Brownwood: American or Republican ?

read more here

..and Brownwood's Middle Class Families are moving in which direction ?

Middle-Class Families in Worse Shape Than Ever
Reuters

Thursday 28 September 2006

Typical families have not stashed enough money; struggling to pay for home, insurance, and education according to Center for American Progress.
Washington - The typical double-income family is worse off financially than ever, a study released Thursday said, warning that few Americans have saved enough to brace for financial setbacks.

Middle-class families are struggling to pay for a home, health insurance, transportation and their children's college with wages that have not kept pace with higher prices, according to the study by a think tank headed by a former top aide to President Bill Clinton.

The middle class's financial condition has been a key issue ahead of the November elections, as Democrats warn that this group is fast losing economic ground amid skyrocketing prices and tax cuts that offer them little benefit.

"In our estimates, it's becoming harder for families to afford what we consider a typical middle-class lifestyle," said economist Christian Weller of the Center for American Progress, the political think tank headed by John Podesta, a former Clinton chief of staff.

Weller cautioned that while Americans are taking on more debt to cover higher costs, wages have not kept pace.

The majority of Americans have not socked away enough money to brace for financial setbacks such as a job loss or a medical emergency.

According to the study, less than a third of all American families have accumulated income equaling three months of their wages. The trend is particularly pronounced among the 60 percent income distribution that makes up the middle class: those with dual incomes earning from $18,500 to $88,030 a year.

From 2001 to 2004, the proportion of middle-class families that has saved three months' worth of income dropped to 18.3 percent from 28.8 percent, the study said.

Higher prices for a range of things - including health care, energy, transportation, food and education - have put Americans in this position as corporate profits have risen, the study said.

It said, that five years into the current economic recovery, average job growth is one-fifth that of previous business cycles and wages are flat when inflation is factored into the equation.

To maintain day-to-day consumption, families have taken on a record amount of debt, equal to 126.4 percent of disposable income in the first quarter of 2006, according to the study.

Commenting on the study, SEIU Labor Union President Andy Stern said, "Of the total amount of our economy and income, we have the greatest share going to profits in modern history and the least amount going to wages in modern history."

"For most working Americans, things are far worse than any time certainly in recent history and at a time of an incredibly growing economy." said Stern, whose union represents 1.1 million health care workers.

Health care industry leader Abbott Laboratories Inc., Johnson & Johnson, and Guidant Corp. edged higher late Thursday in New York.

source: http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/092906LA.shtml
---------------
Published on Friday, September 29, 2006 by The Progressive
The “In Crowd” Versus the “Populists”
by Ruth Conniff

David Broder recently wrote a column in the Washington Post warning of a battle between sensible centrists and “vituperative, foul-mouthed bloggers on the left” and their heroes.

Change is in the air, and the people who have been holding onto power in Washington are worried.
He singled out Ned Lamont in Connecticut and, in Ohio, Sherrod Brown, whom Broder called “a loud advocate of protectionist policies that offer a false hope of solving our trade and job problems.”

Broder’s ire shows how media establishment types and defenders of the status quo are “freaking out” because a majority of Americans are not forming their opinions according to the opinion-makers’ predictions, according to one leftwing blogger—political activist David Sirota.

Change is in the air, and the people who have been holding onto power in Washington are worried.

It is the Republicans’ betrayal of middle-class voters that got them into the hot water they’re in this year, Brown says. “People look at whose side are you on?” he says. “The Republican leaders in the state see government as a piggy bank.[Ohio’s Republican Senator Mike] DeWine and that crowd are giving away tax breaks to drug companies and the oil industry. People reject that.”

As for Broder’s critique, Brown shrugs it off. “Reporters and editors in Washington have always hated my position on trade,” he says. “Out here they don’t feel that way.”

The controversy over Brown—whom the National Journal compares to John Edwards, saying he’s turned his “liberal” record in Congress into a popular pitch for “economic populism”—captures a basic struggle within the country.

Brown has always been for establishing fair trade, raising the minimum wage, and breaking the oil and drug companies’ stranglehold on public policy. He has also opposed the Iraq war from the beginning. These positions turn out to be particularly popular with voters this year, both in the Rust Belt and around the country, as polls show the public definitively opposed to the Administration’s war in Iraq and in favor of progressive wage and health care policies.

But, as David Sirota put it in his furious blog following Broder’s column, the ragged people who work at manufacturing jobs in Ohio—those Brown represents—aren’t the people Washington insiders care about.

“In David Broder's world, those hundreds of thousands of blue collar workers who have been thrown out onto the street thanks to NAFTA and China PNTR are the filth of the earth that high and mighty elite Washington journalists like him cannot be bothered with,” Sirota ranted in vituperative-blogger fashion. “In David Broder's world, any request for our trade pacts to include restrictions on child slavery, environmental degradation, and pharmaceutical industry profiteering off desperately poor people, positively un-American. Why? Because David Broder lives in a place where all of these critical issues are merely just more fodder and gossip for a newspaper column—not real challenges in his life, nor in the life of the people he spends his time with in the Washington Beltway.”

In the Democratic Party, the economic populists are fighting an uphill battle against the Washington in crowd. The outcome of that struggle is one of the interesting issues up for grabs in this fall’s midterm elections.

Across the country, the Democrats are all over the map on Iraq and other fundamental issues. “I understand there’s not going to be a national Democratic policy on Iraq,” Brown says, “because Harold Ford doesn’t want to say what I’m saying. Everybody runs their own race the way they run it—that’s endemic in the party and maybe in politics generally.”

But for Brown, being a straight shooter seems to be winning politics.

“He is a person who says what he thinks,” says Progressive Democrats of America chapter member John Cross. “Despite fourteen years in Congress he’s pretty straight-forward. I think people appreciate that.”

But, as Sirota laments, it’s not a quality that’s necessarily prized in Washington. Take Rahm Emanuel, head of the DCCC, who is another Sirota nemesis.

A rather breathless Newsweek story on Emanuel and his brother Ari—who happens to be the model for the smarmy Hollywood agent on the hit HBO series “Entourage”—gushes over the two men’s similar roles as gatekeepers and kingmakers in their intersecting Hollywood and political worlds. One big question in this fall’s midterms is what chance does the rabble who care about “kitchen table” issues have against this glamorous “in crowd” of the Washington and Hollywood elite?

Sirota calls the coming election a “tidal wave” heading for Washington’s “hall of mirrors,” conjuring up a massive populist uprising against the smug establishment types that will smash their arrogant worldview to smithereens. It’s a gratifying image. But the positions of individual candidates around the country don’t necessarily sustain it. Along with the Sherrod Browns and Ned Lamonts, there are the Maria Cantwells and James Webbs, who don’t take such a strong position on getting out of Iraq, and who supported CAFTA and other free-trade bills. Around the country, a majority of Democratic Congressional candidates are not calling for withdrawal from Iraq.

Still, “the growing feeling against the war in the country is boosting Democrats' chances, even when they are too afraid to press their advantage,” says veteran Democratic campaign strategist Steve Cobble. “The main reason the Republicans are in trouble is because they lied about a war which has turned out to be a disaster. That fundamental fact should not be forgotten, even when individual Democrats shy away from running against the war.”

Certainly the Democratic leadership wants to capitalize on that sentiment. In his book The Plan, Rahm Emanuel has a chapter entitled “Who sunk my battleship?” (All the chapters have cutesy titles designed to appeal to younger, hipper voters). Emanuel criticizes the Bush Administration for its handling of the war on terror. But here’s the plan he comes up with: “We cannot fight and win a long war without more troops. . . . We need a bigger, better-equipped Army.”

Sure, “the administration jeopardized the success of our mission in Afghanistan by shifting troops to Iraq because it didn’t have enough to go all out in both places,” and “Osama bin Laden got away at Tora Bora in part because we didn’t have the personnel to pursue him.” But the answer Emanuel proposes is the Joe Lieberman/Hillary Clinton bill to add 100,000 soldiers to a U.S. Army that is losing soldiers at an alarming rate while bogged down in an unwinnable civil war. Worse, Emanuel lumps together Iraq and the war on terrorism generally—giving credence to the Bush Administration fiction that the U.S. presence in Iraq is part of the effort to fight terrorism, instead of a tragic, costly distraction that has only helped create a bigger terrorist threat.

In his chapter on universal college education, “Toga Party,” Emanuel proposes “big ideas” that sound good, but could easily be whittled down to teensy-weensy micro-policy initiatives. He points out that college tuition has more than doubled in the last five years, while “the Bush administration pushed the largest cut in college aid in history,” shutting the door to higher education for much of the middle class. He endorses the idea of a $3,000-a-year tax credit, and, even better, tuition grants to the states on the model of nineteenth century land grants. But who knows whether the “billions we can save by lending directly to students instead of subsidizing banks” will materialize, particularly given the Democrats’ reliance on the financial industry (where Emanuel worked for years).

If there is going to be a tidal wave in November, it will have to be pushed along by voters who are far more assertive than most of the Democratic candidates. And, of course, which candidates make it at the House level is going to be determined in large part by Rahm Emanuel, who controls the national party’s purse strings.

The DCCC, with it’s “Red to Blue” program for winning the midterms and taking back the House, vets candidates regularly for viability and makes decisions about financing that can cause any given campaign to sink or swim.

“At some point they’ll pull out of all but about 25 House races,” says veteran politico Bill Dixon, who ran Gary Hart’s presidential campaign. “They have these meetings on a daily basis about who to dump and who not to dump.”

In both the House and Senate, the most the Democrats can hope for is a slim majority. That, combined with their internal disagreements about how best to govern, doesn’t bode well for massive legislative change. Even so, a political upheaval in November could send a reverberating message through Washington.

“It’s not just the number of seats the Democrats win,” says Sherrod Brown. “It’s the message voters send that they are unhappy with Bush.” He points to the increasing willingness of Republicans to defect from the White House on a variety of issues, from torture to privatizing Social Security.

If the Democrats do retake the House, Senate, or both, Brown says, “We pass a new minimum wage right away, the first week, pass the 9/11 Commission recommendations, pass legislation negotiating drug prices—substantive legislation.” On that “populist” issue, the minimum wage, he points out: “There are always the votes if the leadership schedules it. If we brought it to the house floor almost all the Democrats and half Republicans would vote for it.”

Pressure from below could make a major difference—even on the most cautious politicians in both parties.

Ruth Conniff covers national politics for The Progressive and is a voice of The Progressive on many TV and radio programs.

source: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0929-20.htm

..... and the Three (3) Brownwood Generals Believe ?

Revolt of the Generals
By Richard J. Whalen
The Nation

Thursday 28 September 2006

A revolt is brewing among our retired Army and Marine generals. This rebellion - quiet and nonconfrontational, but remarkable nonetheless - comes not because their beloved forces are bearing the brunt of ground combat in Iraq but because the retirees see the US adventure in Mesopotamia as another Vietnam-like, strategically failed war, and they blame the errant, arrogant civilian leadership at the Pentagon. The dissenters include two generals who led combat troops in Iraq: Maj. Gen. Charles Swannack Jr., who commanded the 82nd Airborne Division, and Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who led the First Infantry Division (the "Big Red One"). These men recently sacrificed their careers by retiring and joining the public protest.

In late September Batiste, along with two other retired senior officers, spoke out about these failures at a Washington Democratic policy hearing, with Batiste saying Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was "not a competent wartime leader" who made "dismal strategic decisions" that "resulted in the unnecessary deaths of American servicemen and women, our allies and the good people of Iraq." Rumsfeld, he said, "dismissed honest dissent" and "did not tell the American people the truth for fear of losing support for the war."

This kind of protest among senior military retirees during wartime is unprecedented in American history - and it is also deeply worrisome. The retired officers opposing the war and demanding Rumsfeld's ouster represent a new political force, and therefore a potentially powerful factor in the future of our democracy. The former generals' growing lobby could acquire a unique veto power in the future by publicly opposing reckless civilian warmaking in advance.

No one should be surprised by the antiwar dissent emerging among those who have commanded our legions on the fringes of the US military empire. After more than sixty-five years of increasingly centralized and secret presidential warmaking, we have concentrated ultimate civilian authority in fewer and fewer hands. Some of these leaders have been proved by events to be incompetent.

I speak regularly to retired generals, former intelligence officers and former Pentagon officials and aides, all of whom remain close to their active-duty friends and protégés. These well-informed seniors tell me that whatever the original US objective was in Iraq, our understrength forces and flawed strategy have failed, and that we cannot repair this failure by remaining there indefinitely. Fundamental changes are needed, and senior officers are prepared to make them. According to my sources, some active-duty officers are working behind the scenes to end the war and are preparing for the inevitable US withdrawal. "The only question is whether a war serves the national interest," declares a retired three-star general. "Iraq does not."

How widespread is antiwar feeling among the retired and active-duty senior military? And does it extend into the younger active-duty officer corps? These are unanswerable questions. The soldiers who defend our democracy on the battlefield fight within military, and therefore nondemocratic, organizations. They are sworn to uphold the Constitution and obey orders. Traditionally, they debate only on the "inside."

Earlier this year, Gen. George Casey, the top American commander in Iraq, drafted a highly classified briefing plan that was leaked to the New York Times in June. It called for sharply reducing US troop levels in Iraq from the current fourteen combat brigades to a half-dozen or so by late December 2007. The plan contained a great many caveats, and events soon rendered it obsolete. Now General Casey says the Iraqi security forces may be ready to take the lead role in twelve to eighteen months, but he says nothing about troop withdrawals.

Casey's leaked plan revealed the thinking of some of today's top-level officers. These senior military men believe that our forces will have to win the potentially decisive battle for Baghdad before the United States can leave. In August the Army announced an urgent transfer of American forces from insecure western Iraq to the capital in preparation for that coming battle. The move barely doubled the number of troops in Baghdad, to only 14,000 GIs spread over a sprawling metropolis with a population exceeding 7 million.

On August 3 the commander of US forces in the Middle East, Gen. John Abizaid, the universally respected, Arabic-speaking warrior-scholar who knows Iraq intimately, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that worsening Iraqi sectarian violence, especially in Baghdad, "could move [Iraq] towards civil war." In private, senior officers openly refer to civil war, and have indicated that the Army would depart in such circumstances to avoid being caught in the crossfire.

The dissenting retired generals are bent on making Iraq this nation's last strategically failed war - that is, one doggedly waged by civilian officials largely to avoid personal accountability for their bad decisions. A failed war causes mounting human and other costs, damaging or entirely destroying the national interest it was supposed to serve.

Let me interject a personal note. At the height of the Vietnam War, between 1966 and 1968, I was a conservative Republican in my early 30s on the campaign staff of the likely next President, Richard Nixon. What I heard from junior officers returning from Vietnam convinced me that US military involvement there should give way to diplomacy. We no longer had a coherent political objective, and were fighting only to avoid admitting defeat. I wrote Nixon's secret plan for "ending the war and winning the peace," a rhetorical screen for striking a summit deal with the Soviet Union, followed by a historic opening to China that would allow us to extricate ourselves from what we belatedly recognized was an anti-Chinese Indochina.

After I left Nixon's staff in August 1968, I helped end the draft. In 1969-70, I co-wrote and edited the Report of the President's Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Force. Our blockbuster proposal to end the draft combined political expediency and libertarian idealism. Our staff's numbers crunchers calculated that if we raised enlisted men's pay scales, retention rates among the sons of lower- to middle-income families would stay high enough to create a de facto all-volunteer Army. So why not take credit for acting on principle? Nixon's domestic adviser Martin Anderson pushed it, the private computers of consultant Alan Greenspan (who would go on to become chair of the Federal Reserve System) confirmed it and I delivered the text that the commission accepted. Nixon, for once, enjoyed the media's acclaim. The draft was swiftly abolished.

The Iraq War only confirms the wisdom of the nation's commitment to the all-volunteer armed forces. A draft would merely prolong the Iraq agony, not avoid defeat. More than 2,700 GIs killed and more than 20,000 wounded, along with tens of thousands of dead and wounded Iraqis, are enough to carry on the nation's conscience.

Some of the officers from the first generation of the volunteer Army, now mostly retired, are speaking out and influencing their active-duty colleagues. Retired Lieut. Gen. William Odom calls the Iraq War "the worst strategic mistake in the history of the United States" and draws a grim parallel with the Vietnam War. He says that US strategy in Iraq, as in Vietnam, has served almost exclusively the interests of our enemies. He says that our objectives in Vietnam passed through three phases leading to defeat. These were: (1) 1961-65, "containing" China; (2) 1965-68, obsession with US tactics, leading to "Americanization" of the war; and (3) 1968-75, phony diplomacy and self-deluding "Vietnamization." Iraq has now completed two similar phases and is entering the third, says Odom, now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. In March he wrote in the newsletter of Harvard's Nieman Foundation:

Will Phase Three in Iraq end with U.S. helicopters flying out of Baghdad's Green Zone? It all sounds so familiar. The difference lies in the consequences. Vietnam did not have the devastating effects on U.S. power that Iraq is already having. On this point, those who deny the Vietnam-Iraq analogy are probably right. They are wrong, however, in believing that staying the course will have any result other than making the damage to U.S. power far greater than would changing course and making an orderly withdrawal.... But even in its differences, Vietnam can be instructive about Iraq. Once the U.S. position in Vietnam collapsed, Washington was free to reverse the negative trends it faced in NATO and U.S.-Soviet military balance, in the world economy, in its international image, and in other areas. Only by getting out of Iraq can the United States possibly gain sufficient international support to design a new strategy for limiting the burgeoning growth of anti-Western forces it has unleashed....

The fact that so many retired generals are speaking out against the war and against Rumsfeld, and are doing so at such forums as New York's prestigious Council on Foreign Relations, reflects the depth and intensity of the military's dissent. Traditional discipline and career-protecting reticence prompt many disillusioned field-grade officers (majors and above) to keep silent. These are "the Carlisle elite," who attend the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and from whose ranks are selected the generals and top leaders of tomorrow.

The military's senior active-duty leadership will not openly revolt. "We're not the French generals in Algeria," says Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton. "But we damned well know that the Iraq War we've won militarily is being lost politically." The well-read retired Marine Lieut. Gen. Gregory Newbold wrote in a Time magazine essay: "I retired from the military four months before the [March 2003] invasion, in part because of my opposition to those who had used 9/11's tragedy to hijack our security policy." Newbold calls the Iraq War "unnecessary" and says the civilians who launched the war acted with "a casualness and swagger" that are "the special province" of those who have never smelled death on a battlefield.

When civilian Pentagon officials bungled the long, dishonorable endgame of the Vietnam War, disciplined senior soldiers kept silent. After that war ended in US defeat and humiliation, a flood of firsthand military accounts of the war appeared. Embittered generals and other officers, like future general Colin Powell, vowed it would never happen again.

Today, a retired major general privately asserts: "For our generation, Iraq will be Vietnam with the volume turned way up. Three decades ago, the retired generals who are now speaking out against the Iraq War were junior officers in Vietnam. The seniors who trained and mentored us, and who became generals but who kept silent, did not speak out after retirement against Vietnam." Now, even before the Iraq War has ended, generals have shed their uniforms and begun publicly to fight back against Rumsfeld's bullying and a new generation of Pentagon civilians' bloodstained mistakes. These former generals despise Rumsfeld, with several, like Batiste, describing him as totally dismissive of their views. They recall repeatedly trying to warn Rumsfeld before the Iraq invasion that the US forces he was planning to deploy were barely half the 400,000 they said were needed.

Rumsfeld publicly humiliated all who dissented, beginning with Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, who was virtually dismissed the day he honestly gave his views to Congress. Rumsfeld's deputy, neoconservative ideologue Paul Wolfowitz, listened respectfully before rejecting the generals' advice. As the Iraqi insurgency grew, the generals found Rumsfeld "completely unable and unwilling to understand the collapse of security in Iraq," says Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, now retired. The severely understrength US forces have never been able to provide adequate security. Once Iraqi civilians lost their trust and confidence in America's protection, the war was lost politically. As General Newbold says: "Our opposition to Rumsfeld is all about his accountability for getting Iraq wrong from day one."

Bureaucratic accountability comes hard and very slowly. According to a stark consensus of global terrorism trends by America's sixteen separate espionage agencies, the US invasion and occupation of Iraq "helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and [expand] the overall terrorist threat." This highly classified National Intelligence Estimate is, according to the New York Times, "the first report since the war began to present a comprehensive picture" of global terrorism trends.

There's blame enough to go around. In his recently published bestseller Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, Thomas Ricks, the Washington Post's senior Pentagon correspondent, offers a devastating, heavily documented indictment of almost incredible civilian and military shortsightedness and incompetence, such as the foolish decisions that encouraged the Iraqi insurgency. "When we disbanded the Iraqi Army, we created a significant part of the Iraqi insurgency," explains Col. Paul Hughes, whose advice to retain the army was rejected. Before he retired he told Ricks, "Unless we ensure that we have coherency in our policy, we will lose strategically." The most critical political-strategic decisions about post-Saddam Iraq's future were made by deeply mistaken civilian officials in Washington and in the Green Zone by our "viceroy," Paul Bremer, administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

The senior military dissenters will not rest until they indict the mistakes of Rumsfeld and his principal civilian aides at Congressional hearings. The military always plays this game of accountability for keeps. Should the Democrats gain control of a Congressional chamber in the November midterms, televised Capitol Hill hearings in 2007 will feature military protagonists speaking of "betrayal" and "tragically wasted sacrifices." The retired generals believe nothing would be gained, and much would be lost, by keeping the truth about Iraq from the families of America's dead and wounded.

Says retired two-star General Eaton: "The repeated rotations of Army Reservists and National Guardsmen are hollowing out the US ground forces. This whole thing in Iraq is going to fall off a cliff.... Yet we have a moral obligation to see this thing [the Iraqi occupation] through. If we fail, it will cause America grave problems for several decades to come." These earnest, if contradictory, sentiments echo what some conflicted US military officers told me thirty-five years ago, as Vietnam was being abandoned. After President Nixon's Watergate disgrace and resignation, a fed-up American public and a heavily Democratic-controlled Congress finally pulled the plug on our Saigon ally, allowing South Vietnam to fall.

Over the past year, the United States has pressed into service newly trained Iraqi army, police and security forces, replacing elements of the 140,000-plus US troops. But the Iraqi forces lack everything from body armor to tanks and helicopters. Major General Eaton, who in 2003-04 was in charge of training Iraqi security forces, says the United States needs another five years to train the Iraqi army, and as much as another decade to train and equip an effective Iraqi police force.

Gen. Barry McCaffrey, a hero in the 1991 Gulf War who visited Iraq and Kuwait this past spring, writes in an unpublished report: "We need to better equip the Iraqi Army with a capability to deter foreign attack and to have a leveraged advantage over the Shia militias and the insurgents they must continue to confront. The resources we are now planning to provide are inadequate by an order of magnitude or more. The cost of a coherent development of the Iraqi security forces is the ticket out of Iraq - and the avoidance of the constant drain of huge U.S. resources on a monthly basis."

Thus, the crucial "Iraqification" process has barely begun and is mostly still self-deception. New York Times Iraq correspondent Dexter Filkins reports that Baghdad has become "a markedly more dangerous place" over the past year. This undercuts "the central premise of the American project here: that Iraqi forces can be trained and equipped to secure their own country, allowing the Americans to go home," a replay of the failed Vietnamization scenario.

The retired generals' revolt may be inspired by their apprehension over a wider Mideast conflict spreading to potentially nuclear Iran, writes former Pentagon planner and now antiwar critic Karen Kwiatkowski, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and a razor-sharp PhD. Writing in MilitaryWeek.com, she speculates that the generals are trying to get rid of Rumsfeld now to head off a conflict with Iran. The Bush Administration reportedly has contingency plans to bomb Iran's UN-disapproved nuclear sites. Some underemployed Navy and Air Force officers are lobbying to strike Iran, but the overstretched ground combat forces overwhelmingly oppose it as the worst of all possible wars. She writes: "If Rumsfeld retires, we will not 'do' Iran under Bush 43." Such concern over Tehran is well founded. According to Kwiatkowski and retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner, American Special Forces are already secretly inside Iran, identifying potential targets for future air strikes. The Iranians are of course aware of their uninvited visitors.

The obvious diplomatic recourse is for the Bush Administration to talk to Tehran about our pending exit from Iraq, but the White House refused to do so until late September, when the Bush family's longtime political fixer, former Secretary of State James Baker, entered the picture as a deal-maker. Baker is co-chair, with retired Indiana Democratic Representative Lee Hamilton, of the Congressionally created Iraq Study Group (ISG), which is due to issue a comprehensive report on US options in Iraq after the November elections. After a four-day visit to Iraq, Baker, Hamilton and the eight other members of the bipartisan task force returned to Washington with an obvious recommendation: Start talking to Tehran. After receiving President Bush's immediate approval, Baker invited an unidentified "high representative" of the Iranian government, as well as Syria's foreign minister, to meet with the ISG. Baker realizes the leverage is largely on Iran's side of the table.

An expert on Shiite Islam, Professor Vali Nasr of the Naval Postgraduate School, sees a glaring missed opportunity the ISG could help seize. He suggested in the July-August Foreign Affairs that "Iran will actively seek stability in Iraq only when it no longer benefits from controlled chaos there, that is, when it no longer feels threatened by the United States' presence. Iran's long-term interests are not inherently at odds with those of the United States; it is current U.S. policy toward Iran that has set the countries' respective Iraq policies on a collision course."

General McCaffrey warns that "U.S. public diplomacy and rhetoric about confronting Iranian nuclear weapons development is scaring neighbors in the Gulf. Our Mideast allies believe correctly that they are ill equipped to deal with Iranian strikes to close the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. They do not think they can handle politically or militarily a terrorist threat nested in their domestic Shia populations."

The recent war in Lebanon has only made the prospect of war with Iran more problematic. As Richard Armitage, the astute onetime Navy SEAL and former Deputy Secretary of State, told reporter Seymour Hersh: "When the Israel Defense Forces, the most dominant military force in the region, can't pacify little Lebanon [population: 4 million], you should think twice about taking that template to Iran, with strategic depth and a population of 70 million."

McCaffrey's report raises the possibility that US forces will have to fight their way out of Iraq. He says, "A U.S. military confrontation with Iran could result in [the radical Islamic Mahdi Army's] attacking our forces in Baghdad or along our 400-mile line of communications out of Iraq to the sea." The Bush Administration needs Iranian cooperation for the eventual safe exit of our troops, as General McCaffrey advises. This assumes that the Iranians will not risk World War III by trying to entrap our hostage Army in a humiliating Dunkirk-in-the-desert. After successful negotiations, the United States should be able to withdraw via the southern exit route leading through Kuwait to the Persian Gulf and the blue waters beyond.

Once we get our troops safely out, a newly elected, post-2008 administration in Washington may be able to begin reassembling America's scattered global allies to address the region's problems anew, next time multilaterally, and through diplomacy rather than pre-emptive unilateral military force.

America is a uniquely favored nation that redefines itself in each generation. But we have had a lifetime of embracing one democratic global war, and numerous presidentially inspired, politicized and secret smaller wars that have turned out badly. Sixty-five years after Pearl Harbor, we owe it to the past three generations to resume the debate on our national identity, suspended on December 7, 1941, and foreshortened on September 11, 2001.

In the post-cold war era, we have severely cut back our military manpower, reducing the regular Army to only 480,000 troops, but we have not cut back fantastically expensive Air Force weapons systems or the somewhat more useful but still gold-plated Navy. Nor have we redefined our strategic goals to fit realistically within reduced budgets. We have "paid" for the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan by borrowing heavily from foreign dollar-holders, such as China, that are awash in trade surpluses, and have left debt service to future US generations.

A key argument in the ex-generals' indictment is this undeniable fact: Our armed forces are too small to police and reorder the world and intervene almost blindly, as we have in Iraq. That invasion acted out the world-changing daydreams of pro-Israel neoconservative policy intellectuals like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and others who gained warmaking power and influence atop the Pentagon but who evidently never asked themselves, Suppose we're wrong? What happens then? Sober, realistic Israelis privately fear the neocons' "friendship," and where it has led America, more than any Arab enemies. In the inevitable post-Iraq War tsunami of US political recrimination, such Israelis foresee Christian Zionist evangelicals, whose lobbying muscle in Congress was decisive in the run-up to the Iraq War, attempting to scapegoat the high-profile neocons and endangering Israel's all-important security ties to the United States.

Growing public disgust and frustration with the Iraq War has begun to arouse a self-defeating desire to retreat into isolationism. Rather, the United States should revive the traditional but recently neglected realistic approach to foreign policy, as the ISG is starting to do, and it should begin with a renewed multilateral approach to peacemaking in the Middle East.

source: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/093006X.shtml
-------------------
and the Three (3) Brownwood Generals believe ?

this

or this

"Kissinger referred pointedly to military men as "dumb, stupid animals to be used" as pawns for foreign policy."
source: http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/06/266114.shtml

Are Bush and crew

negligent Warmongers ?

Republican Morality ?

decide for yourself

Who's defending Republican Rick Perry in Brownwood Texas ?

Politics

Sept. 30, 2006, 1:18AM
GOVERNOR'S RACE
Perry accused of giving false hope for major tax cut
Strayhorn ad says savings far below $2,000, while two officials warn bills may actually grow

By PEGGY FIKAC and GARY SCHARRER
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau

AUSTIN — Remember the television ad by Gov. Rick Perry promising an average $2,000 property tax cut for homeowners? As tax notices start arriving in the mail next week, challenger Carole Keeton Strayhorn hopes so.

Strayhorn, state comptroller and independent candidate for governor, launched a statewide television ad Friday that leads off with Perry touting the $2,000 cut, then switches to her mocking the assertion.

"Have you gotten your $2,000 property tax cut yet?" she asks, then warns, "Don't go running to your mailbox."

She says most people will get "just about $52" and most senior citizens, whose taxes already are frozen at lower levels, "get nothing."

Perry spokesman Robert Black said, "We stand by the numbers."

Paying $140 more

The GOP incumbent touted the cut in an ad in May, after lawmakers approved a school finance package lowering local school property tax rates.
Perry's savings estimate didn't take into account school districts' ability to raise local tax rates.

It was calculated over three years based on home sales price, rather than the property value figures used in actual tax levies.

Strayhorn's one-year, $52 estimate assumes higher tax rates and property value appraisals.

Bexar and Harris County tax officials said there won't be a big property tax cut.

In fact, many homeowners could find higher taxes on the way.

The average homeowner living in the Houston Independent School District with a house assessed at $160,000 will pay $140 more, or a 4.2 percent increase over last year, Harris County Tax Collector-Assessor Paul Bettencourt said.

"Anyone who is running on a big tax cut is making a mistake because the numbers don't support it. Call it what it is, it's property tax relief. It's not a tax cut," Bettencourt said.

Bexar County Tax Assessor-Collector Sylvia Romo expects her office to come under siege from angry taxpayers when the first batch of about 600,000 tax notices get mailed next week.

Romo said Perry's promise of a $2,000 tax cut for the average homeowner inflated hopes.

"They're going to say, 'Hey, they promised me I'm going to get a tax cut. Why am I paying more?' "

Romo is preparing a script to help employees deal with irate callers.

"It's my office that has to educate taxpayers and calm down the taxpayers," she said.

Romo said she figured Perry's TV and radio spots would cause trouble because she knew that average San Antonio homeowners wouldn't see the promised savings.

Most Texans will get their tax notices just days or weeks before the Nov. 7 election.

"These people are going to vote emotionally," she said. "They are going to say, 'You lied to us.' That's the bottom line."

Defending Perry

Black said Perry — who faces Strayhorn, Democrat Chris Bell, independent Kinky Friedman and Libertarian James Werner on Nov. 7 — deserves credit for tackling education and taxes and for now focusing on rising appraisals that eat into tax savings.
"Carole Strayhorn is the first comptroller in modern history to refuse to offer her own plan to reform school finance, and now she is throwing rocks to cover up her own failure," Black said.

But Strayhorn spokesman Mark Sanders said, "Carole has outlined a comprehensive education reform package, and it doesn't include a fake $2,000 tax cut. I can understand why the Perry people are so vitriolic on this issue. They know it's going to hurt them badly."

While Strayhorn is touting Perry's ad, Perry's campaign Web site isn't.

Black said the Perry camp redesigned its site and didn't re-post the May ad because "we didn't consider that a campaign ad," though it was financed with campaign funds.

Austin bureau chief Clay Robison contributed to this report.

source: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/politics/4225710.html

Small Town "Terrorists" are created in Small Towns by fellow Small Town "Terrorists" !

Principal shot at school dies from wounds
Student charged with homicide, complaint says he admits guilt

Updated: 6:50 p.m. CT Sept 29, 2006

CAZENOVIA, Wis. - A school principal shot Friday morning by a student died a few hours later while in surgery, the University of Wisconsin-Madison hospital said Friday.
The 15-year-old was taken into custody and charged with first-degree intentional homicide, the district attorney said. No one else was hurt.
The homecoming weekend shooting happened one day after Weston Schools Principal John Klang gave the student, Eric Hainstock, a disciplinary warning for having tobacco on school grounds, the criminal complaint said.
Hainstock had told a friend the principal would not “make it through homecoming,” the complaint said.
Hainstock said that a group of kids had teased him by calling him “fag” and “faggot” and by rubbing up against him, the complaint said, and the teen felt teachers and the principal wouldn't do anything about it.
Hainstock said he decided to confront students, teachers and the principal with the guns to make them listen to him, according to the complaint.
Friday morning, he pried open his family's gun cabinet, took out a shotgun and then took a handgun from his parent's bedroom, the complaint said.
The complaint said he shot the principal intentionally three times.
Witnesses said the student walked in with a shotgun before classes began. A custodian, teachers and students wrestled with him.
The custodian said the teen was a special-education student who told him he was there to kill someone, but did not say who.
“He was calm, but he was on a mission,” said Dave Thompson, 43, who also has two children at the school.
Second gun used
Thompson said the student first pointed a shotgun in a teacher’s face. Thompson grabbed the gun, but the student then appeared to be reaching for another gun, so Thompson and the teacher took cover. Thompson then ran into a kitchen to call 911.
Junior Timmy Donovan said the student “pulled a .22 pistol out of his pants, and then started shooting the principal. And at that point, I guess the principal ran and tackled him to the ground.”
Klang, 49, was shot in the head, chest and leg, authorities said.
Hainstock could get life in prison if convicted, District Attorney Patricia Barrett said. Wisconsin does not have the death penalty.
Sophomore Shelly Rupp, 16, described the boy as a freshman with few friends and said he was “just weird in the head.”
“He always used to kid around about bringing things to school and hurting kids,” she said at a gas station nearby where students and townspeople gathered.
Children from pre-kindergarten to 12th grade attend the small school near Cazenovia, a community of about 300 people about 60 miles northwest of Madison.
The shooting took place two days after a gunman took six students hostage in a Colorado high school and killed one of them before committing suicide.
'Kids just loved' principal
The shooting happened as the school was preparing for homecoming weekend. The homecoming parade, football game and dance were canceled or postponed.
School officials said Klang had more than 20 years of experience with the district, beginning as a school board member, and described him as kind, compassionate and soft-spoken.
Rupp called Klang a good principal who always listened to his students. Resident Laurie Rhea, 42, said Klang had spent last weekend at the gas station washing cars for a homecoming fundraiser.
“It’s horrible. All the kids just loved him,” she said.

source: http://www.rawstory.com/showoutarticle.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.msnbc.msn.com%2Fid%2F15060698%2F

Foley's "Family Values", Bush's" Turd Blossom, Republican Reporter Jeff Gannon, and Texas' Koon Kreek Klub

Congressman resigns after former page questions e-mails
POSTED: 5:54 p.m. EDT, September 29, 2006

From CNN's Dana Bash
CNN Washington Bureau
Adjust font size:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Rep. Mark Foley, a Republican from Florida, resigned Friday from the House, a day after a former congressional page questioned e-mails Foley had sent to him.

Foley apparently sent the e-mails in August 2005, when the male page was 16 years old.

"Today I have delivered a letter to the speaker of the House informing him of my decision to resign from the U.S. House of Representatives, effective today. I thank the people of Florida's 16th Congressional District for giving me the opportunity to serve them for the last twelve years; it has been an honor," Foley said in a written statement.

"I am deeply sorry and I apologize for letting down my family and the people of Florida I have had the privilege to represent."

In the e-mails, which were obtained by the Washington-based Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Foley discussed a second page, saying "I just emailed [him]... hes such a nice guy... acts much older than his age... hes in great shape... i am just finished riding my bike on a 25 mile journey now heading to the gym... whats school like for you this year?"

Foley then asked the page for a picture.

The young man, who forwarded the e-mails to another congressional staffer, called the e-mails "sick, sick, sick."

"Maybe it is just me being paranoid, but seriously. This freaks me out," the page wrote in the e-mails obtained by CREW.

A spokesman for Foley told CNN the congressman acknowledged he had an e-mail exchange with the former page but flatly denied that it was anything inappropriate.

Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois said he supported Foley's resignation.

"He's done, as of now; he's done the right thing," Hastert said. "I've asked John Shimkus, who is the head of the Page board, to look into this issue regarding Congressman Foley. We want to make sure that all of our pages are safe, and the page system is safe."

"None of us are very happy about it," Hastert said.

According to GOP sources, Foley is concerned there may be other potential politically damaging e-mails or information out there and has concluded it's best not to run again for office.

Foley, who is considered a moderate, has been in office for six-terms.

His Democratic opponent in the race, Tim Mahoney, called for an investigation into the matter Thursday. Mahoney's campaign denied having anything to do with the information getting out.

Before the questions about the e-mails surfaced, Foley was was expected to win re-election by a wide margin.

The resignation comes within six weeks of the midterm elections in which control of Congress could come down to a handful of seats. The Democrats need 15 seats to end over a decade of Republican control of the House.

According to The Associated Press, Florida Republicans could name a replacement candidate for Foley as soon as Monday. Foley's name will appear on the midterm ballots and cannot be changed, but any votes for Foley will count toward the party's choice, AP reported.

source: http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/09/29/congressman.e.mails/index.html
----------------
Wonder how Republican Reporter Jeff "Softball" Gannon would report the Foley story ? What, you're a Republican and you don't know who Jeff "Softball" Gannon is or what he's been up to for YOU ?

here's your Man

Bush's "Turd Blossom"

Anybody seen or heard from Bush's, "Architect" and "Turd Blossom", Karl Rove ? Maybe he's been lounging and strategizing at the Koon Kreek Klub in East Texas for you and your fellow Pontificating "Family Values" Republicans !

KKK

Do you think that this is the story that motivates Bush's "Turd Blossom" ?

read more here

--------------
In his (Foley's) own words regarding Bill Clinton:

It's vile," said Rep. Mark Foley, R-West Palm Beach. "It's more sad than anything else, to see someone with such potential throw it all down the drain because of a sexual addiction."
source: http://www.sptimes.com/Worldandnation/91298/Congress_sees_through.html
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"Don't Mess With Texas" : A Slogan and Two (1 and 2) Texas Tales.

1) News

Don’t Mess With Texas

Gay governors, oil money, KKK fish camps and Karl Rove
By Lou Dubose
Thursday, September 16, 2004 - 12:00 am

In the early ’90s, before we learned Governor Ann Richards was a lesbian, only the political cognoscenti in Texas knew Karl Rove’s name. Richards lost to George W. Bush in 1994, though before the race began, she had approval ratings in the 70s. She made the mistake of underestimating Bush, dismissing him with her signature-mark humor. She also underestimated Rove. And probably never believed he would dare to out her. The fact that she was a grandmother and a heterosexual provided her a false sense of security.

It didn’t stop Karl Rove then. And the truth is not something that is likely to get in Karl Rove’s way now. The campaign tactics Rove developed in the state that serves as the national proving ground for bad politics and policy suggest that there’s more to come for disabled swift-boat veteran John Kerry. And that he’d better respond, before he’s an entry in Politicalgraveyard.com.

East Texas was the political nut the Republicans had tried for years to crack. Culturally conservative, Christian, racially divided, yet historically Democratic in voting habits, Republican strategists saw it as a place where only African-Americans should have been voting Democratic. It was also the field-and-stream playground of the Dallas Social Registry. The Republican governor who preceded Richards, the owners of The Dallas Morning News, and the most prominent members of the old Dallas oil oligarchy weekended there at a racially exclusive fin-and-feather camp called the Koon Kreek Klub. The pun involving “coons” and KKK was hardly accidental, and provides some insight into the raw racial politics of the region.

George W. wasn’t a KKK fisherman. But he had a weekend place at the nearby Rainbow Club, which is as segregated as the old-line Koon Kreek, where memberships were no longer available when he showed up in Dallas. But the Bush family has never been racist. So it was unlikely that George W. would have agreed to play the race card. The queer card is another matter. That’s the card the Bush campaign played when a highly regarded Republican whom Karl Rove had helped elect to the state Senate spoke out about the sexual orientation of some women close to Governor Richards. “It’s simply not part of their culture, and frankly not part of mine,” the senator said of his East Texas constituents, “that [homosexuality] is something we encourage, reward, or acknowledge as an acceptable situation.” On the other side of the state’s Pine Curtain, the suggestion that the governor had gay associates was enough to create real doubts among voters. A whispering campaign that raised questions about Richards’ sexual orientation closed the deal.

No one ever traced the character assassination to Rove. Yet no one doubts that Rove was behind it. It’s a process on which he holds a patent. Identify your opponent’s strength, and attack it so relentlessly that it becomes a liability. Richards was admired because she promised and delivered a “government that looked more like the people of the state.” That included the appointment of blacks, Hispanics, and gays and lesbians. Rove made that asset a liability.

What worked to defeat Ann Richards in 1994 worked to defeat John McCain in 2000. As with John Kerry, McCain’s strength was his stature as a war hero. When he defeated George W. Bush in the New Hampshire Republican primary, the campaign moved to South Carolina — where Bush had to win to regain his credibility. In South Carolina, with its large population of veterans, McCain was attacked for his strength. The Republican senator faced a whispering campaign that implied that the time he spent as a prisoner of war in Vietnam had broken him, made him so mentally unstable he was unfit to be president. An ad campaign accused him of abandoning his Vietnam veterans after he returned home. Push polls raised the issue of his mental stability. He lost and never recovered.

Rove insisted he had nothing to do with it. Yet when Dallas Morning News reporter Wayne Slater reported that the attack on McCain was similar to what Rove had done to Ann Richards six years earlier, and to the Texas Democratic attorney general two years after that, Rove publicly confronted him, shouting and shoving on the tarmac in front of the campaign plane.

The White House is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. So no reporter will have access to Karl Rove’s phone logs and appointment calendars, to prove the nature of his involvement with the Swift Boat Veterans’ attack on John Kerry. But few in Texas who pay attention to politics harbor any doubt that the Swift Boat attack against John Kerry is the work of the Bush political consultant with an office in the West Wing. The unanimous consensus of his political biographers — Jan Reid and me, who wrote Boy Genius, and Slater and Jim Moore, who wrote Bush’s Brain — is: Rove did it.

It’s the total Rove package. When a race is close, launch a collateral attack against your opponent’s greatest asset. (It’s best if it is tied to some truth: Richards had appointed two lesbians to positions of real power. McCain had been a POW in Vietnam. Kerry had served on a swift boat.) Keep your own candidate aloof from the controversy. Be persistent; if your opponent is explaining his position, he’s losing. And leave no fingerprints.

And denials notwithstanding, Karl Rove is always in complete charge of every detail and decision of his candidate’s campaign. Richards would never have been attacked without Rove’s plan to do so. McCain would have never been attacked without Rove’s direct participation in the planning. John Kerry would never have been attacked by Bush campaign surrogates unless Karl was in the deal.

Then there is the money.

Rove started his political career in Texas by building the first big Republican Party donor database, at a time when all the statewide offices and the Legislature were in Democratic hands. By 2000, Rove’s donor database and brilliant (if ruthless) campaign tactics had eliminated the last Democrat from statewide office. He did it in the Wild West of campaign finance, where anyone can write a check for any amount and the Texas sky is the limit. Now we learn that the first big funder of the Swift Boat ads was Bob Perry, who provided an early $200,000. Perry was the campaign treasurer for Bill Clements, the retired Republican governor who is probably fishing at the Koon Kreek Klub today. Rove ran Clements’ campaign — and pulled off a remarkable last-minute comeback in the polls by finding a bugging device in his own office and claiming that it was placed there by his Democratic opponent (though it was later traced back to Rove himself). Although he only recently made the national news, Perry is the godfather of modern Republican Texas, a Houston homebuilder who contributed $5.2 million to the state’s Republican candidates and political action committees since 2000 (according to Texans for Public Justice, which tracks political spending in the state).

Last week the other boot dropped. Texas oilman and corporate raider T. Boone Pickens contributed $500,000 to the Swift Boat campaign against John Kerry. Pickens is a seasoned Bush donor and a charter member of Team 100 — donors who contributed $100,000 each to Bush Sr.’s 1988 presidential campaign.

Pickens was here long before the Bushes arrived; he met Poppy Bush in the ’50s, when Bush showed up in West Texas to make his fortune in the oil patch. Rove came later. After reports in the Washington Post about an FBI examination into his clandestine school for young Republicans, Rove was investigated by the senior George Bush, then the Republican Party chairman cleaning up after Watergate. Bush concluded his inquiry and offered Rove a job in Houston.

It wasn’t virtue that Bush was rewarding.

Funny how things work out sometimes.

source: http://www.laweekly.com/news/news/dont-mess-with-texas/1345/
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2) ADVERTISING
'Don't mess with Texas' named top ad slogan

Austin agency rounded up 400,000 votes for famed anti-litter slogan.
By Lilly Rockwell
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, September 29, 2006

The most famous advertising slogan to come out of Texas certainly lived up to its name.

"Don't mess with Texas" won a national advertising slogan contest today, beating out 25 other slogans such as Nike's "Just do it" and the Ad Council's "Friends don't let friends drive drunk."

The winner was selected through an "American Idol"-style online voting drive that started in June and ended Thursday. The contest was part of Advertising Week, the industry's annual event in New York.

Thanks to an aggressive get-out-the vote drive and e-mail campaign sponsored by GSD&M, the Austin agency that originated the slogan, and Tuerff-Davis EnviroMedia Inc., which runs the campaign now, the slogan won by a landslide, with more than 400,000 votes.

The slogan will be displayed on banners along a block of New York's Madison Avenue and will be permanently recognized in the Advertising Icon Museum in Kansas City, Mo., which is expected to open in 2008.

"It is pretty incredible that 'Don't mess with Texas,' a state agency slogan, managed to edge out sexy Madison Avenue advertising slogans like 'Just do it,' " said Valerie Davis, CEO of EnviroMedia.

The idea was to get as many Texans as possible to vote, Davis said. The agency enlisted help from the University of Texas Alumni Association and did an online campaign with the latest "Don't mess with Texas" commercial, featuring Matthew McConaughey and Lance Armstrong. It had a link attached so people could vote.

Meanwhile, the "Don't mess with Texas" account came up for review during the summer. EnviroMedia got to keep its high-profile client for another three years.

"Don't mess With Texas" is an anti-litter campaign run by the Texas Department of Transportation.

The famous slogan was created by Tim McClure, a co-founder of GSD&M. GSD&M held the "Don't mess with Texas" account until 1998, when it gave up the account.

McClure said he thought of the slogan during an early morning walk around his neighborhood the day before his agency was going to make its final pitch to the Texas Department of Transportation.

At first, McClure said, agency officials were cool to the idea and wanted to change it to the more polite "Please, don't mess with Texas."

But, McClure said the commanding "Don't mess with Texas" won out. It really got into the DNA of Texans, he said, and was an instant sensation when the first commercial, featuring Stevie Ray Vaughan, aired during the 1986 Super Bowl.

Twenty years later, the slogan has become ingrained in pop culture, emblazoned on T-shirts and bumper stickers and invoked by athletes and politicians.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of "Don't mess with Texas," GSD&M founders Roy Spence and McClure wrote a book about how it was created and the various advertising campaigns surrounding it.

lrockwell@statesman.com; 445-3819
source: http://www.statesman.com/business/content/business/stories/other/09/30/30dontmess.html

Kinky Friedman: Speaking TRUTH to Words

Kinky address borders, gays and his past statements

By MICHAEL RODDEN
The Daily Sentinel
Thursday, September 28, 2006

The Twilight Ballroom at SFA campus was full of "Kinky Fever" Thursday as independent gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman spoke about current issues and fielded questions from the audience.

His first point was that he is not a politician. Politics, he defined as "poly," meaning more than one, and "ticks," meaning blood-sucking parasites."

Friedman addressed topics such as border security, legalized gambling, gay marriage, prayer in schools and the TAKS test, and he clarified statements he has made in the past.

"It's nothing personal," Friedman said of the other candidates running for the governor's seat," But I think everybody is ready for a change."

He said the race is about "Kinky against apathy," and if the people of Texas show up to the polls, Perry's gone.

In the last gubernatorial election, only 29 percent of Texans voted, and Friedman said the number needs to rise to around 40 percent. He encouraged younger people to vote to make the numbers rise.

One issue that requires a change is the lack of security on Texas' border, said Friedman, who proposes sending 10,000 troops to secure the border "now!"

He said the minimal troops that are at the border have "weapons, but no ammo" and they don't have the power to get the job done.

"They are down there for show," he said.

I.D. cards issued following background checks would allow immigrants to work in Texas, and stricter punishments for employers who hire illegal immigrants would improve the situation, Friedman said.

Clarifying previous statements he made on Hurricane Katrina evacuees, Friedman said only a small number of the evacuees are responsible for the rising crime rate in Houston. He said he was previously misquoted as generalizing all of them as "crackheads and thugs."

"This is not racial, in any way. If it were Corpus Christi spring-breakers who were killing people, I would send money to Corpus Christi to put more cops on the street," Friedman said. "That's what I want — more police on the streets in Houston."

Friedman defended himself by saying he is "not a racist, but a realist."

One of Friedman's main stances in the governor's race is regarding Texas' energy situation. He said he wants to wean Texas off of the "dinosaur wine."

As soon as a sizeable number of Texans try bio-diesel, he said. "you'll find that the environment gets cleaner, the engine gets cleaner, the prices at the pumps drops, and they stay down."

"Then we would have the chance to lead the American parade once, instead of following it — to be first in renewable fuels," Friedman said.

You will not find a candidate as diverse as he is, Friedman said. He is for gay marriage and prayer in schools. The major parties won't let their candidates support both, he said.

"Boy, I'm so glad he (Rick Perry) spent all this time banning gay marriage while education, immigration and the environment are all cratering in Texas," Friedman said. "In education we rank 50th, right now. Guam and Samoa are sneaking up on us, right now."

Part of the blame has to do with the TAKS test, according to Friedman. He said students should be taught more than just what will be on the test.

As a way to help fund education, Friedman said legalizing gambling could bring in the much-needed funds instead of Texans sending their money to surrounding states through gambling.

"If you don't want it here, then vote it out. It will be a local option," Friedman said. "For places like Galveston and Padre, it's going to be huge."

He said this will bring in a steady revenue for education and would also lower property taxes. Friedman also wants Native Americans to be able to open casinos on their lands.

"I am 100-percent sure this would pass," he said. "We are only fueling the economies of five other states."

Recently, Friedman was reported as saying he wanted to legalize marijuana, but he took the time to clarify what he said he really meant Thursday.

"Legalizing marijuana is not bright; decriminalizing is the way to go, for many reasons," Friedman said.

People make mistakes, he said, and not all should go to prison or have a criminal record for it.

"We don't have enough room in our prisons for the really bad people, like pedophiles and politicians," Friedman said.

Many people flocked to voter registration tables that were set up, and Friedman was available to sign autographs, meet and talk with people after the event.

"I will sign anything but bad legislation," Friedman said.

source: http://www.dailysentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2006/09/29/kinky_9_29.html
-------------------
Pot Decrim a Kinky Idea

With new FBI crime stats revealing that more than 800,000 pot users were arrested last year – the vast majority for mere possession – at a cost of some $10 billion per year (see "Weed Watch," p.24), the pot decriminalization stance being taken by indie gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman doesn't sound as off-the-wall as pot prohibitionist politicos might have you believe. During a recent editorial board meeting with the Associated Press, Friedman said he supports legalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana as a means to free up jail and prison space and financial resources that would be better spent on drug education, prevention, and rehab programs. He also supports legalizing medi-pot for use by seriously ill patients on the advice of a physician, said his spokeswoman Laura Stromberg. While Friedman's pot decrim position may be a hard sell for status quo drug-war-addicted pols (with the exception of a handful of Texas legislators, most notably Houston Rep. Harold Dutton, who authored a decrim bill last session), his medi-pot position could have legs. So far, legislators on both sides of the aisle – including Austin Democrat Elliott Naishtat, outgoing Austin GOP Rep. Terry Keel, and Rep. Suzanna Gratia Hupp, R-Lampasas – have thrown their support behind medi-pot legislation. Each medi-pot bill has languished in committee, but as support for such a measure continues to grow, it's clear that medi-pot will remain a perennial issue under the dome – one that could finally find sunlight with a little gubernatorial support. – Jordan Smith


Friedman Fights Off Racism Charges

Kinky Friedman was forced on the defensive last week for racial slurs he made during a 1980 stand-up comedy performance in Houston, explaining his use of the n-word was a satirical dig at bigotry. The independent candidate for governor refuses to apologize for the remarks, which first surfaced on the Burnt Orange Report Web site and drew immediate criticism from his campaign rivals and African-American leaders.
"I'm not a racist, I'm a realist, and fuck 'em if they can't take a joke," Friedman said Friday from New York, where he was attending a fundraiser. "I was an equal opportunity offender," he said. "I was one of the first. Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor were ahead of me; Chris Rock was after me."
Friedman was especially critical of Gov. Rick Perry for weighing in on the racial comments. "Now he thinks he's Jesse Jackson," he said. "He's shocked by comments about people of color – that really takes the prize. This is the man who told gays to leave Texas if they didn't like the ban on gay marriage."
News of his 1980 comments followed another stir he created earlier this month when he referred to the Katrina evacuees in Houston as "crackheads and thugs." Most of the evacuees in Houston are black. Additionally, opponents dusted off a video of a CNBC interview last year when he announced what he would do with sexual predators: "Throw them in prison and throw away the key, and make them listen to a Negro talking to himself." The line appeared in one of his earlier mystery novels. The CNBC interview drew little attention at the time because Friedman wasn't considered a serious candidate. But recent polls show him neck-and-neck with Democrat Chris Bell and ahead of fellow indie Carole Keeton Strayhorn, both of whom desperately need Friedman out of the way to close in on Perry. Said Kinky: "The fact that this is popping up now is great news for us."
Friedman has backed off of other incendiary comments he's made. He says he no longer supports the war in Iraq, and he doesn't really hate young people, nor does he support teenage suicides, as he has stated in several interviews. On the war, he says, "It's clear to me that Willie [Nelson] was right. I lost a thousand dollar bet to Willie on that. I bet that Bush and Blair would be heroes within a matter of months [after the invasion], and Willie won a thousand bucks from me, which he still hasn't collected." He also says he's re-evaluated his thoughts about young people, the group his campaign is targeting to drive up voter turnout in November. "I would say that the evidence today is that teenagers love Kinky, and there's hardly any of them in Texas who want to grow up to be like Rick Perry," he said. "Young people and I are getting along really well right now. Maybe because we both feel that we're bucking the system, and maybe there's a connection there." – Amy Smith

source: http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A406134

Bush keeping company with Kissinger

Woodward: Kissinger pays regular visits to President Bush; Every 15 minutes Iraqi insurgents attack troops

RAW STORY
Published: Thursday September 28, 2006

According to Pulitzer-winning Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger makes regular visits to see President Bush. Woodward also blasts the Bush Administration for not telling the truth about the violence in Iraq.

Woodward is set to appear on Sunday's edition of 60 Minutes to talk about his new book, State of Denial: Bush at War III, which will hit bookstores on Monday.

"According to Woodward, insurgent attacks against coalition troops occur, on average, every 15 minutes, a shocking fact the administration has kept secret," CBS News reports.

"It’s getting to the point now where there are eight-, nine-hundred attacks a week," Woodward tells Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes.

"That's more than 100 a day," says Woodward. "That is four an hour attacking our forces."

Gossip columnist Liz Smith first reported the scoop about Kissinger in her column published earlier today in The New York Post.

"One thing the book will tell us is that former Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger is a regular visitor to President Bush," wrote Smith.

"The president likes to receive visits from Nixon's former and most famous aide, and he urges Dr. Kissinger to call him anytime he is in Washington," the column continued.

"This will come as a surprise to the many who think the president doesn't listen to anybody," Smith wrote.

Kissinger served as National Security Advisor under President Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1973, then became Secretary of State. He continued in that position with President Gerald Ford after Nixon resigned in 1974, remaining until Ford's term of office ended in 1977.

Nixon's resignation came in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, which Woodward had broken with his former writing partner Carl Bernstein.

In November of 2002, President Bush appointed Kissinger to head the independent 9/11 Commission, but Kissinger stepped down after many 9/11 families complained, citing possible conflicts of interest due to his consulting firm.

Excerpts from CBS report:

The situation is getting much worse, says Woodward, despite what the White House and the Pentagon are saying in public. "The truth is that the assessment by intelligence experts is that next year, 2007, is going to get worse and, in public, you have the president and you have the Pentagon [saying], 'Oh, no, things are going to get better,'" he tells Wallace. "Now there’s public, and then there’s private. But what did they do with the private? They stamp it secret. No one is supposed to know," says Woodward.

"The insurgents know what they are doing. They know the level of violence and how effective they are. Who doesn't know? The American public," Woodward tells Wallace.

Woodward also reports that the president and vice president often meet with Henry Kissinger, who was President Richard Nixon’s secretary of state, as an adviser. Says Woodward, "Now what’s Kissinger’s advice? In Iraq, he declared very simply, ‘Victory is the only meaningful exit strategy.'" Woodward adds. "This is so fascinating. Kissinger’s fighting the Vietnam War again because, in his view, the problem in Vietnam was we lost our will."

President Bush is absolutely certain that he has the U.S. and Iraq on the right course, says Woodward. So certain is the president on this matter, Woodward says, that when Mr. Bush had key Republicans to the White House to discuss Iraq, he told them, "I will not withdraw, even if Laura and Barney are the only ones supporting me."

source: http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Woodward_Henry_Kissinger_pays_regular_visits_0928.html
----------------------
Military Men Are Dumb, Stupid Animals
author: doubleplusgood
many people have asked about the origin of a quote from Henry Kissinger regarding military men, which came from Woodward and Bernstein's "The Final Days" (1976). Here is the complete paragraph--and for context, the one following--excerpted from pages 194-195 of the second Touchstone paperback edition (1994).

Alexander Haig, newly appointed White House chief of staff, greets newsmen in H. R. Haldeman's former office on May 4, 1973. (UPI / Bettmann)
====================
In their December 1975 Foreword to "The Final Days", Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein state that the book is based on interviews and re-interviews with 394 people, concentrating on the last 100 days of Nixon's administration. None of the quotes or information in the book is individually footnoted or referenced--they do mention that "we did not accord equal weight to all sources," and that "nothing in this book has been reconstructed without accounts from at least two people."

Authors Woodward and Bernstein also note that "The Final Days" is "the work of four people. Scott Armstrong, a former Senate Watergate Committee investigator, and Al Kamen, a free-lance writer/researcher, assisted us full time in the reporting, research and some of the writing."

Kissinger's quote regarding miltary men comes from Chapter 14, which extensively discusses Al Haig, Kissinger and other Nixon staff advisors' negotiations and differences over national security issues during the 1969-1974 period.

The exact, direct quote marks begin with the word 'dumb' and terminate after the word 'used'.

Here is the FULL KISSINGER QUOTE verbatim from the bottom two lines of page 194 to line 14 of page 195:

====================
[paragraph]
In Haig's presence, Kissinger referred pointedly to military men as "dumb, stupid animals to be used" as pawns for foreign policy. Kissinger often took up a post outside the doorway to Haig's office and dressed him down in front of the secretaries for alleged acts of incompetence with which Haig was not even remotely involved. Once when the Air Force was authorized to resume bombing of North Vietnam, the planes did not fly on certain days because of bad weather. Kissinger assailed Haig. He complained bitterly that the generals had been screamin for the limits to be taken off but that now their pilots were afraid to go up in a little fog. The country needed generals who could win battles, Kissinger said, not good briefers like Haig.

[paragraph]
On another occasion, when Haig was leaving for a trip to Cambodia to meet with Premier Lon Nol, Kissinger escorted him to a staff car, where reporters and a retinue of aides waited. As Haig bent to get into the automobile, Kissinger stopped him and began polishing the single star on his shoulder. "Al, if you're a good boy, I'll get you another one," he said.
====================
SOURCE:

Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein
The Final Days
second Touchstone paperback edition (1994)
Chapter 14, pp. 194-195

source: http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/06/266114.shtml

Southern Baptists and Bush

Posted on Fri, Sep. 29, 2006

Baptist group still backs Bush, official says
By ROSE FRENCH
The Associated Press

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The head of public policy for the Southern Baptist Convention says an overwhelming majority of Baptists still support President Bush and his handling of the Iraq war.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday, Richard Land said exit polls showed that about 84 percent of Southern Baptists voted for Bush in 2004. The Iraq war hasn't significantly eroded that support, he said, despite recent polls that show Republicans losing ground with moderate evangelicals.

"I'm not ready to throw in the towel on Iraq yet," said Land, president of the Washington-based Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the Southern Baptist Convention's public policy division.

"It would be foolish to say anybody's pleased," Land said. "I don't think the president's pleased with the progress of the war. Clearly, he would have wished things would have gone better. So do I."

But, Land added: "I still think Iraq is one of the more noble things we've done. We went there to try to restore freedom and to bring freedom to the Middle East."

An Associated Press-Ipsos poll conducted this month indicated that 42 percent of white evangelicals disapprove of the job Bush has done as president.

But Land says that Bush has lost less support from Southern Baptists than "virtually any other constituency." The Nashville-based Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S. with more than 16 million members.

"I don't think there's any question that the vast majority of Southern Baptists still strongly support this president and his policies," Land said.

Southern Baptists have been among the most vocal of conservative Christian groups in support of the Bush administration.

www.sbc.net

source: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/nation/15638339.htm

TXU, In The News

Dateline Brownwood Texas: TXU donation to United Way
Originally uploaded by photosteve.

Posted on Wed, Sep. 27, 2006

Texas power play is alleged
By R.A. DYER
STAR-TELEGRAM AUSTIN BUREAU

AUSTIN — Although not named specifically, TXU Corp. appears to be the subject of an expert’s findings that a top Texas energy supplier engaged in anti-competitive market manipulation similar to that associated with Enron during the California power crisis.

The recent report, issued by a consulting firm hired by the Texas Public Utility Commission, noted that a company with at least 13,000 megawatts of capacity withheld some generation during key periods in 2005. The result would have been higher wholesale electric prices, potentially more revenue for the company and the likelihood of higher electric bills for consumers.

The only company in Texas with 13,000 megawatts of capacity is TXU. The findings parallel a report issued last year by the same consultants. “Based on these analyses, we find patterns that are suggestive of economic withholding that raise competitive concerns,” the most recent report says.

TXU spokesman Chris Schein called the report “Monday morning quarterbacking” but also said he didn’t know whether TXU was the company it referred to.

“They are looking back with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight as to what could have been done, while ignoring consideration for the real-world information,” Schein said. “The report assumes that generators have perfect foresight.”

The report — issued in July by Potomac Economics of Fairfax, Va. — references wholesale market activity from 2005. In one section it examines the potential for companies to drive up wholesale electric prices by holding back energy from more efficient generators during key periods.

It describes three companies only with the initials A, B and C and states that “given the large size of Company C’s portfolio, the pattern observed . . . raises significant concerns.” It notes that regulators should take a closer look at Company C’s activities during 2005.

Terry Hadley, a spokesman for the PUC, said the agency would not identify Company C without first beginning an “enforcement action,” which can lead to sanctions or fines. Hadley would not say whether the PUC was contemplating such action. “We are always monitoring the market . . . but I’m not going to speculate where we are” with regard to a formal investigation, Hadley said.

But evidence within the report points to TXU, several experts say.

Tim Morstad, an official with the Office of Public Utility Counsel that represents consumer interests, said the Texas electric company with the second-largest generation capacity is Houston’s NRG Energy. According to a company Web site, it has less than 11,000 megawatts of capacity, Morstad said.

So it appears that TXU, which owns or leases more than 18,000 megawatts of capacity, is the only Texas company that could meet the description of Company C. “If found true, this type of behavior both raises prices and erodes consumer confidence in the market,” Morstad said.

Two years ago, the PUC issued a similar report from Potomac Economics that also concluded that TXU can unilaterally drive up wholesale power prices. It noted that if left unchecked, the utility could use such monopolistic power to block out competition.

Although it then found no evidence of undue profits, “TXU clearly had the ability to substantially increase . . . energy prices,” the earlier report said. It characterized TXU’s trading practices during a six-week period in 2004 as “non consistent with competition” and said the company sometimes acted as a pivotal supplier of electricity — meaning it had the “absolute” ability to substantially increase prices.

It called for additional monitoring but stated that it appeared that TXU had reduced or eliminated the questionable trading practices. At the time, TXU’s Schein said that “there’s a lot of innuendo in the report that isn’t fair” and that the company never engaged in improper activities.

The company’s trading practices also came under regulatory scrutiny after a cold snap in February 2003, when energy that typically sold below $50 a megawatt-hour shot up to $990.

But the latest report comes at a particularly awkward moment for the company. TXU is seeking permits to build a batch of new coal plants — an initiative that has become an issue in the Texas governor’s race.

The new plants would increase its generating capacity by half, but environmental groups also say the facilities would dramatically add to the type of air pollution that causes global warming.

Separately, an Aug. 27 report by a Michigan State University researcher has noted the potential for market manipulation in deregulated markets across the country. It noted that electric prices have gone up faster in deregulated states that have lifted price caps than prices in states that remained regulated.

Under the Texas electric-deregulation law, the “price to beat” — a regulated price paid by most Texans — will expire at the end of December.

“The evidence suggests that, at least so far, no discernable benefit can be seen for customers in restructured states once the rate caps have expired,” Kenneth Rose wrote in the report drafted on behalf of the Virginia State Corporation Commission.

Staff writer Dan Piller contributed to this report.

R.A. Dyer, 512-476-4294
rdyer@star-telegram.com

source: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/15624161.htm

AIDS screening makes sense

AIDS screening makes sense

Published on: 09/25/06

Nearly three decades into the AIDS epidemic, public health officials are finally recommending that all teenagers and most adults be tested, at least once, for HIV.

The proposal, announced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week, represents a seismic shift from the early days of the deadly epidemic, when public policy yielded to objections from activists that those who tested positive would be socially ostracized if AIDS testing became a routine part of medical screenings.

Those fears were not always unfounded. The disease, which at the time claimed lives quickly, struck homosexual men hardest. And people with AIDS often found themselves fighting for insurance coverage and against discrimination in the workplace and elsewhere.

But with new treatments that prolong life and better anti-discrimination laws, those fears have settled considerably over the last 15 years. Moreover, the face of the epidemic has also changed. Many of the newest infections are among members of ethnic minority groups, teenagers and women who acquire it through heterosexual transmission. Routine screening for the virus makes much more sense.

Fifty to 70 percent of all new cases in the United States are now being diagnosed in people who were unaware of their AIDS status, the CDC says. The agency's research has shown that once people are aware that they are infected, they take steps to protect themselves and their sexual partners.

The new recommendations call for physicians to offer HIV testing of all teenagers and adults up to age 64 as a routine part of any health screenings, like those now offered for cholesterol and blood sugar levels.

They also call for all pregnant women to be tested at least once, and those who report having multiple sex partners or who inject drugs should be tested twice — at least once late in their pregnancy to prevent passing the virus on to their babies. (Since AIDS testing has become more routine for pregnant women, the number of babies born with the virus has dropped from 1,650 in 1991 to fewer than 250 last year.)

Patients would be offered the option of declining the test, and as a practical matter most of those adult patients in long-term monogamous relationships may not want it, experts believe. Still, physicians should raise the issue for them to consider, the CDC says.

Most of the recommendations can be implemented in routine physician interaction with patients, but some may require a change in state laws. For instance, the CDC recommends that states no longer require separate, signed consent forms or that the patient go through lengthy counseling before testing.

Since the start of the epidemic, 500,000 Americans have died from the disease, and more than 1 million have been infected. As many as 250,000 people do not know they are infected.

If AIDS testing becomes a routine part of a medical screening for these patients, the nation will get closer to three goals — no more HIV-infected children, no one with it going for years without treatment and eventually no more new cases of the disease.

— Mike King, for the editorial board

source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial Sep 25, 4:00 PM
-----------------

living lies and destroying lives

Brownwood, Know what time it is ? It's State Fair of Texas Time where "everybody" is welcome !

Posted on Tue, Sep. 26, 2006

By John Austin
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

It can't be too long until the State Fair of Texas opens when Big Tex has hit the Midway in Dallas.

The talking cowboy began life as a Santa Claus statue that didn't wave, speak or move its head.

State Fair President and future Dallas Mayor R.L. Thornton paid $750 for the figure in 1951 and had it converted into a cowboy.

Thanks to some cosmetic surgery, an improved 3-ton steel armature and regular wardrobe updates, the biggest Texan should be looking good when the fair begins with a parade Friday.

ALL ABOUT BIG TEX

Date of birth: 1949

Place of birth: Kerens

Original name: Kris Kringle

Voice: Bill Bragg, right, is the cowboy's seventh voice.

Started talking: 1953 (speaks English and occasionally some Spanish)

Moved for the first time: 2000

Height: 52 feet

Weight: 6,000 pounds

Boots: Size 70 Ariats, 7 feet 7 inches tall.

Clothing: The shirt has a 100-inch neck. The fly on his jeans is 56 inches long. His gigantic Dickies jeans and cowboy shirt, right, are made in Fort Worth.

Hat: 75-gallon, 5 feet tall

Distinguished relatives:

Tex Randall, a 47-foot-tall concrete cowboy who has lived in Canyon since 1959. He doesn't talk or move.

FRIENDS

Other state fairs' mascots:

Wisconsin: a piece of pastry named Cravin' D. Cream Puff

Iowa: a 6-foot-tall blue ribbon named Fairfield and a "girlish purple" grand champion ribbon named Rosetta

Minnesota: a gopher named Fairchild

SOURCES: State Fair of Texas, yesterdayusa.com and roadsideamerica.com (Big Randall)
source: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/state/15610841.htm
-----------------

Brownwood to the Midway

-----------------------

off to the State Fair

------------------

What two political parties are destroying our country right now ?

COMMENTARY: JOHN KELSO

Kinky Friedman a racist? Nah. He messes with everybody

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

In the name of full disclosure, let me say up front that gubernatorial candidate and big tent insultor Kinky Friedman has asked me if I want a position in his Cabinet.

This happening is highly unlikely. For one thing, I doubt Kinky Friedman is going to have a cabinet unless he goes out to Lack's and picks one up. Also, my idea of hell would be trying to explain to the press what Kinky really meant when he used the expression "n——- eggs" 26 years ago in a comedy routine.

Still, I'm getting a kick out of these other candidates for governor who are painting Kinky as racist. I know Kinky Friedman, and he is no John Kennedy. Then again, he's no David Duke, either.

Suddenly, the opposition has conveniently discovered, with an election around the corner, that Kinky Friedman has been making outrageous comments for the past four decades.

I suspect the reason for this startling revelation is that Kinky is hanging around in the polls. One recent poll showed him at 22.4 percent and Gov. Rick Perry leading at 30.7 percent.

Let's put this in perspective. If Richard Pryor were running for president and he got within 9 percentage points of first place in a poll, the other candidates would suddenly remember he's sexist because he shot his wife's car instead of his own.

And now people are all over Kinky for jokes. Which makes you wonder: Should comedians be excluded from politics? Isn't it refreshing to have a candidate who's actually smart enough to be a smartass? It's been a long time coming.

"I don't eat tamales in the barrio; I don't eat fried chicken in the ghetto; I don't eat bagels with the Jews for breakfast," Kinky said. "That, to me, is true racism."

That line has been labeled as racist. I read it another way: It attacks hypocrisy.

You know how your phony candidate sucks up to the public by pumping gas for two minutes in front of a TV camera to pretend he's the working man? You know how political candidates eat the food at the picnic of the group they're trying to get votes from to show they're one of the gang?

That's my take on Kinky's tamale, bagels and fried chicken remark.

Kinky Friedman goes after everybody. He would insult your grandmother regardless of her menu choices. Yes, he can be a pain in the butt. I know because he's turned on me. He can be an annoying, temperamental jerk on occasion. But it doesn't last long, and the smoke clears quickly.

Actually, there are two Kinky Friedmans: the real Kinky and the stage Kinky. The stage Kinky puts on a Texas howdy accent, smokes large smelly cigars and leaves inappropriate messages on his answering machine at home that indicate size matters, to put it politely.

The real Kinky is soft-spoken and puts steaks on the floor of his living room for his dogs.

Kinky is also an entertainer who once had a band called the Texas Jewboys, whose goal was to make people squirm. You can dig up all the lyrics you want on the Internet. Don't take my word for it: Ask his opponents. Heck, I'll bet they'll gladly provide you with a link.

John Kelso's column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Contact him at 445-3606 or jkelso@statesman .com.

source: http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/09/26/26kelso.html
------------------
Sept. 26, 2006, 3:09AM
Ventura joins Friedman campaign
Independent pair embark on Texas college tour

By JANET ELLIOTT
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau

AUSTIN - Sitting next to former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, who sported a braided beard and railed about the war in Iraq, Kinky Friedman looked downright mainstream on Monday.

The iconic wrestler-turned-statesman and the wannabe Texas leader parried with a series of reporters at Friedman's South Austin headquarters before taking off on a tour of colleges. They hope to fire up students to register to vote before the Oct. 10 deadline.

"I've always had good rapport with young people," said Ventura, retired and living a surfer's lifestyle in Baja California. "And the more they pay attention today, maybe the less they'll have to fix tomorrow."

Asked whether college students would remember Ventura, who served from 1999 to 2003, Friedman said, "We'll see."

"Whether he's the hottest contemporary guy happening right now, is not the issue. They love him. They believe he's a truth-teller," said Friedman.

Ventura said that "nonvoting young people" were a key to his upset victory. But Minnesota political scientist Bill Flanigan said Ventura won because of "middle-aged suburbanites who didn't participate in elections."

"He capitalized on an anti-partisan sentiment and mobilized quite a few people," said Flanigan, professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota.

That state's law allowing Election Day voting registration also worked to Ventura's advantage. So did debates, when Democrat Skip Humphrey and Republican Norm Coleman went at each other in "pretty emotional and incoherent ways," Flanigan recalled, making Ventura look like the sensible one.


Ex-aides helping Friedman

Having already imported his campaign manager and advertising director from the Ventura campaign, it was only natural that Friedman would bring in the man himself.
Wearing black jackets and jeans and sitting in folding chairs in the darkened, cavernous room, the two political independents shared 15 minutes of fame with a stream of TV, radio and print journalists. A documentary crew that shadows Friedman captured it all.

Friedman's use of racially charged comments in past concerts and writings was a frequent topic. Ventura said Friedman's satire "helped drag (racism) out from under a rock."

Friedman maintained that he's only being tackled because he's carrying the ball.

Ventura seemed the most animated when he talked about national affairs. The Vietnam veteran ridiculed Bush administration officials who never fought a war. He said if a fence is built along the Texas-Mexico border, he will climb over it from the U.S. side to show that "fences work both ways."

Friedman said the National Guard patrolling the border doesn't have "ammo or the authority to detain an illegal."

"I'd like to know what the hell are they doing there," he said. "For political show, that's what I think."


Ventura lists achievements

Asked about his achievements as governor, Ventura said he appointed 73 judges and "not one of those judges did I know prior to them coming in to interview in my office." Texas elects its judges.
Ventura also bragged about cutting taxes and said he could have been re-elected — "no doubt about it" — if he'd sought a second term. Flanigan said Ventura may be right.

"He wasn't a disaster as a governor, mainly because he really had an excellent staff," Flanigan said.

Ventura recalled how angry he was when Minnesota lawmakers wouldn't consider his proposal for a unicameral Legislature. "That's when I got in trouble, because I called the Legislature a bunch of 'gutless cowards,' " he said.

Friedman said he doesn't have such radical ideas for Texas — yet.

"Not until we find out more about it," he said. "The people in power are not sharing with the rest of the class what they know."

Later Monday, the two repeated many of the same lines at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Ventura offered Friedman a bit of advice if he wins:

"He has got a great sense of humor, and he is going to have to learn to curtail that," he said. As governor, Ventura said he had to be careful about his jokes because "political correctness"prevailed among Minnesota media. He said he took to ending each one with the refrain "that was a joke, joke, joke."

Greg Jefferson of the San Antonio Express-News contributed to this report from San Antonio.

janet.elliott@chron.com
source: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/4214073.html
--------------------
Kinky, Jesse Tour Texas Colleges
By MICHAEL GRACZYK , 09.26.2006, 03:38 AM

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With political soul mate Jesse Ventura in tow, Texas gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman is telling college audiences that he has no reason to apologize for his race-related remarks.

"Anyone who knows me knows I'm not a racist," Friedman said Monday at the University of Texas at San Antonio. "Far from it."

Last week, the Texas NAACP president and a black legislator criticized Friedman for a joke he told in a 1980 comedy club appearance in which he used the n-word about blacks. He also has come under fire for a race-related remark he made in a television interview last year and for other comments about Hurricane Katrina evacuees and ethnic groups.

"Humor is the weapon I use, humor to attack bigotry," said Friedman, who with Ventura is making a campaign swing this week through several Texas colleges and universities.

Ventura, whose surprising 1998 victory as a third-party candidate in the Minnesota governor's race is serving as a model for Friedman's effort, was welcomed to Texas on Monday by an attack from incumbent Republican Gov. Rick Perry's campaign. In a statement, Perry's campaign cited remarks in a 1999 Playboy Magazine interview in which Ventura was said to have called organized religion "a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers."

Dean Barkley, who directed Ventura's successful campaign and is serving in the same capacity with Friedman, said the attacks showed the Perry campaign was "getting pretty desperate."

In San Antonio on Monday, Friedman and Ventura drew enthusiastic crowds, filling a 350-seat campus auditorium to standing room, leaving several hundred others unable to get in.

Friedman talked to the crowd about a crime spike in Houston blamed in part on the Katrina refugees, but stayed away from his previous reference to them as "thugs and crackheads," for which he was criticized as being racially offensive.

"They say Kinky is a racist because I talked about the evacuees," he said. "Well, I'm smart, folks. I know that 250,000 evacuees are not committing these crimes. It's a small number."

In the evening, Friedman and Ventura signed campaign buttons, signs and photos.

"I like what he's talking about," said Marisol Peralez, 22, who is studying to be a special education teacher. She said the criticisms of Friedman's 1980 remarks didn't bother her.

"I think too much is being made of it," she said.

"I've seen him in social settings and how he is with people," said Courtney Laurell, 22. "He's very down to earth."

Besides Perry, Friedman is facing Democrat Chris Bell, independent Carole Keeton Strayhorn and Libertarian James Werner in the Nov. 7 election.

Ventura, wearing a SEAL Team cap and his long beard in a single braid, challenged students to "throw a monkey wrench into the machine" by voting.

"The machine doesn't believe that you vote," the former pro wrestler said. "You elect an independent and you send a message."

Ventura said he and Friedman didn't agree on all issues, with immigration among them. Friedman wants 10,000 troops along the border to block illegal immigration. Ventura, who now lives in Baja California, Mexico, said he didn't want any kind of fence to stem the flow of immigration.

Friedman also acknowledged he and Ventura disagreed on religion, with Friedman advocating school prayer and posting of the Ten Commandments.

"You'll find as independents, we don't always agree on every subject, but you'll find we are in agreement that the Democrat and Republican parties are destroying our country right now," Ventura said. "They're destroying our political process."

source: http://www.forbes.com/business/businesstech/feeds/ap/2006/09/26/ap3044513.html

What have Texans got with Religious Fundamentalism and Big "bidness" ? Pathetic Political Leaders !

Supporting Kinky Friedman's bid to become governor of Texas
Liz Smith
Originally published September 26, 2006

Some days ago when I was standing in the rotunda of the State Capitol in Austin, Texas, where Ann Richards' body was lying in state, I went over to take a look at my good friend's portrait, which adorns the circle among all the other Texas governors. Next to her is now-President Bush.

I noted what a circle of ne'er-do-wells, hacks, connivers and downright idiots most of these chief executives were. Ann was the bright light among them, and there were one or two others who weren't so bad. But in general, I'd say Texas has been pathetic in selecting its leaders in an atmosphere of religious fundamentalism and big "bidness."

Now Kinky Friedman, the entertainer-writer who is running for governor, wants to be one of the good ones. And, in spite of his reputation for loose, fearless talk, his shocking one-liners, his truth-telling and his humorous ways, they say he has a good chance to win. His numbers are surprisingly impressive. So, the other evening, I went to a Manhattan fundraiser for my old pal at a gallery on Madison Avenue. Carolyn Farb, Houston's art collector and generous rich lady, hosted this party. Kinky was in all his glory, wearing his Western Deadwood-type cowboy clothes with a big black hat.
Kinky said to me, "Liz, my detractors are now saying I am a racist because I used the word 'Negro' in one of my detective novels long ago. So I just hope you will print that the other day, Oprah, on her own show, was asked to describe herself and she said, 'I am a Negro woman!' ... I have been saved by Oprah!"
I agreed with Kinky that he is no racist, having suffered plenty himself for being a Jewish boy growing up in Texas. It occurred to me that Kinky and Ann had a lot in common. She told truth to power but with humor so people could absorb it. Kinky does the same thing. I hope he can beat the odds against weirdness.
Now you may not care who becomes the governor of Texas but as this great state has sent three men to the White House, maybe you should. And if you were an Ann Richards fan, you could memorialize her by endorsing her own candidate -- Kinky. And if you are a real Democrat, a populist or a liberal-thinking person, I'd say Kinky is your man. I hope he wins.

source: http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/lifestyle/bal-to.liz26sep26,0,1471934.story?coll=bal-artslife-today

Madrassas' and Jesus Camp: What are the similarities ?

Karzai Calls Pakistan's Extremist Madrassas a Terrorist Threat
By Judy Mathewson

Sept. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai today said a small portion of Pakistan's religious schools, called madrassas, are ``training grounds for terrorists'' and a serious threat to the world.

``There will not be an end to terrorism unless we remove the sources of hatred in madrassas,'' Karzai said in a speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a policy study group in Washington.

Karzai's comments come two days before he's scheduled to discuss cooperation in the war on terrorism with U.S. President George W. Bush and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf at the White House.

Karzai has accused Pakistan of not doing enough to stop Taliban fighters from using the mountainous border region between the two countries as a haven. The fighters stepped up attacks in Afghanistan in recent weeks as Afghan and international forces expand their operations to the south and east.

Musharraf has rejected such allegations, and he told the United Nations last week that ``the problem lies in Afghanistan.''

Karzai said today that many of Pakistan's madrassas are legitimate places of instruction. Still, those preaching hatred ``have to be closed by action'' and ``by arresting'' the organizers, he said.

If a boy of seven is taught religious intolerance until he's 14, ``you will have a suicide bomber,'' Karzai said.

U.S. Can Help

Asked after his speech what the U.S. might do to help his country fight terror and the surge in violence in his country, Karzai said the U.S. ``has a great role to play'' in helping to shut down militant madrassas, though he did not explain how. Karzai said he hopes Musharraf will cooperate in the effort.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks on the U.S. in 2001, Musharraf proclaimed it a top priority to modernize madrassas. Almost five years later, that $100 million effort has collapsed and the program's staff, office rent and utility bills have not been paid, Newsday reported today.

Many of the schools teach and feed Pakistani students for free, making them an attractive alternative to public schools, which require parents to pay for uniforms and books.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said on Sept. 22 that the surge in Afghan violence in recent months poses the gravest threat to achieving piece in that country since the Taliban regime was ousted by U.S.-led forces in 2001. Senator John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, sounded a similar note in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece today in which he said the Taliban now control entire swathes of southern Afghanistan.

Karzai was more upbeat. While he conceded today that there are districts in Afghanistan with a ``power vacuum'' that attract insurgents, he said, ``get us a strong police force and we will do well.''

There was more violence in Afghanistan today. Two gunmen riding a motorbike shot and killed the top official for women's affairs in southern Kandahar province today, Agence France- Presse reported. U.S. forces killed 10 Taliban fighters in Paktika province, the U.S. military said in an e-mailed statement today.

To contact the reporter on this story: Judy Mathewson in Washington at jmathewson@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: September 25, 2006 16:51 EDT

source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=anASn5VaUy48&refer=asia
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listen here

listen here

listen here

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Wonder if the 25% plus of the Brownwood/Brown County Republicans who * "will do or say anthing in the name of GOD" will see the similiarties ?

* Quote: Republican Congressman Mike Connaway's Chief of Staff

The Republican Testimony you "will not" hear on Brownwood's Republican Neo-Con Talk Radio (KXYL)

listen here

Oh, that's right, it's "Pluots and PETA" that seems to occupy J.R.'s important "Air Time" !

What a Pluot ? Just tune in to the morning show at KXYL FM 96.9 !

Hey J.R. (KXYL & Brownwood Republican Spin Mister), have you heard this ?

listen here

..... and what's with all the women bashing this morning over the Brownwood airwaves ?

Dean Strickland - Brownwood Texas

Dean Strickland - Brownwood Texas
Originally uploaded by photosteve.

Dean Strickland Performing in Brownwood today

Lunch, and later, music

Dean Strickland is performing his one-man blues and country music concert from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. today at The Turtle Restaurant Gardens, 514 Center Ave. The show’s free (or at least they’re not charging admission) and being hosted by Steves’ Market and Deli and The Turtle.

Those attending the event are encouraged to bring their own lawn chairs or blankets to spread on the grass. Drinks, including water, sodas, teas, etc. will be available for purchase at the Garden.

And, if you’d like to meet the musician, Strickland will be dining and available for a meet-and-greet from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. at Steves’ Market and Deli.

source: source: http://www.brownwoodbulletin.com/articles/2006/09/23/news/news05.txt

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Who is Dean Strickland ?

Read more here

Where were Kinky's accusers when he was picketing segregated restaurants in Austin ? Kinky racist ? I think not !

Friedman stands by '80s-era N joke

Candidate for governor says foes trying to dig up dirt.

By W. Gardner Selby

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Friday, September 22, 2006

Independent gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman, whose career as a provocative singer and novelist has pivoted on the outrageous, said Thursday that he stands by a 1980 comment twice employing a racial slur, labeling it a humorous poke at racism.

Friedman, 62, said that although he doesn't remember the comment, "of course I don't want to apologize. When you're doing a stand-up act satirizing racism, you don't apologize for it. . . . I've always been an equal-opportunity offender."

Two fellow candidates and an NAACP leader objected, but another candidate said Friedman's comment means little.

The 26-year-old remark surfaced just before noon Thursday on a pro-Democratic blog, the Burnt Orange Report, which presented it as an excerpt from an appearance by Friedman at a Houston club in April 1980.

In the recording, a drawling, fast-talking voice delivers part of what Friedman's campaign called a comic bit:

"Then I come down to Houston, I went to a bowling alley. I couldn't go bowling, there were no bowling balls. The people here throw 'em all in the sea, thought they were n——- eggs, thought they were n——- eggs."

Friedman charged political foes with steering a desperate attempt to falsely paint him a racist.

"The latest political assassination attempt takes completely out of context a controversial word that Kinky was using in a 1980 stand-up performance to lampoon racists," spokeswoman Laura Stromberg said. "Kinky was onstage exposing bigotry through comedy and satire. It's pathetic that the major-party candidates have sunk to this, trying to paint Kinky as a racist when, in fact, he was poking fun at racists."

Democrat Chris Bell and independent Carole Keeton Strayhorn, the state comptroller, called Friedman's comment unacceptable.

Strayhorn said, "Such language is divisive and hurtful and has no place in any part of our society, regardless of one's race."

Bell said, "The only appropriate words right now would be: 'I'm sorry, and I was wrong.' "

Libertarian nominee James Werner said: "It seems like an unpleasant remark, but I have seen nothing to indicate that Kinky is a racist or a bigot. People say stupid things all the time — but they don't always have Republican attack machines scrutinizing their every utterance."

Earlier Thursday, GOP Gov. Rick Perry, who is running for re-election, reacted to Friedman's reference in a TV interview last year to a "Negro talking to himself" by agreeing with state civil rights leaders who were offended by Friedman's remarks.

"These are individuals who know what a racist comment is," Perry said of leaders of the Texas Legislative Black Caucus and the state National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "Call it politically incorrect if you want, but it's not lost on men and women of color when people make remarks that are clearly racist — if not directly racist, obliquely racist. And I think they have appropriately called his hand."

In a November CNBC interview, Friedman was pressed on a line in his 1987 novel, "A Case of Lone Star," comparing New York to "a Negro talking to himself." Friedman said he saw nothing wrong and then said of sexual predators: "Throw them in prison, and throw away the key, and make them listen to a Negro talking to himself."

In April, Friedman called the line "a poetic way of describing a junkie. I mean, you could say, 'A heroin addict walking down the street.' But if you're writing prose, you might say, 'A Negro talking to himself.' "

The line did not cause an uproar at the time, although his campaign reported fielding a few e-mails.

Friedman's attitude toward race won fresh attention earlier this month when he referred to Hurricane Katrina evacuees in Houston, most of whom are black, as "crackheads and thugs."

He later criticized ethnic politicking by saying, "I don't eat tamales in the barrio, I don't eat fried chicken in the ghetto and I don't eat bagels with the Jews."

Friedman is Jewish.

Gary Bledsoe, president of the Texas State Conference of NAACP Branches, expressed shock at Friedman's 1980 remark, saying: "I don't know if there are enough 'highlys' in the book to say I'm offended. It's over the top. Off-color jokes are told in stand-up comedy, but even then, there's a line to be drawn."

Bledsoe said that although Friedman has an entertainment background, he does not deserve slack on the campaign trail.

"He's running for governor. So how he speaks is who he is."

Stromberg, suggesting that Friedman could be emerging as the major challenger to Perry, said: "While Rick Perry was cheerleading in college and Chris Bell was being potty trained, Kinky Friedman was picketing segregated restaurants in Austin to integrate them. Now that Kinky's in second place and a serious threat to the two-party system, Perry and Chris Bell have paid political assassins digging back 30 years through fictional books, comedy shows and song lyrics, desperately seeking to paint Kinky as a racist."

Aides to Perry and Bell said they have not done any probing into Friedman's background.

Friedman, speaking from New York, where he was holding a fundraiser, said: "The voters will decide. I don't remember any of that; it was a long time ago."

wgselby@statesman.com; 445-3644

Additional material from The Associated Press.

source: http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/09/22/22govrace.html
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Letter to the Editor Austin American Statesman

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Friday, September 22, 2006

Why I like Kinky

Good for Kinky Friedman for his stand on political correctness. It's so refreshing to see a political candidate say what he means, then stand behind what he says. I'm a lifelong conservative Republican who is supporting Friedman for governor.

Although we don't have to completely agree with every position he takes, at least we know he's not lying about his stand on the issues, unlike every other candidate for Texas governor.

MARK RODEBUSH

mrodebush@austin.rr.com

Round Rock

source: http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories/09/22/22Letters_edit.html

Dean Strickland: Baylor to Brownwood

Nomadic rock 'n' roll musician hitchhikes to destiny

April 27, 2006

Gretchen Blackburn | Lariat Staff Baylor University - Waco Texas
Thirty eight-year-old Dean Strickland is a traveling musician who is making his way through Texas by hitching rides and performing shows in whatever city he happens to land in.

by GRETCHEN BLACKBURN,
reporter

With his thumb out in the wind, Dean Strickland treads the long sea of pavement leading north on Interstate 35.
His spirit is energetic and optimistic, but his dusty T-shirt and sunburned brow show the wear of his travels.
Once arriving at his destination, he seeks out local radio stations and newspapers to get publicity for his shows.
Sometimes he spends the afternoon practicing or writing songs. At night, he either sleeps at friends' houses or under the stars.
Strickland's unconventional approach to breaking into the Texas music scene -- hitchhiking from town to town, show to show -- has brought added interest to the 38-year-old musician's repertoire.
Though his love for classic rock 'n' roll seeps into his music, the Texas twang and two-step beat he's learned on his journeys is most striking in his recent single "I Love Texas (It's My Home)."
Hitchhiking, he said, isn't his first choice of transportation. But without a car, it's his only option.
He now carries an estimated 67 pounds of baggage with him on the road, but he said it's lighter than the unhappiness he carried as a 28-year-old working in Dallas.
After selling his house and most of his possessions, Strickland left his job to pursue music at the University of North Texas, and later the Musicians Institute in Hollywood, Calif. There, he spent several years honing his guitar and vocal skills and experiencing the hard knocks of a musician's life.
"From the beginning, I knew it wasn't going to be easy," he said. "But I knew I had to try to do what I love."
While walking the miles stretching between his gigs, Strickland has dodged several life-threatening encounters.
While in Oak Cliff, a Dallas neighborhood, he was almost robbed by people offering him a ride and narrowly escaped after being dragged behind the person's car, clinging to his possessions.
On another occasion in the same area, he said another person pulled a gun on him and demanded his bags in return for his life. He again escaped unharmed, guitar in hand.
"There was no way I was going to give up my guitar," he said. "It's my life."
Playing to the tough image of a musician, he jokes that he accepts rides from strangers without fear; it's "the adventure" he likes.
"But now I don't really like to travel at night," Strickland said. "Especially in that area of the city."
He began traveling on foot to shows in Corpus Christi, San Antonio, Dallas, Abilene and Austin in September, and measures his success with business cards.
"I started out with 250 cards, and I've got about 40 left," Strickland said. "It just goes to show all the people I've been able to meet."
The gigs don't pay much, and at times he plays for free, but every day, he said, he wakes up with a positive attitude because he's doing what he loves.
Usually, Strickland said, he's able to find rides along the highways. Most of the time, it's the driver's first time to pick up a hitchhiker, he said.
"I think people sense that I'm a nice guy," Strickland said. "It helps that I'm traveling alone."
Darrel Kinard of Corpus Christi said he stopped to give Strickland a ride, though he doesn't normally pick up hitchhikers. Strickland was in a busy part of San Antonio at the time, and Kinard said he felt compassion for Strickland when he saw the guitar.
"I've been around the music scene in San Antonio and wanted to help the guy out and give him a ride," Kinard said.
Describing Strickland as a "dedicated and polite man," Kinard said he believes Strickland has a chance at making a good living in the music scene if he focuses on one genre and style.
"Once he finds a focus and really develops that, I think he'll do just fine," he said.
Strickland's mother Bobbie, who lives in Bowie, said she worries about Strickland's safety as he hitchhiking from city to city but knows he's motivated and dedicated to his dreams.
"He gets up every morning and makes his own choice to do this. I can only be happy that he's happy," she said.
Strickland's sacrifices, he said, are necessary to reach his ultimate goal -- to earn enough money to travel more comfortably.
Although he's written and recorded 40 songs, Strickland said he's not disappointed that he doesn't have a record contract.
"I just want to play music and be happy," he said. "I walk in faith -- of God and in myself -- and I'll keep walking because it's allowing me to play my music."
Strickland will take the stage from 5-9 p.m. Friday at Treff's.

source: http://www.baylor.edu/Lariat/news.php?action=story&story=40472
-------------
Musician hitchhikes gig to gig



Yesenia Hernandez

Posted: 9/15/06

Dean Strickland walks his way across Texas highways in search of places that are willing to let him play his music - whether it is for pay or for tips, to him it doesn't matter.
Strickland has many years of music experience. He has been singing and playing the guitar since he was 6 years old. He attended Tarrant County College for two years then transferred to the NT College of Music where he was enrolled from 1997-2001. He then moved on to the Musicians Institute in Hollywood where he graduated in recording, guitar and voice.
He began his hitchhiking journey one year ago this month.
At one point he led a "regular" life, he said. At 19 he had a job reading water meters, he had a house and a truck, but he wasn't happy. He decided to give Hollywood a shot, so he sold his possessions. Hollywood gave him more musical experience, but he decided to move back to Texas in July 2005.
In September 2005 he played on Sixth Street in Austin but didn't make enough tips to buy a ticket to Dallas. He said that was when he decided to follow a friend's advice to give hitchhiking a try.
So far, he has walked to and from 14 cities including Denton, Dallas, Lubbock, College Station, Austin and Amarillo. He has played at various coffee houses and bars in those cities, including Cafe Brazil in Dallas and Cool Beans in Denton.
The 39-year-old hitches rides from time to time, but he never lifts his thumb. He carries his belongings on his back and on his shoulders. Three bags and a guitar are all that he owns, along with his passion for music.
Strickland said he goes from city to city not knowing how far he is going to go that day or where he is going to sleep.
"After I walk a lot of miles, after a hundred cars have gone by, someone offers me a ride," he said.
When he gets lonely out on the road he uses his pre-paid cell phone, which he also uses to schedule gigs.
"I call my mom a lot, my brother, my friends, and I have my guitar," he said.
When he doesn't have a place to stay, he is willing to sleep behind buildings, and he often does. He said one time he slept on top of a building, and once he slept on a battery tank.
"There's gonna be lots of that still," he said. "Last night I slept in a parking lot."
He rarely spends money on hotels. He said at one time he had enough money for a hotel room because he received $1,500 after suing Greyhound Lines in small claims court. The incident involved a not-so-nice bus driver who punched Strickland in the face.
Sometimes he gets lucky, and he gets picked up by a kind soul who is willing to take him in for the night, he said.
The day of the interview he was picked up by a horse salesman who let him stay at his ranch outside of Denton.
At times he gets picked up by truck drivers.
Jim Berry picked Strickland up on his way from Austin to Dallas in July.
"I'm a musician myself, and I saw him out in the hot sun," Berry said. "He's a real nice fellow and he had a real nice Martin guitar, I know he had to get to a gig in Dallas."
Marc Jeffreys also picked Strickland up when he was walking from Dallas to Denton.
"I used to hitchhike when I was a kid, too," Jeffreys said. "At least he is following his dream."
Nowadays, he only walks during daylight. He has had a couple of bad experiences with night walking. He said one time a man picked him up and pointed a gun at him. Another time he was dragged along the highway. Both times the men wanted money or something of value, but Strickland had nothing to offer them, he said.
Strickland was dragged across the highway because he didn't want to let his guitar go. It was in the trunk of the car that had picked him up. He said the driver sped off in an attempt to take his belongings, but Strickland hung on the back of the car to save his guitar, and thankfully, he succeeded.
"My guitar is my life," he said.
Bobby Griffith, Strickland's friend since 2001, said he worries about Strickland hitchhiking but knows his friend is determined to make a living as a musician. Strickland's mom is often concerned, too.
"I'd rather he didn't do that, all by himself on the street, but he's gonna do what he's gonna do," Bobbie Strickland said. "I tell him to let me know he's OK. I worry when he leaves. I drop him off on the highway, and I get so sad."
She hadn't heard him play recently until about a week ago when he accompanied her to a senior citizen's dance in Springtown. The people there invited him to sing because of an article they had read in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
"I was amazed myself," she said. "I am really proud of him."
The next morning his mom dropped him off on State Highway 287, and he started walking toward Denton.
Strickland checks in with his mom often so she won't worry. He has hitchhiked to see her five times this year.
"If I go into a town not knowing anyone, I go to anywhere that has music," Strickland said.
He still plays for tips. He said he can't make demands.
"Any gig is better than no gig," Strickland said. "It'll all work out in the long run, as long as I hang in there."
Strickland is focusing on country/bluegrass music. He said his hitchhiking works out as a theme for his upcoming record, and he is going to stick with it. He didn't start out in country, though. When he was based in Hollywood, Strickland said he was part of a punk band named 4giveness.
In 2002 he created his own record label, Never Die Records.
"I'm trying to promote myself," he said.
His self-promotion has worked. He was recently featured in a front-page story in the Star-Telegram. He also got mentioned in Harder Beat Magazine's January 2006 issue.
Strickland said he is trying to land an endorsement deal with a boot company outside of Denton.
So far, he has hitched about 450 rides.
"I just keep walking," he said. "I want to do my best. I want to be successful."
Strickland plans to play five cover tunes and seven original songs from 8 to 9 p.m. tonight at Jupiter House, 106 N. Locust St. in Denton. Admission is free.

source:http://www.ntdaily.com/media/storage/paper877/news/2006/09/15/Arts/Musician.Hitchhikes.Gig.To.Gig-2279708.shtml?norewrite200609231122&sourcedomain=www.ntdaily.com

Wave of Party Switchers Hits Republicans

By Hans Johnson
In These Times

Monday 18 September 2006

Citing extremism, more GOPers are joining the Democrats.
A trend of local, below-the-radar party-switches is undercutting Republicans as they face the sternest challenge in a decade to one-party control of Congress and several state legislatures. Such party-switching by elected officials often indicates that the label they are shedding has lost appeal and foreshadows poor performance at the polls.

Some recent switchers are exiting GOP ranks with a bang. Distorted priorities, the federal deficit and the Iraq war are common themes in their announcements. And in a direct swipe at the far-right ideology that has become a governing credo in the Bush years, they cite intolerance in the party as the chief reason for leaving.

"The moderate Republican has been pushed aside for the extreme right wing," Oklahoma state Senator Nancy Riley told the Associated Press in August, when she became a Democrat. Riley represents a district in suburban Tulsa and has served as minority whip in a chamber that her former party was looking to take over in the fall election. She announced her defection after years of what she described as "abhorrent" treatment by Republican leaders who suffer a "lack of compassion for people."

In central South Carolina, county prosecutor Barney Giese also switched parties. The law-enforcement pro is the son of Warren Giese, a longtime GOP state senator and revered football coach. His announcement upset Republican leaders, struggling to maintain one-party control in a state that Democrats added to their roster of early primary battlegrounds for the 2008 nomination.

"My relationship with some of the leaders of the Republican Party is damaged," Giese told The State, a Columbia newspaper. "No one gets elected without bipartisan support. ... My conflict with them started with me being independent."

On the other coast, Rodney Tom, a state representative in Washington, didn't mince words when he left the GOP this spring. "I realized that the far right has complete control of the party," he told the Seattle Times in announcing his switch.

Now running for state Senate as a Democrat, he represents a district of suburbs that was once lopsidedly Republican. But Tom says voters there generally back abortion rights, nondiscrimination for gay people, balanced budgets and investment in state infrastructure, such as transportation projects. That has soured them on today's conservatives. "For me to be effective for my constituents," he added, "I need to be a Democrat."

Tom's switch underscores a shift in allegiances away from the GOP among well-educated, upper-middle class voters based in part on the strident antigay and antiabortion stands of Republicans.

Begun in the Clinton years, this erosion of the conservative base has motivated some right-wing strategists to peddle the stances all the more ferociously in hopes of finding and winning over new converts from other demographic groups. It may pay short-term dividends. Bush strategist Karl Rove claims to have identified and successfully solicited votes from as many as 4 million new GOP voters in 2004.

Yet the stigma of pandering to intolerance can sear a negative after-image into the minds of other voters. That effect and friction from dealing with party leaders driven by rigid beliefs are two factors consistently flagged by the party switchers. Showing up as much in red states as in blue, the pattern cannot be dismissed as a regional fluke.

In Idaho, Tony Edmondson, a former county commissioner, broke with the GOP in August. He criticized state lawmakers, who in the spring placed a ballot measure barring same-sex marriage before state voters in the fall. "The legislature decided to focus on issues of ideology and posturing ... instead of focusing on the people's business," he told the Associated Press. Edmondson is running for state senate as a Democrat.
In New Jersey, former state Assemblyman Paul R. D'Amato left the GOP, charging the party with operating a "closed shop that discourages individuality, discussion and openness." The Press of Atlantic City noted that D'Amato joined two other local elected Republicans, James Carney and Alisa Cooper, who have become Democrats in the past two years.
And party-switchers figure in two marquee races this fall. Former Kansas GOP chair Mark Parkinson has joined Democratic governor Kathleen Sibelius as her choice for lieutenant governor on her re-election ticket. In Virginia, longtime Republican and Reagan-era secretary of the Navy Jim Webb is challenging incumbent U.S. senator George Allen, a voting-rights foe sometimes pegged as an '08 White House hopeful, in his hard-fought reelection bid. "National security policy under the Bush-Cheney Administration is in total disarray," Webb said in an August speech. "There is no end in sight to the conflict in Iraq ... and homeland security is being neglected."
The shift throws a wrench in the Republican machine as it rumbles across a troubled political landscape. The results of special elections for state legislature in the past year have showcased Democratic voting strength, even in areas the GOP has long dominated (see "GOP Trashed in Special Elections," April 2006). Now another gauge indicates Republican political power at risk.

Twelve years ago, GOP leaders trumpeted a host of Democratic office-holders who had jumped ship as a grassroots rejection of Bill Clinton and his party. They went on to post huge gains in the '94 mid-term elections. Now, as Nov. 7 nears, a similar dynamic of popular disaffection with Republicans is taking shape.

--------

Hans Johnson, a contributing editor of In These Times, is president of Progressive Victory, based in Washington, D.C., and writes on labor, religion and the mechanics of political campaigns.

" Friedman is a threat to the two-party system, so his opponents are digging through fictional books, comedy shows and song lyrics "

Kinky's rivals seize upon 26-year-old joke

Friedman faces calls for apology, defends use of n-word in stand-up act

11:21 PM CDT on Thursday, September 21, 2006

By CHRISTY HOPPE / The Dallas Morning News

AUSTIN – A crass joke using the n-word that Kinky Friedman told 26 years ago has prompted his opponents to call for an apology – a move Mr. Friedman dismissed as gamesmanship.
Mr. Friedman said he did not recall telling the joke but explained that in his years as a stand-up comic, he regularly used racial, ethnic and sexual satire. He said his act was often "raunchy" and "over the edge" in the vein of Lenny Bruce or Richard Pryor.
While at a club in Houston, Mr. Friedman is heard on an audio snippet saying: "I went to a bowling alley. I couldn't go bowling. There were no bowling balls. The people here threw them all in the sea. They thought they were [n-word] eggs."
Also Online


WFAA-TV's Brad Watson reports
Quick Take: Kinky's only looking better to some voters
The snippet appeared Thursday on burntorangereport.com, a blog affiliated with progressive Democratic politics.
Mr. Friedman said he did not think the joke was offensive in the context of his show. And he said he would not be surprised if opponents tried to smear him with other "redneck" jokes he used about Hispanics, women, Jews and gays.
"I think Texas voters will decide, and I think they'll decide correctly that these guys are slimy ... cockroaches," Mr. Friedman said of those who would try to paint him as a racist. "It's what keeps people from running for office. And I don't think it's going to work."
But other major candidates in the race said such comments are over the edge.
"The latest revelations of Kinky's racist comments are disgusting," said Democrat Chris Bell. "He can call it 'satire,' but it's just not funny."
Mr. Friedman, an author, musician and humorist in the crowded race for governor, has been challenged recently for other comments he has made that offended some in the black community.



AP
Kinky Friedman said his standup comedy was often in the vein of Lenny Bruce or Richard Pryor.
This month, he lamented the crime spike in Houston tied to Hurricane Katrina evacuees, calling those responsible "thugs and crackheads." In a CNBC interview last year, he said that sexual predators should be locked in cells all day and made "to listen to a Negro talking to himself."
Republican Gov. Rick Perry told reporters Thursday morning – before the latest revelation – that he stood with NAACP state director Gary Bledsoe and state Rep. Garnett Coleman, D-Houston, when they criticized Mr. Friedman for such comments.
"It's not lost on men and women of color when people make remarks that are clearly racist, if not directly racist, obliquely racist. And I think they have appropriately called his hand on it," Mr. Perry said.
Independent candidate Carole Keeton Strayhorn, through spokesman Mark Sanders, said: "That kind of thinking and language was totally unacceptable when he said it and is totally unacceptable today. I think he should apologize to the people of Texas."
Mr. Friedman said those who are dredging up old quotes and jokes are busy trying to show how politically correct they are so no one will ask them why they haven't achieved improvements in education or immigration reform.
"I'm defending anything that a stand-up comedian, probably drunk and on drugs, who does his kind of thing" would say, Mr. Friedman said. "Anything he says I don't think should be taken in quite the same way as if he wrote it in an essay. If they can find a nonfiction piece of work where I attack any ethnic group, let that one fly. But they're talking about a stage act, about a person who's supposed to offend everyone – that's his act.
"We could use a good deal more politicians who are not so afraid of offending people," he said.
Mr. Friedman said he believes the criticism was an orchestrated attack, much like what lawyers did to Los Angeles police Officer Mark Fuhrman during the O.J. Simpson murder trial.
"The question became whether Mark Fuhrman used the n-word with the gangs he was working with in LA. And the real issue was did O.J. murder his wife. And we never got to that," Mr. Friedman said.
Staff writer Robert T. Garrett contributed to this report.
E-mail choppe@dallasnews.com

source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/092206dntexfriedman.30f1160.html

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Kinky Friedman Campaign Statement

While Rick Perry was cheerleading in college and Chris Bell was being potty trained, Kinky Friedman was picketing segregated restaurants in Austin to integrate them. Now that Kinky’s in second place and a serious threat to the two-party system, Perry and Bell have paid political assassins to dig back as far as 30 years through fictional books, comedy shows and satirical song lyrics, desperately seeking to paint Kinky as a racist.

Republicans and Democrats have created an entire industry-- called Opposition Research-- whose sole purpose is to tarnish and destroy people’s reputations. This is why regular citizens don't run for office. If you do, and you start to threaten the system as Kinky has, you’re going to be attacked.

Kinky has overcome all of the obstacles placed before him - getting on the ballot, raising millions of dollars, building the largest grassroots network Texas has ever seen, and breaking 20% in the polls months ago. He's a serious threat to the establishment, and when you threaten the political establishment, they use the money generated from their formidable fundraising machines to pay for "dirty tricks" tactics to manipulate the press.

It's a slimy industry that exists for the sole purpose of destroying people and -- like cockroaches-- scurries for the shadows whenever a light is shined on it.

The latest political assassination attempt takes completely out of context a controversial word that Kinky was using in a 1980 stand-up performance to lampoon racists. Playing a character on stage, Kinky was exposing bigotry through comedy and satire.

It’s pathetic that the major-party candidates have sunk to this – trying to paint Kinky as a racist when, in fact, he was poking fun at racists. Shame on the press for being complicit. Rather than confront our opponents on their tactics and get the full story, they are allowing industries like opposition research to exist and operate outside the understanding of most voters.

Posted by Kinky Web on September 21, 2006 04:18 PM |

source: http://www.kinkyfriedman.com/2006/09/kinky_friedman_campaign_statem.html
------------------
"It was an equal opportunity offender. To pull out one joke is not fair because there was homophobic stuff, there was sexist stuff. There were Jewish jokes and there were Hispanic jokes," said Friedman, who is Jewish.

Friedman explained he has firm anti-racist credentials.

"Then there was real life. While Rick Perry was busy cheerleading in college, I was busy picketing segregated restaurants in Austin, Texas, to integrate them. That's real life. This is entertainment. It's outrageous performance art. Something to offend everybody."

source: http://blogs.chron.com/texaspolitics/
---------------------

Another racially charged Friedman remark emerges

AUSTIN -- Another racially charged remark by independent governor candidate Kinky Friedman emerged Thursday, this time in an audio clip of a 1980 Houston nightclub performance in which he used a racial slur.

The left-leaning political web log Burnt Orange Report posted the audio in which Friedman used the n-word twice in a joke.

Friedman, now 61, was making fun of bigots in a comedy routine, said his spokeswoman, Laura Stromberg. She said Friedman has tried to expose and lampoon racism.

"While Rick Perry was cheerleading in college and Chris Bell was being potty trained, Kinky Friedman was picketing segregated restaurants in Austin to integrate them," Friedman's campaign said in a prepared statement. His campaign said Friedman is a threat to the two-party system, so his opponents are digging through fictional books, comedy shows and song lyrics to try to paint him as a racist.

At the nightclub, Friedman tells about coming to a bowling alley in Houston and finding no bowling balls. He quipped that "the people threw them all in the sea" because they thought they were "n----- eggs." After the crowd laughs, he repeats the expression.

Friedman's attitude toward race became an issue in the governor's race earlier this month when he referred to the Katrina evacuees in Houston, most of whom are black, as "crackheads and thugs." He later criticized ethnic politicking by saying, "I don't eat tamales in the barrio, I don't eat fried chicken in the ghetto and I don't eat bagels with the Jews."

Friedman is Jewish.

Then a television interview from a year ago resurfaced in which Friedman was asked what to do about sexual predators.

"Throw them in prison and throw away the key and make them listen to a Negro talking to himself," Friedman said. He also called "Negro" a "charming word."

Friedman's campaign has said the CNBC interview in which he made the "Negro" remark was a reference to a book he wrote in the 1980s.

Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican seeking re-election against Friedman and three other candidates, said Thursday he agrees with state civil rights leaders and others who were offended by Friedman's remarks.

"These are individuals who know what a racist comment is," Perry said of black legislators and the state NAACP. "Call it politically incorrect if you want, but it's not lost on men and women of color when people make remarks that are clearly racist _ if not directly racist, obliquely racist. And I think they have appropriately called his hand."

State Rep. Garnet Coleman, former chairman of the Texas Legislative Black Caucus, said probably nobody would have scrutinized his 1980 remark if he hadn't said what he did about Hurricane Katrina evacuees.

"It makes it more relevant because people then look to see, is this part of your character," Coleman said. He said Friedman "needs to change his tune or get out of the race."

Stromberg said those who don't understand Friedman's jokes have had "humor bypasses."

The Friedman campaign statement said those offended by his Houston nightclub statement are taking "completely out of context a controversial word that Kinky was using in a 1980 stand-up performance to lampoon racists. Kinky was on stage exposing bigotry through comedy and satire."

The other major Texas gubernatorial candidates said Friedman should apologize.

"The latest revelations of Kinky's racist comments are disgusting. He can call it 'satire', but it's just not funny," said Democrat Chris Bell. "Comments like these make all Texans look bad. The Texas in our hearts is not filled with hate."

Independent candidate Carole Keeton Strayhorn said the language Friedman used was unacceptable, then and now.

"Such language is divisive and hurtful and has no place in any part of our society, regardless of one's race," she said.

The Friedman campaign also criticized the news media as being complicit by not confronting other candidates about the "slimy" opposition research used in some campaigns, which it said is intent on destroying people.

Spokespeople for Perry, Bell and Strayhorn said their campaigns didn't know about Friedman's Houston nightclub joke until reading about it on Burnt Orange Report.

Phillip Martin, who posted the audio on the blog, works for Coleman, the state legislator. Martin said he did the Web posting in his off time after getting it from an old fan of Friedman's. He said none of the gubernatorial campaigns nor Coleman knew about it before it was made public on the Web.

Kelley Shannon has covered Texas politics and government in Austin since 2000.

source: http://www.kristv.com/Global/story.asp?S=5441744&nav=Bsmh

QUOTE

"While Rick Perry was cheerleading in college and Chris Bell was being potty trained, Kinky Friedman was picketing segregated restaurants in Austin to integrate them," ~Kinky Friedman Campaign

Texas' Republican Rick Perry: Too Little Too Late !

Letter to the Editor - Fort Worth Star Telegram

Too late

I recently watched a Rick Perry campaign commercial. I found it very sad that he would dare to stand before cameras and declare that he promises to put more National Guard troops on the border five years after 9-11.

This is like shutting the barn door after the cows have gotten out. The influx of illegal immigrants would never have taken place had the governor done his job. It is clear to me that Perry is hoping (and perhaps praying) that people will overlook this fact.

May I be the first to tell Perry to finish this term in office with dignity and withdraw from the governor's race?

Richard Colonel, Fort Worth

source: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/opinion/local2/15534953.htm

What you're not hearing over the Brownwood Talk Radio Airwaves (KXYL 96.9FM)

Save Yourself, Blame Bush

By Joe Scarborough
Sunday, September 17, 2006; Page B01

I can't help but feel sorry for my old Republican friends in Congress who are fighting for their political lives. After all, it must be tough explaining to voters at their local Baptist church's Keep Congress Conservative Day that it was their party that took a $155 billion surplus and turned it into a record-setting $400 billion deficit.

How exactly does one convince the teeming masses that Republicans deserve to stay in power despite botching a war, doubling the national debt, keeping company with Jack Abramoff, fumbling the response to Hurricane Katrina, expanding the government at record rates, raising cronyism to an art form, playing poker with Duke Cunningham, isolating America and repeatedly electing Tom DeLay as their House majority leader?

How does a God-fearing Reagan Republican explain all that away?

Easy. Blame George W. Bush.

Escaping political death by attacking an unpopular president is hardly new -- especially since most endangered politicians have the loyalty of a starving billy goat. But this is Dubya's Washington, where the White House has pushed around, bullied and betrayed GOP lawmakers for years.

Republican House members and senators always believed that this White House took them for granted. But after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, most of them had no choice but to sulk in their cloakrooms, listen to Debby Boone on their iPods and take it like a man. Bush was a rock star among the party faithful through the 2004 election, so crossing this popular commander in chief was not an option. That's not to say that Old Bulls didn't privately growl about how they were treated better when their old nemesis was still frolicking with an intern. So what if Bill Clinton misbehaved? At least that president found time to personally negotiate terms of subcommittee markups -- even if he was defiling the Oval Office at the same time.

But that kind of give-and-take between presidents and members of Congress ended once Clinton retired to Chappaqua. For the next five years, Republicans on the Hill would do little more than rubber-stamp Bush's domestic and international agenda because lawmakers were intimidated by his power and his popularity with the Republican base.

Even when the administration would not give generals the troops they needed to win the war in Iraq, Republican leaders did nothing. When the president refused to veto a single spending bill while the deficit spiraled upward, Republican leaders looked away. And when chaos was reigning in the streets of New Orleans and across the Gulf Coast in Katrina's horrific aftermath, Republican leaders remained mute.

That silence -- proof that it is better to be feared than loved in politics -- has had devastating results. The United States is more divided than ever, our leaders are despised around the world, our fiscal situation is catastrophic and congressional approval ratings are the lowest ever. Since nothing sharpens the mind like a political hanging, Republican leaders in the Senate and House are finally considering doing what effete newspaper editorialists have suggested for years: throwing Bush overboard.

Of course, the mere suggestion makes some Republican loyalists shudder. Being a faithful follower of Brother Bush has long been synonymous with loving Jesus, supporting the troops and taking a stand against sodomy. But no more. Many of the conservatives who put Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich in power are counting the days until Bush goes to Crawford for good. Some mutter that their leader's governing style looks more like Jimmy Carter's every day -- and among that crowd, there is no harsher insult.

I recently ran a segment on my MSNBC show asking whether Bush was an idiot. After the show, I actually received positive feedback from conservative friends, along with the predictable condemnation from White House staffers. The response was telling and suggested that attacking Bush from the right carries no political risk -- a useful pointer for House members facing tough campaigns.

If I were a GOP candidate this year, I would not call the president an idiot (he isn't). But I would spend the next 50 days of the campaign telling conservatives and liberals alike that even though I voted for this war once and this president twice, time has proved that Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld were wrong to think that the nation could win Iraq on the cheap. I would also look them in the eye and say that our president was wrong to believe that the United States could fight a war, cut taxes and increase federal spending, all at once. I would castigate my president for claiming to support homeland security while allowing our borders to remain wide open.

I suspect that voters of all persuasions would like that message. Independence is almost always rewarded at the polls. I learned this by accident while running for Congress in 1994, when the local, state and national Republican machines worked overtime to elect my opponent in the primary. I was considered too young, too inexperienced and too conservative.

But after winning 62 percent of the vote, I arrived in Washington an independent man. I criticized Clinton for vetoing welfare reform; I went after Gingrich for backing off spending cuts. Both times, my constituents roared with approval. The best part is that I was rewarded for saying what I believed -- another pointer for today's Republicans.

Using a midterm campaign to run away from your party's president is not unprecedented. In 1994, Democrats did it while GOP challengers were busy tying Clinton's political carcass around their necks. Some Southern Democrats were so desperate to run away from Clinton's tax increase and health care debacle that they in effect told White House operatives that any attempt to send Air Force One to their districts would be met with antiaircraft fire.

In the end, Democrats' efforts to save their majorities in the House and Senate were futile. Right-wing barbarians like me were elected because after two long years of political bumbling, voters were tired of Clinton. Unfortunately for endangered Republicans 12 years later, Clinton's poll numbers during that campaign were 15 percentage points higher than Bush's now. That suggests that the Democratic tidal wave this year will rival that of the Republicans in 1994.

But these Republicans have one advantage that Clinton's party lacked in 1994: Their opponents are Democrats. The Party of Pelosi. The party that is so tongue-tied on its best political issue that I still can't tell you where it stands on Iraq. Nor can they explain how they would balance the budget or stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

That failure to present an alternative vision is in stark contrast with Gingrich & Co., who spent 1994 drawing up a legislative package, a plan to balance the budget and enough position papers to strip an Amazon rain forest.

This year, maybe Democrats can beat something with nothing. As for Republicans, their only chance of survival is blasting the president for mistakes of the past and attacking the Democrats for their failings of the future.

Of course, you GOP candidates can be sure that such attacks will annoy Bush, even though your survival may be all that stands between him and a crazy Democratic chairman launching impeachment hearings. But if you win this fall only to face his stern rebuke next winter, just tell him it was schadenfreude for all the times the White House treated you badly. With any luck, Bush will think you are talking about that Berlin disco that Moammar Gaddafi bombed back in 1986 and then dismiss you like the worthless billy goat he always suspected you were.

joe@msnbc.com

Joe Scarborough, a Republican congressman from Florida from 1995 to 2001, is host of MSNBC's "Scarborough Country."

source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/15/AR2006091500996.html

Kinky Friedman:“Prayer in school, gay marriage, decriminalizing marijuana… no matter what you think of it, people are begging for the truth,”

Sep 14, 2006 8:46 pm US/Central

Kinky Friedman Brings His Political Humor To UTA

Mary Stewart Reporting

(CBS 11 News) ARLINGTON Kinky Friedman spoke with history students at University of Texas at Arlington Thursday.

Friedman tackled some of the controversial issues he's supporting on the campaign trail.
“Prayer in school, gay marriage, decriminalizing marijuana… no matter what you think of it, people are begging for the truth,” the independent candidate for governor said.
Friedman says 60-percent of inmates in prison shouldn't be there, he believes they should be in re-rehab.
After all, he said, “We need a place where we can put pedophiles and politicians.“
A student almost tripped the colorful candidate by asking if Kinky ever smoked a ‘joint’ with his friend, entertainer Willie Nelson. “Of course not. Of course not," he said, amid the laughter.
Friedman’s opponents have attacked his recent description of Katrina victims in Houston as, "crackheads and thugs."
In Fort Worth Tuesday, Governor Rick Perry said, “Look, I think that's an inappropriate comments, but you need to talk to him about that.”
“I think it was a very appropriate comment,” Friedman responded Thursday. “And more than that, I'm addressing an issue that he's dodging. When one little subgroup of crackheads and thugs brings your murder rate up 20-percent, they're responsible for 20-percent of the murders in Houston that little group of people. Put the cops on the street. I challenge Perry.”

(CBS 11 News)

source: http://cbs11tv.com/topstories/local_story_257214712.html
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Friedman Says He'd Legalize Pot in Texas

By MICHAEL GRACZYK
The Associated Press
Thursday, September 14, 2006; 3:15 PM

AUSTIN, Texas -- Kinky Friedman says he favors legalizing marijuana to keep nonviolent users out of prison. If Texas elects him governor, he says, he'll try to get locked-up pot users released to make room for more violent criminals.
"I think that's long overdue," Friedman told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday. "I think everybody knows what (U.S. Sen.) John McCain said is right: We've pretty well lost the war on drugs doing it the way we're doing it. Drugs are more available and cheaper than ever before. What we're doing is not working."
Friedman, the often irreverent singer, entertainer and mystery writer, is running as an independent in a bid to unseat Republican Gov. Rick Perry, and he's getting some serious attention.
He said he'd take a closer look at the use of the death penalty in Texas, wants to clean house on the state's board and commissions and would dump public school assessment tests, even if it costs the state federal money.
On the death penalty, he said he would be more liberal with the governor's authority to grant a one-time 30-day reprieve to condemned killers.
"I would be careful killing a guy," he said. "I think there are people who need to die, but the question I've asked mostly is: When was the last time we've executed a rich man in Texas?"
He bristled at the criticism heaped on him after he called some Hurricane Katrina evacuees in Houston "crackheads and thugs."
Friedman said Wednesday that his plan to give $100 million to Houston to hire more police "was not in any way racist."
"How can you possibly regret that, telling the truth?" he asked. "I am not a racist, I am a realist. In looking at the statistics, I know that 20 percent of the homicides in Houston have been committed by the element in the evacuee population.
"I never said what color their skin was. I never said all evacuees are crack dealers or crackheads. I'm smarter than that."
Also in the race for governor are Democrat Chris Bell, Libertarian James Werner and another independent, Carole Strayhorn, the state comptroller who won that office as a Republican.
As for Friedman, he said he doesn't like being called a politician.
"I don't mind being called a flip-flopper," he said, a description Perry's campaign has placed on him. "I think we actually could use a flip-flopper as governor because a flip-flopper is a human being open to change, and God knows change is what we need now."
He acknowledged that the Texas governor's authority is limited compared with executives in other states but said he would use the bully pulpit to cajole legislators. He doesn't trust them, he said, adding: "I do not trust the media either."
"Right now the lobbyists are leading us. We have a lack of leadership, a vacuum," he said.
One of the Texas governor's few powerful roles is in appointing state board members, and Friedman said he would replace as many as he could, including regents at the University of Texas and Texas A&M.
"You clean house," he said. "You get the old farts out of there. You put a bunch of young people in and you put a bunch of people who care about Texas. It's pretty simple."
If he wins _ most polls show Perry leading in the race but not running away with it _ Friedman said one of the first calls he'd make as governor would be to Robert Muhammad, head of the Nation of Islam in Houston, who he said "the Lord put in my path at the Austin airport earlier this year."
"He's a very visionary man," Friedman said. "You would think we're at opposite poles, but we're not. That's the guy I would tap. I would tap him to help us get those gangsters and thugs and crackheads out of there."

source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/14/AR2006091400973.html

Rest In Peace Coach Charlie Moot and Ann Richards

Charles R. "Coach" Moot

August 26, 1944 ~ September 09, 2006

From: Lewis Center, Ohio

Visitation: Saturday, September 16, 2006 from 5:00-0:00 P.M.

Funeral: Saturday, September 23, 2006 at 4:00 P.M.

Burial: Corwin

Charles R. “Coach” Moot, age 62 of Fort Worth, TX finished his fight against ALS on Saturday, September 9, 2006 with his family by his side.

A longtime resident of Texas and Oklahoma he was an educator as well as a football coach, having coached at both the high school and collegiate levels. Beginning at high school in Cohoes, NY and several schools in Oklahoma, his collegiate career included Northwestern Oklahoma State University before moving on to Texas and UTEP, Sam Houston State, and Howard Payne Universities.

His love of youth and commitment to enriching their lives on and off the football field, lead him to Southwestern Texas High School in Ft. Worth, from which he retired in 2005.

Born on August 26, 1944 in Lockport, NY to the late Peter and June (Church) Moot. He was a graduate of Wilson High School in 1963 and Ithaca College where he played football. He also served in the US Marine Corps during the Vietnam Conflict.

Charlie loved people, and held a passion for football and building character through its coaching. Because of his strong faith and unconditional acceptance and compassion for others he was an inspiration to everyone he knew.

He leaves a tremendous legacy and is survived by siblings: Priscilla Moot of Lewis Center with whom he resided during his illness, Peter (Zada) Moot of Holland Patent, NY, Lucy (Tim) Kraatz of Union, KY, Step-siblings: Cheryl (Dan) Kammon of Kenmore, NY, Rick (Cyndi) Farnham of Las Vegas, NV, Gary (Darlene) Farnham of Ransomville, NY, Bruce Farnham of Cheektowaga, NY , Nieces, Nephews, Great-nieces and nephews, students, and players.

Also preceded in death by step-mother of 26 years: Betty.

Memorial services will be held 5:00 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 16, 2006 at Wedgwood Baptist Church, 5522 Whitman Ave., Ft. Worth, TX with Brother Al Meredith officiating.

Local arrangements entrusted to DeVore-Snyder Funeral Home in Delaware.

An additional memorial service will be held 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, September 23, 2006 at the St. John’s Episcopal Church in Wilson, New York. Inurment will follow in the Corwin Cemetery in Newfane, New York.

In lieu of flowers memorial contributions can be made to ALS for Research, 1810 MacKenzie Dr., Suite 120, Columbus, OH 43220.

Condolences may be expressed at www.snyderfuneralhomes.com

source: http://www.snyderfuneralhomes.com/obituaries/obit_view.phtml?id=5216

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Ann Richards

"the steel magnolia of Texas," Ross Perot 1994
------------------
Sept. 14, 2006, 8:40AM

Former Texas Gov. Ann Richards dies

By KELLEY SHANNON Associated Press Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press

AUSTIN, Texas — Former Gov. Ann Richards, the witty and flamboyant Democrat who went from homemaker to national political celebrity, died Wednesday night after a battle with cancer, a family spokeswoman said. She was 73.

She died at home surrounded by her family, the spokeswoman said. Richards was found to have esophageal cancer in March and underwent chemotherapy treatments.

The silver-haired, silver-tongued Richards said she entered politics to help others _ especially women and minorities who were often ignored by Texas' male-dominated establishment.

"I did not want my tombstone to read, 'She kept a really clean house.' I think I'd like them to remember me by saying, 'She opened government to everyone,'" Richards said shortly before leaving office in January 1995.

Whether or not she succeeded at that, there was no question she cracked open the door.

Her single term as governor had ended in a 1994 defeat to George W. Bush, who went from besting his father's silver-haired critic to the governor's office to the presidency.

"Texas has lost one of its great daughters," President Bush said in statement after learning of Richards' death.

Two years before she was elected governor of Texas, Ann Richards electrified the 1988 Democratic National Convention with a keynote speech in which she joked that the Republican presidential nominee, George H.W. Bush, had been "born with a silver foot in his mouth."

A longtime champion of women and minorities in government who was serving at the time as Texas state treasurer, she won cheers when she reminded delegates that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, "only backwards and in high heels."

As governor, Richards appointed the first black University of Texas regent, the first crime victim on the state Criminal Justice Board, the first disabled person on the human services board and the first teacher to lead the State Board of Education. Under Richards, the fabled Texas Rangers pinned stars on their first black and female officers.

Ron Kirk, the black former mayor of Dallas, said Richards helped him get his first political internship during a state constitutional convention in 1974 and later, as governor, made him secretary of state.

"She set the table so somebody like me could become mayor of Dallas," Kirk said.

She also polished Texas' image, courted movie producers, campaigned for the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico, oversaw a doubling of the state prison system and presided over rising student achievement scores and plunging dropout rates.

Throughout her years in office, her popularity remained high. One poll put it at over 60 percent the year she lost her re-election bid to Bush.

Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry described Richards as "the epitome of Texas politics: a figure larger than life who had a gift for captivating the public with her great wit."

"Ann loved Texas, and Texans loved her," President Bush said. "As a public servant, she earned respect and admiration. Ann became a national role model, and her charm, wit and candor brought a refreshing vitality to public life."

U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, said Richards never lost her zest for life.

"I wrote her a note when I heard about her cancer and she wrote me back a wonderful letter. She was upbeat and positive and I think she was going to go out with guns blazing," Hutchison said Wednesday night.

Richards was diagnosed with cancer in March and underwent chemotherapy treatments.

Her four adult children spent the day with her before she died Wednesday night at her home in Austin, said Cathy Bonner, a longtime family friend and family spokeswoman.

Born in Lakeview, Texas, in 1933, Richards grew up near Waco, married civil rights lawyer David Richards and spent her early adulthood volunteering in campaigns and raising four children. She often said the hardest job she ever had was as a public school teacher at Fulmore Junior High School in Austin.

In the early 1960s, she helped form the North Dallas Democratic Women, "basically to allow us to have something substantive to do; the regular Democratic Party and its organization was run by men who looked on women as little more than machine parts."

Richards served on the Travis County Commissioners Court in Austin for six years before jumping to a bigger arena in 1982 when her election as state treasurer made her the first woman elected statewide in nearly 50 years.

But politics took a toll. It cost her a marriage and forced her in 1980 to seek treatment for alcoholism.

"I had seen the very bottom of life," she once recalled. "I was so afraid I wouldn't be funny anymore. I just knew that I would lose my zaniness and my sense of humor. But I didn't. Recovery turned out to be a wonderful thing."

After her re-election defeat, Richards went on to give speeches, work as a commentator for Cable News Network and serve as a senior adviser in the New York office of Public Strategies.

In her last 10 years, Richards worked for many social causes and helped develop the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders, scheduled to open in Austin in 2007.

Richards said she never missed being in public office. She grinned when asked what she might have done differently had she known she would be a one-term governor.

"Oh," she said, "I would probably have raised more hell."

source: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/4186314.html
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The "Steel Magnolia" in her own words

go here

"Bo" Pilgrim visits Brownwood. Follow the Money !

Thursday September 14, 2006
News

Audience leaves a little richer, in several ways

By Candace Cooksey Fulton — Brownwood Bulletin

Lonnie “Bo” Pilgrim, left, chairman of the board and co-founder of Pilgrim’s Pride Corp., accepts the Gen. Douglas MacArthur Freedom Medal, presented by Howard Payne University President, Dr. Lanny Hall. Photo by Candace Cooksey Fulton

Take the advice straight from the Bible and take the money. Either way, those who accepted Lonnie “Bo” Pilgrim’s gift of “Good News for Modern Man” left lunch Wednesday a little richer.

Pilgrim, the co-founder and majority owner of Pilgrim’s Pride Corp., had a folded $20 bill inserted between the last page and the cover of each booklet.

Pilgrim told those attending the Othal Brand Chair of Free Enterprise and Public Policy luncheon at Howard Payne University he has a formula for life — a pecking order he never varies from or changes.

“I saw on TV the other night where you could work with people and in 60 days, you could plan your life,” Pilgrim said.

“I can give you a plan in 60 seconds. It’s the plan we use at our company — God, first; family, second; company, third; and sales, fourth. That’s it. It’s that easy and it’s what works.”

Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. is a Fortune 500 company with 40,000 employees and annual sales of more than $5 billion. The company, which Pilgrim and his older brother Aubrey began as a sideline to their feed store in Pittsburg, Texas, 60 years ago, hatches 6 million chicks a night and ships out 30 million processed and packaged chickens each week.

In 1946 the brothers gave 100 chicks away with each bag of feed they sold. The farmers who took the chicks would raise them to chickens and bring them back to the feed store to sell. From that, the company grew to become the second largest chicken company in the United States and Mexico.

In his brief speech on Wednesday, Bo Pilgrim told of the hardships he and his brother endured after their father died, and of going to live with their grandmother in a home that had no electricity, plumbing or any other conceivable modern comforts.

But, Pilgrim said, “as we’ve gone down through the years, the thing I’ve never forgotten — that I pledged to Jesus Christ — is to be faithful to him.”

He carries in his billfold a card, written in his own handwriting to remind him of life’s real gain, he said. “I’ve written, ‘if you own the whole world, it doesn’t belong to you.’ A billion dollars net worth and not even one cent belongs to me,” Pilgrim said.

“I came here today to talk to people and to college students because I have a concern that our universities are teaching students how to make a living but not how to live.”

Pilgrim spoke at the Howard Payne chapel Wednesday morning, and then at the luncheon, held in the Bullion Suites at the Mabee University Center. At both engagements, he passed out the booklets with the $20 bills folded inside. One student estimated from the chapel and luncheon attendance combined, it totaled a $6,000 gift. Pilgrim was presented the Gen. Douglas MacArthur Freedom Medal at the luncheon’s conclusion by Dr. Lanny Hall, president of HPU.

The Othal Brand Chair of Free Enterprise and Public Policy was founded in 1983 and endowed by Othal E. Brand, J.R. Beadel, Carlton Beal, Fred L. Flynn and the Hillcrest Foundation in memory of W.W. Caruth Sr. The Brand Chair operates within Howard Payne University’s Douglas MacArthur Academy of Freedom, which serves as the university’s multidisciplinary honors program. Dedicated to studying critical issues that affect the economy, society, the nation and the world, the Brand Chair sponsors lectureships, conferences, and the publication of an annual journal.

source: http://www.brownwoodbulletin.com/articles/2006/09/14/news/news01.txt
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The Money Changers
By moiv Wed May 24, 2006 at 12:08:38 AM EST
topic: Analysis of Christian Right section:Front Page email story print

Last week, Mainstream Baptist wondered What's the Matter with Texas? and referenced the Texas Freedom Network's incisive new report: "The Anatomy of Power: Texas and the Religious Right in 2006."
No one should be surprised to hear that there's a whole lot the matter with Texas, or that -- as is the case even in religion-driven politics - the root of our state's particular evil can be traced to the love of money. Here in Texas, rich men who hand money out by the bucketload are using their wealth to buy a state government that looks like their vision of the promised land.

The TFN report devotes an entire section to "God's Sugar Daddy," Dr. James Leininger.

The San Antonio physician made a fortune selling specialty hospital beds. His business empire has included a variety of other companies, including Promised Land Dairy (which places a Bible verse on each milk container), the direct mail company Focus Direct and the political consulting firm of Winning Strategies. Yet among Dr. Leininger's most significant investments have been in the careers of politicians who back his public policy agenda, including tort reform, private school vouchers, pushing religious conservative principles in public schools, and opposition to abortion and gay rights.
Leininger holds a seat on the Board of Trustees of Patrick Henry College, where "[e]ach Trustee, officer, faculty member and student of the College, as well as such other employees and agents of the College as may be specified by resolution of the Board of Trustees, shall fully and enthusiastically subscribe to the following Statement of Faith."

A. There is one God, eternally existent in three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

B. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth.

C. Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, is God come in the flesh.

D. The Bible in its entirety (all 66 books of the Old and New Testaments) is the inspired word of God, inerrant in its original autographs, and the only infallible and sufficient authority for faith and Christian living.

E. Man is by nature sinful and is inherently in need of salvation, which is exclusively found by faith alone in Jesus Christ and His shed blood.

F. Christ's death provides substitutionary atonement for our sins.

G. Personal salvation comes to mankind by grace through faith.

H. Jesus Christ literally rose bodily from the dead.

I. Jesus Christ literally will come to earth again in the Second Advent.

J. Satan exists as a personal, malevolent being who acts as tempter and accuser, for whom Hell, the place of eternal punishment, was prepared, where all who die outside of Christ shall be confined in conscious torment for eternity.

When Leininger makes that statement of faith, he puts his money where his mouth is, even though he grew up in a church that warns its faithful: "We condemn those who ... aiming to govern the State by the Word of God, seek to turn the State into a Church." But maybe that's why he's not a Lutheran anymore.

Leininger is best known for financing efforts to defund public schools with private school vouchers and push through so-called "tort reform" measures to protect corporations such as his from legal damages, but as far back as 1999, Leininger already had written checks for $2.1 million to anti-choice, anti-gay rights and conservative "family values" non-profits and PACS such as the American Family Association, the Christian Pro-Life Foundation, the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, the Heidi Group, the Institute in Basic Life Principles, and the Republican National Coalition for Life PAC.

State Rep.Frank Corte, a perennial proponent of religious school vouchers and Leininger's longtime lap dog, also shares Leininger's overweening interest in controlling women's bodies. Corte was the author of Texas HB15, a draconian 2003 antiabortion law that has drastically decreased women's access to abortion care in Texas.

And why do even moderate Republicans vote "yes" on bills like these, creating a web of statutes by now so confused that a doctor in Texas can be subject to the death penalty for providing an abortion to a minor without written parental consent? Peggy Romberg of the Women's Health and Family Planning Association was present when many lawmakers walked out of the legislative chamber, refusing to vote on yet another anti-choice bill: "I even had Republicans say to me, `I'd love to walk this one, but they'd kill me,'" she said. "Everyone knows what this is really about. They're just afraid to say it publicly."

If you serve in an elected office in Texas, you don't want to get in Jim Leininger's way.

For the 1994 school board elections, at the behest of the state Republican Party, [Leininger's friend, Bob] Offutt went out to recruit fellow travelers. He found three. One was Donna Ballard, a Pentecostal minister's wife from the Houston suburbs. Through personal funds and PAC contributions ... Leininger donated some $45,000 -- an enormous amount of money as school board campaigns go -- to Ballard and the two other Christian-right candidates. And Focus Direct, a Leininger company in San Antonio that does slick, direct mail work for companies and politicians, produced and mass-mailed a leaflet featuring a photo of a black man and a white man kissing and accusing Ballard's opponent Mary Knott Perkins of wanting to teach Texas children about oral and anal sex. Perkins, a grandmother many times over who is by no means a political radical, lost the election to Ballard. The other two Christian conservatives also won. The victories gave the elected state school board its first-ever Republican majority.
If Leininger spends $45,000 on a school board election, how much will he spend to buy the results he wants in other races? Via the Texas Ethics Commission, the Texas Freedom Network report provides some sobering numbers.

From 1997 to March 2006, the Leiningers contributed or loaned nearly $10 million to candidates for state offices and to political action committees active at the state level. During the same period, the Leiningers contributed more than $1 million to campaigns and political committees at the federal level and in other states. Those vast sums of money went almost exclusively to Republicans and far-right political committees. Indeed, Dr. Leininger has been called the "sugar daddy of the religious right" in Texas, and the name clearly fits.
If Leininger is the religious right's sugar daddy, he has some help paying child support. Lonnie "Bo" Pilgrim is best known as the founder of Pilgrim's Pride, and is recognized on sight by many Americans from his folksy appearances on billboards and television, dressed in a pilgrim's hat and often with a pet chicken under his arm. And that's one lucky chicken, because Pilgrim's Pride facilities in Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Puerto Rico and Mexico process about 30 million of her sisters every week, for a record $5.7 billion in net sales for fiscal year 2005.

Pilgrim is convinced he is on a mission from God.

That mission includes chickens. Lots and lots of chickens. Asked about that mission, Pilgrim cites the first book of Genesis, the section about God creating the fowl of the air. "He created these things to sustain man. I'm in a business that I'm proud to be part of the environment that the Lord created to support man.
"I think the Lord is using Pilgrim's Pride as an example of a Christian businessman," he said. "I believe that from the bottom of my heart. I know the Lord does that with me. He has tried me with fire and he has blessed me."

Bo Pilgrim and his family members have bestowed tens of thousands in blessings upon hard right Republicans in every election cycle -- in addition to another $450,000 for the national Republican committee in 2002 alone -- and that ain't chickenfeed, either.

Aside from his long history as a polluter of the environment second to none - in 1995 Pilgrim's Pride paid $325,000 in fines for illegal wastewater discharges, and in 2002 caused a deadly listeria outbreak that killed eight people and led to the largest meat recall in American history -- Pilgrim immortalized himself in Texas political folklore for what I like to think of as the Great Chicken Feeding of 1989.


Raising chickens made Bo Pilgrim famous. Handing out $10,000 checks inside the Texas Capitol made him notorious. In 1989, during consideration of a bill to reform the state's workers compensation laws, Pilgrim walked onto the floor of the Senate, where a committee meeting was concluding, and handed out $10,000 checks to key legislators involved in the workers comp debate. Several legislators took the checks. When the story was reported in the news media, senators returned the checks to Pilgrim. (One senator didn't exactly return the check. He had already cashed it, so he had to write a new check to Pilgrim.)
In addition to furthering his vision of a "Christian" society, his continuing political largesse to those who have no trouble voting Bo Pilgrim's conscience instead of their own has enabled Pilgrim to continue his blatant defiance of federal law as a major employer of undocumented workers. From my vantage point inside a clinic that provides abortion care, I didn't need a watchdog site to inform me of Pilgrim's hiring practices, because his company employs undocumented Spanish-speaking women in such huge numbers that our clinic has seen many of them over the years, both from Dallas and from Pilgrim's Pride headquarters in Pittsburg, Texas. They receive low pay, of course, with no health insurance and little access to family planning services.

When women working in such conditions experience unplanned pregnancies, they often feel compelled to seek abortions as a matter of economic survival. Despite the fervid insistence by the religious right that the public accept the dubious concept of "Post-Abortion Syndrome" as an article of faith, the biggest worry on these women's minds is that our doctors advise them not to spend prolonged hours on their feet for the next several days. Even though we provide Pilgrim's employees with documentation of their qualification for temporary disability under the Family Medical Leave Act, they fear that they'll lose their jobs unless they return immediately to spending ten hours a day on the processing line, elbow deep in chicken innards.

But the millions pumped into Texas politics by Leininger and Pilgrim pale in comparison to the ungodly amounts of money proceeding from the seemingly bottomless pockets of homebuilder Bob Perry, whose political activities at the national level were revealed in 2004 by his financing of the shady Swift Boat Veterans for Truth assault on John Kerry.

source: http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/5/24/0838/50640
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All "Melting Pot's" are local !

Urban melting pot
From Egyptian to vegan, a quirky smorgasbord of dining diversity is blooming on this neighborly row just south of downtown Fort Worth
By JUNE NAYLOR
SPECIAL TO THE STAR-TELEGRAM

When your appetite demands something far afield from what you'd find at any old interstate exit, only one reach of restaurant real estate in Fort Worth will feed your fancy.
Surrounded by the medical district just south of downtown, Magnolia Avenue graciously provides us with an unconventional, chain-free dining haven.
The site where the south-side renaissance began more than a quarter-century ago, Magnolia between Eighth Avenue and Hemphill Street boasts a dozen restaurants in a 14-block stretch that offers the greatest density of dining diversity in Tarrant County. Middle Eastern, Mexican, vegetarian, seafood, Creole, Mediterranean, Thai, Italian and home cooking are all represented, and each place thrives on the individuality of its food, staff and customers.
If you've been ignoring the Magnolia dining district because road work on Rosedale and Hemphill streets has made navigation tricky, there are a couple of ways around all the upheaval. You can avoid obstacles by either traveling south on Main or Jennings to Magnolia or by cutting through the Mistletoe neighborhood from Forest Park to Mistletoe Boulevard to Eighth Avenue.
Like the historic Fairmount neighborhood extending immediately to the south, Magnolia marches to the beat of its own drummer. Rising amid churches, schools and buildings that date from the earliest days of the 1900s, this collection of restaurants eschews trendy tendencies and draws energy from the district's passion for restoration and its spirit of renewal. Go in search of revitalization, and be well fed.

Bud Kennedy, Amy Culbertson and Patricia Rodriguez contributed to this story.

1 King Tut: It's been 14 years since owner Amin Mahmoud turned us on to shawarma at his cafe that celebrates the Egyptian culinary treasures of his youth, and we're still as smitten as we were at the start. Lamb and chicken are the best varieties of this comforting dish, made with wide, tender cuts of meat simmered with onion and tomato and drizzled with the sesame sauce called tahini. Warm wedges of pita come alongside, as do sauteed rice and a peppery vinaigrette that Mahmoud sells by the bottle.

If you take a gaggle of diners, share the eight-item meze plate, laden with riches -- feta cubes, olives, hummus, creamy eggplant dip and more. Vegetarian delights include couscous crowned with sauteed veggies in tomato sauce.

Tremendously popular at lunch, the ebulliently decorated King Tut is a comfortable place for a dinner with family or pals -- but know that there's no bar, and you can't bring in wine or liquor.

1512 W. Magnolia Ave., 817-335-3051

2 Hoagies Heroes: You may have driven by this teensy, unassuming sandwich shop a hundred times and never noticed it. Well, stop it. Go, order, enjoy. Once you do, you'll want to go again and again, if for no other reason than that you need a dozen visits just to put a dent in the menu.

Officially, there are 37 sandwiches on the list, but with the myriad of ingredients available, you could come up with thousands of variations.

Our favorite on a recent visit was the Super Sub, a compilation of roast beef, ham, turkey, Genoa salami, Swiss and American cheeses, lettuce, tomato, pickle and onion that would have made Dagwood weak with desire. The hot Polish sausage with sauerkraut, spicy mustard and Swiss was gratifying, too, but the chicken salad was too heavy on the mayo for our taste.

Bargain hunters will love this place, as 4-inch sammies start at $1.95, and you can get a big 'un, measuring a foot long, for less than $6.

1500 W. Magnolia Ave., 817-877-0817.

3 Benito's: Here's a place for anyone who's tired of the same old boring Tex-Mex plates. Specializing in dishes from Mexico's interior, Benito's commitment to the ways of true Mexican dining shows in the absence of automatic delivery of chips and salsa to the table (they don't do that in the Old Country, folks).

Forget the chips, and wait for the hot tortillas and fiery pico de gallo that do come gratis with meals and are divine with such appetizers as the gooey, chorizo-studded flaming cheese and the molcajetes filled with fresh, chunky guacamole.

Enchiladas come packed with old-fashioned picadillo, or ground beef freckled with bits of potato, or green chile and chicken. For a comfort dish, there are fried pork chunks with squash and tomatoes, and the chicken en adobo is a baked bird in a brick-red chile sauce that will soothe you to your soul.

Breakfast is served at any hour, but it's particularly delicious at 1 a.m. on weekends. Margaritas are a specialty in this friendly, spacious, serape-adorned cafe, and there's a nice selection of Mexican beers.

1450 W. Magnolia Ave., 817-332-8633

4 Nonna Tata: This tiny treasure is the talk of Fort Worth's foodie circles, but there is nothing pretentious here -- just the passionate, individualistic cooking of Donatella Trotti, who vividly re-creates dishes she remembers from her childhood in the Italian lake country where she grew up.

Where else in Fort Worth would you find risotto al salto -- fried into a thin, crisp cake -- or deeply flavored petals of bresaola -- air-dried beef -- slicked with olive oil and scattered with shards of Parmigiano?

The menu changes from day to day; sometimes the hours do, too: Currently, Trotti serves lunch from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, dinner from 5:30 to 9 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays and until 10 p.m. on Fridays; she closes Saturdays and Sundays and takes reservations only for Monday evenings.

Bring a bottle of wine; Trotti won't charge you a corkage fee (though she might take a sip, if you offer).

Cozy, cute (if occasionally cramped) and cheerful, Nonna Tata has finally given Fort Worth a truly special neighborhood Italian restaurant.

1400 W. Magnolia Ave., 817-332-0250

5 Spiral Diner & Bakery: This funky, laid-back cafe isn't just the best (and possibly only) vegan restaurant in Cowtown, it's a really good restaurant, period. Even confirmed carnivores will find something to tempt them on the vast menu.

Perhaps a Thai-style red curry with broccoli, tofu, peppers and organic brown-rice noodles; or a fresh green salad enlivened with raisins, spiced walnuts and a terrific, garlic-tinged tahini dressing; or a decidedly unglamorous but highly satisfying protein platter, with quinoa, black beans and salsa cooked into a kind of tasty vegan stew.

Then cancel out your virtuous choices with something decadent from the bakery, perhaps a slice of moist, sweet German chocolate cake.

You'll also find a juice bar serving fresh-squeezed juices and smoothies, all kinds of espresso drinks, an interesting selection of beers and an assortment of flyers and newsletters supporting progressive causes.

The emphasis on egalitarianism can seem a little scoldy -- a note on the menu reminds diners that employees are there to "help," not to "serve" -- but we've found the staff genuinely friendly and the atmosphere warm.

1314 W. Magnolia Ave., 817-332-8834, www.spiraldiner.com

6 Servant's Kitchen: Divine inspiration led owner-chef Iting Chu to open a charming eatery late last year. She quit her job as a nurse practitioner when the spirit of gospel music turned her toward Christianity and, in time, a calling to feed people. Her combined passion for service and seafood resulted in Servant's Kitchen, which offers a blend of Asian and Creole favorites.

A recent visit delivered a charming plate of seared teriyaki salmon atop soba noodles and sauteed mushrooms, onion and peppers, although the promised basket of hot bread never materialized. Regulars return time and again for the gumbo -- a concoction loaded with shrimp, crawfish, oysters, scallops and cayenne -- while landlubbers opt for the big burgers.

One wall of the small restaurant showcases aged brick covered with painted vestiges of old grocery ads for such products as Mrs. Baird's Bread; Chu has added her own touches with copper countertops, pendant lighting and Bible verses painted on chair seats.

Service can be on the slow side at lunch and dinner, but it's always exceptionally welcoming.

1310 W. Magnolia Ave., 817-0111

7 Junsuree Thai: The only place in the neighborhood for Thai specialties such as coconut soup, spicy beef salad and an assortment of curries, served in a plain, dark setting. Dinner is unremarkable, but at lunch hospital-district workers and neighborhood residents drop in for the buffet, drawn by reasonable prices ($7.99) and good variety (at least eight entrees, plus a tiny salad bar and rice in three varieties: white, brown and fried.) The buffet runs weekdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., but it's at its best earlier in the lunch hour; as the day wears on, the offerings may be sparse, and the more delicate items such as pad thai don't hold their bright flavor as well.

1109 W. Magnolia Ave., 817-927-3220

8 Scampi's Mediterranean Cafe: Since 1995, restaurateur Ann Diakis and her dad, Theo Diakis, have offered Italian fare and cuisine from their Greek homeland to the neighborhood. The result is a bustling lunch joint by day and a casual cafe for a leisurely dinner on weekends.

At the noon hour on weekdays, options include antipasto and Greek salads, lasagna and Greek specialties; among the latter, we found moussaka -- the traditional layered concoction of eggplant, potatoes and ground beef -- to be especially homey on a recent visit.

On Friday and Saturday nights, when reservations are usually a good idea, start with the spinach salad, topped with feta, mozzarella and toasted almonds; your best bets for an entree are the Greek-style lamb chops rubbed with lemon and oregano, or the chicken sauteed with wine, artichoke hearts, mushrooms and sun-dried tomatoes and topped with feta crumbles.

You're welcome to bring your own wine, but know there's a $3 corkage fee.

Take-home goodies by the pint include tzatziki (yogurt-cucumber-garlic dip) and red-pepper hummus, and you can buy quart-size containers of caponata (an eggplant-zucchini-tomato relish) and marinara, among other offerings.

1057 W. Magnolia Ave., 817-927-1887, www.scampiscafe.com

9 Palermo's Italian Cafe: Before adventurous eaters from outside the neighborhood discovered Magnolia, Palermo's was the south side's dominant pizza-and-pasta cafe, the neighborhood Italian place where everybody went for a teenager's birthday or an easygoing dinner with wine.

On a recent visit, Palermo's proved it's still reliable, opening with a handsome helping of bruschetta, followed by a copious platter of linguine arrabiata and a surprising tortellini special with ham in a delicate brandy-cream sauce.

In the dining room, a dozen friends toasted a 30th birthday with $5 glasses of wine; in a corner nook, teenage girls lifted pieces of Palermo's brick-oven thin-crust pizza.

A menu update is promised soon.

1000 W. Magnolia Ave., 817-878-2400.

10 B.J. Keefer's: After 20 years, the street's favorite burger grill is looking a bit tired. But B. J. Keefer's still grills up half-pound sirloin burgers on puffy custom buns, just like founder and former owner Bill Keefer did back when his restaurant seemed like a south-side version of Fuddruckers.

The relish and condiment bar is shorter and skimpier now, but the new owners kept the seasoned home-fried potatoes. New is a Joe's-style neighborhood pizza-and-pasta menu, including $2 pizza by the slice. The secret surprise might be fresh-baked Pillsbury cookies, four for $1.

909 W. Magnolia Ave., 817-921-0889

11 Hot Damn, Tamales!: The Stavron girls -- originally daughter Angele and now mom Ione -- have built up a following for their made-in-house tamales, in such flavors as wild mushroom with Texas goat cheese. Most of the business is in catering, mail-order and take-home tamales, but the storefront space has a couple of booths and a limited dine-in menu -- a tamale plate or a dailyspecial such as chiles rellenos (Wednesdays) or Mexican skewers (Fridays), plus Mexican apple cobbler and Key lime pie.

These new-style tamales are made with vegetable oil, not lard, which results in a dense log of cornmeal that cries out for sauce. On a recent visit, we had copious cups of brightly flavored salsa to eat with our crunchy tortilla chips, but the tamales in our trio sampler (with rice and excellent black beans) were served naked.

Usually open 11 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays only, Hot Damn, Tamales! will open 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturdays October through December and 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Sundays in December, for the holiday tamale trade.

713 W. Magnolia Ave., 817-926-9909, www.hotdamntamales.com.

12 Paris Coffee Shop: The most famous cafe on Magnolia came from still another Greek immigrant. Gregory Acikis, who instantly Americanized his family by changing his name to Smith, bought the Paris some 75 years ago, and it's run today by son Mike Smith, who greets customers at the door before pointing them to their booth, table or counter stool.

Smith is on the job at 3:30 a.m. each day, baking the pies for which the Paris is renowned; to be on the safe side, reserve a slice of your favorite before ordering lunch, in case they sell out. Then turn your attention to the day's specials, the best of which include chicken livers on Wednesday, chicken and dumplings on Thursday and fried chicken on Friday.

Legendary sportswriter and novelist Dan Jenkins is a regular, and he swears by the enchiladas and the chicken-fried steak. Breakfast favorites include the spinach-feta omelet and corned-beef hash.

In an old Safeway store building at the corner of Hemphill Street, where the streetcar ran between downtown and the south side, the Paris tells the story of Fort Worth in its collection of vintage black-and-white photos.

704 W. Magnolia Ave., Fort Worth. 817-335-2041.

13 Maria's: Far from the yuppie-fied west end of Magnolia, the Flores family serves up old-fashioned Tex-Mex plates in a tiny breakfast and lunch cafe with the gritty feel of the old working-class Magnolia. Though it's outside the main dining district, we've included it here to make a baker's dozen. Magnolia restaurants.

Tamales are handmade and mild, but the real story at Maria's is breakfast, from the chilaquiles to the saucer-sized pork chops. Families from St. Mary's Catholic Church next door crowd around the big tables on Sundays, and at lunch on Saturdays, somebody always needs a bowl of menudo.

The building is 80 years old, and Maria's has been there 26 of those; it's a Magnolia mainstay.

401 W. Magnolia Ave., 817-924-6091

1. King Tut, 1512 W. Magnolia Ave.

2. Hoagies Heroes, 1500 W. Magnolia Ave.

3. Benito's, 1450 W. Magnolia Ave.

4. Nonna Tata, 1400 W. Magnolia Ave.

5. Spiral Diner & Bakery, 1314 W. Magnolia Ave.

6. Servant's Kitchen, 1310 W. Magnolia Ave.

7. Junsuree Thai, 1109 W. Magnolia Ave.

8. Scampi's Mediterranean Cafe, 1057 W. Magnolia Ave.

9. Palermo's Italian Cafe, 1000 W. Magnolia Ave.

10. B.J. Keefer's, 909 W. Magnolia Ave.

11. Hot Damn, Tamales!, 713 W. Magnolia Ave.

12. Paris Coffee Shop, 704 W. Magnolia Ave.

13. Maria's, 401 W. Magnolia Ave.

June Naylor, 817-390-7818 june@junenaylor.com

source: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/living/food/15507098.htm

Noticed all of the recent TXU Advertising ?

Letter to the Editor

The recent spate of full-page TXU ads in the Star-Telegram try to hide the facts about the utility's motivation for the rush to build more dirty, coal-burning power plants. To focus on one plant, TXU Corp. and Alcoa Inc., the aluminum manufacturer, have formed a business partnership to provide low-cost electricity to power Alcoa's very energy-intensive smelter near its Rockdale facility.

It's bad enough that the scheme would let Alcoa buy power year-round from TXU's on-site coal-burner at a huge discount when the rest of the state will see skyrocketing electricity costs.

But to add insult to injury, Alcoa will be able to generate massive profits during daily peak-load periods, those hot summer afternoons and evenings when electric utilities are stretched close to capacity. Simply by exercising its option to buy the maximum allowable power available from TXU, a simple paper transaction would allow it to resell that power at peak-load rates to the retail electric providers and their customers at peak retail prices.

Alcoa pulled this trick during the rolling blackouts several years ago on the West Coast. Its potential profits were so great that it laid off all its employees with full pay, shut down the smelter operation and sold all the power it could buy under its existing long-term contract with huge Columbia River hydropower generators to electricity providers that were desperate for power to keep their customers from brownouts. Alcoa's profits were estimated to be millions per week from the resale -- all legal.

And now that the 2005 Energy Policy Act allows virtually any corporation to become an "electric utility," we are vulnerable to the same scam here in Texas. And if Perry allows TXU to continue with its plan to build its new coal-burners across the state, the TXU-Alcoa sweetheart deal will be consummated. Texas electricity ratepayers get to subsidize Alcoa, we get higher electricity rates to pay for the new power plants, and the state will allow increased air pollution on top of it all.

Jim Duncan, North Texas Renewable Energy Inc., Fort Worth

source: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/opinion/local2/15498522.htm

The Politics of Brownwood Utility Bills

State leaders' inaction leaves Texas' old, sick steeped in utility bills

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

By Cindy V. Culp

Tribune-Herald staff writer

Temperatures may be dropping after this summer’s scorching heat, but there are still plenty of Texans reeling from high electricity bills who could benefit from a state utility relief program — if the money weren’t in governmental limbo.
That’s the message AARP Texas is trying to get out, after learning last week that $256 million collected to help the poor, elderly and disabled pay their electric bills is sitting in state coffers untouched.
Originally, state leaders said the money was needed to help pay for other programs such as Medicaid, said Amanda McCloskey, advocacy manager for AARP Texas, which advocates for senior citizens.
But Friday, AARP learned that most of the money has not been used for anything.
“It’s designed to help people who are suffering and dying,” said Rafael Ayuso, communications manager for AARP Texas. “But that has not happened.”
The money in question is contained in the state’s System Benefit Fund.
Begun when the state’s electricity market was deregulated in 2002, the fund consists of money collected monthly from every electric customer in deregulated areas.
It is calculated based on the number of kilowatt-hours customers use and averages about 65 cents per household per bill.
That money is supposed to be used to give a 10 percent discount to low-income Texans, including the elderly and disabled.
However, the Texas Legislature decided not to fund the program this past session, saying the state needed the money for other programs.
Angered by the move, the AARP asked Gov. Rick Perry to raise the issue during this year’s special session. But that request was denied, and all but about $7 million of the money has been left untouched, McCloskey said.
To fix the situation, the AARP now is calling on Perry to work with the Legislative Budget Board to fund the program immediately. Waiting until the Legislature reconvenes in January isn’t a good option, McCloskey said.
“People are now getting their August utility bills, and they are having trouble paying them,” she said.
A spokesman from the governor’s office said such action is not possible because the budget board only has the power to work with money that already has been appropriated. However, he said Perry supports the program and has asked the Public Utility Commission to include it in its budget request for the upcoming biennium.
Local agencies who help low-income residents said they don’t care who’s right about the details behind the red tape. They just want the program funded. Caritas, for example, is receiving 30 calls a day from people requesting help with electric bills, said Lidia Chavez, director of emergency services. But because of limited funds, only the more dire cases get help.
At the Economic Advancement Opportunities Corporation, the situation is much the same. About 200 people came to the agency Monday morning for assistance, executive director Johnette Hicks said. That’s nearly quadruple the normal number.
But money is tight. Last month alone, the agency paid out $238,000 in electricity assistance for people in the six counties it serves, Hicks said.
“We absolutely need to get this money released for low-income Texans,” she said.
People who want to express their opinions about the situation can call a toll-free hot line set up by AARP. Calls are routed to the governor’s office. The number is (888) 633-3650.

cculp@wacotrib.com

757-5744

source: http://www.wacotrib.com/news/content/news/stories/2006/09/12/09122006wacelectricbillhell.html

Did you hear this on Brownwood Republican Talk Radio ? I don't think so !

Bush Losing Support Among Supporters
Some Disaffected Republicans Plan To Vote Democratic To Protest War Conduct

JACKSONVILLE, N.C., Sept. 7, 2006
Retired Marine Col. Jim Van Riper says he plans to vote Democratic this fall because the Bush administration has failed in its conduct of the war in Iraq. (CBS)

Quote

If they'd done it their way and it succeeded, I couldn't be talking to you like this. They did it their way. They failed and they won't admit it." Retired Col. Jim Van Riper

(CBS) At the Kettle Diner in Jacksonville, N.C., it's faith, family and the Corps. Jacksonville is home to Camp Lejuene, the largest Marine Corps base on the East Coast.

But, as CBS News national correspondent Byron Pitts found, even in Jacksonville, where support for the warriors remains strong, support for the president and his handling of the war may be waning.
"There's a lot of people who think we've been there too long," said Cpl. John Miller. "But personally I think we should stay there until they have an established government."
Asked is she still supports the war in Iraq, restaurant manager Lilly Cantrell answers with an emphatic "yes" — but she pauses first.
Would she have hesitated that long to answer the question three or four years ago?
"No," she says.
What's changed in those three or four years? Things just get worse and worse, she says.
A recent CBS News/New York Times poll found that 65 percent of Americans disapprove of the way the Bush administration is handling the war.
Even some lifelong conservatives aren't hearing the president's message anymore.
"I've turned him off," said retired Marine Col. Jim Van Riper. "I've tuned him out."
Van Riper is a Christian, card-carrying member of the National Rifle Association who voted for President Bush twice. But as more Marines have died, his confidence in the Bush administration has died as well.
"If they had done it their way and it succeeded, I couldn't be talking to you like this," he says. "They did it their way, they failed and they won't admit it. That's arrogance, and I don't mind arrogance, except when there's dead bodies as a result."
So this November, for the first time, Van Riper will vote for Democrats — across the board.
"I've voted Republican nearly all my life. I'm very conservative," he says. "My hope is that Democrats win the House."
Van Riper's twin brother is a retired Marine general whose love for the Corps remains strong, but the war in Iraq is personal.
"I had a son there. I have a nephew there now," Col. Van Riper says. "It's personal."
Asked what he would say to President Bush if he got the chance, Van Riper replies, "Sir, I'm disappointed."
In Jacksonville, a place where war is so very personal and faith so very deep — the president is preaching to a choir with some members who no longer seem quite so willing to believe.

source: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/07/eveningnews/main1983503.shtml

Who are the "Brownwood Yard Nazi's" ? Will they understand any of this ?

Ground for debate
Woman's landscaping project causes a dust-up in Hurst, with neighbors saying the yard looks tacky
By ADRIENNE NETTLES
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER

HURST -- Maggie Camperlengo is certain the grass will always be greener on the other side.
Her Brookridge Drive front yard is surrounded by manicured green lawns that require regular watering. She prefers a more native look.
But her neighbors aren't pleased with her efforts at xeriscaping, an environmentally friendly landscaping technique that uses plants, such as yuccas and cactuses, that can survive in dry weather and don't require much watering.
Neighbors say her yard, which includes statues of a buffalo and a desert tortoise, as well as bovine skulls and a prairie dog scene, is tacky.
"We are protesting the weeds and just bare dirt," said Dennis Olson, who has lived on Brookridge Drive for 11 years. "You can look at other Southwest styles of decorating and they don't look derelict. Weeds and dirt just don't cut the mustard."
Hurst officials were initially skeptical of Camperlengo's landscaping. She received a warning letter from code enforcement officials in June that said her yard was offensive to the neighborhood, fit the city's definition of a nuisance and contained high weeds and grass.
Camperlengo, who is working on a graduate degree in conservation biology at the University of Texas at Arlington, submitted the landscaping plan drawn up by a local architect she hired, and officials reconsidered.
"There are yards like this in Fort Worth and other parts of Texas," Camperlengo said. "This part of the city just isn't used to this."
Hurst is working with her so she can complete her project, said Assistant City Manager Jeff Jones. She has removed some limbs and high weeds that were cited in the warning, he said.
"I think the neighbors will have to see the results of the landscaping plan that they're implementing," he said.
During summer months, up to 60 percent of the water that an average household uses can be for landscape maintenance, according to the Texas Cooperative Extension service in Tarrant County. Xeriscaping, when properly done, can help conserve water and protect the environment compared with traditional landscaping, which requires lots of water, said Steve Chaney, a horticulturist with the extension service.
"People have a large misunderstanding of xeriscaping," he said. "They think it's just cactus, and it can be. But you also can have all types of wildflowers and roses. People just aren't used to seeing this in their front yards."
Some area homeowners and cities are using the landscaping technique, including Arlington, which has a xeriscape garden in Veterans Park.
With much of Texas suffering a drought, many cities, including Hurst, have adopted mandatory watering restrictions. Hurst has banned lawn watering and landscape irrigation between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., except by hand-watering or soaker hoses, until Sept. 30.
As populations grow and water supplies remain the same, xeriscaping is becoming more popular, Chaney said. Texas is slowly moving to join states such as Nevada and New Mexico that have state-regulated lawn maintenance that stipulates how high grass can be and how much landscape watering can be done, he said.
"A lot of people insist on the highly manicured, green lawns that require a lot of watering," he said. "That's OK for them, but at some point the state may step in and say you no longer have that ability. In some states, homeowners are allowed to only have drip irrigation systems and not sprinklers."
Camperlengo says that many on her street don't understand xeriscaping and that she has filed a police report on one neighbor for trespassing on her property to get photos to send to the city.
She says her project is expensive, with an estimated budget of $45,000.
"Our whole idea is to coexist with nature, not fight it," she said.
Olson said that he and other neighbors have approached Camperlengo's property and taken photos from the street but that no one has trespassed. Neighbors would prefer to see a clean, neat and manicured lawn similar to others in the neighborhood, he said.
"What we're trying to say to her is that you have some obligation to try to fit in with the neighborhood," he said.

LANDSCAPING TIPS TO HELP SAVE WATER
Add organic matter to the soil of shrub and flower beds to increase plant health and conserve water.
Select trees, shrubs and ground covers based on how they will adapt to the region's soil and climate.
Carefully select grass. Turf grasses require more frequent watering and maintenance than most other landscape plants.
Zone irrigation system so grass can be watered more frequently than ground covers, shrubs and trees. Using drip irrigation can conserve water.
Use mulch, which significantly lowers moisture evaporation from the soil and reduces weeds, prevents soil compaction and keeps soil temperatures lower.
Mow grass at proper height and apply fertilizer at the proper time and in the proper amount.

SOURCE: Texas Cooperative Extension Service

Adrienne Nettles, 817-685-3820 anettles@star-telegram.com

source: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/local/15223640.htm
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Front Yards Uprooted for 'Greener' Pastures

Architect Campaigns to Keep the Grass off Lawns

Architect Fritz Haeg converts lawns into what he calls edible estates by creating environmentally friendly landscapes that overflow with vegetables and indigenous plants. (ABC News)

By NANCY WEINER

Aug. 22, 2006 — When the Cox family of Salina, Kan., ripped out the Bermuda grass from its front lawn and planted native plants instead, the family committed one of the cardinal sins of suburbia.
Neighbors responded by saying, "I just don't like it," or "What are they doing?"
But in drought-ridden prairie country, the Cox family says its curious front yard saves money on the water bill while giving a new use to the space. "It's so much more interesting. A front yard is flat and boring," Priti Cox said. "And when you don't have young children, the only reason you ever go out in your front lawn is to mow it."
Architect Fritz Haeg has targeted that space, and started converting lawns like the Cox family's into what he calls edible estates by creating environmentally-friendly landscapes that overflow with vegetables and indigenous plants.
"The lawn has become an icon of the American dream. But there really is a dark side to that image because … we pour water on it, we pour chemicals on it, we mow it. It pollutes the air. And then, it's not even a space that we occupy. We don't feel comfortable spending time there," Haeg said.
The traditional American front lawn isn't even American. It's British.
The Rockefellers adopted the style in the mid-1800s for the family's Kykuit estate, along with other wealthy Americans. By the 1950s, lawns had reached mainstream America.
But in England, constant drizzle keeps lawns green. In the United States, sprinklers and fertilizers do the job.
"And what happens with nitrogen and phosphorous is, it produces an algae bloom," said landscape architect Diana Balmori. "When that dies down it consumes all the oxygen in the water and kills the fish."
Haeg is trying to change how Americans use their front lawns by placing edible estate prototypes in every area of the country in the hopes of making it a standard design.
We spoke with a family in Lakewood, Calif., who has an edible estate that stands out like a sore green thumb in its planned community.
Still, it has its fans.
"The vast majority of the neighborhood really does seem to get a kick out of it," Michael Foti said. "Most of the people, they've altered their jogging routine. They pass by and sort of give me a thumbs up and let me know they appreciate it."

source: http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=2344206&page=1
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Forget oasis; let's be desert
Steps could battle our water worries

By Rick Smith, rsmith@sastandard times.com or 659-8248
July 30, 2006

I thought my July water bill was the most depressing thing I had ever read.
Then I found an article on drought by Todd Votteler, The scientist, who works with the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority, says something many of us have long suspected.
''Drought is a normal condition in Texas,'' he wrote in a report originally printed in Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine.
He analyzes rainfall during recorded history, but he also uses research based on tree-ring studies that track rainfall back hundreds of years.
The bottom line?
This part of Texas has been a dry, dry place for a long, long time.
Even the notorious 1950s drought was a drop in the bucket when it comes to dry spells. One ''megadrought'' in the 16th century might have lasted from 20 to 50 years.
The bottom line?
Droughts far worse than the '50s disaster ''have occurred ... and will happen again,'' Votteler wrote.
This kind of news can be interpreted two ways: with despair or with determination.
(What's an optimist? Someone who sees O.C. Fisher Reservoir as 10-percent full instead of 90-percent empty.)
San Angelo has long had an optimistic attitude toward water.
''Build dams and pipelines,'' we believe, ''and it will come.''
Pray for rain, and it will rain.
Eventually.
It has worked so far.
Thanks to Ivie Reservoir, a lake on the other side of Paint Rock, I can continue to pour water onto my rain-starved St. Augustine grass and pecan trees.
Once upon a time, when the Concho rivers supplied plenty of water for the town, San Angelo was a natural oasis.
''Water wonderland'' was San Angelo's slogan years ago.
Over the years, we have kept up our oasis image - and green, leafy lawns - even as our demand for water constantly threatens to exceed our supply.
Now we're talking about treating salty water as a way of supplementing our supply so I can keep my grass green.
I have another idea: Forget oasis.
Let's declare San Angelo a desert.
San Angelo's ''normal'' annual rainfall is about 20 inches.
On the western edge of Texas, 9 inches of rain per year is considered the norm.
We're already up to 7 inches for the year. In a desert, we'd be almost done instead of scrambling for 13 more inches of rain.
In San Angelo, a brown, crunchy lawn is considered less than desirable.
In Van Horn, grass is as rare as rain is. Hard, packed earth is the norm.
Never needs water; never needs mowing.
As an oasis, San Angelo is water-challenged.
As a desert, we're rain-rich.
As an oasis, we poke fun at our dwindling lakes.
As a desert, pools of water - no matter what their size - are treasured as miracles.
As an oasis, we constantly worry about drought and dry skies.
As a desert, we're drought-proof. Another 100-degree, cloudless day? Bring it on.
Recently, Lincoln Middle School students distributed water-saving shower heads free of charge.
That's a step in the right direction.
Others are doing their part.
Some homeowners and businesses have traded grass lawns for gravel. Even my father, the most lawn-loving man I know, has swapped his beloved front yard full of Bermuda for river rocks and boulders.
At work, I park next to a beautiful garden filled with hardy, heat-loving Trans-Pecos plants.
Angelo State University has substituted granite chips for big swaths of grass.
The list goes on and on, and if enough of us did the same, San Angelo would worry a lot less about water (and San Angeloans would worry a lot less about water bills).
In West Texas, as in other places, drought's not a passing problem.
It has always been with us. It's not going away.
We can continue to worry about where the water's coming from, or we can fight dry with dry.

On the Net
Read Todd Votteler's report on drought at gbra.org/files/pdf/rp/drought.pdf.

source: http://www.sanangelostandardtimes.com/sast/news_local/article/0,1897,SAST_4956_4881373,00.html
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John Foley
The Weed and Feed Program
Posted on May 23, 2006 at 07:52 AM

The varieties of enjoyment that people get from the months of summer are difficult to categorize into a top ten list. If they could be whittled down, the freshness of the season and the food we enjoy would top many a list. As restaurant owners and chefs know, the meals of summer always seem fresher, more vibrant and colorful on the plate, more flavorful on the palate, and more enjoyable to prepare. I have never met a chef who didn't enjoy a visit to a local farmers market, neighborhood vegetable stand, or a vegetable patch that a friend shares to cultivate produce for complimentary meals.

A fast growing trend in eateries across the country is the potted herb garden. Not every restaurant has the acreage to plant an actual garden of herbs on the property. However, if you are fortunate to have the space, plant it with an abundance of herbs and lettuces. The perceived value for the customers is monumental and the actual value will be very attractive to your accounting department when your produce bill dips a bit because you are growing your own herbs.

In one of my restaurants I had a wonderful garden that produced more herbs than I would ever use. I eventually became too busy to cultivate the crop on a regular basis but needed the produce. I made a deal with the local garden club. A small plaque in the center of the picket fenced in space simple read “This garden maintained by the Cottagewood Garden Club. The weed and feed program" I made a deal with the gardeners; every Wednesday they would weed the garden and I would feed them. It was a win - win situation.

Of course, not everyone has a small plot of land that can be dedicated to growing basil, mint, and dill. But tat doesn't mean you are going to be summoned to the produce list for the rest of the season. Most herbs grow nicely in pots. And, if you have any space outside, whether on the sidewalk, a patio, or a walkway, a pot full of herbs not only looks great, and is aromatic, but can be snipped at will and added to the chef's creations.

Aside from outside pots and planters, herbs can be propagated in pots and container throughout your restaurant. They grow like weeds- the more they're snipped, the more abundant they become.
And, nothing beats watching a chef go to a planter, plot, or pot and snip a little basil, oregano, and thyme and moments later deliver the pasta with fresh tomato sauce to your table.

This summer, use the weed and feed philosophy. Freshness abounds in the perceived value of a large container of herbs by your front door. And, your chef will thank you for the suggestion.

source: http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:VF0b5Bwm_WAJ:allbusiness.sfgate.com/blog/RestaurantBlog/11534/005663.html+sidewalk+garden+restaurant+herbs&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1&client=safari
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OCTOBER 6, 2004
Down the garden path

BY ERICA CURTIS

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Photo by Micheal Ford
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Gardeners living in the city don't always have a lot of space to work with. But the urge to set hands into soil is a powerful one, and thank goodness. The pockets of beauty these tillers create are something we all can enjoy. The City of Rochester recently announced the winners of the Flower City Garden Contest, an annual part of the Flower City Looking Good program. Both the contest and the program were created to "encourage all city residents to beautify their properties and neighborhoods." Aren't you glad they did?

Sam Cicero and Jim Yost share the gardening work at their 1950s-era Cape house. They've lived there for six years. Besides painting the house and turning the front lawn into a small wonderland complete with trees, bushes, flowers --- including an 18th-century rosebush transplanted from Cicero's parents' home --- and a yellow-brick road, this year they've started in earnest on the back yard. They're building up beds and putting in some fencing and plantings, but they're leaving a wild walnut tree that the previous owner recommended they tear out. "I like it," Cicero says. "Nature plants things better than we do." They wanted a house in the city and deliberately found a house with space for a garden. "I think a garden like ours is less maintenance than a lawn," Yost says. Winner: first place, single family residential

The Friends of Mount Hope Cemetery's gardening committee, a group approximately 12 volunteers large, is all the labor force maintaining the historic cemetery's gardens. One of the volunteers, John Pearsall, was fencing off a spreading mum plant on a recent Saturday. He says the sculpture and basin of the Florentine fountain in the center of this garden were recently restored. The committee is now trying to raise funds to restore the plumbing. Next to the fountain is a rock garden, maintained by the same family for 20 years. And besides the planned gardens and plantings along walkways throughout the cemetery grounds, there is also an opportunity for the public to adopt older plots that no longer have friends or family to look after them. Volunteers are provided with annuals each year or can bring their own plants. The beautification doesn't go without its own reward: the cemetery is one of the best walking spots in the city, and people enjoy it year-round. Winner: first place, not-for-profit

"After the debacle of the Garden of Eden," says gardener Claude Artigue, "people started to develop a sense of beauty again. They wanted to come back to the source, instinctively." Artigue lives in an apartment at Norton Village, and over 10 years has grown a garden that can be seen far down Norton Road (with his neighbors' permission to grow in front of their apartments). He built up banks using soil, dead wood, and stones to create a natural feel. He has orchestrated the plantings to provide variety in color and blooming times so the garden never looks boring. A photographer and artist, he wanted to create something beautiful for everyone to enjoy in their own way. "The objective of this garden is to let people think for themselves," he says. Winner: second place, single family residential

Atomic Eggplant is a place where even carnivores don't mind eating vegetarian food. More than offer delicious, innovative dishes that are both hearty and animal-friendly, owner-chef Meg Davis has managed to grow a portion of her own produce and herbs on the restaurant's Marshall Street plot. By the front sidewalk are tomatoes, chard, other greens, and fresh herbs. The back garden flanks the trademark purple fence and surrounds the patio, where summer diners can sit. There you'll find flowers (most in the ground and pots, some in old bathroom fixtures), more veggies and herbs, and, tucked away in the back, a small army of compost bins. Winner: first place, commercial

Six years ago Mary Kent was working at the Maplewood Neighborhood Association and had to pass by the dismal corner of Dewey and Lexington every day on her way to pick up the mail. "It was the case of a terribly awful city lot," she says. "They had taken down a building, and it was on a very vulnerable corner. It was full of trash and getting worse by the minute." She gathered a small group of volunteers and talked to the city and the NET office. Word spread, and others came to help. Eventually, the Garden of Peace and Life was born. It's still the same committee maintaining the garden May through November. One year ago the mural by Rick Muto, "In the Garden," went up. "We were hoping it would kind of spark up the neighborhood," Kent says, "and people who pass by always stop, and are very happy." Winner: first place, coordinated neighborhood enhancement

source: http://www.rochester-citynews.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A2999
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Brownwood Yard Nazis?

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Steves' Market & Deli June 2006 Garden Award

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You just gotta read it for yourself !

Brownwood's Republican Mike Conaway votes in favor of Slaghtering Horses for Human Consumption.

How Texans voted on horse-slaughter measure
The Associated Press
The U.S. House of Representatives voted Thursday on a measure to ban horse slaughter.

Of the 432 House members, voting yes were 156 Democrats, 106 Republicans and one independent. There are two vacancies in the 435-member House.

Voting no were 36 Democrats and 110 Republicans. Here's how Texas reps voted.

The Texas breakdown: Eight Democrats and two Republicans voted yes, while three Democrats and 16 Republicans opposed the ban.

Texas Democrats - Henry Cuellar, Laredo, N; Lloyd Doggett, Austin, Y; Chet Edwards, Waco, N; Charles Gonzalez, San Antonio, Y; Al Green, Houston, Y; Gene Green, Houston, Y; Ruben Hinojosa, Mercedes, N; Shiila Jackson-Lee, Houston, Y; E.B. Johnson, Dallas, Y; Solomon Ortiz, Corpus Christi, Y; Silvestre Reyes, El Paso, Y.

Texas Republicans - Joe Barton, Arlington, N; Henry Bonilla, San Antonio, N; Kevin Brady, The Woodlands, N; Michael Burgess, Flower Mound, Y; John Carter, Round Rock, N; K. Michael Conaway, Midland, N; John Culberson, Houston, N; Louie Gohmert, Tyler, N; Kay Granger, Fort Worth, N; Ralph Hall, Rockwall, Y; Jeb Hensarling, Dallas, N; Sam Johnson, Plano, X; Kenny Marchant, Coppell, N; Michael McCaul, Austin, N; Randy Neugebauer, Lubbock, N; Ron Paul, Surfside, N; Ted Poe, Humble, N; Pete Sessions, Dallas, N; Lamar Smith, San Antonio, N; Mac Thornberry, Clarendon, N.
A "yes" vote (Y) is a vote to pass the bill; (N) is "no"; 'X' denotes those not voting.

source: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/15463520.htm
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September 5, 2006

Horse slaughter bill reaches trail’s end
By Elana Schor
The lobbying battle over banning horse slaughter for human consumption will move to the House floor this week as celebrity supporters square off against agricultural groups and members temporarily abandon election-year partisanship to consider the bill.

Consuming horsemeat is uncommon among Americans but remains an accepted practice overseas, creating a small market for three U.S.-based horse-slaughter plants. Reps. John Sweeney (R-N.Y.) and Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) have secured a promise from GOP leaders for a Thursday vote on their plan to close those plants and halt government-sanctioned horse killing. But the bill has run into a surprising amount of opposition in a culture built on pony rides and cowboy movies.

Former Rep. Charlie Stenholm (D-Texas), now lobbying for a coalition of farm and veterinary groups seeking to bring down the bill, questioned why a bill banning horse slaughter merits floor time on one of the few legislative days remaining in the House’s crowded September session.

“A large number of members are surprised it’s coming to a vote,” Stenholm contended last week.

But the bill has broad support. Sweeney and Whitfield have joined with Democrats to round up more than 200 cosponsors after the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) sidestepped their amendment last year aimed at blocking funding for the slaughter plants.

Both factions have spent the August recess countering each other’s talking points, but the anti-slaughter contingent will benefit from an infusion of star power this week as actress Bo Derek, country legend Willie Nelson and Texas oil magnate T. Boone Pickens step up their promotion of the bill. Derek, Pickens and Nelson’s daughter are slated to appear at public rallies today.

“We’re making an all-out push,” Whitfield said in an interview. He acknowledged the strong opposition of Agriculture Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), who reported the bill unfavorably, but noted that the floor vote “demonstrate[s] that House leadership is willing to go against committee chairmen to bring a bill up that has never had an opportunity to see the light of day.”

In addition to Stenholm, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Farmers Union and a host of state commodity groups have mobilized against the slaughter ban. The need to shelter and feed horses otherwise destined for processing would present an unnecessary fiscal burden, they argue, and horse owners who rely on government-inspected plants as a humane disposal method would be forced to resort to more cruel solutions if the bill passes.

“The problem comes in when the actual legislation isn’t given consideration aside from the emotional aspect,” said Goodlatte spokeswoman Alise Kowalski. “It doesn’t address the welfare of horses if they can’t be disposed of. This argument really is not about killing horses, it’s about what happens to horses after they are slaughtered.”

If a horse could be used for riding, farming or any other activity, “you would be selling it for a whole lot more than $200 to $300” to a slaughter plant, said Brent Gattis, a former Agriculture Committee deputy chief of staff who is lobbying against the measure alongside Stenholm.

Gattis also pointed to the bill as a possible precedent for banning slaughter of veal calves and other livestock, pointing to the role of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and other controversial animal-activist groups.

But Chris Heyde, a Republican lobbyist for the Society for Animal Protection Legislation, noted that PETA has taken no position on the bill and scoffed at Stenholm’s argument that Congress should not legislate the morals of foreign horse-eating nations.

“That’s a hoot … to say, ‘Who are we to tell other cultures what they can and can’t do?’” Heyde said. “We’ve got a lot of hardworking Americans sitting in Iraq right now. Drugs and prostitution are legal in other parts of the world.”

The emotional and politically charged lobbying has spilled onto the Internet, where both sides have set up websites: pro-slaughter commonhorsesense.com and anti-slaughter justsaywhoa.com. The pro-slaughter team’s site was hacked just before July’s Agriculture and Energy and Commerce Committee hearings on the bill, Stenholm said, directing visitors to anti-slaughter home pages.

Stenholm’s status as the Agriculture panel’s retired ranking member has made him a magnet for criticism from anti-slaughter lobbyists, who see him as aligned with Goodlatte.

“I think he’s just yukking it up over there with his old friends at the committee,” said one K Street Republican backing the bill, decrying exaggerated claims that the ban would leave “unwanted horses … running around the streets like cows in Calcutta.”

Agricultural industry opponents of the bill also have been contacting members during recess in a bid to convince enough cosponsors to defeat the bill. They believe they need to convince 52 supporters to vote against it, based on last year’s appropriations vote.

Yet Sweeney Deputy Chief of Staff Melissa Carlson said the USDA regulation that resulted from that legislative effort ended up bolstering the bill’s prospects, helping Sweeney convince GOP leaders that the department had achieved “an end run around Congress” and that the slaughter ban deserved a vote. Sweeney, an appropriator, ultimately voted against that agriculture appropriations bill in protest of how the USDA was going to implement his amendment.

Another famous horse-lover, Kinky Friedman, the freewheeling singer and novelist turned independent gubernatorial candidate in Texas, said he is watching the bill’s progress with interest.

“If they can do it, it’s going to be great,” Friedman said of the slaughter ban’s congressional backers. “I’ve got a lot more faith in what Texans can do.”

In fact, if the bill fails, Friedman plans to mount a vigorous state-level lobbying campaign to close the Lone Star State’s two horse-slaughter plants. Friedman has already enlisted three powerful allies in Nelson, Oscar-winning actor Robert Duvall and TV star Larry Hagman, a coalition he dubbed the “Four Horsemen of Texas.”

“[The bill’s opponents’] motto is ‘from the stable to the table.’ Our motto is, ‘save a horse, ride a cowboy,’” Friedman quipped.

source: http://www.thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/Business/090506.html

... as it relates to those Republican's in Brownwood who "will do or say anything in the name of GOD" !

A Peach of a Scandal in Georgia
By Garrison Keillor
The Baltimore Sun

Thursday 06 July 2006

If a preacher secretly accepts a bucket of money from a saloonkeeper to organize a temperance rally at a rival saloon and maybe send in a gang of church ladies to chop up the bar with their little hatchets, this would strike you and me as sleazy, but others are willing to make allowances, and so Ralph Reed's political career is still alive and breathing in Georgia. He has bathed himself in tomato juice and hopes to smile his way through the storm.

The facts are fairly simple.

Mr. Reed left the Christian Coalition in 1997 as it was sinking, and he was paid by Jack Abramoff to organize opposition to a gambling bill in the Texas legislature, which would have opened the door to competition for Mr. Abramoff's client casinos in Louisiana.

So Mr. Reed got the good Christians of Texas to bombard the legislature with phone calls and letters denouncing gambling, for which Mr. Reed was paid millions of dollars in gambling money, by way of Mr. Abramoff's bagman, Grover Norquist.

Mr. Reed also helped defeat a state lottery and video poker in Alabama, in behalf of casinos in Mississippi. In Alabama, he told Mr. Abramoff, he had "over 3,000 pastors and 90,000 religious conservative households." He enlisted these Baptists in a fight against one saloon while he was on the payroll of another.

Imagine if Ralph Nader had solicited money from Ford and Chrysler when he went after General Motors' Corvair. Or the Southern Baptists raising money from Sony and Universal to condemn movies by MGM.

A true party loyalist would withdraw from the Republican primary for lieutenant governor of Georgia and say, "I will not allow this mess to distract people from the good work of my party." But Mr. Reed is no quitter.

"Had I known then what I know now, I would not have undertaken the work," he said, when the details came out in a Senate Indian Affairs Committee report.

Mr. Reed insists he didn't know it was gambling money, which, given the e-mail traffic between him and Mr. Abramoff, is a thin twig on which to hang a defense. Either Mr. Reed understands English or he does not. Mr. Abramoff tells him that he'll get a check as soon as the Coushattas send in the money. The Coushattas were in the casino business. You don't come up with $5.3 million from selling beaded coin purses.

Mr. Reed also argues that his stopping gambling in Texas and Alabama was a good thing in and of itself, even though he was hired by rival casinos to do it. Using the same reasoning, Lucky Luciano was on solid moral ground when he knocked off Dutch Schultz.

The sexual trespass of a president is a story any mortal can understand, and the use of your father's influence to sneak you into a military unit where you're less likely to face combat is an act of cowardice all of us cowards can appreciate.

But the chutzpah of Mr. Reed in wheedling money from Mr. Abramoff to snooker Christians into an uproar against gambling is cold-hearted greed. And his work in behalf of the sweatshops and sex factories of the Marianas, arguing that the Chinese women imported there were being given the chance to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ, takes us to yet an entirely new level.

Mr. Reed is a Presbyterian, and the Westminster Confession says, "He that scandelizeth his brother, or the Church of Christ, ought to be willing, by a private or public confession and sorrow for his sin, to declare his repentance to those that are offended; who are thereupon to be reconciled to him, and in love to receive him."

But Mr. Reed is running for office, and that's no time for repentance. Time to hunker down and hope that the prosecutors are occupied with other matters. Smile and shake hands and keep changing the subject. If a reporter mentions Mr. Abramoff, smile and say, "I've said as much as I'm going to about that, and now I want to talk about my plan to strengthen families in Georgia."

Gambling? "I've always been opposed to gambling."

Deceit? Greed? "No charges have been filed. I have been exonerated of wrongdoing."

Will it work? We shall soon see.




Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" can be heard Saturday nights on public radio stations across the country. His e-mail is keillorj@prairiehome.us.

source: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/070806Y.shtml

Remember this as you hear the Brownwood Republican Talking Heads @ KXYL-96.9FM trying to convince you all is well !

Fuel, utilities erode budgets
By PAUL A. ANTHONY, panthony@sastandardtimes.com or 659-8237
August 31, 2006

James Roach understands if customers avoid dropping their clothes at his dry-cleaning service in favor of filling their tanks or paying their electric bills - he's battling the same pressures himself.
At Cornelison Bros. Cleaners, founded in 1908 and owned by Roach the past 23 years, the situation has grown dire, with falling profits, rising expenses and one root cause of it all - utility costs.
''It's hard to make a living,'' Roach said. ''We're just barely paying the bills.''
He isn't alone.
From the city's small businesses to City Hall itself, San Angelo employers are feeling the heat this summer from sky-high utility costs and gasoline prices.
''We're looking at everything we can do to minimize the costs,'' City Manager Harold Dominguez said.
Profits fell 28 percent at Cornelison Bros. between June and July, spurred by the shrinking customer base, electricity bills nearly three times higher than ever, and natural gas bills reaching the same levels.
All this despite attempts to conserve energy, Roach said. The business' nine employees keep non-essential lights in the company's Sherwood Way and College Hills Boulevard locations turned off all day.
Thirty minutes before closing time, the gas boiler is turned off, and it ''coasts in'' on the built-up heat.
''I'm trying to cut down on everything I possibly can,'' Roach said. ''It's ridiculous. They're nailing us to the wall.''
At Cornelison Bros., electricity costs - never above $700 in any given month previously - skyrocketed to $1,700 in May. The result, Roach said, has been an energy surcharge passed on to consumers that still doesn't cover all the company's increased costs.
In other places, the numbers are larger, but the situation's the same.
''One of the things we have to deal with is so much of our operations are open to the public,'' Dominguez said, adding that San Angelo city employees are asked to keep thermostats set higher, and to turn off lights and fans when possible.
The city budgeted $4.015 million for electricity costs during the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. However, by Aug. 15, the city had spent $4.1 million.
The city also has surpassed its fuel budget - spending slightly more than its allotted $1 million with six weeks left in the fiscal year.
Rising utility costs led the San Angelo City Council last month to add $95,000 each to the city's 2007 budgets for electricity and gas.
The city also is looking at changes to the buildings themselves that could make them more energy-efficient.
High energy prices have forced the city's department heads to divert money from other parts of their budgets to pay electricity and gas costs, Dominguez said, although none has reached such crisis proportions as to cut back on services.
The situation is much the same in the San Angelo Independent School District, where ever-increasing summer programs are keeping school buildings open longer during the summer, said Jim Elson, the district's maintenance director.
''Our campuses are open a lot longer than years past,'' Elson said. ''It seems to be the trend with so many extra things going on.''
Newer school buildings are equipped with remote-controlled energy-saving devices, Elson said, while older buildings have thermostats installed with automatic timers.
Elson also organizes teams of students and other volunteers to watch for lights and electrical devices left on in vacant offices and rooms.
''We work very closely with campus principals to make sure we're not running things we don't need to be running,'' Elson said.
At Cornelison, meanwhile, Roach questioned how much his small business can stand.
Winter could bring relief, but last winter's natural gas bills were nearly as exorbitant as this summer's electricity bills. The company is counting on temperate weather and lower fuel prices this autumn, Roach said.
''I've never seen it this bad,'' he said. ''There ought to be a happy medium. Somebody ought to set a price on them.
''It's not the American way (to institute price controls), but it's killing Americans.''

source: http://www.sanangelostandardtimes.com/sast/news_local/article/0,1897,SAST_4956_4957997,00.html
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Editorial: Texas parks' drought

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Compare Texas state parks to a fine team of horses. It has served well, working hard in the Texas sun. Now it finds itself penned off from a sumptuous tank from which to drink.

If Texans think they’re enduring a drought, they only need to look to their state parks system to know what a dry spell really means. We’re talking money in this instance.

The cruel irony is that Texas created a reservoir of funds for those parks. In recent years, however, it has siphoned most of the dollars away.

The fund was created 13 years ago with a tax on sporting goods. This year it raised $105 million. That could really help Texas parks, which have been under serious budget pressures for much of a decade. Unfortunately, and irresponsibly, lawmakers have capped the amount used for state parks at $32 million, diverting the rest elsewhere.

Indeed, last year lawmakers diverted even more. The parks got only $20.6 million of those designated funds.

Budget restrictions on Texas parks have exacted big-time hurt, from closing swimming pools to prohibiting overnight camping at many locations.

Mother Neff State Park near Moody, its staff depleted, has had to reduce the number of days it rents out group structures. Because of the staffing crunch, it can’t have next-day turnaround in cleaning those public venues. This hurts its revenue stream: Yes, even less money for Mother Neff.

That brings up a point made by parks supporters. These assets help Texas economically. A study of 80 parks last year found that they generated about $1.2 billion in sales and local income. About 10 million people visit Texas parks each year.

Recently, Gov. Rick Perry requested that state agencies propose 10 percent cuts in spending. That, said the head of Parks and Wildlife, could result in the closure of 18 parks.

Of dollars designated for parks but diverted away, Perry has said he supports using them exclusively for their intended purpose. If not, the state should either lower the tax on sporting goods or abolish the fund entirely.

In recent years, something comparably cruel has happened with money raised from a surcharge on electric bills and intended to go into a pool of money for helping low-income Texans with their utility costs.

Brazenly, lawmakers took those dollars — over $70 million a year — and routed them into the general fund so they could pronounce the budget balanced with “no new taxes.” Perry has called for those dollars to be used as intended.

Texas’s next governor should expose such smoke-and-mirrors budget ruses which allow lawmakers to crow “no new taxes.”

Texas parks are fine creatures to treat so miserably.

source: http://www.wacotrib.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2006/08/30/08302006waceditorial.htm
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Rising electric bills fanning resentment

11:20 PM CDT on Wednesday, August 30, 2006

By DAVID FLICK / The Dallas Morning News

Devetta Miller had already heard that electricity rates had increased, so when it became obvious that summer 2006 would be particularly hot, the 40-year-old travel agent tried to conserve.
She set the thermostat in her 2,100-square-foot DeSoto home at 78 degrees. She put solar screens on the windows, wore shorts and used appliances sparingly.
But when she saw her electric bill, she was anything but cool. Her most recent statement, which included several weeks of August, came to $551.
It's a chilling reality for most electricity customers this summer.
"I heard that electricity was going to be a little more expensive, but I guess I wasn't expecting this," Ms. Miller said. "Needless to say, this came as kind of a shock. I was taken aback."
When a carryover balance was included, she owed $863 to TXU. To put that in painful perspective: A 30-year fixed mortgage on a $150,000 house in Dallas would cost $10 less a month, and a five-year loan on a BMW 325i would be $678 a month.
Ms. Miller is not pleased by the comparison.
"It gets to the point where you have to compromise between paying your electricity or paying your mortgage," she said. "That's what it will come down to for some people."
It cost Betty Biggins, a 59-year-old retiree, $558 last month to cool her 1,600-square-foot Oak Cliff home – about twice the bill for this time last year.
"I complained about it last year," she said. "But if it was that way again, I'd be happy."
She copes by keeping the thermostat at 80 degrees and using ceiling fans. Still, she said, she has had to cut back in other ways, such as using the clothes dryer at night and serving cold cuts at dinner – in part to save on her food bill and in part to keep the stove from warming up the house.
TXU spokeswoman Sophia Stoller said the higher bills stemmed from a combination of a 24 percent rate increase and an unusually hot summer.
Ms. Stoller hears a lot of complaints about the higher bills – and not just from electricity customers.
"I get it from friends and even people here in the office," she said. " 'What can I do to lower energy bills?' "
Users 'have a choice'
She noted that TXU, like most utility companies, has programs to aid low-income people. For the rest, she said, she counsels energy conservation – installing dimmers on lights, timers on water heaters and thermostats, better insulation and more efficient air conditioners.
"I think what needs to happen is for people to change their habits. They have a choice, and they have control over it," she said.
Often, however, it costs money to save money.
Poor people often can't afford such investments, said Kathy Martin, a volunteer at St. Gabriel the Archangel Catholic Community in McKinney.
Her church's St. Vincent DePaul Society has a program to help low-income households pay utility bills. Requests for assistance this year are running about three to four times the normal level, she said.
"So many have houses with poor insulation, and their [air-conditioning] units are old," she said. "In some cases, their electric bills are higher than their rent. It's just impossible for some people."
For those who can afford it, however, there are savings to be had.
Dan Miller, owner of Dan Miller Air Conditioning in Lake Highlands, said he has heard from owners of 3,600-square-foot houses with $700-a-month utility bills. In some cases, he said, the bills can be lowered by replacing refrigerant or by cleaning dirty condensers.
But not in other cases.
"We have to come back to some people and say we couldn't find a mechanical problem," he said. "It's just a case of when they have a big house and they like to keep it cool, their bills are going to be high."
Going to great lengths
For some people, it depends how far they want to carry conservation.
Ann Gaut of Allen is prepared to go pretty far.
When she moved from Florida into her 1,300-square-foot home in February, she prepared for the hot Texas summers.
She put heavy-duty fiberglass insulation in her rafters. She keeps the thermostat at 77 degrees. She turns it off in the morning, then opens her doors and allows industrial fans to stir up a breeze.
She turns on her water heater in the morning, does dishes, then turns it off.
To keep sunlight out, she installed glass tinting (with the backing still on) on some windows. She put a layer of greenhouse screening on her sliding glass door, covered it with two layers of silver insulation and then covered that with a blue quilt.
It worked.
Her August electric bill: $182.
"I can't see outside," she said. "But my house is cool."
E-mail dflick@dallasnews.com
COMPARING COSTS
A person with an average credit rating would have monthly payments of:
$380 for a $40,000 swimming pool at 7.9 percent interest for 15 years
$678 for a $32,000 BMW 325i at 7 percent interest for five years
$853 for a $150,000 house with 10 percent down and a 6.5 percent, 30-year fixed mortgage
SOURCES: Mastercraft Pools; BMW Mortiz; Dallas Morning News research

source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/083106dnmetstickershock.32a6585.html
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Dirty or clean ? It's all up to you.

Ever wonder why the average Texan's electric bill has gone up nearly 80% under Governor Perry? Or why the state's largest power company is also the state's second-largest lobbyist? Texas has some of the highest energy costs—not to mention the dirtiest air—in the country because we have some of the dirtiest government in the country. Simple as that.
source: www.kinkyfriedman.com

visit www.kinkyfriedman.com for some common sense opinions and plans to the challenges facing Texans. Kinky ain't the type of guy who will tell you all is well when you can see for yourself that all is not well.

Republican Gubernatorial Candidate, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, sued by Brownwood man: Is their a Brownwood Media Blackout on this ?

Strayhorn sued, accused of misleading state agencies
8/29/2006 7:52 PM
By: Veronica Castelo

Carole Keeton Strayhorn announces her 'Forgotten Children' report.
Amy Watts worked as a childcare worker at Woodside Trails Therapeutic Camp for troubled teens for about three years. The wilderness camp is located between Smithville and Bastrop.
"Staff turnover was high and it was hard to get days off. Just like with any other agency, there were things that could have been improved on," Watts said.
While work was difficult at times, Watts said the kids always came first. Allegations of sexual abuse and neglect were not true, Watts said.
"I would have no reason to believe there was any sexual abuse going on. Neglect? I guess it depends on how you define it. Two counselors for 12 kids? I bet there were children out there who didn't get the attention they would have liked," Watts said.
However, in August 2004 the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services closed the camp by revoking its license. They did so after state Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn's "Forgotten Children" report was released. The report targeted abuse at foster care facilities and accused Woodside Trails of sexual abuse and neglect.
Now, two years later, former camp director Betty Lou Gaines filed a lawsuit against Strayhorn and nine other state officials.
Gaines said the report was misleading, inaccurate and resulted in the camps' closure. The false facts could not be ignored, she said.
"I took this step with great reluctance and lots of thought. I feel it's necessary for the future of the children who are in the care of the state of Texas to make sure this never happens again," Gaines said.
Gaines will address the public and answer questions about the lawsuit during a press conference on Thursday at the Capitol.
Comptroller Strayhorn's spokesperson Will Holford declined to comment and directed questions to the Attorney General. Strayhorn's political spokesperson, Mark Sanders, did not return phone calls.
The lawsuit states two judges found the Department of Family and Protective services had no evidence of sexual abuse and claims Strayhorn targeted the camp and used her political power to pressure state agencies to act.
According to the lawsuit, Strayhorn and other state officials "knowingly and intentionally distorted the facts about Woodside Trails and Plaintiff for Strayhorn's political advantage."
The lawsuit continues to say "Strayhorn's campaign against Woodside Trails went far beyond the normal agenda of a powerful, ambitious, and unscrupulous politician seeking higher office."
Watts agrees the abrupt and aggressive manner Strayhorn used on the camp convinced her the children may not have been Strayhorn's priority.
"It didn't seem or have a feel that this was being done to protect children. It kind of had a feel that this was about power. I think that when you have an agency that is needed but needs some support you don't shut the facility down you learn to work with those people and make it the facility that you want it to be," Watts said.
Gaines is asking for an unspecified amount of money for damages.
Watts hopes the state takes steps to replace the camp they closed so the children can get the help they need.

source: http://www.news8austin.com/content/top_stories/default.asp?ArID=169531
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Accused becomes the accuser; Says civil right violated
1/26/2006 12:52 AM
By: Hermelinda Vargas

Two years ago, Woodside Trails Camp was caring for 40 boys, many under state custody, with emotional and sexual issues.
Jackie Reynolds Jr. was a counselor to those kids. Today, he's unemployed and the camp, open for 20 years, is shut down.
The camp's downfall began when State Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn put the spotlight on what she called poor conditions at the outdoor therapeutic camp. Reynolds and another counselor were also accused of sexual improprieties with two boys, in two separate cases.
Reynolds says the accusations are false.
"I know I didn't do it, God knows I didn't do it and some days that has to be enough," Reynolds said.
But that isn't enough, Reynolds said. Nor is it enough that Bastrop prosecutors eventually dropped charges against him. The stigma still affects him personally and professionally, he said.
It's hard to get a job because employers use the internet to supplement their background checks and the accusations against him are easy to find, even if the charges were dropped.
Starting next week, Reynolds and Woodside Trails CEO Bebe Gaines will make their case in state civil court against Strayhorn and the Texas Department of Families and Protective Services --among other state entities.
Reynolds also filed a federal lawsuit against those entities.
"I filed what they call a Section 1983 lawsuit, which basically is a fancy way of saying some people with state authority violated my civil rights, particularly didn't afford me due process," Reynolds said.
The old Woodside Trails Camp is no longer operating, though Gaines tried opening up a boarding school under a different name. Depending on what happens at the civil hearing, she may consider opening up the old camp once again.
Even a victory in civil court might not be enough to regain her camp's reputation, she said.
"The damage they have done is permanent. We can vindicate ourselves and it can all come out that it wasn't right and Woodside Trails can get its license back. But going back into business, I don't know that we'd ever be able to do that," Gaines said.
Gaines will charge on against the state to get Woodside Trails cleared in writing. Most of what happened in 2004 was due to pressure from Strayhorn, she said.
"Under ordinary circumstances, I think these allegations would have been seen for what they are, which were false, but because there was such political pressure behind all this, they didn't actually investigate them well," Gaines said.
A spokesperson for Strayhorn says the Comptroller was not available Wednesday to comment on the story. But she may be able to comment on her role in closing down Woodside Trails, in the next few days.
The state's Department of Families and Protective Services says it can't comment on either case because of confidentiality and also because it doesn't comment on pending litigation.
Prosecutors dropped sexual assault charges against Reynolds in March after the accuser changed his story.
The other former counselor, Robert Meuth, is still charged with sexual assault and indecent conduct with a different boy than the one who accused Reynolds.

source: http://www.news8austin.com/content/your_news/?SecID=278&ArID=154588
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CPS pulls boys out of camp
2 ex-workers at facility for foster kids held on sex abuse counts
By ROBERT T. GARRETT
The Dallas Morning News
August 14, 2004
AUSTIN - State Child Protective Services removed 22 foster boys from a Bastrop County wilderness camp Friday after the local sheriff said two former camp employees sexually assaulted youngsters at the privately run facility.
The problem-plagued CPS has contracted with the 100-acre camp to care for children, who have been placed under its watch, for at least the last 13 years.
Bastrop County Sheriff Richard Hernandez said his office and the state Child Care Licensing Division are jointly investigating allegations of sexual abuse occurring at Woodside Trails Therapeutic Camp near Smithville.
Geoff Wool, spokesman for the state Department of Family and Protective Services, which oversees CPS, said the state had received some complaints about Woodside Trails through the years "but nothing as serious as what we're looking at now."
Bebe Gaines, the camp's director, did not return a phone call Friday seeking comment, but she told The Associated Press, "We're cooperating with the investigation every way we can."
The sheriff said Robert Carl Meuth, 26, of San Marcos was arrested in that city on Aug. 5 and charged with second-degree sexual assault of a child.
Jackie Dewayne Reynolds Jr., 36, was arrested in Brownwood on July 22 and charged with aggravated sexual assault of a child, a first-degree felony, Sheriff Hernandez said. Mr. Reynolds posted $50,000 bail the next day and was released from the Brown County Jail, a jailer there said.
Primitive conditions
As early as 1996, legislators began questioning placements at Woodside Trails because the camp has no electricity or hot water and makes residents - boys 10 to 17 years old - live outside year-round and build their own wilderness shelters.
Last spring, state Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn criticized the agency for allowing foster children to live in unsanitary conditions at the camp for years.
At a House hearing last week, state child-care licensing chief Diana Spiser confirmed that some children lived at wilderness camps, of which Woodside Trails is the most primitive, for up to three years. It lacks running water and flushing toilets.
On its Web site, Woodside Trails says: "Most children need at least one year to complete their treatment. Sometimes it takes six months just to orient the child to his issues."
Ms. Gaines told WFAA-TV (Channel 8) last month that the average stay is 14 months.
WFAA quoted a former camp employee as saying that a 14-year-old offender last fall sexually assaulted a 9-year-old.
Ms. Strayhorn said her office requested that the 9-year-old be removed but that Child Protective Services ignored the request.
Ms. Gaines denied that any campers have sexually assaulted one another and defended mixing boys with records of sexual offenses with other boys.
"It helps both sets of populations to understand the range of problems everybody has in the system," she told Channel 8.
Ms. Strayhorn welcomed the removal of the 22 boys.
"It's about time," she said. "I hope this is the beginning in a change of attitude at the agency."
Ms. Strayhorn's office has investigated foster care for nearly a year, and a scathing report it issued in April contained a photo of an outdoor latrine at Woodside Trails. The latrine violated state standards because it was "only a few feet away" from a sleeping area, not the 75 feet required, the comptroller said.
Camp cited in April
On April 15, state inspectors cited Woodside Trails for having "expired food" stored in the kitchen, failing to give a boy his medication, not giving each boy his own bar of soap and failing to keep two cats and a dog current on their rabies shots.
"They've had their share of minimum-standard violations," Mr. Wool said.
Early Friday, he said, CPS notified juvenile probation authorities, who had placed 10 offenders at the camp, and adults responsible for three private-pay residents about the criminal investigation and state concerns about the camp.
Ms. Gaines told the AP that she expected the 10 juvenile offenders to be removed from her camp soon.
CPS has come under fire after disturbing reports of abuse, neglect and deaths of youngsters in the Dallas area and statewide. On July 1, Gov. Rick Perry ordered a sweeping review of the agency's failings. The governor acted a day after a South Texas grand jury indicted the department overseeing CPS for failing to prevent sexual abuse of three young sisters. The in-house review by the state's human services agency is expected to be complete by the end of the year.

E-mail rtgarrett@dallasnews.com.
source: http://www.isaccorp.org/woodside/woodside-trails.08.14.04.html
-----------------------------------
Media Release

Contact:

Jackie D. Reynolds, Jr.
Brownwood, Texas 76801
Phone: 325-998-6116
Web: www.whataboutthekids.info
Email: jreynolds@whataboutthekids.info

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Republican Gubernatorial Candidate Sued For Civil Rights Violations

A Section 1983 lawsuit was filed in federal court recently alleging that the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts and Republican gubernatorial candidate, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, deprived a therapeutic wilderness camp employee of his civil rights under the color of state law.
(PRWEB) August 14, 2004 -- A lawsuit was filed in federal court Friday naming the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts and Republican gubernatorial candidate, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, as a defendant.
The plaintiff, Jackie Reynolds, filed the lawsuit on his own behalf alleging that, among other things, Mrs. Strayhorn deprived him of his civil rights under the color of state law.
Mr. Reynolds was arrested and indicted last summer on two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child stemming from his work as a counselor at the therapeutic camp Woodside Trails in Bastrop County. The facility was closed after being targeted by Mrs. Strayhorn in her "Forgotten Children" report released in April of last year.
The 109-page, 18-count lawsuit alleges that the charges against Mr. Reynolds were "motivated by ill-will toward Woodside Trails and its former or current employees and was undertaken on behalf of and as a direct result and consequence of the reckless and wanton abuse of power and authority by Defendant Strayhorn."
Other defendants in the lawsuit include the Department of Family & Protective Services and the Bastrop County District Attorney's Office and Sheriff's Office.
In addition to the deprivation of civil rights charge, other counts include conspiracy, malicious prosecution, and intentional infliction of emotional distress, abuse of process and defamation of character.
The Section 1983 lawsuit was received by the United States District Court, Western District of Texas, Austin Division on August 12, 2005, at 2:34 pm. It was assigned case number A05CA638 LY.
Mr. Reynolds is requesting immediate injunctive relief prohibiting DFPS from harassing him or his family and is seeking compensatory and punitive damages for his pain and suffering.

A copy of the lawsuit can be viewed at www.whataboutthekids.info.
source: http://www.sociopranos.com/forums/thread-view.asp?threadid=225&start=451

Denton to Brownwood: Is all "getting over our heads" local ! Grab a cup of " Joe " and read on ....

Posted on Mon, Sep. 04, 2006

A little help from the public
The man behind Arlington's town center has a history of getting tax incentives for his projects
By ANDREA AHLES
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER

Successful town centers are supported by their towns.

And for Steiner + Associates, that often means public financing for roads, water and sewer lines and parking garages when the developer builds a new center.

That worries some Arlington residents as the Ohio development company works on plans for its multimillion-dollar Glorypark town center, the big mixed-use project planned by Steiner and Texas Rangers owner Tom Hicks.

Although the firm has not officially asked Arlington for public financing, Yaromir Steiner acknowledges that his projects usually involve public incentives. He said they do so because they require utilities and parking facilities that are significantly more expensive than the typical mall development and because they create public green spaces.

"People sometimes think that the public help makes the developer richer," Steiner said in an interview Friday, adding that the types of incentives his developments receive can only be used on public infrastructure. "These types of projects will not work without public help."

But some Arlington residents are concerned that city leaders might give Glorypark tax incentives without any public discussion. Under state law, economic development deals can be discussed and negotiated behind closed doors.

Deborah Gagliardi, an architect who ran for City Council last year, said Steiner's previous projects haven't lived up to their hype.

Gagliardi, who will make a presentation on Steiner's older projects to the City Council during the open session Tuesday night, said she does not oppose new developments. Rather, she says, she wants developers to assume considerable risk.

"The city should not be in the business of owning retail space," Gagliardi said. "The developer needs to have an equal amount of equity in the project as the city."

Glorypark will be a multiphase retail, residential and office complex between Ameriquest Field and the new Dallas Cowboys stadium. Hicks has said the partnership could spend close to $1 billion to build 5 million square feet in the next 15 years.

Steiner, who has been a developer with partners on numerous projects in the Midwest, Southeast and Northeast, said his projects get tax incentives because they are helping communities create or redevelop town centers.

Some of his projects have fared better than others.

His premier project, Easton Town Center in Columbus, Ohio, is a popular shopping and entertainment center. In New Jersey, where he used public money to expand the state aquarium, Steiner is building the first privately financed building on the Camden waterfront in decades.

But two of his eight projects have not been as financially successful as the others: Centro Ybor in Tampa, Fla., and Newport on the Levee in Newport, Ky., near Cincinnati.

The Centro Ybor retail center hasn't attracted enough visitors and in the past two years has missed $1.5 million in payments on a $9 million loan from the city. Steiner has since sold his 25 percent share of Centro Ybor.

Occupancy at Newport on the Levee dropped below 75 percent in 2003, and parking lot revenues were unable to fulfill bond payments on the project. The project also went through several ownership changes. Steiner sold his interest in the shopping and entertainment complex in 2005. City officials in Tampa and Newport did not return calls for comment.

Steiner said all of his projects except Centro Ybor had public financing deals where the project's added property taxes were funneled back to pay for its infrastructure needs. The taxes often paid off bonds issued to finance road construction, water and sewer lines and parking garages within the projects.

For example, the city of Glendale, Wis., a Milwaukee suburb, issued $43 million in bonds to pay for infrastructure improvements to Bayshore, a 1950s-era mall that Steiner was redeveloping for retail, residential and entertainment uses. Those bonds are being paid back with the taxes generated from the increased property value of Bayshore, said city administrator Richard Maslowski. And to protect itself from defaulting on the bond payments, the city's agreement with Steiner states that Bayshore will be valued at no less than $320 million in 2008, the first full year the project is open.

Although there were some cost overruns on a parking garage the city built for the project, Maslowski said Steiner agreed to pay the extra construction costs and worked with the city to resolve any issues that arose during construction of Bayshore, which will open in November.

Steiner "actually delivers the project and the quality and the quantity that he said he was going to do," Maslowski said.

Mark Robbins, a professor of public policy at the University of Connecticut, said tax-supported developments are becoming more common with very large projects, such as these town centers.

Some of those projects are good for cities, while others don't work out as well, he said. But Robbins added that governments should be cautious about giving out tax incentives if they can't measure the real benefits of a project for their community.

City leaders have said Arlington would help pay for Glorypark's infrastructure needs, most likely with a tax increment financing district. Councilman Robert Rivera said that tax incentives are a tool the city uses to attract new business to Arlington and that a project like Glorypark will add to the city's tourism.

"In the same way the city of Arlington was proactive in publicly supporting the ballpark and the future Cowboys stadium, it's in Arlington's can-do spirit that we look at every economic opportunity to enhance our economic engine," said Rivera, declining to comment specifically on the Glorypark project.

Dale Attebery, a former city parks board member, said the city should not give any private developers tax incentives, particularly since real estate developers traditionally have not received public financing deals. For example, Attebery said, home builders usually build subdivision streets at their own cost before giving them over to the city for public use.

"I am concerned that we are getting over our heads on so many tax-supported issues that at some point in time, it is going to create a great deal of financial difficulty for Arlington," Attebery said.

Steiner said his "record is on the table" and that his projects, so far, have generated significant taxes and created jobs for their communities.

"If we have one reputation, it is to always deliver more," Steiner said. "We always under-promise and do much better projects."

Glorypark

Yaromir Steiner has not asked Arlington for public financing, though his projects often use it. The planned $1 billion office, retail and residential town center will be built next to Ameriquest Field.

Columbus, Ohio

Easton Town Center, a retail and entertainment complex being developed by Steiner, has over 170 tenants and attracts millions of visitors each year. From 1998 to 2004, it generated $8.1 million in property taxes to cover the city's bond payments.

Camden, N.J.

Steiner was hired to renovate and expand the state-owned aquarium, and completed the work last year. This summer, Steiner broke ground on the Ferry Terminal, the first privately financed building on the Camden waterfront in decades.

Newport, Ky.

Since it opened in 2001, Newport on the Levee has struggled to maintain occupancy and has had several owners. Steiner sold his stake in 2005 but still operates its centerpiece, the Newport Aquarium, which recently spent $4.6 million on an expansion.

Andrea Ahles, 817-548-5523 aahles@star-telegram.com

source: http://www.dfw.com:80/mld/dfw/15437219.htm
--------------
Posted on Mon, Sep. 04, 2006

BATTLE FOR FRY STREET
Residents, others team up to try to persuade developer to renovate, not raze, buildings
By HEATHER ANN WHITE
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER

DENTON -- Almost 7,000 people have signed a petition to save an eclectic area of restaurants, coffee shops, bars and shops just north of the University of North Texas.

The Save Fry Street coalition has collected signatures from students, residents and other supporters since members learned in May that United Equities Inc. of Houston had purchased a beloved block of Fry, between West Hickory and West Oak streets, with plans to demolish much of the strip and add new storefronts.

The coalition plans to present the petition to the Denton City Council on Oct. 3, but members doubt that they'll be able to help business owners who have already been evicted or who may eventually be relocated. "It just makes me sick," said Ashlie Adams, 22, a senior who is studying art at UNT. "It's taking away from the college town. Part of Fry Street's charm is that it's old. There's lots of history. It's so rich in college atmosphere. They take that away, and the kids aren't going to come."

Little is known about what United Equities plans for the strip.

A preliminary site plan filed with the city early this year shows that the developer proposed replacing the strip center with "University Town Center," a project that would include six buildings with parking in the rear, bricked walkways and a north-south through street.

Business owners said the developer has evicted two businesses. The Cool Beans bar, which occupied two spaces in the strip center, was to vacate one of those spaces by Friday. Mr. Chopsticks must be out by the end of the month after winning a 30-day extension, the restaurant's owner said. Other businesses, including coffee shop Uncommon Grounds and clothing store Alter Ego Vintage are gone.

Buster Freedman, United Equities president, could not be reached for comment. Tim Sandifer, the company's vice president of acquisitions, development and leasing, said final plans should be filed within the next month. "We are very enthusiastic about this development and will be pleased to share this information when it is finalized," Sandifer wrote in an e-mail.

Mike Cochran, a Save Fry Street member and former Denton councilman, said he met with Freedman this year and spoke with the developer about possible retailers for the strip, including a CVS pharmacy and Starbucks coffee.

The coalition's mission is to encourage Freedman to renovate some structures rather than raze them, Cochran said. Fry Street has been around since the early 1920s, though its buildings have not received historic designations.

"Looking at trends around the country, they build new buildings that look like fake 1920s commercial centers," he said. "It seems to me sort of wasteful and unnecessary to tear down something perfectly good and rebuild something fake in its place."

Cochran said coalition members have tried to point out options to the developer.

"Being from Houston, he didn't understand the community well," Cochran said. "It seems like he hasn't done his homework. We've tried to let him know what it means to the community."

The president of the Denton Chamber of Commerce, however, said there may be a better use for the area. Fry Street doesn't generate as much tax revenue as other Denton developments, such as the Golden Triangle Mall, said Chuck Carpenter, chamber president. "We recognize its attractiveness in terms of a hospitality destination," Carpenter said. "This is not a dis of Fry Street. I just don't know if you can view any of that as significant."

Some business owners are making adjustments to survive.

Numchai Tamprateep, owner of Mr. Chopsticks on Hickory, plans to move out by Sept. 24. Freedman offered him space in a new building, Tamprateep said, but with a 600 percent increase in rent. Instead, Tamprateep plans to move temporarily to Quick Stir -- his second restaurant -- on Scripture Street about a block away. He'll reopen Mr. Chopsticks when a new building at 1115 Hickory St. is complete.

"I'm pretty sad," said Tamprateep, whose restaurant had operated in the same spot for 22 years. "I have a good customer base. They've been loyal and good to me. I hope they follow me."

Robert Slusarski, owner of The Tomato, is nearly certain that United Equities will ask him to relocate the pizza restaurant, which also has operated in the same location for 22 years. He said that he has been in contact with the developer, but that plans have not been finalized.

"I'm upset," Slusarski said. "As far as I know, they will be tearing down the current building. I don't know where I'll be, but that's my main source of income. I don't want to close."

Martin Bruno, owner of the Cool Beans bar, said he was shocked when he was served with an eviction notice in early August. His bar has been open for 12 years and spans two spaces in the strip center. He plans to scale back into a smaller, original space, which will not be affected by the construction.

"I hate losing my portion of the building," he said. "But I do understand what Freedman's trying to do. I'm not either for or against it."

The change is disconcerting for Liesl Lipford, a junior German major. She favors a cleanup of the area, but she said students don't want a mass-marketed or corporate area.

Lipford, who lives on Hickory Street, said the area is a second home given the amount of time she spends at its coffee shops and restaurants. She compared the area to Sixth Street near the University of Texas at Austin.

"We look at things differently. We don't want them making everything cookie cutter. These places are staples," the 21-year-old said. "I am going to be sorry to see these places go."

ONLINE: www.savefrystreet.com

FRY STREET REDEVELOPMENT

Denton residents organized as the Save Fry Street coalition are collecting signatures on a petition to persuade a developer to preserve the character of a strip known for its eclectic group of retail shops, restaurants, bars and coffee shops. The area includes the 1100 block of Fry, Hickory, Oak and Welch streets.

Affected businesses are:

Mr. Chopsticks

The Tomato

Texas Jive

Naranja Cafe

Bagheri Italian

Restaurant

Spirit Station

Java Flakes

Uncommon Grounds

Treasure Aisles

Bottoms Up

Talon Comics Shop

Cool Beans

SOURCE: www.savefrystreet.com, Star-Telegram research

Heather Ann White, 817-548-5400 hwhite@star-telegram.com

source: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/state/15437123.htm
-----------
Starbucks puts lid on runaway coffee freebie

September 1, 2006

BY SHAMUS TOOMEY Staff Reporter
A free iced coffee e-mail campaign at Starbucks that was meant to be small instead turned grande when someone changed the coupon's wording and spread it online, forcing the chain to kill the promotion.
The e-mail coupon was originally distributed Aug. 23 to "a limited group" of employees in the southeast part of the country. They were encouraged to send it to friends and family, the company said.
But the coupon's wording offering a free iced coffee was altered to allow for any iced drink, including the pricey frappuccino. Soon, it had been spread to hundreds of thousands of people nationwide.
The coupons hit Chicago stores in recent days. At one downtown Starbucks, 60 coupons were cashed in Tuesday, workers said.
Because the original promotion was valid, the "113" code on the coupon was accepted by cash registers at the chain.
Validity debated
Starbucks pulled the plug late Tuesday, saying the promotional e-mail "has been redistributed beyond the original intent and modified beyond Starbucks control."
Before then, people around the country debated online whether the coupon was valid or not.
"To all you non-believers: ive had 3 cups of free iced coffee today, and one free frapuchino," a spelling-challenged person in California wrote on the digg.com Web site.
Another retorted it was obviously a fake coupon, writing: "Want me to make you one that gets you free hot coffee too? How about a free happy meal?"
Starbucks employees here said customers have taken the end of the free ride in stride.
"People figured it was too good to be true," a barista said.

stoomey@suntimes.com

source: http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-scambucks01.html
---------
Starbucks Coupon Update:

Friday, September 8, 2006 · Last updated 3:38 p.m. PT

Starbucks sued in NYC over canceled freebie coffee coupon

By SAMUEL MAULL
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

NEW YORK -- Starbucks Corp. was sued for $114 million Friday over its recall last week of a coupon that entitled the holder to a free large iced drink being promoted by the giant Seattle coffee retailer.

Peter Sullivan, the lawyer who sued on behalf of a 23-year-old Starbucks regular who felt "betrayed" when her coupon was not honored, accused the company of fraud and said he will request class-action status to include the "thousands who were misled" by the offer.

On Aug. 23, Starbucks e-mailed the coupon for the free grande drink to selected employees with instructions for them to forward the coupon to friends and family. The offer was valid through Sept. 30.

But, Sullivan said, Starbucks got jittery and refused to honor the coupon after the company saw how widely it had been distributed. "I believe they were surprised by how successful the promotion was," the lawyer said.

"The excuse proffered by Starbucks, that they did not believe that an offer released over the Internet would be so widely distributed, is ridiculous," Sullivan said. "Clearly, Starbucks chose to initiate a viral marketing campaign to counteract their slumping sales."

A spokeswoman for Starbucks said company officials had seen Sullivan's press release but not his court papers and would have no immediate comment.

Sullivan said he saw lines of coupon-carrying caffeine customers outside Starbucks coffee shops in New York in response to the promotion, and when they could not redeem the coupons "they felt let down and angry."
One of those people, Sullivan said, was his client, Kelly Coakley of Queens, who works as a paralegal and administrative assistant in another Manhattan law office.

The $114 million the lawsuit asks for approximates the average cost of one cup of Starbucks coffee a day for all of the people turned away for the 38 days the offer was valid, Sullivan explained. "That's a very conservative figure," he said.

He did not explain how they determined how many people had tried to redeem the coupon.

source: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/6420AP_NY_Starbucks_Sued.html

"When you have Republicans doing what Democrats used to do,which is tax us to death and spend money like drunken sailors,you know you've got trouble."

Posted on Tue, Sep. 05, 2006

Perry is still the one to beat
By JOHN MORITZ
STAR-TELEGRAM AUSTIN BUREAU

AUSTIN -- The 2006 governor's race kicked off in earnest this Labor Day weekend with polls showing that only about 35 percent of Texans want the incumbent re-elected. He's under attack from his three main rivals, and rumblings of discontent are bubbling up from one of his most loyal constituencies.
Yet political analysts and observers predict that Republican Gov. Rick Perry will cruise to victory Nov. 7, which will put him on the path to become the longest-serving chief executive in Texas history and perhaps even in the running for the second spot on the GOP national ticket in 2008.
What gives?
Perry, a former state lawmaker from Haskell County who has served in three statewide offices, is running for his second full term against a field so crowded that his opposition has fragmented. The winning candidate doesn't need an outright majority of the votes, just more than any other candidate.
State Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, a Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-independent, is hammering away at his plan for a $184 billion network of toll roads and rail lines that would be run in large part by a Spanish firm. Democrat Chris Bell, a little-known one-term ex-congressman from Houston, has devoted much of his recent effort to highlighting the deterioration of the state park system during Perry's administration.
Kinky Friedman, the offbeat country songwriter and mystery novelist who's also running as an independent, chants "never re-elect anybody" as part of his campaign mantra and faults what he calls the professional politicians for failing to promote issues such as alternative energy production and publicly financed political campaigns.
All three have criticized Perry for taking more than five years to overhaul the state's unconstitutional school finance system and have picked apart the plan that he guided through the Legislature last spring on grounds that it overlooked schoolchildren, short-changed teachers or double-crossed taxpayers.
Libertarian candidate James Werner scarcely mentions his rivals while waging a low-key campaign calling for smaller government and lower taxes.
'Hard to beat'
"There's no doubt that Perry has left himself open to criticism," said political analyst Harvey Kronberg, publisher of the online newsletter Quorum Report. "But no one has yet to make a positive case for themselves as the one voters should replace him with. As it stands right now, he's going to be hard to beat."
The challengers discount such assertions.
In her campaign appearances and stump speeches, Strayhorn insists that by fall, voters will be faced with a choice between her and Perry. Each has won several statewide races dating back to the 1990s, and they have far more money in their campaign accounts than do Bell and Friedman. She has about $8 million; Perry has about $10 million.
"This is clearly a two-person race," she said last month.
Bell, who is making his first bid for statewide office, said recent polls show the momentum swinging his way. A Zogby Interactive Poll released last week shows him in second place, though 12 points behind Perry and just a fraction of a percentage point ahead of Friedman.
"As we become better known, people are starting to come to us," Bell said Friday. "There's an 'anybody but Perry' sentiment out there that will finally consolidate around one candidate, and I think it will be me."
Friedman, a political novice whose campaign was launched by way of his now-suspended column in Texas Monthly magazine, is reaching out to Texans who either had never bothered to vote or have become disillusioned with politics as usual.
"It's a two-way race -- between me and apathy," Friedman has said, adding that if disaffected voters turn out, "I'll win in a landslide."
Perry, who succeeded George W. Bush as governor in December 2000 and was elected in his own right in 2002, has dismissed the cacophony of criticism from his opponents as "white noise in the background." Robert Black, his campaign spokesman, said the governor is running on a record of job creation, education improvement and fiscal conservatism.
"Texans need to look at the economy of this state -- 630,000 new jobs in three years," Black said. "Student test scores are exceeding the national average. If Texans are asked, are they better off than they were four years ago, we're confident in their answer."
Dissension in the ranks
But not everyone in the Republican camp is so sure.
Steve Hotze, a Houston physician and a longtime Republican activist, calls 2006 a "disappointing" election year. Hotze is among a band of Republicans who said Perry sold out the conservative movement by embracing a new tax on business to make up for cuts in local property taxes for financing public schools.
"The Republicans have foisted upon Texas the largest tax increase in the state's history," Hotze said. "I don't know how that will play out in the fall, but we've all seen the polls. Gov. Perry is not strong."
Hotze, who first became active in politics in 1976, says that he'll watch the race from the sidelines for the first time in 30 years.
"I'm staying out of it," he said. "When you have Republicans doing what Democrats used to do, which is tax us to death and spend money like drunken sailors, you know you've got trouble."
Black disputed the characterization, saying most Republicans and even some Democrats and independents will give Perry credit for solving the education finance crisis before the courts shut down the schools. The package, he said, is designed to lower property taxes by one-third over two years and give all teachers at least a $2,000-per-year pay raise.
Friedman called the school finance plan "a court-ordered crumb" for teachers and schoolchildren. And like Strayhorn and Bell, he has called for substantially higher pay for teachers.
Strayhorn's attacks on Perry have probably been the harshest among the challengers. And Perry's camp has largely concentrated its fire on the comptroller.
Here's a sample of the back-and-forth salvos: Strayhorn calls Perry a "do-nothing drugstore cowboy" whose Trans Texas Corridor plan "is the biggest land grab in the history of the state." The Perry campaign's Web site features five slams at Strayhorn, calling her transportation plan "bad science fiction" and suggesting that she has granted her campaign contributors special favors in tax disputes with the state.
Strayhorn strenuously denies any improprieties.
Bell predicted that the strident tone will harm both camps and help him. But first he must win back some of the Democratic supporters who drifted to Strayhorn early in the campaign.
Into the homestretch
Fred Baron, a Dallas lawyer and a frequent contributor to Democratic candidates and causes, was among several Texas trial lawyers who gave money to Strayhorn when it appeared that no strong Democrat would step forward to challenge Perry.
But this month, Baron sent Bell a check for $25,000 and said he hopes the Democrat can put forth a positive message heading into the home stretch of the campaign.
"Chris is a very competent guy, and he'd make a good governor," said Baron, who last year gave $12,500 to Strayhorn. "He's been terribly underfunded, and that's a shame."
Friedman is maintaining his nontraditional approach. He's tapped laid-back pop singer Jimmy Buffett to host a benefit concert in Austin this month. It's already sold out. And two weeks ago he unveiled a plan to develop nontraditional energy resources such as biodiesel fuel and wind power to cut pollution and decrease the need for imported oil.
"Today, our capacity to generate energy from wind, solar and biofuel sources is 400 times greater than the amount we're currently using," Friedman said. "Renewable energy sources can be found in every corner of the Lone Star State. Why aren't we tapping into them?"
Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said that it will be tough for any of the challengers to burst from the pack unless Perry stumbles from the weight of the attacks against him.
"I think Perry is the prohibitive favorite right now," Jillson said. "As a Republican incumbent in the reddest of states with an unlimited war chest, I just don't see how he gets beat. The only interesting question is who comes in second."

Rick Perry

Age: 56

Party: Republican

Incumbent

Web site: www.rickperry.org

Keys to victory: Hold on to the Republicans' base by running strong in the suburbs and minimizing defections in rural Texas by voters who might oppose his $184 billion Trans Texas Corridor, which is expected to gobble up tens of thousands of undeveloped acres.

Chris Bell

Age: 46

Party: Democrat

Former congressman

Web site: www.chrisbell.com

Keys to victory: Win back Democrats who may be siding with one of the independent candidates and maximize turnout in heavily Democratic urban areas, especially in Harris County, where he is well-known from his service as a congressman and a Houston City Council member.

Carole Keeton Strayhorn

Age: 66

Party: Independent

State comptroller

Web site: www.carolestrayhorn.com

Keys to victory: Form a coalition of moderate Republicans, disaffected Democrats and independents with special emphasis on rural Texas, which may be distrustful of the proposed Trans Texas Corridor.

Kinky Friedman

Age: 61

Party: Independent

Entertainer and author

Web site: www.kinkyfriedman.com

Keys to victory: Corral voters disillusioned with the major political parties and appeal to Texans with little or no history of voting.

John Moritz, 512-476-4294 jmoritz@star-telegram.com

source: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/15442084.htm

All Facism is Local ! Look for the $ 3,000.00 Suits in the Glass Closets !

Letter to the Editor - Fort Worth Star Telegram

A cursory Google search for fascism will provide a pretty good synopsis of the ideology and political philosophy behind the term: "A radical totalitarian political philosophy that combines elements of corporatism, authoritarianism, extreme nationalism, militarism, anti-anarchism, anti-communism and anti-liberalism."
Writer Laurence W. Britt cites 14 threads that are common to the seven main fascist regimes that grew from Benito Mussolini's original experiment: powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism; disdain for the importance of human rights; identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause; the supremacy of the military/avid militarism; rampant sexism; controlled mass media; obsession with national security; religion and ruling elite tied together; power of corporations protected; power of labor suppressed or eliminated; disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts; obsession with crime and punishment; rampant cronyism and corruption; and fraudulent elections.
And as those corporations and financiers who supported Mussolini, Francisco Franco and Adolf Hitler knew, fascism is good for business.
What I find interesting in President Bush's and Rumsfeld's newly found fondness for the term is that fascism is a right-wing ideology.
To the extent that people equate Democrats, liberals and assorted lefties with the extreme left wing -- communism -- it seems natural to me that some people might be afraid that our Republican, conservative righties could be closet fascists in $3,000 suits.

Greg S. Pate, Fort Worth

source: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/opinion/local2/15450267.htm
-------------------
Published on Tuesday, September 5, 2006 by CommonDreams.org

Rehabilitating Fascism: How Would We Know It If We Saw It?
by Robert Freeman

With his announcement that the war on terror is actually a war against "Islamo-fascism," President Bush has opened a fruitful debate. As is so common with Bush, however, his use of the term seeks to stigmatize more than characterize, to evoke glandular excretions more than intellectual reflections.

But in one sense, the president has performed a useful service. By re-introducing fascism into legitimate public discourse - by "rehabilitating" it, as it were - the president may actually help inform the country about the real dangers it faces as the war on terror continues its relentless march.

For the better part of sixty years, fascism was a term of intense odium, too heavily freighted with moral opprobrium to even be used in polite conversation. Even though earlier U.S-allied, right-wing regimes in Spain, Portugal, Greece, Chile, Argentina, Korea and other countries could legitimately be termed fascist, the remembrance of Nazis herding Jews into gas chambers was almost too painful to bear. Use of the term against political foes automatically removed its user from the realm of legitimate discussion.

Yet it is precisely the power of fascism - at least to those who practice it - that has made it such a compelling and recurring form of national rule. The question we must confront with Bush's revival of the term is, "What exactly does it mean?" How would we recognize fascism today if, in fact, it was loose about the globe?

In classic terms, fascism is defined by five characteristics of governance: nationalist aggression; fusing of the state with corporate interests; single party rule; the suppression of civil liberties; and pervasive propaganda. All of these inhered in the Italian, German, and Japanese governments of the 1930s and '40s. All of them would have to be present before the label "fascism" could legitimately be applied to a modern regime.

Nationalist aggression was a hallmark of Hitler's rule. He occupied Austria, the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, in each case declaring (falsely) that Germany's very existence was threatened by dark forces in those countries. Mussolini attacked Ethiopia and reasserted Italian control over Libya. Japan attacked Korea, Manchuria, China, Formosa (Taiwan), and much of southeast Asia.

In all three countries, the leaders used nationalist aggression to whip their people into militaristic frenzies and to intimidate opposition movements. At the Nuremberg war trials, Herman Goering, Hitler's Minister of Propaganda, gave one of the most lucid explanations of how this process worked:

"Naturally, the common people don't want war. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
The second classic characteristic of fascism is the fusing of the state with large corporations. It was the major industrialists who backed Mussolini's campaign to purge Italy of labor unions and leftists. In Germany, it was the Prussian aristocrats and corporate interests who funded Hitler's National Socialist party on his promise that he would eliminate liberal opposition. In Japan, it was the Zaibatsus - the industrial conglomerates - that underwrote the rise of the militarist state.

As each of these fascist governments ramped up for war, large corporations reaped fabulous profits as monopoly suppliers of energy, weapons, construction services, chemicals, and industrial machinery. In the German case, they benefited as well from the use of slave labor in factories, mines, and concentration camps in Germany and throughout Eastern Europe.

The third classic characteristic of fascism is single party rule. At its core, fascism is profoundly anti-democratic. In none of the fascist countries were competing parties tolerated. In Italy, the fascists deployed "blackshirts" - bands of thugs - to intimidate and in some cases murder opposition figures. In Japan, militarist fervor allowed only loyalty to the Emperor.

Germany adopted the model of Italy, employing "brownshirts" to harass and threaten opposition parties. Almost immediately after Hitler's assumption of power in 1933, the German parliament building, the Reichstag, was burned in a fire later attributed to the Nazis. Hitler used the event to outlaw all competing parties and consolidate political power in himself.

The fourth classic indicator of fascism is the suppression of civil liberties. Immediately upon being appointed Chancellor, Hitler began a systematic campaign of dismantling protections of the individual that were part of the Weimar Constitution. Freedom of speech, press, and assembly were aggressively suppressed.

Citizens could be arrested without charge, held without bail, transferred to remote prisons without notification of relatives, and executed on the flimsiest of pretexts. Spying on the people by the government became rampant. By August 1934, Hitler had effectively seized all power, leaving the national legislature as a mere rubber stamp and an echo chamber for his increasingly deranged rantings.

The final characteristic that marks the existence of fascism is pervasive propaganda. It was in Mein Kampf, written in 1925, that Hitler first propounded the Big Lie as a technique for controlling the thoughts of the masses: lie; lie big; and lie often. Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will" became the canonical film embodying the practice of pervasive state-driven propaganda.

Germany, Italy, and Japan each used both state organs and state-influenced private media to saturate their people with state-approved militarist narratives, making it all but impossible to question state authority or state actions. That, of course, was their intent. All carried out lurid, slavish hagiography, adulation of the "leader" as resolute, infallible, even divine, and of the government as the only source of security, strength, and safety. Those who questioned the legitimacy or the efficacy of the fascist state or its leader were denounced as fools or, worse, traitors.

Nationalist aggression. Fusing of the state with corporate interests. Single party rule. Suppression of civil liberties. Pervasive propaganda.

By these criteria, it is doubtful that Muslims resisting military occupation of their lands, the massacre of their people, and the theft of their resources by western invaders can be considered "fascist." Still, President Bush has provided an undoubted public service in raising the issue, by rehabilitating the term for legitimate public debate.

Fascism may, indeed, be resurgent today. Certainly the profound damage it wrought on the world in the last century is reason to be watchful of it, to be on guard against it. But it is not among the Islamists we need fear finding it. If Bush, in fact, wants to protect the U.S. against the very real dangers of fascism he so lustily decries, he will need to look for it elsewhere.

Robert Freeman writes on economics, history and education. He can be reached at robertfreeman10@yahoo.com.



source: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0905-22.htm

Who's putting Party before Country ? Read last paragraph !

Published on Thursday, September 7, 2006 by the Associated Press

War Turns Southern Women Away From GOP

by Shannon McCaffrey

MACON, Georgia - President Bush's once-solid relationship with Southern women is on the rocks. "I think history will show him to be the worst president since Ulysses S. Grant," said Barbara Knight, a self-described Republican since birth and the mother of three. "He's been an embarrassment." In the heart of Dixie, comparisons to Grant, a symbol of the Union, is the worst sort of insult, especially from a Macon woman who voted for Bush in 2000 but turned away in 2004.
Barbara Knight, shown in her Macon, Ga. office Thursday, Aug. 31, 2006, was born and raised a Republican. But these days the mother of three from middle Georgia has deep misgivings about the GOP and the man she once voted for: President Bush. A recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that three out of five Southern women surveyed said they planned to vote for a Democrat in the midterm elections. (AP Photo/Gene Blythe)
In recent years, Southern women have been some of Bush's biggest fans, defying the traditional gender gap in which women have preferred Democrats to Republicans. Bush secured a second term due in large part to support from 54 percent of Southern female voters while women nationally favored Democrat John Kerry, 51-48 percent.
"In 2004, you saw an utter collapse of the gender gap in the South," said Karen Kaufmann, a professor of government at the University of Maryland who has studied women's voting patterns. White Southern women liked Bush because "he spoke their religion and he spoke their values."
Now, anger over the Iraq war and frustration with the country's direction have taken a toll on the president's popularity and stirred dissatisfaction with the Republican-held Congress.
Republicans on the ballot this November have reason to worry. A recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that three out of five Southern women surveyed said they planned to vote for a Democrat in the midterm elections. With control of the Senate and House in the balance, such a seismic shift could have dire consequences for the GOP.
Democrats need to gain 15 seats in the House and six in the Senate to seize control.
In a sign of how crucial races in the South will be to the GOP national strategy, Bush was traveling to Georgia on Thursday to help former Rep. Max Burns raise money in his bid to unseat Democratic Rep. John Barrow. The president also will give a speech in Atlanta.
Knight lives in another congressional district considered competitive. Republicans hope to oust Democratic Rep. Jim Marshall, whose district was redrawn by the GOP-controlled Georgia Legislature to make it more conservative.
Voters like Knight could prove to be spoilers. The 66-year-old real estate agent doesn't particularly like Marshall, a hawkish Democrat and former Army Ranger, but she said she'll vote for him because she likes his conservative Republican opponent, former Rep. Mac Collins, even less.
"I'm going to go for the moderate, and these days that tends to be Democrats," Knight said.
Sandy Rubin, a high school teacher in Macon, voted for Bush and said she's also likely to vote for Marshall. Rubin said the GOP's focus on issues that appeal to social conservatives, such as gay marriage and abortion, have turned her off.
"I care about job security and education. The things I hear the Republicans emphasizing in their campaigns are not things that affect me or my family," said the 39-year-old mother of two.
The movement of some Southern women away from the Republican Party tracks with national poll results showing that women have become more disillusioned with the war and were more likely than men to list the conflict as the important issue facing the country.
Nationally, the AP-Ipsos poll found that only 28 percent of women approve of Bush's handling of the war. Bush did better in the South, but only slightly - just 32 percent of women in the region said they approve of his handling of the war.
"I never did understand why we went into Iraq and didn't instead clean up the mess in Afghanistan first," Knight said.
Teresa Cranford, 39, also of Macon, said her support for Bush was lukewarm in 2004, but she ultimately voted for him so he could finish the job in Iraq. As the death toll has risen, so has her discomfort.
"I'm a mother and that makes me think differently about it," Cranford said.
Lynn Hamilton, 44, said she still supports Bush even though her backing for the ongoing war has waned.
"As a mother you worry, 'Am I going to lose my baby boy?'" said the Gray, Ga., resident. "A mother's view about war is often going to be a lot different than dad's is."
Neither Cranford nor Hamilton has decided how they plan to vote in the midterm elections, although neither ruled out voting for a Democrat.
"I'm not a straight party-line Republican anymore," Cranford said.
Still, some Southern women remain stalwart supporters of the president and the Republican Party. At a watermelon festival in Chickamauga, in the mountains of northwest Georgia, substitute teacher Clydeen Tomanio said she remains committed to the party she's called home for 43 years.
"There are some people, and I'm one of them, that believe George Bush was placed where he is by the Lord," Tomanio said. "I don't care how he governs, I will support him. I'm a Republican through and through."

source: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0907-04.htm

"A statesman is thinking about the next generation. Get the money changers out of the temples. Get the politicians out of Texas.": Amen, Brother Kinky

Posted on Thu, Sep. 07, 2006

Friedman urges legalization of Texas casinos
JEFF CARLTON
Associated Press
DALLAS - Legalizing casinos in Texas makes sense because residents already drive to nearby states or fly to Las Vegas to gamble, independent gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman said Thursday.
"This is common sense," Friedman said. "It's crazy to have Louisiana gamblers mad at Oklahoma for taking away their Texans."
Friedman, a musician, author and humorist, said he recently returned from a "fact-finding mission" in Las Vegas and estimated that half the people he met there were from Texas. Texans are also responsible, Friedman said, for transforming the regional gambling hot spot of Tunica, Miss., from the "poorest little town in Mississippi to the richest little town in Mississippi."
Legal casino gambling in Texas would generate between $6 billion and $8 billion annually for the state, he said. That money would improve public schools and lower property taxes, which Friedman described as "obscene and outrageous."
"We would bring the money back home," Friedman said. "Legalizing casino gambling is very popular in Texas and I think most people want it."
The issue is a mixed bag among Friedman's major opponents in the crowded race for governor.
Republican Gov. Rick Perry opposes legalizing casinos. He proposed video lottery terminals at race tracks two years ago but the Legislature voted the measure down, his campaign spokesman said.
"To expect this Legislature to take an even larger step beyond video lottery players and to go on to full-blown casino gambling is completely unrealistic," spokesman Robert Black said.
Democratic candidate Chris Bell is not opposed to casinos but does not see them as a long-term solution to the state's education problems, according to his campaign.
"No one should try to mislead people into thinking this is any kind of silver bullet for school funding," campaign spokesman Jason Stanford said. "This is what they tried us to tell us for the lottery. Try to find someone in Texas who believes the lottery has solved education funding."
Carole Keeton Strayhorn, the state comptroller who is running as an independent, was an early advocate of the video lottery terminals but prefers to let voters decide when it comes to casinos, her campaign spokesman said.
"If voters want to place it on the ballot and voters pass it, that is fine with her," Mark Sanders said. "She just wants the people to have a say in the issue."
Friedman's comments on gambling were part of an overall political message he described as K.I.S.S.P.: Keep It Simple, Stupid Politicians.
Friedman positioned himself as an outsider compared to his opponents in the governor's race. His three major opponents have a combined 89 years of political experience, Friedman said.
"A politician is thinking about the next election," Friedman said. "A statesman is thinking about the next generation. Get the money changers out of the temples. Get the politicians out of Texas."
Friedman repeated ideas he discussed Wednesday in Houston, including beefing up security by increasing the number of National Guard troops at the Texas-Mexico border from 1,500 to 10,000. He also wants to give Houston $100 million to address rising crime.
Friedman complained about the budget surplus in Austin, saying he would use it to strengthen the state park system and improve social services.
"These areas have been so gutted by this governor that I don't think any policy I would create could hurt them any worse," he said.
source: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/15462518.htm

Thursday September 7, 2006: In the News

Thursday September 7, 2006 News

United Way opens $335,000 drive

By Gene Deason — Brownwood Bulletin

Local residents support the Brown County United Way so strongly each year because it’s part of their religious make-up, Brownwood Mayor Bert Massey told a luncheon audience gathered Wednesday to open the 2007 campaign.
The drive to raise $335,000 to benefit 14 Brown County agencies is now under way, and the kickoff luncheon saluted the workers and contributors who made last year’s campaign a success while recognizing those who have agreed to work in this year’s effort.
“If you don’t need help personally, why do you care if someone else gets it?” Massey asked. “Why do you care if children are abused... why do you care if some family needs child care? Why do you love these people who are in need?”
Massey turned to the Bible for the answer, reading selections including the parable of the Good Samaritan and Jesus’ words saying that anything done for others is done for him.
“We care because the one that most if not all of us worship says it’s the thing to do,” Massey said.
Massey’s remarks capped a luncheon program that featured introductions of representatives of the 14 United Way agencies, United Way board members and campaign division leaders.
“This campaign is about the agencies,” drive chairman Joe Childs said. “I’m proud that Brown County gives and continues to give.”
He said he was initially shocked when the goal for 2007 was set at a record $335,000, but that faded when he remembered by the campaign exceeded its $325,000 goal last year.
“That $335,000 is nothing for Brown County; that’s nothing when you consider what these agencies are doing,” Childs said.
Another highlight of the luncheon was a video conceived and produced by Paul and Jill Underwood, set to the Pete Townshend song “Let My Love Open the Door.” Featuring United Way agencies and supporters, the video illustrated the services provided by member agencies.
The United Way campaign has decided to use the video extensively in its campaign, and adopted the theme “Let Your Love Open the Door” to work with its showing.
The near-capacity audience at the Mabee Center at Howard Payne University showed its delight with a standing ovation.
United Way officers include Brett VanOverbeke, president; Douglas Boone Jr., vice president; Cody Stone, treasurer; Bill Thomas, finance chair; and Craig Collier, allocations chair.
Division leaders include Betty Bell, accountants; Weldon Wilson, construction; Von Bates, automotive; Mike Fugua, industry; Kathy Edwards and Ed Nadurata, 3M; Jeannette Pattillo, education; Minessa Medic, government; Chanda Hoppe, farm and ranch; Alicia Newman, utilities; Laurie Chastain, hospitality; Jan Cate, agencies; Veta Young, insurance; Liz Brown, legal; Evelyn Hutchings, Early; Reed Smith, Brownwood Regional Medical Center; Janice Horton, Kohler; Brad Wells, Realtors; Marilyn Jackson, Howard Payne University; Douglas Boone Jr., SECC; Doak Givan, speaker; and Edd Ratliff, finance.

Karen Lynch is executive director.

source: http://www.brownwoodbulletin.com/articles/2006/09/07/news/news03.txt
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Last Updated: Thursday, 7 September 2006, 17:51 GMT 18:51 UK

FBI probes 'Mafia Bible' for code

Bernardo Provenzano allegedly took over the Mafia in 1993
Italian officials have handed to the FBI a Bible that belonged to suspected Mafia kingpin Bernardo Provenzano to see whether it contains a secret code.
Provenzano, 73, was captured in Sicily in April after 43 years on the run.
The Bible found in his isolated hut contained dots, arrows and notations and investigators want to know if it is a code that will unlock other messages.
Provenzano, who allegedly took over the Sicilian Mafia in 1993, is held in a top security prison in central Italy.
'Pizzini'
Italian prosecutor Piero Grasso said: "We need to do everything we can to see if Provenzano's Bible contains coded messages."
Prosecutors say Provenzano constantly refers to the book, found in the hut close to his birthplace in Corleone where he was caught.
Provenzano was arrested at an isolated hut in April
The hideout contained paper notes known as "pizzini" which had numbers that Italian code-breakers said referred to Mafia contacts.
Mr Grasso said it was still to be proved whether a code existed. If there is one it could help police prevent the Mafia from reorganising.
Mr Grasso said Italian authorities had co-operated with the FBI over the Mafia "many times".
A US government official confirmed the FBI was "working with the [Italian] state police to determine whether there are any hidden messages in the Bible".
Any code-breaking will be done at an FBI laboratory in Quantico, Virginia.
Italian police say Provenzano took over as head of the Cosa Nostra in 1993 after then leader Toto Riina was captured.
Provenzano was given the nickname "Binu the tractor" for allegedly mowing down enemies as a hit man.
While on the run, he was sentenced in absentia for murder. A package of laundry sent by his wife led to his capture in April.

source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5325362.stm
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FBI TO CRACK PROVENZANO BIBLE
Holy book may have been used to encode messages

(ANSA) - Palermo, September 7 - A bible used by jailed Mafia superboss Bernardo Provenzano has been sent to the United States to see if the Federal Bureau of Investigation can find codes the boss may have used to send messages .
Italian police experts have tried in vain to make sense of the boss's scribbles on post-it notes he stuck into the well-thumbed bible and the typescripts he copied out of it .
Now they've decided to send it to the FBI's Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit, one of the world's top code-breaking teams .
Italy's Anti-Mafia chief Piero Grasso stressed the importance of doing "everything possible" to see if the bible had a secret use .
Investigators suspect the bible may contain ciphers used to encrypt the notes the 73-year-old Don used to communicate with bosses around Sicily .
Provenzano may have sent similarly annotated copies of the holy book to his Cosa Nostra brothers so they could use them to decode the notes, Italian police think .
He may even have had such copies sent to powerful bosses in prison. The Bible is one of the few books allowed to mafiosi serving time under Italy's toughest prison regime .
Police have already deciphered many of the notes found in the boss's hideout and discovered a number system used to identify bosses and order crimes .
Their work has led to a string of arrests .
But the bible comments and copied biblical passages have proved harder to crack .
Despite investigators' optimism, Grasso indicated that the bible may not prove to be the key to the remaining notes. "It's a hunch that has to be proven," he said .
Provenzano had five bibles with him when he was caught on April 11 after 43 years in hiding .
The annotated copy was by his bedside .
It was the first thing he asked for when he was moved to solitary confinement shortly after his arrest .
His request was turned down. He was given a prison bible, which is currently his only reading matter .
One of the boss's favourite biblical parts, according to what he was found to have copied out, was the Book of the Apocalypse .
He typed out whole chunks complete with notes on the exact meaning of words like "vice" and "fornicate" .
One passage reads: "The beast you saw was there but is already gone: it is about to rise out of the abyss and go to its ruin". Like several Cosa Nostra dons, Provenzano is said to have been a devoted Catholic, in his own way .
Police found religious trappings including cheap posters of the friar with the stigmata, San (Padre) Pio, in the tumbledown farmhouse in which Provenzano spent his last years .
Provenzano is believed to have had a close support network in Corleone, the town 40km (25 miles) south of Palermo made famous by the Godfather films .
Investigators also suspect he enjoyed protection from local politicians and rogue police officers .
The boss, who took sole command of Cosa Nostra when co-boss Toto' 'the Beast' Riina was arrested 13 years ago, is being held in a single cell in a high-security prison in Terni, central Italy .
He has so far made four appearances via video-link at a trial for crimes committed in the 1980s .
Provenzano has been convicted in absentia of a string of murders he committed as a young hitman and more recent assassinations he approved including the 1992 bomb slayings of Italy's top anti-Mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino .

source: http://ansa.it/main/notizie/awnplus/english/news/2006-09-07_1079111.html

" Fairy Tales & Fantasy Land ": Disney's/ABC's new Mantra ?

Editorial

Sept. 7, 2006, 9:10PM

Fabricating history
ABC docudrama on 9/11 jettisons accuracy in favor of fictional sensationalism

With national security and the war on terror again in the spotlight as the midterm congressional elections near, intense political scrutiny is focused on the ABC miniseries The Path to 9/11, set to air Monday on the event's fifth anniversary.

Democrats and some experts on terrorism say a key scene in which members of President Bill Clinton's administration refuse to approve a CIA recommendation to kill or capture al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden never happened. The show's narrative, according to a review by Editor and Publisher, presents the Bush administration largely in a positive light.

A letter expressing Clinton's objections signed by his lawyer stated, "The content of this drama is factually and incontrovertibly inaccurate, and ABC has the duty to fully correct all errors or pull the drama entirely."

Clinton's secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, and former security adviser Samuel R. Berger also wrote protest letters to Robert Iger, president and CEO of Walt Disney Co., which owns ABC. "No such episode ever occurred," Berger wrote, "nor did anything like it."

The New York Times quoted another Clinton official, Richard Clarke, as saying, ''There were no CIA operatives about to snatch bin Laden. It's utterly invented."

A former Bush administration security official, Roger Cressy, described the ABC production as riddled with factual errors both small and large. "What ABC has done here is something straight out of Disney and fantasyland," Cressy told an MSNBC talk show host.

The show's writer and producer, Cyrus Nowrasteh, is no stranger to debates over his mixture of fact and fiction in historical dramas. He wrote the Showtime docudrama "The Day the President was Shot," which depicted the White House in turmoil after the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan in 1981. Reagan national security adviser Richard Allen claimed Nowrasteh and executive producer Oliver Stone "have pulled out all the stops, turning history on its head by substituting fantasy and sheer fabrication for what really occurred in the White House."

ABC officials have downplayed concerns over the show's accuracy, explaining it "has composite and representative characters and incidents, and time compressions have been used for dramatic purposes."

However, the network is planning to distribute the miniseries to thousands of high school students via free downloads. The exposure will leave many young people thinking they are seeing fact rather than fiction.

Nowrasteh has a talent for writing fiction, including the pilot episode of the popular spy series La Femme Nikita, and a little-seen movie, Norma Jean, Jack and Me, in which a shipwrecked man washes up on an Caribbean island and discovers President Jack Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe alive and living out their golden years.

It's unfortunate that ABC would trust the depiction of a still painful and politically volatile subject such as 9/11 to a writer best known for fantastical storytelling. The least ABC officials can do is remove segments found to be fictitious before distributing the movie to impressionable schoolchildren and a national audience.

source: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/4171409.html