EcuProphets

It sound like the beginning of a joke…

Bill Clinton, Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra, and Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, are sitting down to a banquet…

except until the New York Times broke the story this morning, Mssrs. Giustra and Nazarbayev had not been familiar enough to support a joke’s setup. (more…)

Why am I not surprised at this?

Four months after announcing troop reductions in Iraq, President Bush is now sending signals that the cuts may not continue past this summer, a development likely to infuriate Democrats and renew concerns among military planners about strains on the force. (more…)

A dozen years or so ago I was talking to an old school radical about my favorable opinion of Todd Gitlin’s call to lay aside identity politics for the greater good of the country. We were at a three day conference, and it was my bad luck to bring this up at dinner of day one. For the rest of the conference, this old school fellow spat the name “Todd Gitlin” with contempt. At every opportunity. (more…)

There’s an old preacher’s joke about the time Mabel finally dragged her ornery husband Harry to church. When the time for the sermon approached, Mabel was worried that Harry probably would start snoring, which would embarrass her and annoy the parishioners. But a few minutes into the sermon — dealing with the Ten Commandments — Harry broke into a grin, which remained throughout the rest of the service. On the way out of church Harry was heard saying to Mabel: “You see? At least I haven’t made any graven images.”  (more…)

Your House member will need to hear from you. Soon. Like, today. Find his or her contact information here. (more…)

When Governor Spitzer proposed allowing undocumented sojourners to get driver’s licenses, I supported it. People are here in the United States for any number of reasons and the revival of 19th Century arguments about furriners a-stealin’ our jobs was unfairly simplistic.  (more…)

Time to compare and contrast — (more…)

On the day that

1. global markets went into free fall and Ben Bernanke played Spiderman shooting the US Market a Spidey Web of an interest rate cut
2. Heath Ledger was found dead in SoHo
3. Fred Thompson dropped out of the predidential race
4. Hillary left South Carolina – the portentious event was 
5. the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by Enron investors suing major banks that allegedly helped the Houston company disguise its financial problems. Not only did this probably end, for practical purposes, efforts by shareholders to hold third parties responsible for crippling losses, it served as an end-zone celebration of the power of plutocracy.  

(more…)

The myth-making machine that is the MSM is a continually astonishing entity for its simplicity of output. In go human beings with all their complexities, out come cartoon characters, as easy to digest as Cap’n Crunch (take that as you will.) (more…)

Levity’s diary today in Daily Kos links to this video.

Martin Luther King Day, if it is truly to honor Dr. King, must be about April 4th, 1967 as it is about anything else. After April 4th, 1967, Dr. King was no longer a “safe” black man — he had linked civil rights with human rights and economic rights. He came out against the war! He muddled respectable civil rights advocacy with that of all those… those… hippies! Liberals were furious. As well they should have been. “Beyond Vietnam” stripped the mask off all America’s priveleged – liberal, moderate, and conservative alike. (more…)