First Looks category archive

Tomorrow, Tangier Restaurant (great fish and chips!), 18th and Lombard, Philly, 6 p. m. till whenever.

I might even make it this time. At least I don’t have to go to the cooling tower place.

Whoop-de-do!

Dick Polman.

Please read the entire post. It has something the Current Federal Administration does not.

Facts.

I realize, of course, that the Blackwater dispute isn’t nearly as important as the portentous struggle over a two-week-old moveon.org newspaper ad; after all, the Blackwater story is merely about the deaths of at least 11 Iraqis and the wounding of 12 more, and we know that, in American politics, those faceless people matter a whole lot less than a few juvenile words aimed at an American military man. But, for the heck of it, consider this chronology:

Eight days ago, armed guards employed by Blackwater (one of the roughly 60 American firms that have profited from the Bush administration’s unprecedented war-fighting privatization program) were involved in a controversial gun battle in Baghdad. The Iraqi government contends that the Blackwater guards, while protecting a U.S. embassy convoy, got spooked by some mortar rounds that had landed nearby, and had then opened fire indiscriminately, killing and wounding the innocent civilians. Three Iraqi ministries have already determined that the Blackwater’s conduct constitutes “a terrorist action against civilians, just like any other terrorist operation.”

(snip)

Early last week, the Maliki government, which says that the Baghdad incident was the seventh violent episode involving Blackwater this year alone, was making noises about kicking the North Carolina-based firm out of Iraq. That threat didn’t last long. By Friday, a Maliki advisor was telling the press, “The reality of the matter is, we can’t do that.” One big reason: Order 17, signed in 2004 by American occupation chief Paul Bremer, who unilaterally decreed that all U.S. private contractors shall be exempt from Iraqi law.

In other words, “free Iraq” (as Bush likes to call it) shall be considered free as long as it doesn’t try to meddle with the Bush war-fighting privatization program. When it does try to meddle, it is deemed to be a hostage to U.S. interests; as Maliki said yesterday, the Blackwater case poses “serious challenges to the sovereignty of Iraq.” Meanwhile, Blackwater went back on the job last Friday, guarding U.S. convoys, after just a few days in the dog house.

Steve at ASZ.

Here’s a copy of my email.

Though there is no doubt that the editors of the Rocky Mountain Collegian could have expressed themselves with more grace, the sentiment they expressed was well within the borders of free speech.

And one shared by a majority of the American people.

Including this American person, whose son currently serves in Afghanistan.

I’ve been out of town all day doing the cooling tower thing, but Brendan has more.

Tomorrow, Tangier Restaurant, 18th and Lombard, Philadelphia, just a block off South Street.

I’d much rather be there than at the Cooling Tower Place (for one thing, it’s only 25 miles away, not 79 miles away).

Pick up the slack for me, okay?

Jon Swift on the Emmys.

Fair and bolloxed.

The nutcases are coming out to support the DA.

From the SPLC:

As tens of thousands of people were preparing to make their way to Jena, La., for today’s anti-racism rally, white supremacists were burning up the Internet with furious denunciations, bloody predictions, promises of future violence, and calls for lynching.

“The best crowd control for such a situation would be a squad of men armed with full automatics and preferably a machine gun as well,” is how one person put it on the Web forum hosted by the neo-Nazi Vanguard News Network. Added another hopeful VNN poster: “I’m not really that angry at the nogs [a recent variation on an ancient racial slur] — they are just soldiers in an undeclared race war. But any white that’s in that support rally I would like to … have them machine-gunned.”

As the rally began to unfold this morning, it became clear that it would attract huge numbers of people, perhaps even the 40,000 that some organizers had predicted. They came to protest the case of the “Jena 6,” black youths who were charged with serious crimes for an attack on a white youth not long after white teens who had targeted blacks were let off with a slap on the wrist. White supremacists reacted with a strange mixture of anger and admiration for the organizing behind the rally.

But the dominant response was violent rage. “I think a group of White men with AK rifles loaded with high capacity magazines should close in on the troop of howler monkeys from all sides and compress them into a tight group, and then White men in the buildings on both sides of the shitskinned hominids shall throw Molotov cocktails from above to cleanse the nigs by fire,” wrote “NS Cat” on VNN. Another poster fantasized about a terrorist attack in Jena today: “Wouldn’t that be sweet? Gosh darn, wouldn’t that be sweet? Good LORD wouldn’t THAT be SWeeeeEET? Boom, Boom, no more Coon! Well? A White man can dream can’t he?”

Via Pam’s House Blend.

Test your knowledge here.

Via Upyernoz (not as good as he, but still respectable).

Brendan has an idea.

Upyernoz on (cough, cough) accountability. Well said.

Tomorrow, Tangier Restaurant, 18th and Lombard, Philadelphia, just one block from South Street, 6 p. m.

Todd Chappelle’s from Delaware.

This is my sixth edition of What Digby Said.

Brendan calls in the chips.

I’m not a big fan of the local Wilmington rag. They are stuck between two big metropolitan area (Baltimore and Philadelphia) and are at a disadvantage in competing for ad dollars.

Frankly (which is how I try to do most things), I like a newspaper that takes more than five minutes to read (10 on Sunday), but this is way cool.

Simply by selecting a neighborhood or a zip code or by clicking on the map, you can see crime reports for that area for the last two weeks by type of crime.

Or is that incompetence? Or stupidity? Or simply “true believer-ism“?

Nothing says we’re here to help you better than turning off the power and shutting down the flow of water when it’s 122 degrees outside. Yes, the United States is busy winning the hearts and minds of the people in Iraq one parched throat in the dark scorching heat at a time. I guess the Iraqis didn’t realize that when we said we we’re initiating a troop surge that it would also result in shutting off all of the other spigots.

Troop surge power, surge, water surge? Apparently the United States can only provide one of the three at a time–kind of a multiple choice question for our friends in Iraq. After all, a troop surge is designed to bring democracy so it was the only logical choice. I guess the Iraqis need to realize that we’ll get to water and power once everyone is liberated and living in freedom–albeit in third world conditions far worse than seen under that tyrant Saddam.

1. All right, here are the rules.
2. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
3. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
4. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
5. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

1. I’m a good housekeeper. Everytime I get divorced, I keep the house.

2. The first time I drove 100 miles an hour, it was in a 1965 Ford Fairlane with a 289 V-8 on Smith Beach Road (now called Savage Neck Drive). Now, that was an engine.

3. I will not cook with any form of wine or alcohol that I am not willing to drink straight up. “Cooking sherry” is for cleaning toilets.

4. Stop signs are difficult to steal. It can take up the three Saturday nights to get away with one.

5. Curry is a gift from God.

6. Guilt is for suckers. Do your best, hold up your head, and soldier on. (Of course, if you don’t do your best, guilt is for you, but then that’s your problem, isn’t it?)

7. I had one date in high school. And it wasn’t a very good one.

8. I hate computers.

Oh, and now I have to tag eight people–I don’t think I have eight people to tag, at least not eight people who would notice me.

But I will do my best and to hell with the rules (whose rules are they, anyway?)

Not Always Mayberry

Karen’s Rant Page

My Turn

DelawareLiberal

That’s 8 divided by 2 and all you get.

Oh, yeah:

9. To hell with the rules.

String Band.

What Digby said.

Addendum:

What TBogg said:

To paraphrase Monica, “Officer, I didn’t mean to commit a felony.”

Yeah.

Right.

“Officer, I didn’t know I was going 75 in a 35 mph zone.”

Give me a break from imbecilic ideologues who have no idea what the Constitution of the United States of America means. Furrfu.