In the News This Morning

Hot senate race in Virginia. Allen, the macaca man, continues to display his bullheaded, arrogant self. Mr. Webb outshines him with a thoughtful, levelheaded approach to the issues.

Post Wedding Blues

There is a discussion about new brides feeling let down once the big day has passed. Trust me that is the least of their worries!

Macacca, Nigger! When will George Allen go? Va needs to lose this guy!

Salon.com- Two former UVA football players, who were teamamtes of George Allen have stated , without reserve, that  George frequently and with derision called African-Americans “niggers”. One teammate, Dr. Ken Shelton a radiologist in Hendersonville, N.C. spoke publicaly and stood by his comments in an interview yesterday with The Times-Dispatch. His words: “He did use the n-word. He used it often. It was I am sure, intended in a very derogatory manner. George’s racial views were fairly obvious by  his actions too.”

Shelton played tight end for the UVA Cavaliers when Allen was quatrterback in the early 1970’s. Shelton 53 and a registered independent, cited a hunting trip where he said Allen stuffed the severed head of a deer in a mailbox in a neighborhood where blacks lived. Shelton went on to say that Allen gave him the nickname “Wizard” because Shelton shared the same surname as Robert Shelton, the imperial wizard of the UnitedKlans of America in the 1960’s.

Doug Jones, who roomed with Shelton and played on the team wiyh Allen during the 1972-1973 seasons, said ” I never heard George Allen use any racially disparaging word nor did I ever witness or hear about him acting in a racially insensitive manner.

The New York Times last night quoted another former UVA student as saying he heard Allen use the racial epithet to describe blacks in the early 1980’s. Christopher Taylor, then a graduate student in anthropology, said the term came up  in a conversation about turtles in a pond near Allen’s property. Allen, Taylor said, told him that “around here” the only people who “eat ‘em” were blacks, whom he described with the notorious epithet. Taylor said he was visiting Allen to pick up an Australian shepherd puppy.

Allegations of racial insensitivity have plagued Allen’s career. As a state legislator, he voted against a holiday to honor the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights leader. As governor he issued a proclamation recognizing Confederate History and Heritage Month, which generated controversy because it did not mention blacks or the sacrifices of those who fought against slavery and the union of the country.

It is also known that Allen’s senior high school yearbook displays his class picture wearing a confederate flag on his jacket lapel…a stunt he blows off as a joke. Who’s laughing? Further, it is common knowledge that he displayed a confederate flag across the rear window of his pickup in the early 80’s.

On balance… shaky at best, because no doubt it is politically motivated and not reflective of his true social and political consciousness:

As a senator he sponsored legislation to help historically black colleges upgrade technology and a senate apology for its failure to ban lynching in the early 20th century. What?

So, all of this on the top of the recent macacca event!!!! Lets lose this loser!!!

2006 Midterm Elections -Virginia

Excerpted from Letters to the editor of the Richmond Times Dispatch.

A position I can understand: The writer of this letter is, contrary to many Virginia Republicans, actually paying attention to the state and federal impact of George Allen’s rerun for the US senate.

“In all liklihood I will vote for Senator George Allen. Yet, I do not like the way Allen backtracks on many things he has said in the past. I have come to the conclusion that he says what he thinks he needs to say to obtain votes from the particular group he is addressing. He is more politician than statesman.

On the other hand, although I like many of Jim Webb’s policies and would like to see them addressed, I could never vote for him. A vote for Webb would be a vote to put the Howard Dean/Nancy Pelosi ultra-liberal wing of the democratic Party in power. I can think of nothing that would be more detrimental to this country.”

 The problem with his argument is that in his final statement he makes a sweeping generalization with no supporting remarks on why ultra-liberal government could possibly be worse than what we have now? I am a very middle of the road citizen with a checkered voting record dating back to the sixties (Yes, I am an old fart who heartily supports capital punishment, oposes welfare and supports gay marriage..if we have to have contractual marriage at all). In other words I certainly oppose an ultra liberal government but that is better than what we have now.  We are ruled by a smirking and corrupt little puppet who thinks he is a monarch. He is protected by a passel of powers-behind-the-throne authoritarins who have blundered into a colossal mess in Iraq and the Middle East taking all of us with them. They have hijacked the press by cutting from the front row of the white house press corp those journalists who challenge their policies (begin with Helen Thomas), planted uncertified “reporters” in their place to direct the news conferences with easy, administration friendly questions. They have avoided frontal confrontation by making sure no queers can  get married ( I feel safer just knowing that … said in jest). The abortion issue is another successful deflection from issues that directly impact the safety and constitutional sanctity of this nation. And it is going to be their undoing far more than Iraq, however, because once criminalized and women find themselves needing to seek back alley or self induced abortions, once   women begin dying (wives, mothers, daughters, sisters) and once the majority of citizens come to realize how they have been had by flat-backing patriarchal, male dominance and that no one stands in that voting booth with them…… this issue will reverse itself back to legal and safe pregnancy termination…. with the social dominators taking a hit. As a footnote to the abortion debate..criminalization will not stop it and further, will not slow it down. 

I launched into a screed didn’t I. Oh well I am around it all the time.

Unknown

Bob Woodward. His 14th book due on Oct 3, 2006..Title is still unknown… it focuses on the war in Iraq and is a devastating look at America’s current Mideast politics.

True but Incomplete

Stephen Weinberg (physicist)

“Good people do good things and bad people do bad things…but for good people to do bad things…that takes religion.

I would add “for bad people to to do good things…. also takes religion, sometimes.”

The Case for Impeachment of George Bush (#43)

Making false claims(lying) and inducing Congress and the American people into an unjust war where 20-30,000 Iraqi’s were slaughtered and nearly 3000 Americans, not to mention the 18,000 Americans who are maimed and dismembered. (Is this a war crime?)

Allowing the people close to him profit from the war in Iraq> The no-bid contracts.

Authorizing the torture and rendition of prisoners of war and suspected terroists.

Stripping Americans of their constitutional rights,

Failing to defend our homeland and borders.

Illegal wiretapping.

Weaving an Identity Tapestry

 Sonja D. Curry-Johnson’s “Weaving an Identity Tapestry”:

“In college, conflicts did not lessen, but rather grew, both around me and within me. Here I had to decide what meant more to me, the attention and admiration of men, or my integrity as an independent woman. Unfortunately, there were times when my willingness to find and keep a boyfriend outweighed my desire to live my life honestly as my own person. During these times, I often placed the needs of the relationship over my own. It took a few years and a few broken relationships for me to reassess the importance of romantic love and to realize that there was no fantasy that was worth my denying any part of my identity. I decided not to become involved with a man unless I was sure he was the type of person that would not only accept my feminist ideals but also support my execution of them in my personal and professional lives. That type of man, in my mind, was a rare bird indeed. No sooner had I resigned myself to a life without romance, that I met such a bird and, in perhaps the least-debated decision of my life, married him.”

Post Wedding Blues

There is a discussion about new brides feeling let down once the big day has passed. Trust me that is the least of their worries!

The Real Nasrallah

A son of Beiruts slums has become one of the most engaging and dangerous lraders in the muslim world.

These are headlines from NewWeek (8/28/2006)

“Remember this about Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbullah: he grew up very poor but very smart, and although he wears the robes of a minor Shiite cleric, he is a world class politician. The US government defines him as a terrorist, but that is only one of his faces. If he survives the war he started in Israel, he will remain what he has become during these weeks of combat: perhaps the most charismatic figure in the muslim world, and very possibly the most dangerous.

His message  is “to regain lost pride…by readiness to sacrifice and readiness to suffer.”