NYC subway terror plot "not corroborated

Gee, what a surprise. Read the rest of this post...

Since so many of you were so rude, you get my response

Since so many of you felt the need to be gratuitously rude in response to me having simply critiqued a museum, I get to respond because, honestly, I'm not afraid of you people. I'm glad some of you think the Holocaust museum is a well-designed museum. But I don't. And last time I checked it was still okay in America to criticize the layout of a museum, even if the museum is about - heaven forbid - the Holocaust.

So without further ado, your comments, my responses:

1. "The print is small because they don't care if people really read it."

That's absurd. Then don't print anything at all on the walls of the exhibit, but don't tell me its intentional that they post print that's nearly illegible because the font is too small and the lights too low.

2. "The museum is way too information heavy because the Holocaust is a big topic."

As a writer, and former student, I've heard that canard far too many times. I can't write a one-page briefing paper, Senator/professor, because the topic is too complicated, too important, etc. Yes, you can. And if you don't, you lose your audience, so why exist at all?

3. "The museum is not about you and whether you had a good time."

Oh, that's a cute cheap shot. And yes, I have stopped beating my wife.

Well, in fact the museum is all about me. The museum is about its visitors. It's about spreading a message, about informing the masses, and the vehicle is it's visitors. If the information is literally illegible to many of its visitors, how does the museum spread its message? If the information is simply on overload, so people can't even read it all, how does that spread the message? It's cute to say "this is about more than you," but I come from a world where I actually care about my message getting out there. If this is all about making YOU feel good that you have a museum, even if it doesn't get its message across as well as it can, well, then who's the one who really has a problem and a narcissism complex?

4. "Good Lord, John, more than 6,000,000 died at the hands of the Nazis in the the death camps, and YOU have the temerity to complain that you had a bad day?"

Good Lord, Mary, get that chip off your shoulder and drop the drama by about 50 decibels. A poorly written essay doesn't get an "A+" simply because the student chose to write about the Holocaust. Though I guess you could certainly put the deaths of 6 million Jews on the teacher who doesn't give you an A and see how they react.

5. "You want fun, go to DisneyWorld."

First, who was talking about "fun"? Do you always criticize people for things they didn't even say? And again, same answer as to #4. You don't get an A simply because you chose to write about the Holocaust. And I'd throw it back in your face. If you're going to screw up and do create a work that doesn't deserve an A, you better not have the hubris and the temerity to choose the Holocaust as your subject, because then YOU, if anyone, do the dead a disservice.

6. "I don't think that the decimation of a people group, in any setting, is meant to be fun, exciting or any other opposite of boring."

Yes, I've stopped beating my wife. Who said the museum was supposed to be fun? Having said that, no museum should be boring. This reminds me of a woman who wrote a horrible poem in a poetry class in my college and the class thought the poem was great. Why? Because the poem was really boring and the topic she was writing about was her boredom, so she evoked the topic perfectly by writing a really boring poem. Uh huh...

7. "'Homosexual' is akin to 'colored' or 'oriental.' Would you grow up? A museum dedicated to events in the 1940s needs to be on the cutting edge of 21st century slang?"

Ah, so you think museums about WWII should call blacks "niggers," or is that "negroes"? And I'm not talking the official documents from the era, I'm talking the museum's own literature.

8. "Also, why the need to specify Africa to give an example of animistic beliefs?"

Ah, now we get into far-left PC reverse bigotry. Uh, how about because African tribes are the only people I've ever heard of who believe that a picture steals their souls. I had no idea referring to factual things about Africa was now bigoted. Thanks for that clarification.

9. "...and calling the Roma 'gypsies' is just as bad cuz to them it's an insult."

See answer to question 8. And, the Holocaust Museum itself uses Roma and "gypsies." And finally, I could have just called them "Roma" and left 98% of the people here in the dark as to what the hell I was even talking about. But at least you'd be happy. Because, the lesson I've learned from some of you today is that getting your message across isn't important at all, it's simply having an important message that matters - regardless of whether anyone hears it, or how good a job you do of explaining it. And we wonder why we don't win elections.

Yeah, I think that just about does it. I'm glad many of you enjoyed the museum. I think it's not very well done. And since George Bush still hasn't accomplished everything he wants, I can still say that in America. Read the rest of this post...

Washington Post Many Papers Pick Up Dobson / Rove Story

Tomorrow's Washington Post picked up the story of Specter's appearance on This Week I mentioned earlier. It covers the Dobson / Rove connection:

Specter and Vermont Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, the committee's ranking Democrat, said they intend to follow up on a comment by Focus on the Family founder and chairman James C. Dobson that, based on conversations with White House adviser Karl Rove, he believes she opposes abortion and would be a good justice.

Dobson AND Rove in front of a committee under oath? Can dreams come true?

Update #1: The New York Times also picked up the story:

Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and several Democrats on the committee said Sunday that they were considering calling the evangelical conservative James C. Dobson to testify on what he has been told about Harriet E. Miers, the president's Supreme Court nominee.

Update #2: Tomorrow's Boston Globe has a lengthy profile of Dobson. If you don't know who he is, you need to. To truly enjoy what it means to see Dobson in front of a committee under oath, read this article. Read the rest of this post...

Open thread - My Holocaust Museum let down...

Went to the Holocaust Museum today, and honestly, I was less impressed than I had expected from all the hype.

It was okay, but... The hoopla about being given a card with the name of a person who you follow through the exhibit and then at the end you find out if they lived or died - well, that's just silly - they hand you a small 4 page leaflet and you reach each page every few minutes or something. They even forgot to hand us, or anybody else we saw, the booklets.

Second, half the exhibit is illegible to anyone with eyes over the age of 25. The big descriptions of major events are in big font and readable, but the text accompanying all the small photos, artifacts, etc. is way too small for an adult eye to read, and the lighting on those objects is terrible. We finally gave up reading all the explanations because we were squinting against the glass like old people - I still have a headache. I suspect this museum cost a bit of change, and it's about a rather important topic - I can't believe they've had that horrible illegible text there all these years.

Third, it was just way too long and, honestly, kind of boring after a while. You have to read way through room after room after room after room of every single detail of every single year from 1933 to 1945. You don't even get to the Holocaust itself until you're halfway through the museum and totally exhausted. The second half of the museum is better - there's more "stuff" and less reading, but still. We finally just breezed through the last several rooms because we'd had it - it was just too much. Someone could have done a much better job of making this more of a museum and less of a reading assignment.

And finally, they have this ridiculous - RIDICULOUS - ban against taking photos. It's not clear why, since most of the stuff they have in the museum isn't even real. It's almost 100% copies (which is another very annoying aspect to the museum - it's not really a museum if everything inside is fake, in my view). You certainly don't have to worry about a flash damaging a new poster of a photo. I was at a temporary exhibit they had a few years back about gays and the Holocaust and they banned the use of photography. Everything was copied - there wasn't, I seem to recall, a single "original" thing in the exhibit - which not only made me wonder why you couldn't snap photos, but it also made me wonder why I didn't just look at the exhibit online. After all, do you really need to go to a building to look at copies of photos and copies of documents?

Interestingly, they told me that previous time that you couldn't take photos because of "copyright" issues, or some such bull. Putting aside the absurdity of that comment - I've never been to a museum and been told not to take photos because of copyright reasons - but even if that were the case, tell me you can't ask the donor for permission to let people take photos so they can spread the word about the Holocaust around the world? I just found the restriction stupid, annoying, and in the context of everything else, one more reason to not really enjoy the visit.

Oh one more thing. Drop the word "homosexual," please. In the one very small wall that talks about gays being killed during the holocaust (there's also a tv screen above with pictures of gays who were arrested, along with pics of gypsies and I believe some others minorities), they use the word homosexual and homosexuals over and over again. It creeped me out. Most of the time they could have easily said "gays and lesbians," gay men, etc. In the context of an exhibit about mass extermination including gays, reading the word "homosexual" over and over again struck me as a little out of date and more than a little clinical, and thus creepy. The word, today, is really only used by those who don't know any better, or by the religious right in order to demonize us. "Homosexual" is akin to "colored" or "oriental." It may have been fine once upon a time, it's not now. Also, perhaps I missed it, but we deserve more than a paragraph on a wall. Why not one small little display case with a bit of the gay history too - they had more than a case devoted to gypsies (the "roma"), and I'm sure they deserved their mini-exhibit. I'm not competing, I'm just saying, it was a bit sparse on the gay side of things as compared to the other non-Jewish minorities.

I hate to pan the place, because it exists for an important reason. But man, I won't bug any future visitors to DC to go to that place. It needs some work. Which is too bad. Read the rest of this post...

Pat Buchanan: It's not clear Bush wants to see Roe v. Wade overturned

I shudder to say, I think Buchanan's analysis is solid (well, "shudder" because I loathe praising Buchanan). Read the rest of this post...

"Discrepancies in Testimony" means someone lied

Any guesses on who that would be? One person was a reporter with no hidden agenda. The other was a conniving political mastermind.

Guess Rove. Both RawStory and Think Progress have links to the latest update from Newsweek on the Rove scandal....seems Mr. Sleazy Smarty Pants forgot to tell the prosecutor about the conversation he had with Matt Cooper and a subsequent e-mail describing the conversation. Actually, he forgot to tell the prosecutor either of those pesky little facts during his first visit to grand jury -- when he was under oath. Ooops....prosecutors really, really don't like that.

Rove was probably so used to lying to reporters...who never called him on it...that he thought he could get away with lying to anyone. Read the rest of this post...

Specter Brings up Rove on This Week

As I mentioned below, this was a quite an interesting development. From Bloomberg:

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter said he wants to know whether presidential adviser Karl Rove privately assured a conservative activist of how Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers would rule on the court.

Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, said he will would look into a statement by James Dobson, president of the Colorado Springs, Colorado-based advocacy group Focus on the Family, that Dobson has had ``conversations'' with Rove about the woman nominated to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and knows things about Miers ``that I probably shouldn't know.''

``The Senate Judiciary Committee is entitled to know whatever the White House knew,'' Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, said on ABC's ``This Week'' program. ``If Dr. Dobson knows something that he shouldn't know or something that I ought to know, I'm going to find out.''

The senator stopped short of saying he would subpoena Dobson or Rove to appear. Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat and member of the Judiciary panel, said today that Dobson should be called as a witness during hearings on Miers's nomination that are set to begin next month.

Schumer and Specter agreeing on something. God this must be a great day to be a Conservative. Forty years of work and it comes down to this? Read the rest of this post...

Cold Damp Fall Afternoon Open Thread

I know I've been trying to help the President with the shots, but this one just seems appropriate both in name and in delivery system. First off, he's undergoing a fragging from within his own ranks. Second, you know he's not keeping a shot glass on his desk. Any good alcoholic knows you need a little more stealth to keep that buzz up all day. Therefore Mr. President, I suggest:

Gunfire

Scale ingredients to servings
1 cup strong black tea
1 shot Bundaberg® dark rum (AMERICAblog variation - scale number of shots based on Administration members indicted that day)

Pour one cup of strong black tea, add rum and stir.

Open thread away. I'm watching football... Read the rest of this post...

ABC Poll: Public's Confidence in Bush/Republican Government Slipping Further

Just getting into my Sunday AM TiVo. This Week with George Stephanopoulous had a fascinating exchange on Miers with Leahy and Specter. They got into James Dobson's quotes about knowing things "that I probably shouldn't know" and getting that information from Rove.

Specter said that if Leahy didn't call him as a witness, and interrupted Stephanopoulous to further say (and speaking in the Dolesque third person): "If Pat Leahy doesn't call him, then Arlen Specter may." Rove and Dobson before a Judiciary Committee. Oh god, please do not tempt me so...

More from ABC, a new poll on confidence in the Bush/Republican "government"'s ability to respond to a disaster:

In another sign of eroding public trust in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, confidence in the federal government's ability to respond to a terrorist attack unleashing nuclear or radioactive materials has fallen sharply in the hurricane's aftermath.
...
Overall, 52 percent in this ABC News poll do express confidence in the government's ability to respond effectively to a nuclear or radiological terrorist attack‚ but that's fallen from 78 percent in late August, likely a result of the troubled hurricane response.

A 25 point drop in less than one month? That's massive. Polls like these don't drop that significantly in that short a period of time without some major realignment going on in the public's psyche.

UPDATE 1: Watching Meet the Press now, Dr. Richard Land (Southern Baptist Convention) and Pat Buchanan debate about Miers. No need for a Democrat here, the Republicans are literally eating each other alive!!!! Buchanan is actually quite politically intelligent. Russert basically asked him with the Delay Scandal, the Frist Investigation, the Rove Investigation, and Katrina, that Bush just didn't need one more fight. Buchanan replied that this was a moment Bush failed to see the opportunity to create political capital by going to the base. Being principled, he should pick the ideological battle and rallying the troops. Buchanan is right. Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

I'm timing this open thread 10:30 even though it's really 9:30 on the east coast. I'm heading to brunch with my sister and family who are visiting DC for the long rainy weekend. Joe is off marathoning. So there's always a chance you won't hear from us for the next few hours. Thus the sneaky open thread - shh, don't tell anyone. Read the rest of this post...

GannonGuckert interviewed Amb. Wilson BEFORE the WSJ article ran

GG has been implying, but not directly saying, that he "may" have heard about the classified State Dept intelligence memo mentioning Valerie Plame from a Wall Street Journal article that mentioned it. Only problem, Gannon's interview with Wilson, in which he asked Wilson about the article, occured weeks BEFORE the WSJ article ran. Oops.

Why does this matter?

1. It suggests that Gannon found out about the classified information from someone else, not the Wall Street Journal. How did classified information concerning Valerie Plame reach this very unclassified individual? Did someone in the Bush administration tell him? And why did Gannon suddenly switch his story to imply that he heard about the memo from the WSJ - what was he trying to hide?

2. What did Gannon tell the FBI investigators about the memo? If he lied or tried to obscure the truth, wouldn't that be obstruction of justice?

More from The Left Coaster. Read the rest of this post...

Bill Bennett: Shut up already

AP

Former Education Secretary William Bennett on Saturday blamed the news media for distorting his remarks about aborting black babies, saying he had intended to make "a bad argument in order to put it down."

Bennett, making his first public speech since the comment aired on his radio show last month, said the meaning of his remark linking the crime rate with black abortions was reversed in many news reports.

"I was putting forward a bad argument in order to put it down," Bennett said, drawing sustained applause from nearly 4,500 people attending the Bakersfield Business Conference. "They reported and emphasized only the abhorrent argument, not my shooting it down."....

Bennett said: "I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down."

And now you're putting foward a really bad excuse. Just say I'm sorry and move on. The media is twisting your words? Dude, you made a comment about killing all the black babies in America and how, although it would be a naughty thing to do, it sure would help the crime rate. What part of that sentence don't you understand to be offensive? You weren't shooting down the validity of your statement, you were shooting down the morality of doing it - but you still believe aborting all the black babies would help decrease crime. So, what's your point? Read the rest of this post...

Open Thread

Well, another week begins. Predictions for this week?

I am off to run the Chicago Marathon with my friend, Courtney. Read the rest of this post...

Bird flu hits Turkey - Bush still has no serious plan

Two thousand turkeys in a farm were infected with the disease and destroyed to help stop the spread of the disease. The local officials are saying everything is OK, they're doing everything needed to stop the spread of the disease but the reality of the situation is that this disease is spread from migratory birds and this turkey farm is next to a nature park. Turkey is an important location for bird migrations from Asia and into Africa so this discovery is extremely serious and could be the beginning of the spread into Africa, a continent that cannot afford to be hit with bird flu.

Meanwhile, back in the US we have a president scrambling to get rapid production from Big Pharma (at a special cost, no doubt) because despite knowing about this problem for years it's only now becoming an emergency. The last time I saw specific numbers, the US will have enough supplies for 2% of the population whereas western Europe was closer to 10-20 times that amount. Finland is even buying enough for the entire population.

The Bush plan seems to be a Star Wars-like plan or a model based on their war on terror, which is to fight it "over there" and prevent the deadly flu from hitting US soil. Hmm, so in a nutshell, blame it on the fuzzy foreigners again ("no one in the world is ready" - ha, very false) and then somehow stop the movement of migratory birds. Interesting. So are we going to see big safety nets up in the sky blocking birds? Are we going to somehow be able to stop all people moving around? Are we going to check every shipment of food coming in to the country? With plenty of other Brownies out there, I think we can all guess the actual readiness of this administration.

Forget about the talk from these people, because we all know they struggle with reality. The US is not ready now and won't be any time soon. Let's hope that the avian flu plods along slowly because otherwise it's going to be a major problem. Wasn't this the administration that ran on their claims of keeping America safe? Who's feeling safer now? Read the rest of this post...

Delphi files for bankruptcy - wages and jobs to be hacked

But don't worry, the top 21 execs who ran them into the ground are still lined up to pull in millions and the unions will be forced to have wage cuts of more than 50%. What's delightful here is that now that they are in bankruptcy Delphi can pretty much get away with doing whatever they want with bankruptcy protection. Why am I having flashbacks to US Air and their bankruptcy where they hacked to the bone for average workers yet the top brass bathed themselves in millions per year before going back into bankruptcy for a second time?

Sure, part of the problem may be very high packages associated with the union workers but let's get real, the execs who were supposed to be directing this ship have failed miserably and should accept painful cuts as well. There's a nasty trend of McWages in the US for working families that is doing a bang up job of gutting the middle class. Who are these companies going to sell to once they've managed to re-create this mythical 1900 era of a two-tiered society? What ever happened to the civic duty and responsibility from the corporate world? Read the rest of this post...