Terrance Simien and the Zydeco Experience
“Everyday”

Gee, whodda thunk!

In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantnamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.

The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantnamo.

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

Full article at the NYTimes

From one of my favOrite bloggers, Fade, at House of the Rising Sons.

A friend called me early this morning. He’s a default Texas John McCain supporter, which means : He won’t vote for no split tail or no negro, by God.

A day before I had ripped McCain to this Truck Driver- and explained why he should be voting Democrat for the rest of his natural born life, apparently, 24 hours set in and he forgot the fifteen damn factors I had instilled in him via reason, logic, and historical example.

He called me from his cell as he was truckin along, and he asked me if I was still supporting Obama. Before I could answer, he followed up with : “Have you seen the news?” - Now, I am a news JUNKIE. I mainline C&L, I shoot MSNBC Straight, I chase it with NPR Radio , and while I’m at it, I have a slice of Yahoo and smoke a bowl of CNBC. And I wash it all down with a suicide of various blogs. So, sitting down at my desk that early morning, I hadn’t even booted up my PC yet. All I had was my morning drive with NPR’s tibetan updates.

I thought- ‘Well, shit! what did I miss?’

“Obama got a terrorist working for him.Yep, it’s all over the news!” He exclaimed.

Read more »

I’ve been reading about Obama’s appearance in Philadelphia last night. Wow. The enthusiasm and hope that oozes out of the crowd of 35,000 is amazing. You can watch his speech here. Sphexus at DailyKos has many pictures, videos and first hand accounts of the event. This kind of passion and enthusiasm is encouraging, no matter who the candidate. Gee, there ARE alot of bitter people in Pennsylvania.

Bill Maher had Jeremy Skahill on last night. He spent some time in Pa.

Looks like Ahmadinejad has us right where he wants us - over a barrel.

Republicans might be slowly turning our great nation into a third-world country, but it doesn’t give Ahmadinejad the right to kick us why we’re down. Calling our currency “paper”, and saying we should be paying more for oil isn’t very nice.

What in the world have we done to make him hate us so much?

Report: Iran’s president says oil prices too low

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran’s hard-line president declared that crude oil prices, now above $115 a barrel, are too low, state media reported Saturday.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told an oil and gas exhibition in Tehran on Friday that he thought the commodity still had to “discover its real value,” according to the Web site of Iran’s state-run television.

Oil prices have hit all-time highs above $115 a barrel in recent weeks, amid reports that oil and gasoline reserves in the United States were lower than expected and as the dollar sinks to record lows.

There are still people out there who don’t realize that when situations arise that require great care and diplomacy, but aren’t given those considerations, shit like this comes back to bite us on the ass later on.