Pass the Brazil Nuts, Please

WTH?

This bozo (Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva) must be joking, for at least three reasons:

1) He's a Euro descendant, too, although presumably he does not have blue eyes.
2) How can the leader of any South American country presume to lecture anyone in the First World on economics?
3) He can lay a lot of the most recent garbage on the only partially white, non-blue-eyed Presidente Obama.

Imagine if Gordon Brown, the world's whipping boy of the week, had said, "Most of the world's poverty is caused by the irrational behaviour of [name-a-color] people with [name-a-color] eyes.

As it is, of course, Brown said next to nothing except that he didn't want to blame individuals. NEWSFLASH FOR PM BROWN: da Silva doesn't want to blame individuals either.

And while we're at it, where do these clowns get off thinking they should have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council? I think they need a seat in a class on 20th Century Brazilan Economic History Since 1950 first.

Come to think about it, given all Brazil's contributions to world security, their having a seat makes at least as much sense as France having one.

###

Brazil’s leader blames white people for crisis

By Jonathan Wheatley in São Paulo and agencies

Published: March 27 2009 00:27 Last updated: March 27 2009 00:27

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Thursday blamed the global economic crisis on “white people with blue eyes” and said it was wrong that black and indigenous people should pay for white people’s mistakes.

Speaking in Brasília at a joint press conference with Gordon Brown, the UK prime minister, Mr Lula da Silva told reporters: “This crisis was caused by the irrational behaviour of white people with blue eyes, who before the crisis appeared to know everything and now demonstrate that they know nothing."

He added: “I do not know any black or indigenous bankers so I can only say [it is wrong] that this part of mankind which is victimised more than any other should pay for the crisis.”

Mr Brown appeared to distance himself from Mr Lula da Silva’s remarks. “I’m not going to attribute blame to any individuals,” he said.

Mr Brown was visiting Brazil as part of a five-day tour of Europe, the US and South America in preparation for the G20 summit to take place in London next Thursday. He made a joint appeal with Mr Lula da Silva for the world’s biggest economies to provide $100bn to boost global trade.
“I’m going to ask the G20 summit next week to support a global expansion of trade finance to reverse a slide in world trade,” Mr Brown said.

Mr Lula da Silva also spoke out strongly against raising trade barriers in response to the global crisis. “I compare protectionism to a drug,” he said. “Why do people use drugs? Because they are in crisis and they think the drug will help them. But its effects pass quickly.”

The two leaders’ remarks demonstrate the desire each will have to secure the other’s support during the G20 meeting.

Brazil – which has long campaigned unsuccessfully to be given a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council – will argue for a bigger voice for Brazil and other emerging nations in multilateral organisations such as the International Monetary Fund and the Financial Stability Forum, a group of central banks and national supervisory authorities established in 1999.

Brazil is one of many nations calling for increased regulation of global financial markets and greater powers for multilateral regulators.

It will also call for a resumption and conclusion of the Doha round of talks at the World Trade Organisation.

In return for supporting such initiatives, Mr Brown will expect Brazil to endorse calls for fiscal stimulus in a bid to mitigate the impact of the global crisis, such as the proposed $100bn in trade finance.

From our friends at the WashPost

At the U.N., Many Hope for an Obama Win

By Colum LynchWashington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 26, 2008; A17

UNITED NATIONS -- There are no "Obama 2008" buttons, banners or T-shirts visible here at U.N. headquarters, but it might be difficult to find a sliver of territory in the United States more enthusiastic over the prospect of the Illinois senator winning the White House.

An informal survey of more than two dozen U.N. staff members and foreign delegates showed that the overwhelming majority would prefer that Sen. Barack Obama win the presidency, saying they think that the Democrat would usher in a new agenda of multilateralism after an era marked by Republican disdain for the world body.

Obama supporters hail from Russia, Canada, France, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Indonesia and elsewhere. One American employee here seemed puzzled that he was being asked whether Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was even a consideration. "Obama was and is unstoppable," the official said. "Please, God, let him win," he added.

"It would be hard to find anybody, I think, at the U.N. who would not believe that Obama would be a considerable improvement over any other alternative," said William H. Luers, executive director of the United Nations Association. "It's been a bad eight years, and there is a lot of bad feeling over it."

Conservatives who are skeptical of the United Nations said they are not surprised by the political tilt. "The fact is that most conservatives, most Republicans don't worship at the altar in New York, and I think that aggravates them more than anything else," said John R. Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. "What they want is the bending of the knee, and they'll get it from an Obama administration."

The candidates have said little about their plans for the United Nations, but Obama has highlighted his desire to pursue diplomacy more assertively than the Bush administration, whereas McCain has called for the establishment of a league of democracies, which many here fear is code for sidelining the United Nations.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has avoided showing a public preference about the presidential campaign -- although he has hinted at a soft spot for Obama in private gatherings, according to U.N. officials. His top advisers say they think McCain and Obama would support many of Ban's priorities, including restraints on production of greenhouse gases that fuel climate change.

"The secretary general and the Secretariat of the United Nations take no position on the U.S. election," said Ban's chief spokeswoman, Michele Montas. "The secretary general deeply respects the democratic process, and he looks forward to working with whomever the American people choose."

Many U.N. rank and file are less circumspect, saying they see in Obama's multicultural background -- a Kenyan father, an Indonesian stepfather and a mother and grandparents from Kansas -- a reflection of themselves. "We do not consider him an African American," said Congo's U.N. ambassador, Atoki Ileka. "We consider him an African."

read the rest

An Open Letter to John McCain

An Open Letter to John McCain

By Joseph Sigalas

I write this letter as the father of three young children, girls who have become highly enthusiastic about the presidential race. Of course they’re rooting for you because their mother and I are. But down deep I know that the victory they are rooting for will result in a far better country and a better future than they are likely to get from Obama.

But we have to get there first. To do that we’re going to need something different from your team. You will have to stop missing opportunities to win over the winnable middle.

I don’t claim to have all the answers, but the following seven-point plan outlines at least some of what you have to do:

Distinguish yourself once and for all from President Bush. The attempts to pin him on you is to ignore the last eight years of direct conflict between you and the President. Among the most striking: You were in favor of having more troops in Iraq well ahead of President Bush. He did eventually sign on and push ahead with “The Surge.” But all of that was him catching up with you. Give him credit for coming around. But it was you who openly and heatedly argued at the time—and against the Administration—that we should have sent more troops to Iraq in the first place.

Stop letting Obama get away with saying he was “right” on not going into Iraq . His “rightness” about our not being welcomed as liberators must have been based on personal clairvoyance; it wasn’t based on the intelligence available at the time. Being right in hindsight is awfully easy. You need to point out that constantly taking credit for what amounted to luck (for Obama, not Saddam) and 20/20 hindsight reveals not “good judgment” but rather a character that may have trouble resisting the urge to reshape the truth.

Point out, publicly and persistently, that the chief problem with Obama’s position on Iraq was that he was willing to lose. As Robert McFarlane wrote in the Wall Street Journal last week, he acted as if losing was something America could take in stride, apparently just as he imagines we did with Vietnam . But I know personally: That narrative is false. Not only did we lose prestige in the world and embolden our enemies by allowing a numerous but politically immature generation to drive foreign policy and force us to abandon our friends—as certainly would have happened had we “strategically redeployed” from Iraq—but we also betrayed another group of people, people just a little younger than the so-called “boomers.” Those people, myself included, came of age post-Vietnam. That American “loss”—not to mention Watergate—handed us an America we were made to feel ashamed of, or at least vaguely embarrassed about. For many people my age, patriotism was “uncool,” lame or (more likely) just beside the point. Yes, the U.S. accomplished the lunar landing in 1969. But most of those I’m talking about were too young (I was only six) to fully appreciate that event, and Vietnam and later Watergate soon pushed all that off the front pages for years to come.

The point is, losing the war in Iraq would have the unintended consequence of alienating a whole new generation. That’s not the America I want to hand down to my daughters.

Attack Congress’s numerous and persistent failures. That’s a tough spot for you, but it has to be done. You must point out what those of us paying attention already know: Congressional Democrats routinely create a “disaster” only then to suggest themselves as the solution.

Do not let the American people forget that Congress has been in Democratic hands since 2006. And where have they been? Reid, Pelosi, Frank and Company’s recent accomplishments amount to little more than this:

Obstructing victory in Iraq by pre-declaring American failure;
Recklessly and deliberately creating a sense of economic despair for eight years; their “success” is now exacerbating the recent crisis;
Dragging their feet on drilling last summer, going home (to raise money) because, according to Pelosi, that just wasn’t Congress’s problem.

As for Obama, he was just “phoning it in” regarding the bailout issue—at least until President Bush called him.

The Democrats’ Congressional record is one of relentless failure. Call them out on it.

Explain, in plain and simple terms, how your tax plan will save and increase jobs—and how Obama’s plan to raise taxes on “big business” (those with incomes over $250K) will result in job cuts. Potentially massive job cuts. His plan will raise taxes on the very companies that employ thousands of Americans. For instance, according to cbsnews.com, InBev—the company that recently bought Anheuser-Busch, which includes American-icon company Budweiser—“has tried to soothe American fears of job losses by promising to keep open all 12 North American breweries… as long as the company did not face extra U.S. taxes.” This story goes right to the point. If companies have to pay more taxes, they will either leave altogether or be forced to lay off employees, back off on benefits, and, ultimately, pass costs on to consumers. No matter how Obama tries to parse it, we all lose. And by the way—if Obama wins, you can bet many people won’t like their rolled-back benefits. They’ll sign up for the government-backed plan in droves (until we bankrupt that system, too).

Do not let Americans in the middle forget Senator Obama’s cultural elitism and “celebrity” status. Just saying that he’s “liberal” is not nearly enough. Remind us that Hollywood and New York celebrities, academics, trial lawyers, the mainstream media and others who consistently attack traditional America and those who love it adore him. Remind us of his grating, condescending “clinging to their guns and religion” comment. Like the elitist cocktail set to which he belongs, he imagines that he knows best and that those who don’t agree are a bunch a ignorant, racist yahoos.

Last but not least:

Communicate authentic optimism about America . You must do this above all. Tell us in concrete terms that everything will be all right. Don’t give us false hope; show us there IS hope. That’s what I’ll vote for. Aside from cutting taxes, what should we—not just the government, but ALL of us—do? What version of America should we steer toward? That’s what the ideal president would tell us. Point the way in specific terms. Become the president by acting like a president. Right now.

In short: Give us clear reasons to vote for you. Make those reasons shine through the political and media fog. Talk over the media’s heads—straight to us.

As of tonight, 26 days remain until the election. You still have some time to make changes that may make all the difference. For all our sakes, Senator McCain, make them now.

We must not hand my daughters, your grandchildren, and children across the U.S. a self-doubting, self-reproaching nation that has become habitually ashamed of itself. All of that is to brood on the past. Sir, show us the future.

Get real.

Something suspicious about this. Do they really want us to believe that these military people gave Obama an average of almost $453 each? Get real.

Military donations favor Obama over McCain

Thursday August 14, 6:31 pm ET
Troops donate more campaign money to Obama than McCain, despite McCain's military record

Troops serving abroad have given nearly six times as much money to Obama's presidential campaign as they have to McCain's, the Center for Responsive Politics said.
The results also are striking because they favored Obama, who never has served in the military. McCain meanwhile, is a decorated war veteran who spent nearly five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. The Arizona senator graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and had a 22-year career as a naval aviator.
Obama has opposed the war in Iraq and says he would withdraw combat troops within 16 months. McCain has been a steadfast supporter of the war, saying he would withdraw the troops only when conditions on the ground warrant it.
"Obama will work tirelessly to uphold this nation's sacred trust with its veterans, to ensure they are not forgotten after they return home and he will provide our troops with the leadership they deserve, as well as the support they and their families need," Obama spokesman Nick Shapiro said.
McCain's campaign played down the significance of the donations.
"John McCain has been endorsed by more retired admirals and generals than Barack Obama has military donors," McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb said in a statement.
"We feel confident that many U.S. troops stationed overseas will support John McCain in the election this fall, but we suspect most are too busy doing the important work of defending this country than to make political contributions," Goldfarb said.
The report tracked donations of $200 or more. It found that 859 members of the military donated a total of $335,536 to Obama. McCain received $280,513 from 558 military donors.
Among soldiers serving overseas at the time of their donations, 134 gave a total of $60,642 to Obama while 26 gave a total of $10,665 to McCain. That was less than the amount received by Republican Ron Paul, who collected $45,512 from 99 soldiers serving abroad, the report said.

Dirty Harry comes clean
Clint Eastwood talks to Jeff Dawson about race, euthanasia, politicians, capital punishment - and how he really feels about the 'fascist' role that made him famous

Jeff Dawson

Friday June 6, 2008

GuardianClint Eastwood folds his gangly frame behind a clifftop table at the Hotel Du Cap, a few miles up the coast from Cannes, sighs deeply, and squints out over the Mediterranean. "Has he ever studied the history?" he asks, in that familiar near-whisper.

The "he" is Spike Lee, and the reason Eastwood is asking is because of something Lee had said about Eastwood's Iwo Jima movie Flags of Our Fathers, while promoting his own war movie, Miracle at St Anna, about a black US unit in the second world war. Lee had noted the lack of African-Americans in Eastwood's movie and told reporters: "That was his version. The negro version did not exist."

Eastwood has no time for Lee's gripes. "He was complaining when I did Bird [the 1988 biopic of Charlie Parker]. Why would a white guy be doing that? I was the only guy who made it, that's why. He could have gone ahead and made it. Instead he was making something else." As for Flags of Our Fathers, he says, yes, there was a small detachment of black troops on Iwo Jima as a part of a munitions company, "but they didn't raise the flag. The story is Flags of Our Fathers, the famous flag-raising picture, and they didn't do that. If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people'd go, 'This guy's lost his mind.' I mean, it's not accurate."

Lee shouldn't be demanding African-Americans in Eastwood's next picture, either. Changeling is set in Los Angeles during the Depression, before the city's make-up was changed by the large black influx. "What are you going to do, you gonna tell a fuckin' story about that?" he growls.

"Make it look like a commercial for an equal opportunity player? I'm not in that game. I'm playing it the way I read it historically, and that's the way it is. When I do a picture and it's 90% black, like Bird, I use 90% black people."

Eastwood pauses, deliberately - once it would have provided him with the beat in which to spit out his cheroot before flinging back his poncho - and offers a last word of advice to the most influential black director in American movies. "A guy like him should shut his face."

Eastwood knows how to handle controversy. Four years ago, his boxing flick Million Dollar Baby, which garnered him best picture and best director Oscars (giving him five in total, including two for Unforgiven and a premature lifetime achievement gong back in 1995), was attacked by Christian groups. They had objected to the plot's "assisted suicide" of a paralysed athlete.

"People who hadn't even seen the movie were saying that it's pro-euthanasia, but it wasn't," Eastwood says. "If you had asked Frankie [his character in the film], 'Do you believe in euthanasia?', he'd have probably said no. But that was the circumstances of the moment. Highly dramatic circumstances."

And 37 years ago, he starred in a film that has been a bone of contention ever since, and which is the reason for our conversation today. Dirty Harry, the film that liberals have long argued was little more than an argument for summary justice, is being rereleased in DVD form, packaged with its quartet of siblings (Magnum Force, The Enforcer, Sudden Impact and The Dead Pool), as part of Warner Brothers' 85th birthday celebrations.

Dirty Harry - the story of a cop railing against bureaucracy and pursuing criminals according to his own whim - has been so imitated that it is hard to imagine the revulsion that spilled over it upon its release. The New Yorker's critic, Pauline Kael, called it "fascist", and other reviewers heaped similar scorn on it. They wondered whether holding a .44 Magnum in a suspect's face was the best way to pursue justice; they wondered whether the San Francisco setting was a slap at one of America's most liberal cities; even the CND belt buckle sported by Scorpio, the serial killer in the film, was interpreted as a swipe at the left. With the cop thriller supplanting the western as Hollywood's action genre of choice, Eastwood was surely the political as well as cinematic successor to John Wayne.

But moviegoers took little notice of those who attacked the film. They flocked to the cinemas, Dirty Harry's dialogue passed into common parlance, and it now occupies an important if uneasy place in film history.

"Of course people built a lot of connotations into the film that weren't necessarily there." Eastwood grins. "Being a contrary sort of person, I figured there had been enough politically correct crap going around. The police were not held in great favour particularly, the Miranda decisions had come down [forcing police to read arrested suspects their rights], people were thinking about the plight of the accused. I thought, 'Let's do a picture about the plight of the victim.'"

Wayne had turned the film down, as had Steve McQueen, Robert Mitchum and various others. Frank Sinatra was set to star until, according to showbiz lore, tendonitis in his wrist prevented him from handling the Magnum's heavy recoil. "Probably just bullshit," says Eastwood. But Ol' Blue Eyes' loss was Young Blue Eyes' gain. Eastwood brought director/collaborator Don Siegel to the project. And, courtesy of a much misquoted line - "You've got to ask yourself one question: do I feel lucky? Well do ya, punk?" - the picture turned Eastwood from cowboy star into everyman icon.

That same year, Eastwood directed his first film, Play Misty for Me. With Dirty Harry having established him as Warner Brothers' surest banker, he negotiated a quid pro quo: the studio would indulge his personal projects, such as Bronco Billy or Honkytonk Man, the kind of fare that would shape him as the director we know today, as long as he kept on cranking out the blockbusters, even if that meant working with an orangutan.

Sergio Leone, who directed Eastwood in his breakthrough role in the Man With No Name trilogy of spaghetti westerns, said he liked the actor because he had only two expressions: "one with the hat, one without it". These days it would be stretching it to suggest that Eastwood's range is quite that broad, his face seemingly fixed in a beatific beam, the sort of blissful countenance that once had him pegged in a scurrilous - and erroneous - piece of showbiz gossip as Stan Laurel's love child. The skin on his cheeks certainly seems tauter than one might expect of a man of his vintage. The contentment of his autumn years or the proverbial "bit of work"? Frankly, you can only wonder.

Nevertheless, he's imposingly tall (6ft 2in), sporty-lean, and could probably knock both 10 years off the 78 he has clocked up and seven bells out of anyone who messes with him, the result of relentless exercising, a strict diet and, probably, fatherhood late in life. In an arrangement at which even Ken Livingstone might raise eyebrows, Eastwood has had seven children with five different women, including an 11-year-old daughter with his current wife, Dina. It surely accounts for the emotional content of some of his recent films, not least Changeling, which had been in competition for the Palme d'Or and, like the lauded Mystic River, concerns child abduction.

There are actually echoes of Dirty Harry in Changeling, Eastwood says, and he's not making any concessions to liberals: "I get a kick out of it because the judge convicts the killer to two years in solitary confinement, and then to be hanged. In 1928 they said: 'You can spend two years thinking about it and then we're going to kill you.' Nowadays they're sitting there worrying about how putting a needle in is a cruel and unusual punishment, the same needle you would have if you had a blood test."

The politics are evidently always simmering with Eastwood. By the time Ronald Reagan was in the White House quoting Eastwood's "Go ahead, make my day" from Sudden Impact in a speech about tax cuts ("I must have heard it about 10,000 times," says Eastwood), he was shaping up to become the non-partisan mayor of the California town of Carmel, where he was sympathetic to environmental concerns and less sympathetic to big business.

Eastwood still likes to let his views be known, often forcefully. In 2005, he vowed he'd kill Michael Moore if the documentarian ever showed up at his house, the way he had doorstepped Charlton Heston in Bowling for Columbine. This March he was sacked from Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's California state parks commission for objecting to the building of a toll road through a national forest. But though he has been associated in the public mind with Republican viewpoints, he's something of an individualist. "I don't pay attention to either side," he claims. "I mean, I've always been a libertarian. Leave everybody alone. Let everybody else do what they want. Just stay out of everybody else's hair. So I believe in that value of smaller government. Give politicians power and all of a sudden they'll misuse it on ya."

Has he declared for anybody in this electoral cycle? "You know, I haven't really," he says. "My wife used to be an anchorwoman in Arizona, so she knew John McCain and she liked him and I kinda liked him. In fact, we sort of supported him when he was running the first time against Bush eight years ago. But we haven't been active as yet. It's kind of a zoo out there right now. So I think I'll kinda let things percolate."

These days Eastwood doesn't really look back on his old films, though he mentions a viewing of The Outlaw Josey Wales, a film some regard as his masterpiece. He meant to watch for five minutes, but ended up sitting all the way through. "The films that I've done in recent years are the ones I remember the most," he says. "I guess I'm living in the present more than the past."
One thing he has made clear is that he will definitely not be making Dirty Harry 6, despite rumours to the contrary. "Some idiot came up with some theory," he says. The crime flick Gran Torino, which he is due to film at some point, is emphatically not part of the Dirty Harry cycle. "Not at my age," he stresses. "There are certain age limits on police officers. They'd have retired me out at 65."

But there's one film project on the cards that might interest Spike Lee. Eastwood's next project, The Human Factor, is about Nelson Mandela and how he used the country's victory in the 1995 Rugby World Cup as a means of fostering national unity. Will he be sticking with the historical record on that one? He laughs. "Yeah, I'm not going to make Nelson Mandela a white guy."

· The Dirty Harry Ultimate Collector's Edition box set is released on Monday
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

Hillary Wins Pennsylvania

Hillary Clinton just gave her victory speech. In it, again and again she hit the same point: blah blah blah, a woman CAN be president! Blah blah blah, the old lady wants to see a woman in the White House! Blah blah blah, we're going to be able to put our daughters on our shoulders and whisper to them you can be anything you want to be -- even a Woman In The White House!

Guess what, Hillary? My daughters already know that. Why? Because my wife and I, told them that. Without your help.

So stop telling us to vote for you or Barack so we can do something historic. It's not enough reason to vote one way or another. And your thinly veiled "anyone but a white guy"argument is blatantly bigoted. And ignorant.

Besides, "historic" will happen one way or another. If elected, John McCain will be the oldest president to take office. He will also be the first former POW to be elected president and the first Vietnam veteran elected president. So don't worry. You'll get your historic election.

Meanwhile, while you're obsessing about Barack's skin color and your sex, Americans may not like the war in Iraq, but they will like retreat/defeat even less. And soldiers want to come home, but not defeated and humiliated.

And on to Mr. B.O.: Barack, why is it when you refer to your candidacy and say things like "in this election we have the chance to solve problems we have working on for decades," I get the feeling that what you really mean is "[White] Americans, we need change! And here is an historic opportunity. You bitter-religious-gun nuts can right your past wrongs by electing a black guy--and, as fate would have it, I'm a black guy. Lucky you!"

Addendum: I'd like to see Hillary's story about the woman handing her a pic of the woman's father getting the CMH from President Truman vetted. Smells funny.

Bye, Huck

An hour ago I watched Mike Huckabee end his honorable and remarkable campaign. Thank you for giving people someone to vote for, Governor Huckabee.

So now it's Senator McCain. He's got a character, grit, and a biography that can't be matched by either Dem, unless you count being black or a woman as a meaningful qualification. They'll have to come up with more. We can't have an affirmative action president.

Super Tuesday

I'm just trying to hear some reality. I tend to resist being swept up in waves of adulation or harm. Some real plans, not just idealistic platitudes or calls for "change" as a virtue in and of itself -- whether from the right or left. As such, I confess that I'm not really nuts for anyone. I might sound grumpy about it -- I'm not, really. I LOVE this season. It's my version of the Olympics.

Lately I'm a little weirded by the practice I once thought was a great idea -- the ability to vote in any primary one wants. I'm generally not very loyal to parties, but I was really turned off in 2006 as I sat with my whole CDC office at lunch one beautiful *primary* election day afternoon. As the salads were served, nearly all of my high-minded, well-educated, but deeply partisan public-servant colleagues--particularly the well-paid ones--announced, unblushingly, that after lunch they were headed to the polls to vote for the rival of a candidate they hated in the opposite party's primary for lieutenant governor. Not because they wanted the rival to win, but because they were afraid their hated candidate would win, and they wanted "make sure his supporters didn't have the chance" to vote for him in the general election.

This practice is as old as the stars, I know, and it goes on on both sides. And I've been tempted to do it, I admit! But it sure bugged me that day. With independents -- REAL independents -- it's different. There's a very good reason not to formally affiliate with one party or the other -- ainly because one is apt to feel differently at different times. But in Georgia (and other states all across the country), deeply partisan members from one party can (and do) flood the box in the opposite party's primary in order to get a weaker opponent on the ballot in November. So the weak candidate wins, but is easily defeated in the general.

Fewer Abortions?

I'm watching the 506th Democratic debate of 2007. Kucinich (and the others by implication) says he'll work for fewer abortions through birth control, etc.

But if there's nothing wrong with abortions, why work for fewer of them?

New Series: Recycled News

This is my first entry in an attempt to see if I can document a pattern I've noticed in news coverage.

Here's a story that was first reported on a few weeks ago, but is re-reported today (14 Nov) by AP as "news":

Pet massacres carried out in Puerto Rico

TRUJILLO ALTO, Puerto Rico - Back roads, gorges and garbage dumps on this
tropical island are littered with the decaying carcasses of dogs and cats. An
Associated Press investigation reveals why: possibly thousands of unwanted
animals have been tossed off bridges, buried alive and otherwise inhumanely
disposed of by taxpayer-financed animal control programs.

Hmmm, sounds familiar. Oh, wait, here's it is in this Reuters story:

Hundreds protest Puerto Rican "pet
massacre"
Sun Oct 21, 2007 11:50pm EDT

By John Marino

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (Reuters) - Hundreds of people, angered over an
alleged "pet massacre" in Puerto Rico's northwest town of Barceloneta, joined in
a protest march on Sunday from the island's Supreme Court to its
Capitol.

Many in the crowd of about 500 brought dogs and wore T-shirts reading, "I'm a animal lover" or "I love mutts." Others held signs with slogans like "stop animal abuse" and "justice for the pets of Barceloneta."

The October 8 and October 10 raids, in which authorities seized around 80 pets from their owners at three public housing projects in Barceloneta, stirred widespread anger.

There's no news like old news. Or in this case, recycled news. The stories aren't exactly the same: later in today's story it does mention the October story. But there's a pattern here. I've seen it happen with other stories. They resurface after failing to get much traction. That's not earthshaking but I wonder why it happens at certain times.

There seems to be a pattern. So, I'll try to document it here.