"
But Abramoffgate goes much higher than these two political pimps. In those e-mails between Abramoff and Scanlon, it is clear that they trafficked in their ties to DeLay and others in the Republican leadership. As the Washington Post reported, Abramoff "cultivated a reputation as the best-connected Republican lobbyist in Washington," and it was not a false claim. DeLay, who referred to Abramoff as "one of my closest and dearest friends," received no fewer than three free golf trips to Scotland from Abramoff, among other payoffs.
Both DeLay and Abramoff are under indictment for charges in other cases but not, as of yet, this one. Scanlon has already pleaded guilty to conspiring with Abramoff to defraud various Indian tribes and bribe government officials. Former White House official David Safavian has been indicted for lying about his ties to Abramoff. The bet now is that Abramoff will also cop a plea bargain instead of spending many years in jail and paying even larger fines than the $19.7 million Scanlon has accepted.
If so, more depressing tales of corruption may be detailed publicly. But what is already clear is that the Republicans' reputation for moral superiority is as dead as the Lone Ranger.
E-mail Robert Scheer at rscheer@truthdig.com.
© 2005 Rober
source: http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1207-24.htm
QUOTE
"I believe that all people, regardless of their personal belief, or religious denomination, would agree that being honest with yourself, your family, and those around you, is a great foundation for living your life. It has been a long, hard journey for me, and I want people to learn from my mistakes, not share them." ~ Billy Bean
" Just another powerful, closeted, hypocrite Republican "
My Totally Gay Boy Scout Leader
The tormented Republican mayor of Spokane might have molested young boys. Boys like, well, Mark Morford
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
I was, in my youth, a Boy Scout of America. It's true.
This is my confession. I was a Boy Scout in the '70s in Spokane, Washington, where I grew up, because I was a skinny-ass middle-class white-bread kid in suburban skinny-ass middle-class white-bread America and this is just what you did and for the most part it was fine and good and normal. What can I say. I am now fully recovered.
But here's the interesting part. Growing up, there was a man named Jim West who was our troop leader at the time and West was also, if I recall which I admittedly can't with perfect clarity, a pillar of the community. Upstanding. A Good Guy. All the boys knew him. Liked him. I know I did.
Jim West was also a sheriff's deputy, a community activist, outgoing and up-and-coming, and at that time was apparently slowly wending his way into local politics, and I have vague memories of him being very nice and well liked and I definitely recall him standing up there more than once, on the little elementary school stage, handing out cheesy plastic trophies to the wide-eyed boys at the Pinewood Derby, the geeky annual Boy Scouts model-car race that was the only part of the Scouts I actually cared about or remember in any detail, except for the waking nightmare that was Boy Scout summer camp, which I hated like white-hot death. But that's another column.
And now, this: Jim West, the Republican mayor of Spokane, a longtime serious player in regional politics and the former majority leader of the state senate and a potential Republican gubernatorial candidate and apparently one of the fiercest and most hot-tempered and most powerful Republicans in the state of Washington, is in deep trouble.
Claims are now rampant that West has used his position of power for years, even since the '70s, ever since he was a Scout leader, ever since he was handing out cute plastic trophies to young preteen boys exactly like me and actually to me in particular (I won a couple -- what can I say?), West has used his position to lure men and teenage boys into having sex with him.
It's a scandal. Big. It's all over the Spokane papers -- er, paper. Jim West has, according to the slightly stodgy local rag the Spokesman-Review, has now admitted to soliciting young-guy action on Gay.com, more than once, particularly from an 18-year-old teen to whom he offered an internship and lots of nifty perks, who was then substituted for an expert hired by the Review to draw West, quite literally, out of the closet.
Want to read some lukewarm, semiarticulate chat transcripts between a secretly gay Republican mayor and the guy hired by the newspaper to pose as an 18-year-old gay stud? Right here, baby.
Well, so what? No big deal, so far. Creepy and deceptive though it may be, West has, so far, done nothing horribly illegal. Just another powerful, closeted, hypocrite Republican (the antichoice West voted for the invidious Defense of Marriage Act in '98 and once proposed that teen sex be outright criminalized -- not just intercourse, mind, but all sexual contact, of any kind) showing his true colors and leveraging his power to work through his rather sad boy-toy fantasies and insodoing giving all true open-hearted gay and bisexual humans who just want to celebrate their love and be left alone a very, very bad name.
Hell, it happens all the time, far, far more often than snide Bush supporters think. Just ask the Catholic Church. Or Jimmy Swaggart. Or Karl Rove (come on -- you just know).
But here's where it gets darker, uglier. Here's where it becomes a double-whammy scandal. Because now, two other men have stepped forward, claiming abuse, childhood sexual abuse, molestation and pedophilia at the hand of the good and upstanding Jim West, during the exact time he was a sheriff's deputy and Scout leader and when the men were very young boys indeed.
During the time, that is, when I knew him. When I was a Boy Scout and West was up there, grinning and handing out trophies for the fastest little wooden car. At that very time, he was also, allegedly, molesting boys. Which is just ... weird. Nasty. Disquieting.
And there it is. Not merely a sad closeted gay Republican mayor using his office to cruise for and have regular sex with all manner of incredibly young but still of-age males, but allegedly a true-blue pedophile, a child molester, a bona fide, first-class, card-carrying demon. Could it be possible?
I was there. I was a Boy Scout at the time West is accused of molesting boys and I even traveled on Scouting retreats with him, and even I recall (and my parents tell me) there were rumors and innuendos swirling about West's predilections even back then, askance concern about sending young boys off to overnight getaways with West because, well, something seemed a little amiss. Not necessarily evil, not necessarily predatory, just ... amiss.
But the rumors were never really elucidated, never really validated. No one ever openly accused West of anything or even openly asked just what the hell his sexual preferences were, so far as I know. Which might seem odd but which was, for the time period in question, not the slightest bit uncommon.
Just to be perfectly clear, I recall no personal run-ins with West of any kind when I was a kid, save for the positive and the pleasant and the paternal. My memories of that time are admittedly vague and for all I know I was drunk a lot, sneaking rum into my Honeycombs, strung out on Twizzlers and Pop-Tarts and Totino's microwavable frozen pizzas, but I can tell you with all honesty, I have no deeply buried memories. I have no horrific sexual episodes that would only emerge through insidious regression therapy. I had, in fact, a perfectly lovely childhood, despite Boy Scout camp. And I am kidding about the rum.
No criminal charges have, as of this writing, been filed against West. He is refusing to resign as mayor, though he is taking a short "leave of absence" to prepare a response to all the allegations. Officials have seized his personal City Hall computer to check for improper use. West is, of course, denying all pedophilia charges, though not anything about the homosexuality, or the cruising of gay chat rooms, or the regular soliciting of 18-year-old boys. And most everyone expects other men to now step forward, claiming childhood abuse by West.
There is almost too much to explore here, too much twisted psychology and inverted morality to give full exposure via one mere column, though it's safe to say perhaps the most insidious angle of this story is the vicious hypocrisy of the gay-hatin' Republican Party itself, along with their giddy self-righteous fluffers from the Religious Right.
And someone should really do a national, once-and-for-all study to back up what everyone already knows -- which is, of course, that the more repressed and sanctimonious and uptight you are about sex and love and gender and religion, the more likely you are to be involved in secret kink, in deep perversion, illegal perversion, perversion that crosses the line from healthy and slippery and delicious to degrading and morally reprehensible and Karl Rove. Just ask -- did I say this already? -- the Catholic Church.
Which brings up one more tidbit. A twisted kicker. Spokane, my staid, homogeneous, uneventful, wildly uninteresting (well, until now) hometown with the not-so-secretly gay and possible pedophilic Republican hypocrite mayor, is also the home of only the third Roman Catholic archdiocese in the nation (after Portland and Tucson) to file for bankruptcy protection. Because of all the lawsuits. Dozens of lawsuits, all against Spokane's archdiocese. Lawsuits over, you guessed it, sex scandals.
Pedophilia. Sexual abuse of young boys. About $76 million worth of lawsuits, to be exact, most stemming from allegations against one Spokane priest, Patrick O'Donnell, who admitted molesting young boys from the time he was in the seminary. Coincidence? Something in the Spokane water? Karmic connection with West? See two paragraphs, above.
(Christ, talk about not being able to go home again. Thank God I still have fond memories of soccer practice and Skate King and bootlegging cheap beer and Carol Hunter's dreamlike auburn hair. But, again, that's another column).
So then. I couldn't care less about Jim West's consensual, adult sexual fetishes. I couldn't care less that he's an accomplished legislator and respected lawmaker and former paratrooper and that he's 54 years old and still cruises the Web for barely articulate 18-year-old boys who still have their wisdom teeth. (Hell, Billy Joel is just out of rehab at 56 and his new wife is what, 23? Hey, work out your sad daddy complexes as you will.)
There is, of course, zero causal link between homosexuality and pedophilia. I couldn't care less that West might be gay, or bisexual, or whatever the hell else he tells himself he is when he goes to sleep at night and dreams of, I don't know what. Bunnies. In leather chaps. On fire.
Here's what does it. Here's what makes West and people like him rife with potential for, well, some of the nastiest and most dishonest and dangerous abuses humans are capable of.
It's the ability to ignore the incredible hypocrisy of your own life, the staggering amount of self-loathing, the pathetic insincerity. It's the ability to join a political party that not only openly loathes, but actually violently condemns, your choice in sexual partners, a sexually ignorant platform that claims to have some sort of direct line to a gay-hating war-loving God, and then, in the middle of who knows how many gay affairs, to feel no shame as you step right up and endorse that exact same hateful agenda as public policy.
It's the fact that, in West's case, you can still sleep at night after you've voted against gay love and railed against healthy teen sex and bashed women's rights and criticized adult/youth sex when you are, in fact, so confused and lost and deeply engaged in much of it yourself that it's very likely your mangled, hypocritical mind has lost the ability to distinguish between informed, consensual, happily kinky adult relationships and, say, abusing the honest trust of a pre-teen boy. Or, for that matter, many boys.
Join that party and toe that line and swallow that nasty doctrine and spit it out into the world like oozing red-meat dogma while you secretly use your power to lure in teenagers and men for sex, and I don't put anything past you, Jim. To my mind, you're capable of anything. Anything at all.
And for that, my old troop leader Jim, I can never forgive you.
Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate, unless it appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which it never does. Subscribe to this column at sfgate.com/newsletters.
source: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2005/05/11/notes051105.DTL
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UPDATE
Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - Page updated at 08:40 AM
E-mail article Print view
Spokane dumps its mayor
By JOHN K. WILEY
The Associated Press
Mayor James E. West must leave office Dec. 16.
Related
Archive | Even the mayor wonders: Who is the real Jim West?
SPOKANE — Mayor Jim West was recalled from office Tuesday in a special election prompted by news accounts that he offered City Hall jobs and perks to young men he met in a gay Internet chat room.
In the city's first all-mail election, 38,718, or 65 percent, voted "yes" for recall, while 20,681, or 35 percent, voted to retain West, 54, who became the city's first elected chief executive to be ousted before his term expired.
Just more than half of the 110,000 ballots mailed to voters in the city were counted in the first batch of results released Tuesday night.
"I said I'd abide by the will of the voters, obviously, and they've spoken," West said. "I'm at peace with their decision — and disappointed."
West, a Republican former state legislator who voted against gay-friendly bills, must leave office when the election results are certified Dec. 16. He has spent 27 years in public office.
The mayor said he planned a news conference today to "prepare to make the transition and pass the baton."
The Spokesman-Review newspaper conducted an undercover investigation and reported in a series of articles beginning May 5 that West was a closeted homosexual who visited gay chat rooms on his city-owned laptop computer and offered internships and other favors to young men he hoped to have sex with.
City Council President Dennis Hession, first elected to the council in 2002, will become mayor pro tempore until the council appoints a replacement for the remaining two years of West's term.
West was elected mayor in 2003 after serving more than two decades as a conservative state legislator.
The recall petition contended West used his political office for personal benefit by offering a city internship to someone he thought was an 18-year-old man he had met in a gay online chat room and with whom he had sexually explicit chats.
One person he thought was a high-school senior was really a computer expert hired by the newspaper to snare West.
West has not been charged with any crime.
source: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2002668976_west07.html
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
KXYL's "Talking Heads" Could Take Some Lessons from these Guys !
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And, while they're busy bashing Dean's comments, this is what they don't want you to see !
DNC Fact Check: President Bush Said We Can't Win
12/8/2005 1:13:00 PM
To: National Desk, Political Reporter
Contact: Karen Finney of the Democratic National Committee Staff, 202-863-8148
WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The following was released today by the Democratic National Committee:
The RNC got it wrong. Today, they falsely claimed that President Bush has always predicted victory in the War on Terror, and argued in a release that "President Bush Never Said We Couldn't Win." In fact, last summer, on the first day of his convention, President Bush told Matt Lauer on NBC's "Today Show" that he didn't think "we can win it."
NBC, "The Today Show", 8/30/04
MATT LAUER: You said to me a second ago, one of the things you'll lay out in your vision for the next four years is how to go about winning the war on terror. That phrase strikes me a little bit. Do you really think we can win this war of ter--on terror? For example, in the next four years?
PRESIDENT BUSH: I have never said we can win it in four years.
MATT LAUER: No, I'm just saying, can we win it? Do you say that?
PRESIDENT BUSH: I don't--I don't think we can win it.
New York Times Headline: "Bush Cites Doubt America Can Win War on Terror." "President Bush, in an interview broadcast on Monday, said he did not think America could win the war on terror but that it could make terrorism less acceptable around the world, a departure from his previous optimistic statements that the United States would eventually prevail." (New York Times, 8/31/04)
String of F's: Bush administration and Congress
Government gets string of F's in 9-11 panel progress report
'We shouldn't need another wake-up call,' commission chief says
07:48 PM CST on Monday, December 5, 2005
Associated Press
WASHINGTON – Time, money and ever-present terrorism threats have done little to close gaping holes in the nation's security system, the former Sept. 11 commission said Monday while accusing the government of failing to protect the country against another attack.
The panel cited disjointed airplane passenger screening methods, pork-barrel security funding and other problems in saying the Bush administration and Congress had not moved quickly enough to enact the majority of its recommendations of July 2004.
DallasNews.com/extra
Final report on on 9/11 Commission Recommendations
"We're frustrated, all of us – frustrated at the lack of urgency in addressing these various problems," said Tom Kean, a Republican and former New Jersey governor who was chairman of the commission.
"We shouldn't need another wake-up call," Mr. Kean said. "We believe that the terrorists will strike again; so does every responsible expert that we have talked to. And if they do, and these reforms that might have prevented such an attack have not been implemented, what will our excuse be?"
Rather than disbanding like most federally appointed commissions when their terms expire, Mr. Kean and the other nine commissioners continued their work as a private entity called the 9/11 Public Discourse Project.
Wrapping up more than three years of investigations and hearings, the former commission issued what members said was its final assessment of the government's counterterrorism performance as a report card. It gave failing grades in five areas, and issued only one "A" – actually an A-minus – for the Bush administration's efforts to curb terrorist financing.
The five F's were for:
•Failing to provide a radio system to allow first responders from different agencies to communicate with one another during emergencies.
•Distributing federal homeland security funding to states on a "pork-barrel" basis instead of risk.
•Failing to consolidate names of suspicious airline travelers on a terrorism watch screening list.
•Hindering congressional oversight by retaining intelligence budget information as classified materials.
•Failing to engage in an alliance to develop international standards for the treatment and prosecution of terrorism suspects.
The panel also gave the government 12 D's and B's, nine C's and two incomplete grades.
The White House released a 17-point fact sheet noting its support for the commission and some of its recommendations that have been enacted so far, including the creation of a national intelligence director and a counterterrorism center to analyze threat information from federal agencies.
GRADING PREPAREDNESS
Some grades that members of the former Sept. 11 commission gave the government Monday for how well it has or hasn't followed the panel's recommendations:
A-minus: Making efforts with other countries to crack down on terrorist financing abroad.
B: Finding a balance at home between security and civil liberties.
C: Gaining private business preparedness in case of an emergency.
D: Improving screening of checked bags and cargo on airline flights.
F: Helping emergency agencies acquire radios and other equipment that would let them communicate with each other during a disaster.
Incomplete: Revamping the CIA, including improvements in its use of human intelligence operations.
SOURCE: Associated Press
source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/nation/stories/120605dnnatterror.3e2c3c56.html
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Dallas Morning News Editorial
Weak on Security: Washington must do more to protect America
04:41 AM CST on Tuesday, December 6, 2005
They went out with a bang, that's for sure. The members of the panel investigating the Sept. 11 attacks issued their final report card yesterday, and everyone in Washington headed for cover. And with good reason. The commission handed out poor security grades on everything from insufficient cargo screening to nukes on the loose.
Three items particularly stood out:
•First, the bureaucracy is still eating us alive. Congress recently created an intelligence czar to ensure that everyone charged with fighting terrorism talks to each other. Unfortunately, the panel warned, there are few incentives to share information.
Intelligence czar John Negroponte could help matters by rewarding those who do talk across bureaucratic lines. So should President Bush. Their attention could fire up the bureaucracy, which needs to remember that no one cares who oversees a piece of turf, as long as we're all safe.
•Second, fire and police departments still can't talk to each other via the radio. The first responders battling the 9-11 attacks, as well as Katrina, couldn't communicate on the same frequency.
Fortunately, this problem can be fixed easily. Congress could pass legislation that would allow first responders to use the same part of the radio spectrum. A bill to that effect sits in Congress, and House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist should see that Congress passes it by year's end.
•Third, states unlikely to weather the next terrorist attack (see Wyoming) are sucking anti-terror money away from those that are likely to get hit (see New York). States also are wasting federal homeland security funds on unrelated causes, like body armor for fire department dogs in Ohio.
The House has an answer. Representatives want states to apply for federal homeland security money on the basis of risk and vulnerability. The Senate could do all of America a favor by adopting the same formula.
There's no way to fully protect a country as broad and diverse as the United States. But the commission is right: We don't need a bull's-eye on our back.
source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/editorials/stories/DN-security_06edi.ART.State.Edition1.e2ad8a5.html
Monday, December 05, 2005
As it relates to Brownwood/Early "Dollar" Stores .......
Family Dollar struggles to make its ``urban initiative'' a success
By PAUL NOWELL, AP
MATTHEWS, N.C. (AP) - When Rekiyta Sifford recently picked a box of Christmas ornaments at a Family Dollar store, it landed in cart filled with shampoo and other necessities. Between the cost of classes and working part-time, the 22-year-old college student from Charlotte doesn't have much cash to spend on fancy decorations.
"It's always tough," she said, but at Family Dollar, "I like the prices."
That's why she shops at a store that packs its crowed aisles with everything from motor oil and bug spray to milk and eggs. That Sifford is willing to spend money on something like Christmas decorations while shopping for shampoo is what Family Dollar Stores chairman and CEO Howard Levine is counting on to reverse a yearlong trend of declining profits.
"Our focus is still on the low-income, value-conscious consumer," Levine said. "I think it's a big reason why we have been so successful."
That success, however, has been challenged in the past year by the financial woes of its best customers, primarily low-income workers and families earning $25,000 a year or less. Struggling with layoffs and higher energy bills, they've found themselves without enough cash for a shopping spree to the nation's deep-discounters.
"All of these chains have had more difficulty achieving same-store sales," said Nick McCoy, a senior consultant at research company Retail Forward. "The economy had a lot to do with it and their core customer was hit hard by higher fuel costs, so they delay nonessential shopping trips."
Family Dollar's profits have been lower in each of the past four quarters and the company recently lowered its expectations for both sales and earnings for 2006. The company, which has nearly 6,000 stores in 44 states, had sales last year of $5.8 billion, but earnings were down to $217.5 million from nearly $258 million in 2004 - a drop of nearly 16 percent.
The company's rivals aren't doing much better. Last week, market leader Dollar General said its third-quarter earnings were off by 9 percent from the same period a year ago. The Tennessee-based chain said higher transportation costs and other expenses cut into its profit. On the same day, Dollar Tree, based in Chesapeake, Va., said its quarterly income was down 2 percent; it blamed sluggish customer traffic.
The financial troubles have led Matthews-based Family Dollar to slow down its so-called "urban initiative" as it tries to figure out how to bolster its bottom line. In 2002, the company began concentrating its expansion efforts on larger U.S. cities, building two of every three new stores in places with populations of at least 200,000.
The chain followed a year ago with a $25 million program to spruce up some of its stores in places like downtown Chicago, New York and Detroit, where the North Carolina-based discounter didn't face as much competition from its deep-discounter peers, as well as Wal-Mart and Target.
"The program turned out to be more expensive than they anticipated when they first rolled it out," McCoy said. "This slowed them down a bit."
Sales at the chain's 2,000 urban stores surpass those at its rural locations, but profits at those in inner-cities are reduced by higher rent, wages and extra security. The company's urban initiative pumped millions of dollars into about 1,300 of those stores, adding staff and other resources to improve performance, as well as installing coolers at about 1,000 stores so they could sell milk and other perishables.
But those stores' profits, even with all the improvements, didn't improve.
"After we spent all that money, all we did was break even," Levine said. "It was lot for us to take on. So we've decided to slow down to get it right."
Anthony Chukumba, an analyst with Morningstar Inc. in Chicago, said Family Dollar's problems including missing deadlines for new store openings, sometimes because of foreseeable issues such as meeting zoning requirements. Company officials also underestimated problems such as shrinkage - which is the industry term for shoplifting - in inner-city stores.
"I think their moves into urban areas are partially to serve an underserved market while at the same time insulating themselves from the big discounters," he said. "If well executed, it's a great concept, but it's been done poorly."
There are signs of progress. This week, Family Dollar reported that sales were up 9.7 percent in November, boosted by customers also buying more toys and consumer electronics - the very kind of nonessential item key to the store's profitability.
"I think Family Dollar still has good concept, offering lower to middle-income consumers compelling values in convenient locations," Chukumba said. "Their business model is definitely not irreparably broken, but they need to take steps to repair some of the mistakes they have made."
source: http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/business/article.adp?id=20051203010309990002&cid=1223
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Budget cuts may hit poor
Plans to slow Medicaid, food stamp spending could sting Texans
09:23 PM CST on Sunday, December 4, 2005
By ROBERT DODGE / The Dallas Morning News
WASHINGTON – Lawmakers returning to Capitol Hill this week face a bruising fight over whether to curtail poverty programs – decisions that could impose hardships on some Texans, including legal immigrants, children of the working poor and those dependent on child support.
A showdown is expected between conservative House Republicans and their more moderate Senate counterparts as congressional negotiators try to resolve differences in cost-cutting measures that GOP leaders argue are necessary to reduce the deficit. The problems in spending were underscored last week by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, whose gloomy economic forecast weighed on the stock market.
Democrats and advocates for the poor argue that program reductions are the price for Bush administration tax cuts that largely benefit higher income brackets.
The budget reduction proposals will minimally trim the growth in spending for Medicaid, food stamps and other programs.
The 2.7 million Texans receiving Medicaid and the 2.4 million getting food stamps could be affected. And the changes come as a handful of states, including Texas, are dealing with the immediate and long-term costs of providing support for families displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
"The state is already under a severe budget crunch," said Scott McCown, executive director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities in Austin. Pointing to government estimates, he said Texas could lose $900 million in Medicaid funds over five years.
to read the entire article please visit: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/120505dnnatmedicaid.7d09f16.html
Sunday, December 04, 2005
QUOTE
"Texas politicians have "used gay marriage" to move people's attention away from health care and other pressing matters, he said." ~ Kinky Friedman - Independent Candidate for Texas Governor - Laredo Morning Times - Tuesday, 29 November 2005
Would Brooks perform in Brownwood ? Would he be invited ?
Posted: Sun., Dec. 4, 2005, 6:00am PT
Wal-Mart thinking inside the box
Retailer sells half a million copies of six-disc Brooks set
By PHIL GALLO
The country's biggest- selling album is available at only one retailer, and it's being considered No. 1 only because the retailer says so. Wal-Mart, which inked an exclusive deal with Garth Brooks this summer, says it sold half a million copies of the six-disc "Limited Series Boxed Set" through pre-orders and one day of store sales (Nov. 25), outpacing the disc that Nielsen SoundScan reported as the chart-topper, System of a Down's "Hypnotize.
source: http://www.variety.com/VR1117933941.html
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Garth Brooks
Born: February 7, 1962, in Tulsa, Oklahoma
Status: Married, to Sandy Mahl
Love him or hate him for it, Garth Brooks is the guy responsible for new country.
Bringing together a traditional honky tonk sound, sensitive guy lyrics, and rock-concert-ready intensity, Brooks has brought country to the larger public and paved the way for countless other crossover performers. Some would argue that in its attempt to appeal to such a wide audience Brooks' music has become overly packaged and commercial. (He does have a degree in marketing). Could be, but try telling that to his legions of fans.
Brooks burst onto the scene with his self-titled debut album in 1989. It did surprisingly well, crossing over onto the pop charts. But it was his second album that would make him a superstar. No Fences was the first country album to break the million-copy barrier, selling 13 million in all. His follow-up, Ropin' the Wind was the first album in history to debut at the top of both the country and pop charts.
Brooks' concerts are legendary. In 1997 he got 750,000 people to cram in to New York's Central Park -- an unlikely venue for a country singer. (Admittedly, the concert was free.) His albums have continued to sell well over the past few years, though not in such astronomical numbers as in the early 90s. His most recent, In the Life of Chris Gaines, involved a major makeover for the singer: a "pre-soundtrack" to a movie about a fictional rock star, Brooks appears on the cover in a black wig and with a soul patch.
Brooks' pro-tolerance anthem "We Shall Be Free," the first title on his gospel-tinged The Chase, was a big hit with gay country fans, including Brooks' lesbian sister, musician Betsy Smittle, who is bass/acoustic guitarist and background vocalist for Brooks and the band Stillwater.
But Smittle was surprised when her brother called to warn her that he'd outed her in a 1993 television interview.
"It put me in a state of panic,'' Smittle told Newsweek. '"I thought, 'Oh my God, they're going to blow up the bus or something.' But nothing bad came of it. A lot of good came of it, really. People are a bit more open-minded."
Brooks even supports gay marriage. "If it's against the law, then that's something that you're just going to have to fight for," he told The Village Voice. "If you truly love somebody and you want to get married to them, get married to them. I know that's what I did."
source: http://www.planetout.com/entertainment/starstruck/2000/03/brooks.html
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Note from Steve: We'd welcome and help support a Brownwood Performance by Garth Brooks !
Standing Up with Theodore Pugh, The First Amendment Warrior
Standing Up for the Right to Sit Down
St. Mary's Freshman Takes On His Teachers Over the Pledge of Allegiance
By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 1, 2005; B03
Standing 5 feet tall in checkered Vans, 14-year-old Theodore Pugh is an unimposing First Amendment warrior.
But the freshman at Leonardtown High School in St. Mary's County, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland and his principal, yesterday taught his teachers a lesson in free speech and reinforced his right to abstain from reciting the Pledge of Allegiance at school.
Theodore became upset this year when, he said, a friend in his homeroom was "reprimanded" by the teacher for remaining seated during the pledge. The teacher, according to Theodore, said that she had a brother in the military in the Middle East and that it was disrespectful to his sacrifice not to stand.
"I thought, 'We have to research this,' " said Theodore, an honor roll student.
Without telling his principal, Theodore -- with help from his father -- wrote to several First Amendment organizations, including the ACLU of Maryland, to find out what rights students have. As it happened, the ACLU was already on the case. At least four students in three public school systems -- St. Mary's, Baltimore and Prince George's counties -- had reported being forced to either stand or say the pledge although they wanted to abstain, said ACLU of Maryland lawyer Richard Griffiths.
"It was a succession of all of these pledge things from around the state that made us stop and say maybe we should try to get everybody on the same page about what the law says," Griffiths said. So the ACLU contacted school system superintendents in every county in Maryland, as well as the state Department of Education.
After receiving a letter from the ACLU, Leonardtown High School Principal Scott Smith said he wanted to make sure the rules were clear to teachers.
"We cannot require a student to stand during the pledge. We cannot require a student to leave the room during the pledge," he told his staff during a meeting yesterday, adding that students must remain "respectfully silent" during the pledge.
Staff members lobbed several questions at Smith:
"Why can we not respectfully ask them to leave the room?"
What if the sitting starts to "spread to other kids and create a rebellion?"
"Can we tell them how we feel?"
Smith replied that students would feel singled out if told to leave the room, that he felt the novelty of sitting during the pledge would probably wear off, and that it's not the job of teachers to proselytize to students.
Disputes over the pledge periodically surface in school systems across the country. A U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year that a Pennsylvania law requiring schools to notify parents if students abstain from the pledge was unconstitutional.
The U.S. Supreme Court heard a case last year brought by a California atheist who objected to his daughter's saying the pledge because it contained the words "under God." The Supreme Court didn't address the constitutionality of the issue but ruled that the man lacked legal standing to file suit on his daughter's behalf because he didn't have full custody of the child.
Claudette Smith of Essex, Md., said her two children in the Baltimore County school system have been told they have to either stand or recite the pledge. Her daughter, an 11th-grader at Chesapeake High School, was told by three separate teachers that she was being disrespectful by remaining seated during the pledge.
"I just think that the schools and their staffs, as well as their students, should be educated in the fact that they don't have to stand . . . if they don't want to, and it's really nobody's business why," Smith said.
For Theodore Pugh, not saying the Pledge of Allegiance was less a political statement and more an expression of rights, he said.
And besides upholding his classmates' rights, his pledge protest worked well for him, too.
"My friends were very impressed with me," he said.
source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/30/AR2005113002010_pf.html
The Worst President Ever ?
The History News Network at George Mason University has just polled historians informally on the Bush record. Four hundred and fifteen, about a third of those contacted, answered -- maybe they were all crazed liberals -- making the project as unofficial as it was interesting. These were the results: 338 said they believed Bush was failing, while 77 said he was succeeding. Fifty said they thought he was the worst president ever. Worse than Buchanan.
This is what those historians said -- and it should be noted that some of the criticism about deficit spending and misuse of the military came from self-identified conservatives -- about the Bush record:
He has taken the country into an unwinnable war and alienated friend and foe alike in the process;
He is bankrupting the country with a combination of aggressive military spending and reduced taxation of the rich;
He has deliberately and dangerously attacked separation of church and state;
He has repeatedly "misled," to use a kind word, the American people on affairs domestic and foreign;
He has proved to be incompetent in affairs domestic (New Orleans) and foreign ( Iraq and the battle against al-Qaida);
He has sacrificed American employment (including the toleration of pension and benefit elimination) to increase overall productivity;
He is ignorantly hostile to science and technological progress;
He has tolerated or ignored one of the republic's oldest problems, corporate cheating in supplying the military in wartime.
Quite an indictment. It is, of course, too early to evaluate a president. That, historically, takes decades, and views change over times as results and impact become more obvious. Besides, many of the historians note that however bad Bush seems, they have indeed since worse men around the White House. Some say Buchanan. Many say Vice President Dick Cheney.
source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucrr/20051203/cm_ucrr/isgeorgebushtheworstpresidentever;_ylt=AiKvXpSd2POS5dzWu5hH4gKs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3ODdxdHBhBHNlYwM5NjQ-
Brownwood PTSD: Depending on the " Outside " Media !
Would it surprise you that when a Brownwood family reached out to the Local Newspaper for help regarding PTSD issues facing their son who served in Iraq, they were turned away ? Are the issues of what returning soldiers and their families are facing too much for the local paper ? Too much for Brownwood's Republican Political Leaders as well ? Yes, it's Political. Politicians sent them to war and politicians are accountable to them when they return home ! It's interesting that the Ft Worth Star Telegram and the Abilene Reporter News found this same information worthy of coverage ! If you depend on Brownwood's Newspaper and her staff, here is an example of what they have chosen to "not " cover as it relates to local PTSD issues ....
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I would like to be able to thank the Brownwood Bulletin for their PTSD Coverage as it relates to Brownwood, but I can't !
Here's the Bulletins Coverage, ( two sentences in a Thursday August 25, 2005 Editorial ) " Then there are the emotional problems which members of the military can bring home with them after being in a war zone. No matter how well they cope, what they have seen leaves them changed human beings." , to date on PTSD. I guess they are too busy focusing on the "Brownwood, Feels Like Home" stories to report on these community issues !
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FYI - Here is today's Dallas Morning News Front Page Story regarding PTSD issues......
Unseen wounds prove just as deadly to troops
Suicides renew focus in military on alleviating toll of combat stress
09:43 PM CST on Saturday, December 3, 2005
By DAVID McLEMORE / The Dallas Morning News
Not all the wounds received in Iraq are visible. Not all the combat deaths occur on the battlefield. For Capt. Michael Pelkey, the war followed him home.
Courtesy
Michael Pelkey and son Benjamin
After a year in the Persian Gulf region, Capt. Pelkey returned to Fort Sill, Okla., in July 2003. He quickly immersed himself in a new job and began getting reacquainted with his wife and infant son.
Then came the terrifying nightmares of the death and destruction he had seen in Iraq – and the inexplicable anxiety he felt in the safety of home. He grew forgetful. He began sleeping with a loaded 9 mm handgun.
On Nov. 5, 2004, a week after an off-post therapist determined that he had post-traumatic stress syndrome, Capt. Pelkey shot himself in the chest and died.
"Michael wasn't in Iraq, but in his mind, he was there day in and day out," said his widow, Stefanie Pelkey of Spring, Texas. "He'd never discuss the details of his experiences in Iraq, but they changed him forever. What killed my husband was a wound of war."
Since combat operations began in Iraq in March 2003, 45 soldiers have killed themselves in Iraq, and an additional two dozen committed suicide after returning home, the Army has confirmed.
And while no one knows precisely what pushes someone over the edge, the unresolved stresses of combat on the soldier's heart and mind are a factor.
The Army surgeon general estimates that 30 percent of returned Iraq veterans showed signs of some mental stress three to four months after coming home. The 2004 Army Mental Health Advisory Team survey, while showing improved unit morale in Iraq over the previous year, also showed that nearly one in five U.S. combat soldiers had acute post-traumatic stress syndrome.
"This is the froth of the wave. The big numbers are coming," said Steve Robinson of the National Gulf War Resource Center, an advocacy organization for veterans of conflicts in the Persian Gulf region. "It took years for the severity of PTSD among Vietnam veterans to show up. If we don't give the soldiers the help they need, such as face-to-face counseling, we're cheating them of a debt owed."
Another Army study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine , found that 17 percent of U.S. combat troops, including Army and Marines, experienced major depression and combat stress, the highest rate since Vietnam.
Just one-fourth to less than half of those with post-traumatic stress disorder sought help, according to the Army study. And some 65 percent of those questioned said they worry that if they asked for help, it would make them look weak or affect their military careers.
Taking care
The military is keenly aware of the mental health need and the potential for numbers to increase. More mental health workers are serving in line units in Iraq. Commanders of units destined for Iraq and Afghanistan are urged to give soldiers and their families information on the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder before and after deployment.
All returning soldiers go through mandatory screenings, though they vary from commander to commander. And the Army is sending more mental health teams to Iraq to work more closely with soldiers in the field.
"We recognize that it is in our best interest to decentralize mental health care. For the wounded sent stateside, it's presented as just another part of the care. We can provide some confidentiality," said Col. Lorenzo Luckie, chief of behavioral medicine at Brooke Army Medical Center in the San Antonio area and a consultant with the Great Plains Army Regional Medical Command.
For those still overseas, the Army is improving access to mental health workers and making mental health care "more visible to commanders as a source of help," he said. "We hope that leadership will present mental health care as something safe and without negative effects on career."
National Guard and reserve soldiers, who make up half the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, show higher rates of post-traumatic stress. But once deactivated and sent home, they must fall back on the Department of Veterans Affairs for treatment. According to VA data, 9,600 of the 360,000 soldiers discharged after fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan have received a provisional diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder.
"We're a lot better able to assess needs now than we were for Vietnam," said Dr. Larry Lehman, chief psychiatric consultant with the Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington. "We hope to identify the psychological and social problems resulting from combat stress before they harden into mental disorders."
Critics of the VA, however, aren't convinced. On Veterans Day, retired Marine Gen. Joseph Hoar, a former commander in the Middle East, called on the federal government to strengthen its health care system for veterans.
"President Bush has consistently refused to provide enough," Gen. Hoar said. "Earlier this year, his administration admitted they were $1 billion short in funding for critical health care services. Thousands of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan will require mental health care, yet the Bush administration has not taken action to deal with this emerging problem."
Lacking resources
In April, the Department of Veterans Affairs acknowledged it had underestimated medical care costs, requiring Congress to approve an additional $1.5 billion in emergency funds for this budget year.
Congressional leaders said the additional money would correct underestimations by the VA of the number of veterans seeking care, as well as increased costs of treatment and long-term care. But Congress also found that the VA had not taken into account the additional costs of caring for veterans injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Veterans in several states have found that Veterans Affairs had to stop scheduling appointments because of a lack of staff or a shortage of funds, said Mr. Robinson of the National Gulf War Resource Center.
"For the Guard and reserve, it's particularly bad," he said. "Their soldiers are separated from the Defense Department support system almost immediately after deployment and sent home to VA hospitals and clinics that are already overwhelmed and backlogged.
"We have to recognize the need and provide help, not wait for the veterans to ask."
U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-El Paso, is also concerned. He cites a study in General Hospital Psychiatry that VA primary care clinics recognized less than half of the cases of post-traumatic stress distorder identified by researchers.
"Just as a bullet can destroy limbs, warfare can injure one's psyche," Mr. Reyes said. "PTSD is a serious war wound that requires serious treatment."
As a member of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, Mr. Reyes has joined in legislation that would provide a more structured, comprehensive approach to addressing post-traumatic stress and other mental health needs, including cross-training to better screen for the disorder and the development of a joint VA-Defense Department plan to advise clinicians on state-of-the-art diagnosis and treatment.
Veterans Affairs officials said they have already placed VA liaisons in military hospitals to make the transition from one level of care to another seamless, Dr. Lehman said.
In January, the Pentagon announced it would begin health assessments of military personnel three to six months after redeployment, focusing on support to those needing assistance with post-traumatic stress disorder and psychological and social readjustment issues.
"This new initiative is designed to assist service members who have returned from areas of combat operations to ensure their health and well-being," said Dr. William Winkenwerder, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. "We have the capacity and the desire to manage these issues proactively."
The screenings, set to begin in the spring, will include active-duty soldiers and National Guard and reserve forces returning from combat tours.
Michael's decline
Mrs. Pelkey, who also served in the Army, testified in July before the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee on how her husband wrestled with his wartime demons before killing himself.
Just before his departure for Fort Sill, he expressed concerns about emotional conflicts to a doctor in Germany. The doctor referred him to a counselor. But on-post counselors were so understaffed that they couldn't see him before he left five days later.
At Fort Sill, the pressures of everyday life – a new house, a new baby and new jobs – pushed treatment to the back burner.
And things seemed to be normal again, Mrs. Pelkey said. When the restlessness, insomnia and other early symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder popped up, neither Michael nor his wife recognized the signs.
"We were both officers. These were things we should have known but didn't. We hadn't been made aware of what to look for," Mrs. Pelkey said in a phone interview. "There had been no debriefings for family members or forced evaluations in Germany. The post-deployment evaluation was more a check-of-the-box and move on."
At Fort Sill, Capt. Pelkey sought medical help but was discouraged that appointments were sometimes a month away. The family contacted Tricare, a program that lets military families use civilian medical care, and were told the only outside therapy available was "family therapy." They took it.
Over the next two weeks, Capt. Pelkey was told that he had post-traumatic stress disorder and that help was available.
"He was really happy," Mrs. Pelkey said. "Help was on the way."
A few days later, he was found on the couple's bed with a gunshot wound to the chest.
Three months after Capt. Pelkey's death, the Army did begin more intensive intervention for cases of the disorder at Fort Sill.
"Soldiers and families now get information on combat stress and effects before and after deployments. They learn how to prepare themselves," Mrs. Pelkey said. "But coordination in the military is horrible. Things happen at local commands, but there should be an Army-wide program that carries the weight ...from the top."
And the stigma of reaching out for help still remains a substantial barrier, she said.
"That's the biggest problem," she said. "Until the leaders – and I mean the Joint Chiefs and the president and Donald Rumsfeld – recognize PTSD as a wound of war and step up to the plate and push for more care, it's not going to filter down. And our soldiers won't let their guard down."
Mrs. Pelkey's efforts to have her husband's death recorded as a casualty of war have proved fruitless to date. The Pentagon has refused her petition, saying he died more than a year after his tour.
"PTSD doesn't always show up until a year has passed," she said. "I'm not giving up, though. I want my son to know why his daddy died. And I don't want this to happen to other military families. I don't want it to just be another suicide in the Army."
E-mail dmclemore@dallasnews.com
Our Own: Log on for profiles of the 200 Texans who have died serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/120405dntexwarwounds.28f2aa6.html
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Below link posted for the Brownwood Bulletin Staff
Saturday, December 03, 2005
And on the Brownwood Airwaves for over ten years .....
........ Brown County Republican Spokesperson & Brownwood Talk Radio Talking Head James Williamsons lectured us on the immorality of the Democratic Party and the Morality of the Republican Party !
Published on Friday, December 2, 2005 by the Boulder Daily Camera (Colorado)
Let God Speak for Himself
by Molly Ivins
Austin, Texas -- The Lord Impersonator is back again. This fella reappears every couple of years and causes no end of trouble. The jokester goes around persuading feeble-minded persons he is the Lord Almighty and that they are to do or say some perfectly idiotic thing under his instructions.
One of the worst cases we've had in Texas was the time the Lord Impersonator convinced 20 people in Floydada to git nekkid, get into a GTO and drive to Vinton, La., where they ran into a tree. Seein' 20 nekkid people, including five children, come out of a GTO startled the Vinton cops. The nekkid citizens all said God told them to do it.
Quite a few people have been mishearing the Lord lately. The Rev. Pat Robertson thinks the Lord told the people of Dover, Pa., they shouldn't ask for His help anymore because they elected a school board Robertson doesn't like. And Rep. Richard Baker of Louisiana said right after Hurricane Katrina that "we finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did it."
I kind of doubt Katrina was designed by the Lord as a form of urban renewal. I think it's a big mistake for us to go around putting our own puny interpretations on stuff that happens and then claiming the Lord meant thus-and-such by it. It is my humble opinion that some folks should do a lot more listening to God and a lot less talking for Him.
In that category, I put a whole passel of politicians — including that God-fearing professional patriot Rep. "Duke" Cunningham, of San Diego. Cunningham resigned his office after pleading guilty to having accepted $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors. "Duke's" big cause in Congress was to get a constitutional amendment to ban flag-burning. Which do you think is more unpatriotic: burning a flag to indicate desperate dissent against American policy or getting elected to Congress and selling out for a Rolls-Royce and some antique commodes?
Rep. Tom DeLay, who is under indictment in Texas, is another fine parser of the Lord's intent. According to Mother Jones magazine, DeLay appeared at a prayer breakfast just after the tsunami that killed 240,000 people. "DeLay read a passage from Matthew about a nonbeliever: '... a fool who built his house on sand: the rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house, and it collapsed and was completely ruined.' Then, without comment, he righteously sat down."
Some Christians seem to me inclined to lose track of love, compassion and mercy. I don't think I have any special brief to go around judging them, but when the stink of hypocrisy becomes so foul in the nostrils it makes you start to puke it becomes necessary to point out there is one more good reason to observe the separation of church and state: If God keeps hanging out with politicians, it's gonna hurt his reputation.
I've always hoped that people like Tom DeLay and Duke Cunningham (and Reps. Bob Ney, Richard Pombo, Dana Rohrabacher, John Doolittle and William J. Jefferson, a Democrat; and Sens. Bill Frist and Conrad Burns) were really stonewall cynics at heart, secretly sneering at the rubes who buy into their holier-than-thou posturing. But I'm afraid they're not.
I'm afraid one actually has to allow for the denial and self-delusion that make it possible for people to be both self-righteous and sleazy at the same time. We are all capable of fooling ourselves in a grand variety of ways.
Another reason why religion and policy make such a bad mix is that religion brings the dread element of certitude into what needs to be a constant process of questioning. In the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh quotes a former Defense Department official who served in Bush's first term: "The president is more determined than ever to stay the course. He doesn't feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage, 'People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.'"
Look, certitude is the enemy of clear thinking. "Never be absolutely sure" is a useful motto, and sailing through our current policies in Iraq without a shadow of a doubt is both foolish and dangerous. I would be far more reassured if I thought the president were second-guessing every move we make than I am to find out he hasn't a shadow of a doubt. For one thing, it shuts him off from considering alternatives, and boy do we need some alternatives.
So here we sit, watching a great, stinking skein of corruption being fished to the surface of Washington, while the town is simultaneously filled with a great babble about God, prayer and morality. Corruption trails head off in all directions — lobbyists, wives, jobs, perverting intelligence, outing agents for petty revenge — all this and a prayer breakfast every day.
Molly Ivins is the former editor of the liberal monthly The Texas Observer. She is the bestselling author of several books including Who Let the Dogs In?
© 2005 The Daily Camera
source: http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1202-23.htm
Friday, December 02, 2005
Who's holding "a smoking gun" ?
Little Surprise at Redistricting Document From Democrats Who Lost 2004 Race
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
Published: December 3, 2005
HOUSTON, Dec. 2 - It was too late for him, "but it's never too late to have the truth come out," said Charles W. Stenholm, the former Democratic representative from West Texas whose 26-year career in the House fell to the Republican Congressional redistricting of 2003.
Reaction split mostly along party lines in Texas on Friday to the news that Justice Department experts had found the redistricting plan violated minority voting rights, but were overruled by senior officials.
Ousted Texas Democrats and the N.A.A.C.P. reacted angrily but without great surprise to publication by The Washington Post of a long-secret 73-page memorandum laying out the unanimous objections of six Justice Department lawyers and two analysts to the redistricting.
"It confirms what a lot of us suspected for a long time," said Charles E. Soechting, president of the Texas Democratic Party. "Political appointees and the Bush administration conspired to deny the voting preferences of Texans."
Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, a Republican who had strongly backed the partisan redrawing of district lines after the 2000 Census, said through a spokeswoman that the plan had been upheld by a three-judge federal panel and that "we continue to stand by that decision while the case is pending in the U.S. Supreme Court."
The redistricting, strongly pushed by Representative Tom DeLay of Houston, went into effect for the 2004 election, winning the Republicans five more Texas seats in Congress at the cost of some senior Democratic incumbents whose districts were dismembered.
The Justice Department document had long been rumored to exist, some Democrats said. Gary L. Bledsoe, president of the Texas N.A.A.C.P., said he had tried to obtain it in an open records request.
"It's very clear we have a serious problem," Mr. Bledsoe said. "The civil rights division is not protecting the interests of minorities." He called the redistricting "an affront to the Voting Rights Act" because of the way it apportioned minority voters, diluting their overall strength even if it created minority districts here and there.
Mr. Stenholm, who had served his district stretching from Fort Worth almost to New Mexico since 1979, called the document "a smoking gun" that should persuade the Supreme Court to review the case. The court has not yet agreed to hear the case.
Mr. Stenholm, now a consultant on agriculture issues in Washington, said he was heartened to see that the Justice Department had found fault with the redrawing. But he said, "If the professional staff said that, what excuse could they possibly have in not going with the professional staff's recommendation?"
Chris Bell, a Houston Democrat who served one term in the House before losing his race last year in a redrawn district and is now running for governor against Mr. Perry, said, "If you can't have faith in the Department of Justice, where are you going to have faith?"
Mr. Bell called the memorandum "shocking" and said, "No wonder they kept it under lock and key." He said that it "helps to drive home how corrupt the entire scheme was, top to bottom" and that "it will not sit well with voters to find out the game was fixed in the Department of Justice."
"We've all become accustomed to expecting the worst with redistricting," he said, "but I don't think anyone expected it to be this bad."
Martin Frost, a Democrat from Arlington who also began in the House in 1979, laid his defeat last year to a redrawing that dispersed a black and Hispanic constituency.
Mr. Frost, a political fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, said that in a redistricting battle in 1991, when Democrats controlled the Legislature, the former President Bush rejected a Republican congressman's effort to politicize the Justice Department by drawing it into the fray.
But last year was different, he said. "It was totally political," he said. "You can't get justice out of this Justice Department."
Nick Lampson, a Democrat of Beaumont first elected in 1996, was popular enough with Republicans to take 60 percent of the vote in a Republican-majority district before it was carved into three parts, costing him the seat in 2004. But unlike some of his ousted colleagues, he is running again in the redrawn district - challenging Mr. DeLay.
source: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/03/politics/03react.html
Hoblitzelle Foundation: Believing in " Historic " Downtown Brownwood
Lyric Theatre gets grant
Brownwood restoration project to receive $50,000
By Celinda Emison / Reporter-News Staff Writer
December 2, 2005
BROWNWOOD - The Raise the Curtain Capital Campaign Project to fund restoration of the Brownwood Lyric Theatre got a big boost from a Dallas-based foundation.
The Lyric Performing Arts Company announced the receipt of a $50,000 challenge grant from the Hoblitzelle Foundation.
Dub Wilson, chairman of LPAC, said the grant will be received as soon as another $50,000 in matching funds are raised to restore the theater.
''This is a very exciting achievement for the Raise the Curtain Capital Campaign project,'' Wilson said. ''We encourage all those in the community who are planning to join with us in this effort to take this opportunity to double the value of their contributions by making them now as a part of the Hoblitzelle match.''
To celebrate the grant approval, LPAC will host a reception at 7 p.m. Monday at the theater with a special screening of the 1954 movie ''White Christmas,'' starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye.
Proceeds from the movie event will support restoration of the Lyric Theatre and will support the match of the Hoblitzelle grant.
If Monday's weather is cool, guests should wear warm clothing because the Lyric building is not currently heated.
Eric Evans, managing director of LPAC, says the goal is to raise the $50,000 in matching funds by the end of December.
''That will show that we are receiving support from the community at a healthy pace,'' Evans said. ''And it will help us to get other grants in the future.''
The total cost to restore the Lyric Theatre is estimated to be $1.5 million. Work to be done includes asbestos removal and architectural design and development.
The total project includes the addition of a new stage and lighting, 300 seats, a new screen and projection system, restoration of historic decor, a state-of-the-art sound and lighting system and new restrooms. The project also includes total renovation of the lobby, which was formerly a downtown dress shop.
The Lyric Performing Arts Company is a nonprofit, 501(c)(3) corporation organized to restore the Lyric Theatre building, built in 1914 in downtown Brownwood.
The Hoblitzelle Foundation was established by Karl and Esther Hoblitzelle in 1942. Both were active in the social, civic and cultural activities in Dallas.
Contact Brownwood staff writer Celinda Emison at (325) 641-8804 or emisonc@reporternews.com.
If you go ...
What: Lyric Theatre reception and presentation of ''White Christmas''
Where: Lyric Theatre, 318 Center Ave. Brownwood
When: 7 p.m. Monday
Tickets: $10 at the door, includes drinks and snacks
To donate to the Raise the Curtain Capital Campaign: Go online at www.brownwoodlyrictheatre.com or call Debbie Morelock at (325) 646-6128.
source: http://www.reporter-news.com/abil/nw_local/article/0,1874,ABIL_7959_4283102,00.html
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* Were Brownwood's Republican Lawmakers aware ?
Justice Staff Saw Texas Districting As Illegal
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post
Justice Department lawyers concluded that the landmark Texas congressional redistricting plan spearheaded by Rep. Tom DeLay (R) violated the Voting Rights Act, according to a previously undisclosed memo obtained by The Washington Post. But senior officials overruled them and approved the plan.
The memo, unanimously endorsed by six lawyers and two analysts in the department's voting section, said the redistricting plan illegally diluted black and Hispanic voting power in two congressional districts. It also said the plan eliminated several other districts in which minorities had a substantial, though not necessarily decisive, influence in elections.
"The State of Texas has not met its burden in showing that the proposed congressional redistricting plan does not have a discriminatory effect," the memo concluded.
* The memo also found that Republican lawmakers and state officials who helped craft the proposal were aware it posed a high risk of being ruled discriminatory compared with other options.
But the Texas legislature proceeded with the new map anyway because it would maximize the number of Republican federal lawmakers in the state, the memo said. The redistricting was approved in 2003, and Texas Republicans gained five seats in the U.S. House in the 2004 elections, solidifying GOP control of Congress.
Thursday, December 01, 2005
QUOTE
“I believe that Wal-Mart is bad for America. It may provide low prices, but these prices come with a high moral and economic cost for consumers."
~ 56% of Poll Respondents from Zogby International Poll. See www.WakeUpWalMart.com
Coach Paul Tyson
Dallas Morning News
Waco coach heard cheers, then whispers
Paul Tyson was a Texas coaching legend, but his demise cast a cloud over his career
09/01/99
By Kevin Sherrington / The Dallas Morning News
WACO - On the 50th anniversary of their old coach's finest football team, some former Waco High teammates got together to fix up his headstone and start a club. They replaced his porcelain picture on the stone and added an inscription, just below his record. Dedicated to the memory And regime of coach Tyson 1913-1941 With love and respect Paul Tyson Tiger Club
Organized 1977
Seventy-eight men came to the first reunion in Waco that spring. Several went all the way back to the 1920s, a high school football era that the Waco Tigers dominated as no school has in any decade since. The Tigers won four state championships in the '20s. And that doesn't include the '21 team, which played before Waco High was a member of the University
Interscholastic League and eligible for playoffs.
All the Tigers did in '21 was go 9-0 and outscore their opponents, 526-0. Only one team moved the ball past midfield against them all year.
And that wasn't even Paul Tyson's best team. No, that would have been the '27 Tigers, who went 14-0 and didn't give up a
touchdown until their 10th game, which must have upset them. The next week in a playoff game, they took it out on Houston's Jeff Davis, 124-0.
The '27 Tigers beat Abilene for the state title and, finished with Texas teams, invited one from Cleveland, Ohio, to come to Waco, where they beat the Ohioans, 44-12.
Even before the mythical national championship, Tyson was a national figure. He attended and spoke at football clinics all over the country. Knute Rockne and Pop Warner routinely sought his opinions on offensive philosophy, and he was a favorite of reporters, who found him charismatic and humble and openly campaigned for major universities to hire him.
Tyson remained at Waco, though. He would have been happy to finish his career there, too. But, in the spring of 1942, the school board suddenly and unanimously voted to fire him after an 8-2 season, two removed from a year he took the Tigers to the state finals.
No reason was given. Newspaper reports indicated that the board fired Tyson because it'd been more than a decade since the Tigers were regular state title contenders. He'd spoiled them, defenders said. Some said it was because, at 55, he was too old, or that he'd made enemies with a board member.
But, for any of those reasons, it seemed unthinkable: How could Waco High fire Paul Tyson, the man who revolutionized Texas high school football and may have been its greatest coach?
What could he have done?
"I know where you're going," Windsor Deaton said gruffly, "and I don't believe any of that bunk."
Deaton, 73, was a tailback on Tyson's last Waco team. He had heard the rumors. Tyson, a lifelong bachelor who never dated, was "too intimate" with his players. He lived in the YMCA or the Roosevelt Hotel his 28 years as coach, and he always was in the company of at least two or three players. He'd drive them up to Dallas in his big Packard, where he'd treat them to steak dinners at the Golden Pheasant downtown. Or he'd take them to Austin to watch football practice at the University of Texas.
Some said it was just evidence of his affection for his players. Others said they were signs of something darker.
The rumors got so bad that Tyson even instigated an investigation to clear himself. But it did nothing to stop the whispers, which grew too loud for the board.
"I'm sure that's true," said Bob McCollum, 78, a star of Tyson's '39 state finalist team. "The rumors just followed him, and the school board got all they could stomach. People were talking about it all the time, and they just fired him to pacify all the people raising trouble."
Tyson never got over his dismissal. Neither did his players. A quarter-century after his death, as his name began to fade in the memory of Texas sports fans, Tyson's players started a lettermen's club. It was no accident that they put his name on it.
More than 70 years have passed since some of those men fought on a football field for Paul Tyson.
Some are fighting yet.
The first football game he ever saw cured Paul Tyson's homesickness for his hometown of Santa Anna. The next game, he started in it.
He went to Addison-Randolph College in Waco, planning to be a doctor. Then he went to a football game, tried out for
the team the next week and made the starting lineup.
He had many interests, though. He taught himself to play the clarinet, flute and trombone and worked at the violin.
He played the piano for Sunday services and Wednesday prayer meetings at the First Christian Church in Santa Anna, and, later, at Central Christian Church in Waco.
He was tall, slender and striking as a young man, though he didn't make much use of it. He dated a young girl in his hometown named Bessie Herndon, or at least he did until he went to pick her up one evening and she'd already gone out with someone else.
"That was the last of his lady friends right there," Tyson's sister, Amboline, said in 1977.
In 1908, Tyson graduated from Add-Ran, one of the last classes before it burned and was reborn a few years later in Fort Worth as TCU. He got his Masters, then went to the University of Chicago to study medicine. While playing baseball there, he reportedly was offered a contract to pitch for a major league team.
"Professional baseball players are not regarded very highly," he explained in declining. "I was afraid that I might wind up a loafer."
He went back to Texas, where he taught biology in Tyler to supplement his income while
studying medicine. It was there that he also helped coach the football team and gave up
medicine for athletics.
After Tyler, he went to Denison, then to Waco High in the fall of 1913. He was more famous
on campus at first as a biology teacher. His first team at Waco went 1-3-2.
He wouldn't have another losing season for 27 years.
The run really started in 1919, after a year of military service. Between 1919 and 1931, the
Tigers did not lose a home game. Waco had winning streaks of 16, 14, 10, 21 and 19 games
and went to the state finals six times.
They didn't just beat teams, either; they destroyed them. From 1921 to 1927, they scored at
least 100 points eight times. They scored at least 50 in 32 games, in which the average score
was 85.5 to .2.
Why were they so good? Former players and coaches said most teams in the '20s employed a
basic offense run out of a short punt formation and a defense not much more complex.
Tyson changed all that. "He made it into an art," said Dr. Howard Dudgeon, 88, who played
on Tyson's '27 team. "Before that, it was slapstick."
Teams in the '20s were lucky if they had uniforms and 20 players to fill them out. Waco
generally had at least 100 players, which Tyson divided into three groups, with the second
group, or "cannon fodder," as it was known, scrimmaging the first-teamers twice a week.
They looked like an army. "We thought the field would tip over when they walked out on the
field," said Thomas E. Turner, who played for Hillsboro in the late '30s. "We turned pale."
As the Tigers went through pre-game drills, Tyson strolled the field, studying the uneven
terrain, looking for bare spots or wet grass, anything that might give his team an edge. A
perfectionist, he never left anything to chance. After Oak Cliff gave the Tigers their only good
game in 1921, losing just 21-0, Tyson had one of his coaches scout every one of Oak Cliff's
games the next year, at a time when no one scouted games.
Tyson didn't cuss or swear or even raise his voice. Sometimes he'd challenge one of the boys
to a race and give him a 10-yard head start. If the boy was particularly fast, he'd give him five
yards.
He never lost. "He knew how to handle boys," Dudgeon said. "He believed in discipline. If
you started cussing, you didn't play the next game. If you made an error, he'd call you over.
He'd call you 'Boy' or 'Kid.' 'Boy,' he'd say, 'this is what you did wrong. I know you can
do better.'
"And you could."
He had some stars. Ben Lee Boynton, an All-America in college, played for him, and one of
Boynton's teammates was Leo R. "Dutch" Meyer, who would go on to fame as coach at
TCU. John Drew "Boody" Johnson, considered by some old-timers the greatest all-around
high school player ever, played for Waco from 1921-23.
Tyson also had Joel Hunt, who would become an All-America at Texas A&M. Hunt's last
year at Waco was 1923, when the Tigers lost the state title to Abilene, 3-0. Waco's best
chance to score came late in the game, when the Tigers got the ball down to the Abilene 2, and a play was called for Hunt.
A rare mix-up in the backfield netted nothing. Four years later, recalling that scene for his
national championship team, Tyson smiled.
"You know," he said, softly, "Joel has not come by for that ball yet."
The Tigers played at the old
Cotton Palace in the '20s,
Baylor's home field, too, and they
regularly outdrew the Bears with
crowds of 12,000 to 15,000.
Fans once rewarded one of
Tyson's state championships by
sending him to the Rose Bowl.
After the '27 national
championship game against Latin
High of Cleveland, they presented
him with 75 percent of the net
receipts, or $6,000.
He had no need for such a great
sum. He lived in the YMCA for
years and paid $15 a month in
rent. He was so careless about his
dress that his players took pity on
him, surreptitiously seeing that his
shoes were shined and clothes
laundered. Local merchants
occasionally would tell him to
come by their stores, where they
would fit him with a new shirt and
suit.
He made $250 a month as a
biology teacher and coach. What
would he do with $6,000?
Someone told him he should buy
a Packard straight-8, which went
for an astronomical $3,500. He'd
never owned a car. He didn't even
know how to drive one. He
bought the Packard, though, and
his players gave him lessons.
He took them everywhere in it, and he always drove Packards after that. He was sleeping in
the back seat of one on the way back from Dallas when Deaton and another teammate decided
to see how fast it would go. They got up behind a Greyhound bus and were pushing 100 mph
when the bus suddenly braked, and the Packard did, too.
Tyson flipped out of the back seat and landed face-first on the floorboard. He slowly collected
himself and looked over his two startled players.
"You boys found out how fast that bus would run, didn't you?" he said, and went back to
sleep.
His easy, gentlemanly nature belied his interest in the game. Since 1919, he attended coaching
schools at Wisconsin, Notre Dame, Ouchita College, Colorado, Stanford, Northwestern,
Baylor, SMU, TCU, Nebraska and other colleges. From Pop Warner at Stanford, he refined a
play out of the single wing in which the quarterback would take a snap, spin to one of three
backs crossing behind him and hand off or keep the ball for a run or pass.
The "spinner" play proved devastating in 1927. Defenses had no idea where the ball was
going, particularly poor Jeff Davis, whose coach said after the 124-point defeat, "They would
have beaten a good college team today."
Friends began to wonder if Tyson could coach one. An executive at The Dallas Morning
News wrote Knute Rockne in the spring of '27, asking him to recommend Tyson for an
opening in the Southwest Conference.
Rockne complied a few days later. He called Tyson, whom he had met at his coaching schools
in Dallas, "one of the finest coaches I ever met, college or high school" and said he was "as
capable from every angle as most any of the college coaches I know."
But the letter either did little good, or Tyson didn't want to leave Waco. Friends insisted he
turned down jobs in the SWC. He was without question a confidante of both Rockne and
Warner. A file containing more than a dozen letters of correspondence between Rockne and
Tyson is in Notre Dame's archives. In one letter, Rockne invites Tyson and Warner to be his
houseguests for a football confab. In another, he tells Tyson he wants to discuss "some fresh
dope on the lateral pass in the Canadian game which is very interesting, though I believe it will
play but a small part in our game."
Because of the close relationship between Tyson and Rockne, a rumor circulated that he had
accepted a position on Rockne's staff in 1931, just a few weeks before Rockne's plane
crashed in a Kansas field.
Tyson later told Thomas Turner, who grew up from Hillsboro to head The News' Central
Texas bureau, that Rockne never actually offered him a job.
"But he made it plain," Tyson told Turner, "that anytime I wanted to leave Waco and join his
staff, he'd be glad to have me."
As it turned out, Tyson took a sabbatical in 1931 anyway, going to Stanford for a year to
study under Warner. He came back in '32 to Waco teams that weren't as dominant anymore.
Other coaches, studying his methods, started to catch up. He had one more great team,
reaching the state finals in 1939 against Lubbock. The Tigers lost, 20-14. The next season,
Waco went 3-6-1, Tyson's first losing season since 1913. He brought the team back to 8-2 in
'41, just missing the district title.
Four months later, the school board met and asked Tyson for his resignation. He refused. So
the seven-member board met again the next night in executive session, voting unanimously to
fire him. Assistant coach Clyde Martin also was fired, and principal G.M. Smith was
reassigned as a classroom instructor.
Dudgeon, who later served on the school board, said he went back through meeting notes and
found no records to indicate why the board acted as it did. Turner, who researched the story
for The News, said the board apparently fired the principal for defending Tyson.
Turner said he never found any evidence of sexual abuse by Tyson. He talked to scores of
players, and a couple said they thought Tyson was gay but offered no proof.
Most of the players acted as if they wanted to fight him for asking.
"There was absolutely no proof," Turner said. "I knew everybody in town, and no one could
prove anything. But it was like what George W. Bush is going through now with the drug
rumors. It just got out of control, and he couldn't stop it. And Paul was getting older and a
little seedy, a little out of it. He was a proud, stubborn person, and he wouldn't change his
ways.
"It was a sad ending."
Tyson took a job as an instructor at Dallas' Woodrow Wilson High in 1942, then spent three
mediocre seasons as football coach at Beaumont South Park. He went back to Dallas in 1946
as football coach and athletic director at Jesuit College Prep. But he left after a year, claiming
poor health.
He seemed like an old man to Eddie Joseph, a sophomore tailback on Jesuit's team in '46.
Joseph spent some time in the hospital in the spring of '46 with a broken leg, and Tyson came
by to visit him every night.
"He would draw a crowd, especially all the older people," said Joseph, now director of the
Texas High School Coaches Association. "He talked about the old days and the great
ballgames. He was a fine, neat old man."
Joseph remembered that and Tyson's "big old playbook. He tried to run all those great plays
that he'd done in his career. And it was just too much. His repertoire was too great for us."
As for the rumors, Joseph said he didn't hear any until after Tyson left Jesuit. Like the rest, he
said there was no proof.
From Jesuit, Tyson went to Westminster College in Tehuacana as an instructor. He stayed
two years before accepting a job as football coach at Daniel Baker College in Brownwood, a
school with a history as one of the worst programs in Texas college football.
He went 2-6-2 in 1949. He couldn't have enjoyed it much. Since he was fired in 1941, he'd
never strayed too far from Waco. In 1948, as the Tigers were on their way to another state
championship, Tyson would appear at the offices of the Waco Tribune-Herald on Sunday
afternoons.
"He'd stay an hour or so," said Dave Campbell, former sports editor of the Tribune-Herald.
"I think he was just revisiting the good old days."
At a banquet honoring the '48 state champions, Dudgeon looked up from the dais at the
Roosevelt Hotel and saw Tyson out in the hall, looking in. "By the time I got to the door,"
Dudgeon said, "he was gone."
His players always looked out for him. When the board fired Tyson, the athletic council,
made up mostly of his former players, issued a statement indicating they didn't support it. His
current team protested, too.
But nothing helped, not even a petition signed by the mothers of 300 of his former players.
Their only recourse was to honor him. In 1955, when Tyson was voted into the Texas Sports
Hall of Fame, Dutch Meyer presented his plaque. He broke down while reading it. When the
Hall of Fame moved to Waco, Dudgeon and others insisted that a special Paul Tyson room be
included.
And then there is the Paul Tyson Tiger Club. For years, members put flowers on Tyson's
grave on the date of his death. He died during a faculty meeting, a week before Daniel Baker's
1950 season opener. A dean, thinking Tyson was asleep, nudged him, and he toppled to the
floor.
Doctors said he died of a brain hemorrhage. He was 64. The body was returned to Waco,
where the family of Waco High's former team physician took care of the details, as usual.
Most of the years he was at Waco High, the Crosthwaits had Tyson over for Sunday dinners.
They buried him in their family plot. The petition was in his pocket.
the great italian playwright
luigi pirandello,
“in right you are if you think you are”,
showed a community pays
when it is driven by gossips
to find out “the truth” about people’s private lives.
Brownwood "COLD" Cases
Rangers to probe '89 slaying of girl, 13
Technology may uncover leads in Brownwood case
By Celinda Emison / Reporter-News Staff Writer
December 1, 2005
BROWNWOOD - The cold case unit of the Texas Rangers announced Wednesday that it will investigate the 16-year-old murder case of a teenage girl.
Ranger Troy Wilson of the Unsolved Crimes Investigative Team of San Antonio, said he will be in Brownwood for the next several days looking over the case of Amanda Goodman, 13, who was found dead on the side of a country road south of Brownwood on May 16, 1989.
Fellow Texas Ranger Nick Hanna, who works in Brown County, contacted Wilson about the Goodman case. Hanna said that before the case could be turned over to the cold case unit,
the files and evidence had to be reorganized by the Brown County Sheriff's Office.
Investigators have not named any suspects, but hope that advances in technology will help them uncover leads that they were not able to find in 1989.
''It is possible that some of the physical evidence could be sent off to check for DNA,'' Wilson said.
Brown County Sheriff Bobby Grubbs, who at the time Amanda was found was the lead Texas Ranger investigating the case, sheriff's Det. Lana Guthrie, and Hanna will assist Wilson.
''We will also call in anyone that we need to who was involved in the initial investigation,'' Grubbs said.
Amanda's body was found 10 miles south of Brownwood along the north side of Indian Creek Road.
Investigators recalled that she had been ''gingerly'' place near a tree, with her books and purse neatly beside her. The 13-year-old was killed by a single gunshot to the head. Goodman's mother, Barbara Nejtek, said she had hoped and prayed for the day the case would be turned over to the cold case unit.
''I'm relieved, and after 16 long years of waiting, we may find out the truth about what happened to Amanda,'' she said. ''The family and I are thrilled - we believe this is the next step in getting this case solved.''
Contact Brownwood Staff Writer Celinda Emison at (325) 641-8804 or emisonc@reporternews.com.
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Brownwood, Texas,
Leon Laureles
May, 1996
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Note from Steve: Unlike COB ( Brownwood's Unofficial City of Brownwood Website ) we do not remove or hide our ACLU
posts !
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- Name:Steves' Market & Deli
- Location:Brownwood, Texas, United States
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