Bill's Big Diamond Blog

Gore in GQ Rips Bush

GQ’s interview with Al Gore is going to raise eyebrows:

...It is inconceivable to me that Bush would
read a warning as stark and as clear [voice angry
now] as the one he received on August 6th of 2001,
and, according to some of the new histories, he
turned to the briefer and said, “Well, you’ve
covered your ass.” And never called a follow up
meeting. Never made an inquiry. Never asked a
single question...

…whatever happened to the concept of
accountability for catastrophic failure? This
administration has been by far the most
incompetent, inept, and with more moral
cowardice, and obsequiousness to their wealthy
contributors, and obliviousness to the public
interest of any administration in modern history,
and probably in the entire history of the country!

But how do you really feel?

(cracks up)

What’s the nicest thing you can say about
George Bush?

He made a terrific appointment of Ben Bernanke
as chairman of the Federal Reserve.

OK, Is there a second best thing?

I can’t think of another one, actually.

Deciders in Iraq Study Group Come Up With a Plan...er, a Suggestion

The Iraq Study Group has apparently decided to urge President Bush to ‘pull back’ troops from Iraq. Gently, though, without timetables…

Great, thanks. The American people have gotten that far and dare we say a bit farther already.

No specific details, but the major concern among panel members have is that their modest proposal will have been too little, too late. Well, duh. What makes them think that?

The rising tide of civil war in Iraq might well make their plan irrelevant. Let’s hope that there’s some pressure on Washington to accept and encourage Kofi Annan, the incoming Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, and Iraq’s neighbors to work diplomatically towards a settlement within the country. Bushco has made such a bloody mess that adults now need to step in and help make peace.

Argh.

Annan Offers to Broker Iraq Talks

Yesterday, UN Secretary Genral Kofi Annan proposed an international conference among Iraqi political parties, stressing that the country's neighbors, Syria and Iran, needed to be involved.

“.…the Iraqi leaders will have to understand that
they need to come together to make compromises
to resolve their differences."

At the same time he said the Iraqis could not do it
alone in light of the "the bitterness and the level of
violence" so "the international community has to
help them do it."

It would be a good first step for the US to encourage this venture. Clearly, the time for a constructive role by the UN in brokering peace has come, since the role played so far by the US has only worsened the situation constantly.

UPDATE— If there were any doubt about the need for an honest international broker left, today’s abrupt cancellation postponement of talks including President Bush should make that need crystal clear.

NYPD and Sean Bell's Death

Hardbeat News, a Jamaican community newspaper based here in New York has extended coverage of a sad story out of Queens this past weekend. Sean Bell, a young man celebrating a bachelor party at a nightclub with some friends, was fired at fifty times and killed by NYPD officers when they confused his party with criminals they had been staking out at the club. Bell and his friends were unarmed. The use of drastic force and the repeated firing have outraged black community leaders, who assert that police have rarely, if ever, used similar tactics against white suspects who didn’t fire at them.

Hardbeat reports that the Bell party was arguing at the club with a gangster named J-Rock, a Guyanese national and another man, who threatened to “pop off,” indicating he’d shoot at the young men. Later, in the parking lot, one of the men with Bell, Joey Guzman, said “I’m gonna F_ck you up!” to the man with J-Rock before getting in his car.

It was sometime after this that a plainclothes NYPD officer approached Bell and his friends’ car, apparently without identifying himself. It’s not clear what happened after that, but there was confusion about who the men in Bell’s car were. The NYPD team working an unrelated undercover operation at the club moved in after the car Bell and his friends were in advanced on the plainclothes officer. Police claim that that Bell and his friends rammed one of their vehicles. It's easy to understand how everyone was scared of each other. How this escalated into police firing over fifty shots at Bell's car, however, is still unexplained.

That’s the very wrong thing here… fifty shots, when department regulations require that after three shots, officers reassess the situation. Fifty shots. No guns in the car, no return shots fired.

There’s a serious tragedy here, but there’s also a young man who’s dead and some answers a fiancée and a family need from the NYPD—soon.

The Grey Eminence is About to Speak— All Hail?

The Baker Boyz will be shopping their 'recommendations' around this week at the White House. John Amato has Norah O'Donnell on video discussing the first draft with Chris Matthews.

I wonder how long it will take for the Iraq Study Group to get the Washington Establishment to share in the slow course correction they think will extricate us from the disaster... and therefore in the blame for the cataclysm that will inevitably ensue without a major shift.

Would it kill everyone in DC to even discuss why we can't petition the UN for advice and assistance in finding an international solution? Just because Bushco decided to blow off the entire world doesn't mean the rest of us are unable to seek their counsel.

RFK Then and Now

Bobby Kennedy was probably the last viable American presidential candidate to inspire our people towards a better, not simply a more powerful society. One can argue that Ronald Reagan inspired people, but his legacy was more a legacy built on pride and nostalgia than aspiration. Bobby actually wanted to change the course of American history: to end the war in Vietnam, to close the gaps of poverty and race that divided American life, and to heal the divisions that war, imperial goals, and inequality had riven in the country’s social fabric.

To experience the speeches Bobby made in the year of 1968 was to hear about an America that was torn, but still hoping for salvation. Divided by war and by the unfulfilled promise of the civil rights movement, Americans were still striving to turn the country around and to become a better place, to become who we claimed we actually were, a beacon of hope for mankind.

So it was a spiritual coup de grace to the head of this wounded yet struggling land that Bobby Kennedy was murdered in the very moment of his victory in the California Democratic primary on June 4, 1968. Bobby’s dreams of redemption for America died that night too. Coming as it did on the heels of the murder of Martin Luther King, Bobby’s assassination left Americans of all races without a leader who saw the vision of fulfilling our better destiny and left the country with electoral choices between bad and worse, between followership and reaction. Sadly, Americans picked the worse of the two— and have been digging out of the wreckage ever since.

It’s a moment in history that’s worth reexamining and that’s what Emilio Estevez’s film, “Bobby,” does, in an inventive way. Estevez brings characters onscreen who are representative of a coalition of progressive American subcultures and places them together in the Ambassador Hotel for the course of the day leading up to Bobby’s California victory party and his sudden demise. It’s a glimpse at the elements of a nation that could still come together, while straining under the forces that divided them. It’s not my intention to write a review of the film, but let me say that Estevez does us a service by letting us discover Bobby’s words and images in the context of coming to know characters who play out parts of our own history in our various social classes.

The film leaves me with a feeling of determination, leavened with a sadness about how much of our lives have gone by without tackling the work that was in front of us in 1968. “Bobby” the film and RFK, the leader could not be more relevant than they are today. Almost forty years have passed since the events of that year. In that time, America has come perilously close to becoming the modern-day Rome that Bobby feared we would. It’s time for us to wake up and come home to the aspirations he embodied— before it’s too late.

Beyond our borders, we have become the greatest
force in the world. Some have even spoken of us
as the new imperial power. Even if we should
desire such a role, it is no longer possible, as the
history of the last 20 years has so unmistakably
shown. The day has passed when a country can
successfully rule distant lands by force. The issue
for us is whether we will live as an island in the
midst of a hostile world community or whether we
will be joined with other independent nations in
search of common goals. We must understand this,
because so much depends on what is going to
happen in the future as to whether this concept is
clear to us. Other countries will associate
themselves with us, not because they will be
forced to, but because they find in our acts and in
our policies a common interest and an
understanding of their own ideals and their own
aspirations; an understanding of the values that
they can respect and admire; an understanding of
the values that they can strive to emulate; thus
consideration of our wealth and our power brings
us full circle to the question with which we began:
What do we stand for? Nor should we be
surprised, for this is the most powerful and
constant lesson of all of history.

The wars and the conquests, the politics and the
intrigues of state are soon covered by the years.
The triumph of Athens, the empire of Rome, the
march of armies, the names of governors - all
these did leave some imprint, but it is the ideas
and the statutes, the plays of Sophocles and the
philosophy of Plato that endure most vividly
shaping and enriching our lives to this very day.
The mastery of transient events, our
accomplishments, our victories will ultimately
matter far less than what we contribute –
all of us – in this country to the liberation of the
human spirit. That is what we have always stood
for in the past, that it is what we must stand for at
the moment. That is what has given us our unique
position, our unprecedented strength. That is why,
in fact, we are proud to be Americans.

For two hundred years, America has meant a vision
of national independence and personal freedom
and justice between men. But whether it will
continue to mean this will depend on the answers
to difficult and complex problems. It will depend on
whether we sit content in our storehouses, dieting
while others starve, buying eight million new cars a
year while most of the world goes without shoes.
It will depend on whether we act against crime
and its causes and wipe the stain of violence from
this land. It will depend on whether we can halt
and can reverse the tide of ever greater
centralization in Washington and return the power
to the American people in their local communities.
It will depend on whether we can turn the private
genius of industry to the service of great public
ends, using comprehensive tax incentives to help
industry create the jobs, train the workers and
build the housing, which all of the efforts of the
federal government have, so far, failed to do. It will
depend on whether we still hold, as the framers
proclaimed, a decent respect for the opinions of
mankind, or whether we will act as if no other
nations existed, flaunting our power and flaunting
our wealth against the judgment and desires of
neutrals and allies alike.

RFK- January 4, 1968

CT Lessons and the Coming Makeover of John McCain

Ah, holiday reading… Don’t you just love being able to get up a little later and still having time to check out the papers and the net?

Matt Stoller posted some things about the Connecticut Senatorial campaign and about John McCain that resonated with me. As I posted on occasion during the fall campaign, Holy Joe received a huge pass on his backstabbing of Social Security and of the Democratic Party in general. Perhaps because his wasn’t a ‘priority’ race or perhaps out of fear of retribution from a re-elected Lieberman, he never faced the music from the ‘adult’ progressive heavyweights who could have blown the cover he created as a freethinking centrist.

The result of the Lieberman ruse of “Independence=centrist=rationality” is that Joe successfully created the illusion that he’s a middle-way thinker and has staked out territory that will be crucial to own during coming elections. The Democratic Party in particular and progressives in general will face similar image makeovers—particularly by Republican John McCain in 2008. Stoller argues that a concerted effort over time to show the likes of Lieberman and McCain for their more conservative selves is an important priority. The threat to Lieberman and McCain critics of being portrayed by as wild-eyed radicals will only become more potent if their unswerving support for more war and their endorsements of right-wing fundamentalist proposals go unnoted for much longer.

Stoller’s point follows on from the thought that Steve Clemons posted about on Wednesday— namely that Lieberman and McCain are now actually poised to form a presidential coalition ticket in 2008 that could take on the imagery of centrism without any of the substance. Wouldn’t that make the Democratic ‘adults’ wish they’d helped close the sale for Ned Lamont?

It would be a mistake to see McCain and Lieberman as the
champions of a new centrist political ethic, but the cosmetics
of their partnership will be too seductive for many pundits
who will fall for the deal.

UPDATE 11/26/06- I see that Kevin Drum is on the case re: McCain today. Some 'centrist!'

Thanksgiving in Houston

Here’s a Thanksgiving story for the home hearth over this long weekend to come. How the Houston janitors won a contract to be represented by the SEIU in the heart of union-busting Texas, with many of their brothers and sisters in jail, being “taught a lesson,” by guards is a truly heartwarming lesson for us all.

The janitors organized their campaign like civil rights organizers brought attention to their cause in the 1950’s and 1960’s. In fact, the racial dynamics of labor organizing in the US today is a question of equality— and the janitors were successful in pointing this out.

Happy Thanksgiving. Many blessings to all of us and let’s be thankful for the recent victories progressives have won as we prepare to fight the battles of the coming year. Salud!

Rich City, Poor City— NYC

According to the census nearly 20 percent of New Yorkers are living in poverty--that's approximately 1.5 million people, here in our city.

Click here for podcasts of WNYC’s stories about poverty in NYC.

Tracking Products' Carbon Footprints

On the other side of the Atlantic, the Guardian reports today on an offer from Britain’s Carbon Trust, a government-funded independent company, to help businesses track and reduce the carbon footprint of their products.

The UK created the Carbon Trust to help businesses and the public sector cut carbon emissions. Should the US study the creation of a similar entity?