Bill's Big Diamond Blog

WTF? Did Limbaugh Actually Do This?

This is unbelievable.

Rush apparently dares anyone to call him out on this… If there’s anyone out there with a recording of this segment of his broadcast and the context, please send a link or more information.

If true, it makes Imus look like small potatoes. I can't even say more at the moment.

UPDATE— Media Matters for America has the entire audio of Rush’s rant about white liberals’ racism and Obama. I guess his attack on white liberals is somehow (in his own mind) supposed to insulate him from repercussions from his own public enjoyment in repeating the phrase “Obama the Magic Negro” over and over. I’m sure his audience of idiots lapped it right up as he set the phrase to the tune of “Puff the Magic Dragon.”

He laughs off his producer’s warning on-air:

LIMBAUGH: Barack, the Magic Negro, doo doo
do doo."

Uh-oh, Dawn's shaking her head on that. What
are you saying, if I do that, I then will own the
term, because I will be taking it above and
beyond how it's been used? Well, that's what we
always do here. We do parodies and satires on
the idiocy and the phoniness of the left. We
could throw in -- yeah, we could put an L.A.
Times lyric in there to make, you know, make it
obvious who it was who actually used the term. I
mean, don't start telling me to shy away from
this stuff. That's why I'm where I am, that's why
I'm who I am, and for which I make no apologies.
I'm very proud and happy.

Happy indeed. What a worm.

LA and the Riots, 15 Years After Rodney King Verdict

It's been fifteen years since the Rodney King verdict and the subsequent uprising in South Central Los Angeles. I wonder what we've learned in the intervening years in this country. Race relations are now discussed in the mainstream media only when a radio figure spews racist vitriol on a dedicated Cinderella women's basketball team. Even the disaster of Hurricane Katrina seems to bring poverty and segregation to the forefront of American culture for but a brief moment.

The violent reaction to the King verdict didn't create a lasting conversation about addressing racism and poverty in America. But for sure, forgetting our contemporary history of brutality and neglect towards poor people of color isn't solving anything either.

Links:

"Los Angeles riot still echoes a decade later" CNN (2002)

Twilight: Los Angeles

Twilight (an excerpt)

LA— A City in Stress: A Bibiography

Going back further, listen to Decades After LA Riots (1965), Watts Still Suffers

Photographs- LA— May 1992

Katrina Aid Unclaimed

Unbelievably enough, the disaster of Hurricane Katrina incompetence and arrogance from the Bush Administration continues to unfold. The Washington Post today carries an article detailing how MOST of the aid pledged by foreign countries in the wake of the disaster was mothballed, wasted, turned away, or remains unclaimed.

This, while the people living without homes or jobs or loved ones still attempt to recover.

Leaving Iraq— Riverbend's Departure

It was inevitable. As a reader of her blog, I often worried that her latest posting would be the last we’d ever hear of her, so this is a better outcome.

Riverbend is leaving Iraq. Her family, like most of the middle class in Baghdad, has decided to emigrate. Wish them luck and Godspeed to a safer place.

On the one hand, I know that leaving the country
and starting a new life somewhere else- as yet
unknown- is such a huge thing that it should
dwarf every trivial concern. The funny thing is
that it’s the trivial that seems to occupy our lives.
We discuss whether to take photo albums or
leave them behind. Can I bring along a stuffed
animal I've had since the age of four? Is there
room for E.'s guitar? What clothes do we take?
Summer clothes? The winter clothes too? What
about my books? What about the CDs, the baby
pictures?

The problem is that we don't even know if we'll
ever see this stuff again. We don't know if
whatever we leave, including the house, will be
available when and if we come back. There are
moments when the injustice of having to leave
your country, simply because an imbecile got it
into his head to invade it, is overwhelming. It is
unfair that in order to survive and live normally,
we have to leave our home and what remains of
family and friends… And to what?

It's difficult to decide which is more frightening-
car bombs and militias, or having to leave
everything you know and love, to some
unspecified place for a future where nothing
is certain.

Oh God, Get This Schmidt OFF of Me!

All right, enough with the doom and gloom.

Let’s take a moment to laugh at the misfortune of others.

Many thanks to one Florida blogger, Sinfonian, who has a feature on his Blast Off! blog, the Daily Schadenfreude.

My favorite: March 15…lots of soda water, Jean. Lots.

h/t The Politico

Yingling- Pt. 2

On Iraq, Yingling’s AJF article (see yesterday's post) on the failure of American generalship has this to say:

Population security is the most important measure of
effectiveness in counterinsurgency. For more than three
years, America's generals continued to insist that the U.S.
was making progress in Iraq. However, for Iraqi civilians,
each year from 2003 onward was more deadly than the one
preceding it. For reasons that are not yet clear, America's
general officer corps underestimated the strength of the
enemy, overestimated the capabilities of Iraq's government
and security forces and failed to provide Congress with an
accurate assessment of security conditions in Iraq.
Moreover, America's generals have not explained clearly the
larger strategic risks of committing so large a portion of the
nation's deployable land power to a single theater of
operations.

…Now that the public is immediately concerned with the
crisis in Iraq, some of our generals are finding their voices.
They may have waited too long.

Anyone who thinks that ending the American involvement in Iraq will end our troubles in the Long War against Al Qaeda is smoking something too mellow. Yingling’s critique and his proposals to reform the general officer corps are a good start towards the kind of self-examination this country needs to endure in order to move forward as a leader in the 21st century. It’s a must-read.

UPDATE- Just to be clear, I'm not saying we should stay in Iraq, just that it's not the end of U.S. troubles in the region (or with Al Qaeda) if we leave. Personally, don't think it's going to get better in Iraq UNTIL we leave the country militarily. But Yingling's critique goes to the point of developing the leadership necessary to serve in the present, instead of the Cold War past.

Yingling's Iraq Rebuke to the Generals

In an article drawing media attention today in Armed Forces Journal, Lt. Col. Paul Yingling argues that the current generation of American military leadership has failed in its duty to the country. He contends the failure was in knuckling under twice (in Vietnam and in Iraq) to political leaders who demanded loyalty to a proposed scenario that was unsupported by available military facts and strategic thinking.

Yingling predicates that, except for General Eric Shinseki, military leadership withheld information from Congress and the American people that might have prevented the current quagmire in Iraq. Shinseki famously spoke clearly to Congress about the need for hundreds of thousands of soldiers’ boots on the ground for many years to secure Iraq— prior to the invasion in 2003.

Yingling points to the fact that after Shinseki’s forced retirement, following his candor, no military leaders gave Congress honest assessments: assessments that might have prevented civilian leaders from endorsing the quick invasion that led America to believe it could win both a war and an occupation “on the cheap” in Iraq.

Yingling’s most controversial suggestion is that Congress alone can intervene now to save the military from its own leadership:

Congress must enhance accountability by
exercising its little-used authority to confirm the
retired rank of general officers. By law, Congress
must confirm an officer who retires at three- or four-
star rank. In the past this requirement has been pro
forma in all but a few cases. A general who presides
over a massive human rights scandal or a
substantial deterioration in security ought to be
retired at a lower rank than one who serves with
distinction. A general who fails to provide Congress
with an accurate and candid assessment of
strategic probabilities ought to suffer the same
penalty. As matters stand now, a private who loses
a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a
general who loses a war. By exercising its powers
to confirm the retired ranks of general officers,
Congress can restore accountability among senior
military leaders.

Will Congress take Yingling’s warning to heart and begin to excoriate generals who repeated the Administration’s mantras about a cheap war— to be won without a draft or major civilian sacrifices? Probably not. But perhaps his article will make it harder for some career-minded senior officers to parrot the party line when the prospect of history’s condemnation looms larger than the favor of the leaders of the moment.

Dan Dzwilewski, Star Witness?- Part 2

An AP article about the slow dance of withheld memos at the Justice Department tells a revealing story:

The Justice Department released a list of internal
documents Thursday focusing on lawmakers' concerns
and media questions about the firings of eight federal
prosecutors, but the department resisted congressional
demands for copies of the memos.

Note, this is not a release of documents, merely a list of documents not being released. Among the list of e-mail being withheld by the Justice Department from congressional investigators is one that strikes this blogger’s interest.
This e-mail:

..dated Jan. 13, is described as "Notifying FBI of Union-
Tribune (nyse: TRB - news - people ) article re: Lam's
resignation and FBI SAC D. Dzwilewski." Carol Lam
was the U.S. attorney in San Diego, where Dan
Dzwilewski is heading the FBI's local office until he
resigned April 30.

Sampson has acknowledged, under questioning by
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., that he complained to
FBI headquarters about Dzwilewski's contention that
Lam's firing was politically motivated.

It will be interesting to see if Congress calls Dzwilewski to testify about the consequences he felt for having expressed displeasure at the retaliatory firing of Carol Lam after her prosecution of Abramoff figure Rep. Duke Cunningham in her district. It would also represent a widening of the inquiry from one dealing purely with prosecutors to also including pressure on the FBI. Dzwilewski, who was forced out after defending the fired San Diego prosecutor’s reputation and challenging the politics behind her removal, had worked in a nonpartisan manner for 27 years, including as head of the San Diego FBI office since 2003.

Bill's Baaaack!

While we’re in a television mood, please welcome back Bill Moyers’ Journal to PBS. He’s back with a bang as of last night, with an excellent story, “Buying the War,” about the failure of the news media to get the story on the selling of the Iraq War. It’s available online at the link.

You might also appreciate the kudos to the Knight-Ridder reporters, Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobe, who got the story right and kept on it throughout the run-up to war.

Stewart 1, McCain 0

You gotta wonder who thought it was a good idea to appear on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show to do a pre-announcement. Check out the evisceration live on camera as Stewart takes McCain’s talking points apart. Thanks to Susie for posting it in two juicy clips.

UPDATE 4/29/07— There’s a great stretch on the McCain interview in the midst of Bill Moyers’ talk with Stewart on the first regular broadcast of his new/old Bill Moyers’ Journal. A couple of excepts from it describe just some of the wonderfulness of Stewart’s approach:

JON STEWART: …In my head, thought, I would
love to do an interview where it's just sort of de-
constructed — the talking points of Iraq — sort of
the idea of, is this really the conversation we're
having about this war? That if we don't defeat Al
Qaeda in Iraq, they'll follow us home? That to
support the troops means not to question that the
surge could work. That, what we're really seeing in
Iraq is not a terrible war, but in fact, just the media's
portrayal of it. So, I wanted to just go through-- like,
is this really the conversation that we're going other
(to) be having about something as significant as this
war?

…There is a there is an enormous contradiction,
and it is readily apparent, if you just walk through
simple sort of logic, and simple rational points. But
the thing that they don't realize is that everyone
wants them to come from beyond that contradiction
so that we can all fix it. Nobody is saying, "We don't
have a problem." Nobody is saying that, "9/11 didn't
happen." What they're saying is, "We're not a fragile
country, trust us to have this conversation, so that
we can do this in the right way, in a more effective
way."

BILL MOYERS: Why aren't we having that
conversation? Well, that's a very good point, Why is
the country not having this conversation, the kind of
conversation that requires the politicians who are
responsible for the war to be specific to the
concerns of the American people. I mean, they do
come out and a kind of gauze goes up.

JON STEWART: Because I don't think politics is
any longer about a conversation with the country.
It's about figuring out how to get to do what you
want. The best way to sell the product that you want
to put out there, but not necessarily for the products
on you know, it-- it's sort of like, when a
dishwashing soap you know, they want to make a
big splash, so they decide to have more lemon, as
though people are gonna be like, "That has been
the problem with my dishes! Not enough lemon
scent!"

h/t Atrios