If it is Sunday, it is TV time

My Sunday morning ritual, and I may have posted this before is simple — I watch the Chris Matthews show (Religiously, if I miss an episode not only does my day get off to a bad start but my week seems to suck, too. And as I have said before, I need my Chris Matthews fix so when he was ill last winter/fall/whenever it was or when they give him a vacation, he does deserve them, his shows are different and I cannot watch and suffer a minor depression until he returns.), then Meet the Press then Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer.  I do a lot of channel surfing throughout the morning and afternoon and inevitably I get all worked up and frequently yell at the TV.  This morning was no exception.

 

C-Span showed the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings with Atty General Alberto Gonzales and I got to see some of that and recorded what I missed — I do leave the house from time to time and did so this afternoon.  What I saw was appalling.  Whether he was lying to the committee about what he knew, which is against the law, or if he really did not remember everything he claims to have forgotten, neither make this situation better.  In fact, the more he spoke the clearer it became that the line between where the White House ends and the DoJ begins seems to have disappeared completely during this administration.  While all Executive Branch agencies are going to change somewhat with each administration, they need to maintain some separate identity to be able to carry out their work.  No where is this more true than at the Justice Department.  That partisan politics may have altered which cases were pursued and how is appalling.  Some may call me naïve and insist this is just 'politics as usual.' That should not change our outrage at this lack of respect for our system of government.

 

Vive la France!

 

Across the ocean, in the country everyone loves to hate, except me — I LOVE  FRANCE, history may be made there.  Believe it or not, OTHER COUNTRIES HAVE ELECTIONS and more THEY ARE NOT ALWAYS DUE TO US INTERVENTION, though I have read our campaign style has crept into their campaigns, we'll have to wait and see how that works out for them.  Better, I hope. For those who have not been watching, French candidates Nicolas Sarkozy (conservative) and Segolene Royal (liberal) got the top votes on 22 April and will face each other in a runoff election on 6 May (LA Times):

 

            "On a warm sunny day, voters in shorts, sunglasses and other casual attire stood in long lines caused by a turnout of about 86%, the highest since 1981. Some first-time voters needed help with the process.

            The high turnout reflected intense interest in a particularly suspenseful and significant election…

            Nationwide voter registration rose by more than 4 million since 2002. The Socialist Party carried out a vigorous get-out-the vote drive to avoid being blindsided again by an upstart candidate as in 2002."

Personally, as a liberal and a woman I am pulling for Ms. Royal — she would be the first female president of and that would be fantastic on many levels.  It is also amazing to see such a high voter turn out, one not marred with the polling problems we have at each election.  Lines, it seems to me they are always worse in poorer areas, were so long at polling places that many people went home because they could not afford to stay and wait.  Election day should be a holiday but back to France, where we might see we have a lot more in common with them than we think. This description of the French electorate looks eerily familiar:

           

"The country suffers from the fastest-growing public debt in , high unemployment, entrenched protectionism, a bloated public sector and concerns about both immigration and the failure to integrate ethnic Arab and African populations…

            Voters “clearly marked their wish to go to the end of the debate between two ideas of the nation, two projects for society, two value systems, two concepts of politics,” Mr. Sarkozy said.

            More than an hour later, Ms. Royal appeared before a rally in the Poitou-Charentes region, where she is regional president, promising to change , but softly.

            Many French people, she said, “do not want a ruled by the law of the strongest or the most brutal, sewn-up by financial interests, where all powers are concentrated in the same few hands.” She added, “I am a free woman, as you are a free people.”"(The New York Times)

 

One thing that struck me was the desire to change the way the government is viewed and how similar the issues are. More on 6 May!

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The morning paper was very thick today.

This was not a 'slow news week' for sure.

 

While the shooting at Virginia Tech. continues to dominate news coverage, it has been pushed back a little – by another shooting.  A disgruntled employee, Bill Phillips, went into building 44 at the in this afternoon and shot and killed a fellow engineer before killing himself.  Apparently two other people were held hostage, one was injured but the other was not.  The motive seems to be some kind of dispute between Phillips and his supervisors.  Nothing gets your mind off one terrible shooting than another terrible shooting. (CNN, video can be viewed here: http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/20/nasa.gunfire/index.html)  While nothing really positive can come from any of these kind of actions, the first shooting may have shone some light on depression & other mental health issues among college students and other students, this should do the same thing for workplace violence.  According to a report by the International Labor Organization (ILO, this report is here), homicide is the third leading cause of death at work.  The press release on the above report, says:

 

"Violence at work, ranging from bullying and mobbing, to threats by psychologically unstable co-workers, sexual harassment and homicide, is increasing worldwide and has reached epidemic levels in some countries."

 

The report suggests the news is not all bad and that while the above is true, the trend in the US is decreasing and more deaths at work are due to the nature of the employment, showcased in many reality shows such as the Discovery Channel's "the Deadliest Catch," which showcases crab fishing in Alaska. 

 

But this incident is not the first time this has happened and it will happen again.  The ILO, on the same page, has offered a set of guidelines aimed at helping employers deal with unhappy employees and prevent it from happening again.  Most cases of workplace bullying, for example, do not end up with violence.  This story will be eclipsed by the tragedy, and it is easy to see why.  As suicide is the third leading cause of death for people ages 15-24, once again I am going to say that we need to do more for people with mental illnesses — and that applies to both shootings.  The incident with which I am most familiar took place on July 1, 1993 in .  Another disgruntled employee entered a law office at 101 California street and killed eight people and wounded six others , this was one of the events that prompted Congress to pass a crime bill and the Assault Weapons ban, which has since expired — it was not renewed by the Dubya's administration.  Personally, I don't think anyone needs to have access to these weapons and agree with the ban.  People have the right to protect themselves, family and property and hunt but if you need an AK-47 to shoot a deer, you need either glasses or a class in hunting.  Gun lovers have said the Second Amendment is there 'to protect us from our government.'  Nothing, no assault rifle or anything else that you can get legally, is going to protect you from the military (and people have told me that's what they need protection from).

 

We need to stop our collective hand-wringing and second guessing and start to look at what happened and why and DO something — close gun loopholes, enforce the gun laws we have, allow schools to intervene when students become dangerous to others and create a society where we care about each other not fear each other.  People like to say they 'are not their brother's keeper,' that needs to change.  After re-watching "Bowling for Columbine" I want to move to .  On why people in big cities up north DO NOT LOCK THEIR DOORS (hey, I am from NY there is NO way I would ever feel safe sleeping in a house where the doors were unlocked) one woman said that people in the States are scared of other people while when they lock their doors they feel trapped.  They also have strong gun control laws and the like.  It is too bad it is so cold there.

 

Back in Washington, DC…

 

Things continued to look bad for our AG Alberto Gonzales as more Republicans called for his resignation, which does not seem to be in the cards.  It is comforting to know that while he knew little of what happened, per the number of time he said he did not recall or recollect events, he assured the Senate Judiciary Committee that 'nothing improper occurred,'  — that's very comforting.  (Hearing info here).  It seems obvious, to me anyway, that the AG knew a lot more than he is even saying now and that he thinks claiming ignorance will help, Senator Leahy, the committee's chairman, made it clear the smokescreen was not working.  The more this 'political fishing expedition,' as many Republicans have called it, continues, the more we learn that this White House treated the Justice Department like it was not a separate entity but a part of the White House.  Sen. Leahy said:

 

            "We hear disturbing reports that politics may have played a role in a growing number of cases. I have warned for years against the lack of prosecutorial experience and judgment throughout the leadership ranks of the Department. We are seeing the results amid rising crime, rampant war profiteering, abandonment of civil rights and voting rights enforcement efforts, and lack of accountability. This Justice Department seems to have lost its way.

            The Department of Justice must not be reduced to another political arm of the White House. The Department of Justice must be worthy of its name. The trust and confidence of the American people in federal law enforcement must be restored."            

I am working on getting more information on this but according to information provided by former AG Janet Reno, a small number of staffers at Justice and in the White House were able to work together but that number went from about 10 to about 400.  Sources have told me Senator Leahy found this to be some of the 'most interesting information' he has seen in all his years in the Senate.  The news magazine, the Nation, has documented the politicalization of many departments and has probably been the 'business as usual' approach towards all Executive Branch departments, which is not how it is supposed to work.  More on that to come…

 

For the record, I hope Mr. Gonzales stays on.  These people scare me and to think they are scary and competent scares me more.

 

Just when you thought it was safe to open a can of cat food…

 

It seems ANOTHER pet food ingredient has been contaminated by a chemical.  Melamine has been found in wheat gluten and rice protein that was used in pet foods and it appears most of if came from .  The Chinese are not cooperating with our FDA.  According to the Washington Post (April 20, 2007) the FDA inspects about 1.3 percent of human and pet food and some of the contaminated food might have been meant for human consumption, and I do not mean people who eat pet food (I saw a woman on some cable station who, and I swear this is true, has gained 500 pounds by eating cans of cat food because she is 'addicted to it,' if there is time there has to room for a post on that).  A list of pet foods NOT recalled can be found at www.thepetfoodlist.com.  As a pet owner, it has been really worrisome that so many pets, cats mostly and I have a cat and like him a lot, died.  Granted, some people do a lot of things for their pets that border on the obscene, like get them fur extensions and diamond collars, it is NOT too much to assume that when you buy pet food, it is safe for your pet.

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Another day, another too many news stories to count

Virginia Tech. shooting, the coverage continues…

 

The news channels remained focused on the terrible events at Virginia Tech, the victims and what signs there were that may have indicated this was going to happen.  While I stand by my comments that we need to change how we view mental illness, the President of GWU wrote and excellent op-ed in today’s Washington Post.  Last year, that university suspended a student for having mental issues and they were sued.  Stephen Joel Trachtenberg noted that he knew they would be sued if they did nothing students were injured or killed and/or if they did something and that he thinks the decision was correct.  No one would disagree with him this week but that was not the case last week, or when it happened and the school was vilified so I concede the point that if someone is really intent on doing something like this, they will.  The other comment Mr. Trachtenberg made, also covered in the same paper on an earlier page, was “Presumably Stephen King was once and undergrad.”  One irony of that, is that when I read that other students were concerned about this student’s writing, I thought of people like Stephen King.  Being an avid fan of his I have read most of his books and some are pretty gory – in one a person actually eats their own body to stay alive, yuck.  In any case, King has never, as far as I know, killed anyone.  Clive Barker has written hideously gory books but he is not a violent person either.  But the coverage goes on…

PS.  Note to NBC:  Your statement that ‘every news organization on the planet used the coverage’ and that justifies you using it is just bogus.  NBC set the precedent by showing the video and once they showed it the door was open for the others to follow suit.  D’uh.  Thanks.

 

Preventable deaths

Ali Allawi was on the Daily Show last night, he wrote The Occupation of : Winning the War, Losing the Peace.  Jon Stewart asked him about his reaction to the violence in .  He asked in reference to the shooting and talked about how it has shocked and upset most of this country – how do the people of deal with this kind of violence on a daily basis?  Perhaps it is natural to take deaths in your own country more seriously than those that happen far away from home, even when Americans are killed.  My initial thought on the Iraq/Virginia comparison was that is in the middle of a civil war.  The rub is that we started the civil war there and are responsible.  According to one web site, and I will not vouch for its accuracy, (Iraq Body Count), between about 62,000-68,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since we invaded.  More than 3,200 Americans have died – the average is about 80 a month right now and the last few weeks have produced some of the worse violence since the war began.  One headline today read, Another suicide attack hits Baghdad after bloodiest day since US surge began, more than 230 people were killed yesterday:

 

The most devastating of Wednesday’s blasts struck the Sadriyah market as workers were leaving for the day, destroying a lineup of minibuses that had come to pick them up. At least 127 people were killed and 148 wounded, including men who were rebuilding the market after a Feb. 3 bombing left 137 dead.

How do you live in that kind of environment?  How do you raise children?  How do you do this and NOT this to create resentment against the ?  Not too long ago I saw a poll that showed more Iraqis think their lives were better before Saddam was toppled.  That’s a scary thought, to me.  One will argue that hindsight is 20/20 but it seemed to me – before we went into – that we had no plan past ‘regime change.’  In fact, all we had was how to get rid of the last regime, not start a new one.  At the time I worked in WDC and spent a lot of time at Congressional hearings and think tank/NGO meetings about – how and who would manage the reconstruction.  The ONE THING everyone seemed to believe was that the DOD had no experience in this area, though it would be their responsibility, and it was basically a train wreck waiting to happen.  What struck me as odd was that even with this knowledge, people still wanted to go in.  Now we are in a mess of our own making.   And more Americans have died there than in NY & Virginia on 9/11.

 

One interesting thing is that the Democrats remain steadfast and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the war is ‘lost.’ And:

 

Reid, speaking to reporters, drew parallels between Bush's still-can-win attitude and President Lyndon Baines Johnson's decision to deploy more troops to to avoid a defeat while he was president.

was lost militarily he said, leaving only diplomacy, politics and economics as tools for achieving any sort of victory for the . "I believe … that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in this week," he said.

Dubya responded, indirectly (same article):

In his opening remarks at a Town Hall meeting in , Bush placed the war in the context of the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and stressed the necessity of not retreating. "It's an interesting war … where asymmetric warfare" employs suicide bombers to wreak havoc and, with the resultant media coverage, use the bombings to help "define whether or not we're successful," Bush said. 

So, we know Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and that there is MORE al Qaeda there now than before the war, Dubya insists on linking the two AND has the nerve to call the war ‘interesting.’   Yes, Mr. Bush the media is to blame for our problems in – at least they stay on message.  Laura Bush told some media outlet that everything is going just great in except for that ‘one bombing a day that spoils everything’ (that may not be an exact quote).  One definition is repeating the same action while expecting it to produce a different result.  Our policy fits that bill.

 

Alberto Gonzales on the mat and asked to resign – by a Republican

 

The AG finally got taken to task for his deception and went before the Senate Judiciary Committee.  No one expected the Democrats to support him but everyone thought some of his Republican friends would support him and they failed to do so.  In fact, one Republican called watching the hearing like watching ‘the clubbing of a baby seal.’  It was not pretty.  It went further, Sen. Thomas Coburn (R-OK) argued "The best way to put this behind us is your resignation."  For the AG’s sake, I hope that happens sooner than later.

The clips on CNN showed someone who was not prepared for the hearings or the job.  His answers were either, I don’t know, or they made him look like he had no idea what he was doing at Justice or at the hearing.  The New Republic summed up the testimony this way:

 

Gonzales displayed an odd dissociation from his job as head of the Justice Department, often behaving more as though he was a diligent inspector general called in to analyze what had happened rather than someone who had made things happen himself. "The fact that Mr. [David] Iglesias appeared on the [firings] list doesn't surprise me," he told Chairman Patrick Leahy, as though he'd just completed a departmental audit. When Kansan Sam Brownback asked him to explain the rationale behind Nevada U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden's dismissal, he said that "it appears there were concerns about the level of energy," like he'd come from some fact-finding staff interviews. As the clock ticked on, Gonzales's self-transformation from Cabinet member to impartial observer threatened to become a full-blown identity crisis: "I now understand I was involved in a conversation with the president," he said at the end of a spat with Arlen Specter. Reporters glanced around in confusion, perhaps imagining what it was like when the two different I's Gonzales had just referred to talked to each other in the privacy of his own home, one in a low voice, one in a high, squeaky one. Specter, who–like an exasperated parent–had just finished berating Gonzales for not taking his advice about how to prepare for the hearing, simply leaned back in his seat and shook his head. Boy, the look on his face said. Have I raised a screw-up.

What’s almost worse than how he answered questions about the firings and his role in them was how he addressed his ability to do his job, which no one could possibly think is possible.  He said that he asks himself every day if he can do the job and always feels he can.  He is the only one but if Dubya can remember conversations with you that you have forgotten, well the time has come for some serious medical testing.  Dubya, it turns out, was the only Republican to support the AG and released a statement that the hearings went well.  

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