“I think I’ve done all the necessary mea culpas” – Mel Gibson to WGNTV reporter while promoting his new movie before he curtly ends the interview and calls the reporter an asshole. What pushed Gibson over the edge? The entertainment reporter had the unmitigated gall to ask if Gibson was worried that audiences may perceive him differently because of the drunk driving arrest and his subsequent anti-semitic, sexist rant directed at one of the arresting officers.
The thing is, Gibson’s is another Imus blow up. Remember when Imus’ career was “over”, no one would support Imus? Well, he got a payout on his contract, got a bigger contract with a new station and is back to Imus being Imus.
Mel has enough money and has made enough money for people that no matter what he does there will be another job in Hollywood for him. No matter what kind of case is made against accepting Gibson going forward, its already too late, money talks, b.s. walks. He’s done the Hollywood comeback 3 step: apologize to anyone who may have been offended, go to a cushy rehab, come back, return to same dickish behavior that got you in trouble in the first place while saying something like I did what you wanted me to do, now what do ya want?. It’s just funny that people always wonder how famous people proving they are jerks will affect a performer’s career.
Answer: it won’t. As long as they follow the three step.
Once we have bought into the worth of celebrity (and our society is heavily invested), you’ve already admitted you just want a fallen star to make things go back to the way they were before they publicly confirmed they were an jerk.
“Mr. Chairman, speaking for myself and myself only, it is my personal and professional belief that allowing homosexuals to serve openly would be the right thing to do, …No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens. For me, it comes down to integrity — theirs as individuals and ours as an institution.”
-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen testifying before the Senate Armed Forces Committee regarding “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” Policy
Will Republicans smear the Admiral for his beliefs? It’s time to end bad policy that continually expels trained soldiers from active duty in a time of war. Dan Savage still wants an “executive order” to ban DADT.
Great, good, feeling hopey again about the repeal of DADT. But, again, Obama could suspend the enforcement of DADT today while Congress works on a solution, just as his head of Homeland Security suspended enforcement of the widow’s penalty while Congress works on a solution. And Obama described the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) as abhorrent and promised to repeal it but his administration nevertheless defended the law in court. But I’m prepared to take yes for an answer, of course, on DADT. As depressing as the lack of movement on the big promises—end DADT, repeal DOMA—there has been action on ending the HIV Travel Ban (set in motion by the Bush administration), and hate crimes legislation.
An Executive Order suspending DADT while the repeal is being ushered through congress is simply the wrong way to go. First off, its a political cover for the Republican opposition. An executive order basically circumvents the spirit of the democratic process and will allow the GOP to oppose repeal of DADT as a matter of checking executive power, an executive power GOPers never checked during Bush’s tenure. The merits of the debate will be lost in the middle of the Washington Press Corps asking if “Obama is so full of himself, he thinks he can rule by decree”, Democratic Senators from red states will be spooked and DADT won’t pass.
Repeal of DADT should be pushed to congress for action and the decision to repeal this unjust law should be left to the more reliable US House and the unfortunately, unreliable 59-41 US Senate. When the Senate votes, if Obama has Executive Ordered a DADT ban, it can be cover for conservative Democrats and “Moderate” Republicans from liberal states. Its an excuse for these folks to calculate: “Let’s try the status quo established by Obama’s executive order repealing DADT so I don’t have to take a real stance. Midterms are coming up and I need the anti-homo crowd”.
In addition, an executive order is dependent upon the executive. If the executive ordered DADT ban happens and Obama is a one term President, which could very well be the case, does the DADT ban executive order that Savage wishes for last longer than his one term? We shouldn’t tie the existence of justice to the term limits of any official, no matter what “hopey” feeling we may get. Woodrow Wilson was elected with the help of broad African American support and rewarded the Black leaders and voters who marshaled this voting block by re-segregating the federal government.
As of now, if a Democratic legislator votes against repeal of DADT, they are casting a vote against the Commander in Chief, the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The three men who are in charge of two wars and the military service around the world. Make them vote no and stand on their bigotry. Make them vote that only people who happen to be straight should bear the human cost of war in defense of their country. Make them argue that it is worth throwing away hours of training and expertise because of sexual orientation.
DADT is a very stupid operational rule, let alone an unjust law, but it shouldn’t be repealed by heavy handed executive orders. That can prove to be too fragile a justice.
Update: Sessions/Hagan questioning Sec. Gates and Adm. Mullen
The auto show was just here in Philly, but with all the iPad excitement, the concept model I am actually more hype for is a (ChromeOS will not have proprietary hardware to start) ChromeOS Tablet.
Note/Disclaimer: I am a G1/Android phone w/seperate iPod Nano guy. Still haven’t gotten the Nexus One, but I most probably will. First two computers were Macs, but cost and my profession as a Software Engineer/Web Developer led me to being a reluctant but long term PC user. Definitely not Mac averse. I miss the beautifully built, high usability interfaces. I don’t miss the proprietary hardware.
Tony Blair’s widely panned appearance at last week’s Chilcot inquiry into the origins of the Iraq war reminded the world about the former British prime minister’s role in that lethal fiasco. Like many of the Iraq war’s instigators here in the United States, Blair has gotten a free pass while flaunting his lack of remorse. Indeed, the failure to hold him accountable resulted in his appointment as the special envoy of the “Mideast Quartet” in June 2007, charged with reviving the peace process on behalf of its members — the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and the Russian Federation.
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During Blair’s long-winded justification of his actions, he compared the current threat from Iran’s nuclear program with the supposed threat from Iraq’s supposed WMD arsenal no fewer than 58 times. “We face the same problem about Iran today,” he said — a call to war that sounded weirdly discordant coming from a man committed to encouraging peaceful negotiation.
Tony Blair as Mideast Peace Envoy is a ridiculous position for someone who either grossly miscalculated or lied through his teeth to magnify the threat Saddam Hussein posed to the rest of the world. At this point, all that matters is that Tony Blair is the absolute wrong choice. Conason captures the worst thing about Blair’s inquiry appearance: “We face the same problem about Iran today,”.
As he vociferously defends his decision to lead his nation into a costly invasion of Iraq Blair’s belief that 2010 Iran is the “same problem” as 2003 Iraq means that he believes we should attempt to bomb and bribe them into a functioning Democracy as well. Not the best mindset for a peace convoy.
COLORADO SPRINGS — This tax-averse city is about to learn what it looks and feels like when budget cuts slash services most Americans consider part of the urban fabric.
More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.
The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.
Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.
Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.
City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won’t pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.
“I guess we’re going to find out what the tolerance level is for people,” said businessman Chuck Fowler, who is helping lead a private task force brainstorming for city budget fixes. “It’s a new day.”
Congress under Obama Administration has been productive. It just hasn’t been producing everything voters want…
Any Congress that passed all these items separately would be considered enormously productive. Instead, this Congress did it in one bill. Lawmakers then added to their record by expanding children’s health insurance and providing stiff oversight of the TARP funds allocated by the previous Congress. Other accomplishments included a law to allow the FDA to regulate tobacco, the largest land conservation law in nearly two decades, a credit card holders’ bill of rights and defense procurement reform.
The House, of course, did much more, including approving a historic cap-and-trade bill and sweeping financial regulatory changes. And both chambers passed their versions of a health-care overhaul. Financial regulation is working its way through the Senate, and even in this political environment it is on track for enactment in the first half of this year. It is likely that the package of job-creation programs the president showcased on Wednesday, most of which got through the House last year, will be signed into law early on as well.
Most of this has been accomplished without any support from Republicans in either the House or the Senate — an especially striking fact, since many of the initiatives of the New Deal and the Great Society, including Social Security and Medicare, attracted significant backing from the minority Republicans.
How did it happen? Democrats, perhaps recalling the disasters of 1994, when they failed to unite behind Bill Clinton’s agenda in the face of uniform GOP opposition, came together. Obama’s smoother beginning and stronger bonds with congressional leaders also helped.
But even with robust majorities, Democratic leaders deserve great credit for these achievements. Democratic ideologies stretch from the left-wing views of Bernie Sanders in the Senate and Maxine Waters in the House to the conservative approach of Ben Nelson in the Senate and Bobby Bright in the House, with every variation in between. Finding 219 votes for climate-change legislation in the House was nothing short of astonishing; getting all 60 Senate Democrats to support any version of major health-care reform, an equal feat. The White House strategy — applying pressure quietly while letting congressional leaders find ways to build coalitions — was critical.
Certainly, the quality of this legislative output is a matter of debate.
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If the midterm elections in November turn out to be more like 1994, when Democrats got hammered, than 1982, when Republicans suffered a less costly blow, the GOP will probably be emboldened to double down on its opposition to everything, trying to bring the Obama presidency to its knees on the way to 2012. That would mean real gridlock in the face of a serious crisis. Given the precarious coalitions in our otherwise dysfunctional politics, we could go quickly from one of the most productive Congresses in our lifetimes to the most obstructionist.
Voters need what they were promised was important to pass and they also need something for them directly. In Massachusetts, they don’t hate the health care plan, its just that the federal health care plan doesn’t offer anything for the Bay State which already has universal health care. Seniors don’t want anyone messing with their Medicare and yet they weren’t too hype on Medicare for all single payer health care.
The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, a unique window into a vital chapter of American history that the late Buck O’Neil helped open 20 years ago, could be in trouble.
Attendance and revenues are down, and a decision by new management to distance itself from O’Neil has splintered many of its most loyal supporters.
What’s more, the recession has cut deeply into donations. After posting its first loss two years ago of about US$30,000, the museum is looking at what one staffer termed “a monster loss” that could approach a quarter of a million dollars when the final accounting for 2009 is complete. For a relatively small museum that has always depended on the kindness of others, $200,000 is seismic.
Much of the revenue loss is traceable to a drop in licensing revenue. No one is predicting the museum’s imminent demise, but everyone agrees the trend must be reversed.
“For museums all over the country, dollars are becoming hard to find,” said Greg Baker, who took over as executive director a little more than a year ago. “We are challenged by that. We’ve got to raise money to keep going and if we don’t, we’ll end up closing our doors.”
If it shuts down, the country will lose the only museum dedicated exclusively to black baseball’s unique contribution to American culture and the vital role those men played in the long and painful march toward equality.
For weeks, the right has heckled Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. for his plans to try the alleged 9/11 conspirators in New York City and his handling of the Christmas bombing plot suspect. Now the left is going to be upset: an upcoming Justice Department report from its ethics-watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), clears the Bush administration lawyers who authored the “torture” memos of professional-misconduct allegations.
While the probe is sharply critical of the legal reasoning used to justify waterboarding and other “enhanced” interrogation techniques, NEWSWEEK has learned that a senior Justice official who did the final review of the report softened an earlier OPR finding. Previously, the report concluded that two key authors—Jay Bybee, now a federal appellate court judge, and John Yoo, now a law professor—violated their professional obligations as lawyers when they crafted a crucial 2002 memo approving the use of harsh tactics, say two Justice sources who asked for anonymity discussing an internal matter. But the reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed “poor judgment,” say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.) The shift is significant: the original finding would have triggered a referral to state bar associations for potential disciplinary action—which, in Bybee’s case, could have led to an impeachment inquiry.
If this is true and as plain as Bybee and Yoo being cleared, the Obama Administration has proven that it has no interest in curbing the frightening expansion of the unitary executive as defined by Bush White House and the Holder Justice Department has proven it has feigned independence all along.
In addition, the fact that a 59-41 Democratic majority in the Senate means that the Senators need that same President to be their daddy to tell them where to go, before they miss every deadline, weaken the effect of every bill they write for political expediency means that there is no hope that they will pass progressive legislation making administration attorneys professionally and legally responsible for the memos they write. Even when they break the law.
