Our cruise recently took us to San Juan, where I found
some of the most beautiful colors just sitting there, waiting to be
photographed.

... See my Tabblo>

Our cruise recently took us to San Juan, where I found
some of the most beautiful colors just sitting there, waiting to be
photographed.

... See my Tabblo>

This is a test, this is only a test.

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

I don't update this blog much, mostly because I have other things to do. But the Katrina aftermath has me very upset.

How is this political? Simple. We don't have resources thanks to a certain idoit squandering them.

This is the text of a letter I just wrote to the White House, that I know will never get read by them:

Dear Mr. President,

The death, panic and utter lawlessness in New Orleans is your own doing. This country does not have the military personnel to send in there at this time of need because they are fighting a war of choice in Iraq.

We, the people of this nation, knew this war was bad from the start. We knew you lied to us about WMD and the true threat to our freedom, we knew you lied about this being a war against terrorists. You made this choice. This is your consequence.

People are dying, children are hungry, chaos reigns. This is your legacy, this is how history will remember your administration.

I hope you're proud of what you created.

People are dying in the streets, the images are too horrific to watch. Rather than getting better it just gets worse. The equipment we should have in place is far away.

I'm not going to pile on to the vast numbers of people who are crying about the state of journalism in the US. There has never really been a golden age of journalism, as people seem to think. It's just the mind's eye playing tricks as it looks backwards.

However, that doesn't mean journalists are exempt from criticism. Everyone has been talking about how CBS News and Sy Hersh broke the Iraqi abuse story. But here's an interesting note from Richard Pyle of the AP on Romanesko's Media News

Hersh, CBS didn't break prison abuse story
5/13/2004 2:50:10 PM

From RICHARD PYLE: With all due respect to my erstwhile colleague and softball teammate Sy Hersh, neither he nor "60 Minutes II" exactly "broke" the Iraq prison abuse story, as some others have suggested.

On Nov. 1, 2003, the Associated Press carried an 1,800-word story from Baghdad about alleged mistreatment by Americans in three detention centers, including Abu Ghraib. In that story, AP Special Correspondent Charles Hanley quoted former Iraqi prisoners as describing psychological abuse, deprivation, beatings, detainees punished by hours lying bound in the sun, being attacked by dogs, deprived of sufficient water and food, spending days with hoods over their heads, sick men dying in crowded tents.

The story said senior U.S. officials had not responded to specific
questions about the alleged abuses, submitted by AP two weeks earlier (Oct. 18). It did cite then-unknown Brig Gen Janis Karpinski's comment, reported in Arab media, that prisoners were treated humanely and fairly.

As Hanley noted in another story last weekend, the queries were never answered, and the official silence continued until January 2004, when military authorities announced that investigations were under way.

The original AP report did not have the benefit of the graphic photos
that accompanied the more recent New Yorker and CBS accounts. But that hardly explains the lack of official response, or why other news organizations didn't follow up.

The last sentence raises an interesting question: why didn't other news organizations follow up? At the time this was probably seen unsubstantiated reports from a group of Iraqis with blood on their hands. Rather egotistical. The silence by the government was actually a stroke of genius here. By not acknowledging it at all, the story almost went away. If they'd even said "we're investigating" during the initial queries, the story would have been huge. Instead, they basically dismissed the Iraqi complaints and the media did the same.

So while our media is free, it doesn't seem to think that way.

I’m reading the stories about Nick Berg, the American beheaded on video tape by his captors, supposedly in retaliation for the torture of Iraqi prisoners in Iraq. Two things strike me.

First, both Daniel Pearl and Berg were told to make statements before their executions. In both, they were told to identify their families. While Pearl was told to identify himself as a Jew, Berg’s information comes across as distinctly Jewish—his father is Michael, his brother and sister, David and Sarah, his last name. I doubt this is a coincidence. The media has said nothing about this, but the fact is, this is Arab militants drawing a direct line between Israel and the US. The only indication I've found of his religion is a small mention in a Kansas City newspaper that he carried a Jewish prayer shawl. More attention should be paid.

Second, Berg was held by US forces as his father said “without due process.” Berg is a US citizen, he should be afforded rights that befit a US citizen. Still, I can’t help shaking the feeling that you can’t ask others to live up to a higher standard if you’re not willing to live to that standard yourself. By that I mean, why should only US citizens be treated fairly? Why shouldn’t we ask that ALL prisoners undergo some sort of due process.

Yes, I know that in wartime, things change. But has Congress declared this war? Was there a vote that I missed? Constitutionally, only Congress can wage war. The reason for that is simple: to keep a single individual from having ultimate control over the military.

Kinda scary.

Take THAT Right Wing!

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court said today that Civil Unions may be separate, but certainly aren't equal. The state Senate asked for clarification on the issue of Gay Marriage, and the court affirmed that by marriage it means marriage.

"The history of our nation has demonstrated that separate is seldom, if ever, equal," they said in their advisory opinion.

This issue is far from dead. States will be battling among themselves for a while, then the Federal Government will get involved. But the bigger issue is the Massachusetts Constitution. The issue of an amendment will come up at next week's constitutional convention. I hope it dies there, if not, I hope it dies before it's put before the voters.

I'm confident voters will eventually reject it, but I'm not going to leave anything to chance.

I'm Back!

After a short hiatus, I'm back with my political rantings. My other blog is devoted to family, this one is just about my political and social rants.

To get things started, this is from an Associated Press story about the loss of contact with the Mars rover:

In New York City, Jim Garvin, NASA's lead scientist for Mars exploration, said on CBS' "Late Show with David Letterman" that scientists have "gotten a heartbeat" from the rover.

He said the team was "communicating with it at very low rates to tell it how to wake itself back up."

When did late night talkshow hosts become news people? When did our country get so confused that we can't separate entertainment from information? I know, there are plenty of times that the two become mixed, like some of those tabloid "news" programs that fill early prime time on local stations. But this is insane. Does anyone think David Letterman should be filling Cronkite's shoes? Should we get rid of Nightline so we can watch Conan?