?

!

awwww Steve.

bless yer speedy lil fingers ;->

We must stand together in this, all of us, for the good of our nation and the good of us all. We, the people…because the time for accountability and renewal is now.

beautiful Christy.

The FBI said they broke the law with National Security Letters and they said they were sorry is that the end of it?

Amen, Christy.

Adie @ 3

awwww Steve.

bless yer speedy lil fingers ;->

Great minds at work..concurrent, minimalist, ZED’s

Oh, thank you so much for that clip.

When I was a wee puppy in Minneapolis, Aaron Copland came to conduct the Minnesota Orchestra at their then brand new Orchestra Hall.

To this day, I stop whenever I hear Copland and smile – such a wonderful composer, and so gifted at incorporating American folk idioms into his work.

OK, returning to my role as strident, angry, lefty netroots guy.

Copland’s Appalachian Spring indeed!

Also, Fanfare for the Common Man!

Kudos to fellow Brooklynite Aaron Copeland, born into the new century in 1900!

Where do we stand? I am SO there!

Aaron Copeland – an American treasure.

Libby question for the lawyers: He’s filing his emergency appeal to stay out of jail during the appeals process. Does anyone know how often these emergency appeals are granted? I would assume that just about everyone who has to go to jail while there are appeals pending would file this sort of thing. How many of them are ever granted?

Thanks for the perfect post-break re-set, Christy—and the Copland!

Sandman @ 5

The FBI said they broke the law with National Security Letters and they said they were sorry is that the end of it?

Somehow that doesn’t seem like enough. My nephews when they were young discovered the magic words I’m Sorry could be used to make any sort of bad behaviour unhappen. They were surprised and angry to discover that it didn’t work with Aunt HotFlash.

I blame Dr Spock.

We cannot wait for someone else to act on our behalf. We must do this work ourselves, and we must begin now.

I’m game. Perhaps it’s time for a Democracy/Constitutional renewal event – would next spring’s equinox be a good time?

Quite apt for this post:

From Glenn Greenwald in Salon today:

One of the principal dangers of vesting power in a leader who is convinced of his own righteousness — who believes that, by virtue of his ascension to political power, he has been called to a crusade against Evil — is that the moral imperative driving the mission will justify any and all means used to achieve it. Those who have become convinced that they are waging an epic and all-consuming existential war against Evil cannot, by the very premises of their belief system, accept any limitations — moral, pragmatic, or otherwise — on the methods adopted to triumph in this battle.

Efforts to impose limits on waging war against Evil will themselves be seen as impediments to Good, if not as an attempt to aid and abet Evil. In a Manichean worldview, there is no imperative that can compete with the mission of defeating Evil. The primacy of that mandate is unchallengeable. Hence, there are no valid reasons for declaring off-limits any weapons that can be deployed in service of the war against Evil.

(snip)

Frank at 12 — In my experience, they are exceedingly rare, because you have to show a likelihood of winning on appeal in order to stay out of jail under the federal statutes and, frankly, that’s also very rare. Not impossible, but very highly unlikely absent some substantial showing of a violation of rights — which I just do not see in Libby’s case. Anyone practice in the DC Cir. who wants to chime in on the court’s usual practice on these sorts of cases? In my neck of the woods, something like this is very, very rarely granted — but then, I’m in the very conservative 4th Circuit.

HotFlash @ 14

Sandman @ 5

The FBI said they broke the law with National Security Letters and they said they were sorry is that the end of it?

Somehow that doesn’t seem like enough. My nephews when they were young discovered the magic words I’m Sorry could be used to make any sort of bad behaviour unhappen. They were surprised and angry to discover that it didn’t work with Aunt HotFlash.

I blame Dr Spock.

Even with puppy dog eyes?

I stand united with you, all of you.

We must stand together in this, all of us, for the good of our nation and the good of us all. We, the people…because the time for accountability and renewal is now. -Christy Hardin Smith

just the right music, too, Christy.

More from Greenwald (Christy and Greenwald are a forcible dynamic duo this morning!):

(snip)

It is from these premises that the most amoral or even most reprehensible outcomes can be — and often are — produced by political movements and political leaders grounded in universal moral certainties. Intoxicated by his own righteousness and therefore immune from doubt, the Manichean warrior becomes capable of acts of moral monstrousness that would be unthinkable in the absence of such unquestionable moral conviction. One who believes himself to be leading a supreme war against Evil on behalf of Good will be incapable of understanding any claims that he himself is acting immorally.

These principles illuminate a central, and tragic, paradox at the heart of the Bush presidency. The president who vowed to lead America in a moral crusade to win hearts and minds around the world has so inflamed anti-American sentiment that America’s moral standing in the world is at an all-time low. The president who vowed to defend the Good in the world from the forces of Evil has caused the United States to be held in deep contempt by large segments of virtually every country on every continent of the world, including large portions of nations with which the U.S. has historically been allied. The president who vowed to undertake a war in defense of American values and freedoms has presided over such radical departures from the defining values and liberties of this country that many Americans find their country and its government unrecognizable. And the president who vowed to lead the war for freedom and democracy has made torture, rendition, abductions, lawless detentions of even our own citizens, secret “black site” prisons, Abu Ghraib dog leashes, and orange Guantánamo jumpsuits the strange, new symbols of America around the world.

(snip)

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, beautiful music, thank you

Christy,

A few days ago I transcribed Lawrence Tribe from a May 17th radio appearance. I thought you would love it. When you didn’t respond I wondered if somehow I had offended you. Don’t know. But in any event, he spoke eloquently about the abuses of the Constitution and impeachment. Did you see it? It seems to go along with what you are saying today.

hate to break the mood, but just noticed HuffPo has pic of nit looking scarier than TSoprano at his worst.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…..tem-cells/

himself plannin’ to play his diety-role & veto stem cell bill today…. :-

The fact that the walls of the Constitution can be breached can never be un-done. The sick feeling that I have is that, with a Dem President and Congressional majorities after 01/20/09, the theme will be “heal the country and move on”. The criminals will escape justice and the Rule of Law will be further subverted. As with Watergate and Iran-Contra, the evil will go to ground and will resurface with increased virulence in the future.

United we stand.

Boston at 21 — I’ve just been well and truly swamped and am trying to catch up with some copious e-mails at the moment. Give me time to read, digest and think a bit. The Peanut is at the age where she is more hands on than ever, and that takes away from momma’s reading time. I’ll get to it, though, I promise.

Steve @ 23

The fact that the walls of the Constitution can be breached can never be un-done. The sick feeling that I have is that, with a Dem President and Congressional majorities after 01/20/09, the theme will be “heal the country and move on”. The criminals will escape justice and the Rule of Law will be further subverted. As with Watergate and Iran-Contra, the evil will go to ground and will resurface with increased virulence in the future.

But it can take a long time to really heal from stuff.

I would disagree with several of Michael Moynihan’s points.

Wage inequality has deepened over the last 30 years. Bush just made it worse.

The media have been in bed with the Bush Administration. There was no need for a Kremlin style take over. Alternate voices have come much less from the nooks and crannies of traditional media and much, much more from the emerged phenomenon of the blogosphere.

The system of kangaroo courts at Guantanamo has been slowed by the Administration’s delay and incompetence in setting them up. Yes, the courts have intervened from time to time. But even Hamdan was more about the SCOTUS outlining the forms to be used in setting them up than in a condemnation of them. The result was the Military Commissions Act.

Also John Yoo AFAIK had nothing to do with the tribunals. Indeed under his view of the unilateral executive, such courts would not be needed. The President could hold anyone he wanted for as long as he wanted. Also Yoo left the Office of Legal Counsel in mid 2003 long before a lot of this came up.

While the 109th Congress acquiesced in its own demotion, the 110th has yet to show in a substantive way that it has reclaimed its Constitutional role.

Steve @ 23

The fact that the walls of the Constitution can be breached can never be un-done. The sick feeling that I have is that, with a Dem President and Congressional majorities after 01/20/09, the theme will be “heal the country and move on”. The criminals will escape justice and the Rule of Law will be further subverted. As with Watergate and Iran-Contra, the evil will go to ground and will resurface with increased virulence in the future.

the fact that some of these vermin CAME from Watergate and Iran Contra is every reason NOT to sweep it under that hideous rug in the Justice Department.

Nice to see another venue wake up and smell the treason.

Last installment from Greenwald:

(snip)

In sum, the great and tragic irony of the Bush presidency is that its morally convicted foundations have yielded some of the most morally grotesque acts and radical departures from American values in our country’s history. The president who insists that he is driven by a clear and compelling moral framework, in which the forces of Good and Evil battle toward a decisive resolution, has done more than almost any American in history to make the world question on which side of that battle this country is fighting. The more convinced President Bush and his followers become of the unchallengeable righteousness of their cause, the fewer limits they recognize. And America’s moral standing in the world, and our national character, continue to erode to previously unthinkable depths.

(snip)

I must say that calls to action from the MSM after they abandoned their responsibiliities for so many years and so many deaths is a little too much for me.

If and when I see calls for impeachment for the criminal acts from this administration on the front pages os MSM and I see “honest” reporting of the dislike and distaste for this administration then I might, might start to read their newspapers once again and I might even start to believe some of what they report though that is doubtful.

Right now I read the news from many different countries just to get some damn truth. I cannot watch the teevee for fear of barfing and I only buy the NYT on sunday for the crossword puzzle.

Reading anything by the “johnny come lately” MSMites like, for instance, Friedman who now are not supporting the murder of thousands of Iraqis is sickening. Once again I am pi**ed

Interesting factoid: Appalachian Spring was originally written as a dance piece for Martha Graham.

Christy. 25

This is such a special time with your precious little gal. I can’t imagine anyone here wanting you to waste one bit of it. We can wait. ;->

nomolos at 31 — Well, given that this was an op-ed piece and not a “call from the media,” I’d say that’s a bit harsh. Moynihan was a Clinton Administration official and, if I remember correctly, is related to the late Sen. Pat Moynihan.

It is Aaron Copland, gang. No “e” in his last name. I was fortunate to meet him twice – in 1964 and in 1968. I made a total asshole of myself the second time.

I played in his work, Emblems, this past spring. It is his only work centered around Amazing Grace, but it is a gnarly beast, very atonal and questioning, written around the times I met him, during the civil rights upheaval and the beginnings of failure in Vietnam. Copland’s Lincoln Portrait was to be played at Eisenhower’s first inauguration, but was withdrawn at the request of the GOP national committee. Scholars still disagree whether the withdrawal was because Copland stalwartly refused to name names to the HUAC, or because he was gay.

Hugh — I assume you saw Gordon’s latest in the NYT — seems like another unthinking transcription.

Ed*ard at 35 — Dang it — I always add that extra “e”. Thanks for the correction — will fix up top…

Ed*ard Teller @ 35

It is Aaron Copland, gang. No “e” in his last name. I was fortunate to meet him twice – in 1964 and in 1968. I made an asshole out of myself the second time.

I played in his work, Emblems, this past spring. It is his only work centered around Amazing Grace, but it is a gnarly beast, very atonal and questioning, written around the times I met him, during the civil rights upheaval and the beginnings of failure in Vietnam. Copland’s Lincoln Portrait was to be played at Eisenhower’s first inauguration, but was withdrawn at the request of the GOP national committee. Scholars still disagree whether the withdrawal was because Copland stalwartly refused to name names to the HUAC, or because he was gay.

killer-fun violin part in that piece. yeehaw! ;->

As I said @23…

Democrats go light on lawyer who pushed Bush’s ‘enhanced interrogation’ policies
Nick Juliano
Published: Tuesday June 19, 2007

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/….._0619.html

Christy Hardin Smith @ 25

Boston at 21 — I’ve just been well and truly swamped and am trying to catch up with some copious e-mails at the moment. Give me time to read, digest and think a bit. The Peanut is at the age where she is more hands on than ever, and that takes away from momma’s reading time. I’ll get to it, though, I promise.

I get it (raised a fireball, myself). I think I left it on Pull Up a Chair. Would it be good to find it and copy it and bring it over? (I’m offering to do it, not asking you.)

Thanks Christy.

I need my morning call to arms.

BTW there is an excellent article at the NYT by David Leonhardt about the Thomas the toy train engine.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06…..80axlxTI1w

Many companies ship their manufacturing to China and elsewhere because labor is cheap and there are few rules. The Thomas story is an illustration of what those few rules mean.

OK. now I am listening to the music.

Yes, thank you Christy! Right now, I’m being attacked by the wingnuts who are nurses and physicians. You want to read scary – read their take that healthcare isn’t a right, and that they treat patients with contempt, with ridicule, and they delight in attacking anyone who is liberal, who advocates for patient rights, and who holds professionals to a -duh – professional standard of care and practice.

The desecration of the Constitution affects us all in every aspect of our lives. It must be stopped, and it must be restored.

Adie @ 38

killer-fun violin part in that piece. yeehaw! ;->

- uh, that bein’ Appalachian Spring, heh.

Thanks for the link.

A concise summation of an ill time, combined with American optimism for improved times to come

Ed*ard Teller @ 35

It is Aaron Copland, gang. No “e” in his last name. I was fortunate to meet him twice – in 1964 and in 1968. I made a total asshole of myself the second time.

I played in his work, Emblems, this past spring. It is his only work centered around Amazing Grace, but it is a gnarly beast, very atonal and questioning, written around the times I met him, during the civil rights upheaval and the beginnings of failure in Vietnam. Copland’s Lincoln Portrait was to be played at Eisenhower’s first inauguration, but was withdrawn at the request of the GOP national committee. Scholars still disagree whether the withdrawal was because Copland stalwartly refused to name names to the HUAC, or because he was gay.

Wow. Never knew that about Ike’s innaugural. I saw/heard him conduct Appalachian Spring and Fanfare for the Common Man at a concert in Berkeley — mid 1960s.

Ed*ard Teller @ 35

It is Aaron Copland, gang. No “e” in his last name. I was fortunate to meet him twice – in 1964 and in 1968. I made a total asshole of myself the second time.

I played in his work, Emblems, this past spring. It is his only work centered around Amazing Grace, but it is a gnarly beast, very atonal and questioning, written around the times I met him, during the civil rights upheaval and the beginnings of failure in Vietnam. Copland’s Lincoln Portrait was to be played at Eisenhower’s first inauguration, but was withdrawn at the request of the GOP national committee. Scholars still disagree whether the withdrawal was because Copland stalwartly refused to name names to the HUAC, or because he was gay.

…
thanks for telling us more.
-surely the reason would be the former not the latter.

GSD — If you are still around, Bill Scher has something up from TBA on the York mistaken reportage. Just FYI.

Ed*ard Teller @ 35

It is Aaron Copland, gang. No “e” in his last name. I was fortunate to meet him twice – in 1964 and in 1968. I made a total asshole of myself the second time.

I played in his work, Emblems, this past spring. It is his only work centered around Amazing Grace, but it is a gnarly beast, very atonal and questioning, written around the times I met him, during the civil rights upheaval and the beginnings of failure in Vietnam. Copland’s Lincoln Portrait was to be played at Eisenhower’s first inauguration, but was withdrawn at the request of the GOP national committee. Scholars still disagree whether the withdrawal was because Copland stalwartly refused to name names to the HUAC, or because he was gay.

Why is there so much quiet space in this? Does all music of this kind have pauses?

Hugh @ 42

BTW there is an excellent article at the NYT by David Leonhardt about the Thomas the toy train engine.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06…..80axlxTI1w

Many companies ship their manufacturing to China and elsewhere because labor is cheap and there are few rules. The Thomas story is an illustration of what those few rules mean.

I feel for any parent who has to take Thomas (or any of his friends) away from a three year-old.

Christy Hardin Smith @ 49

GSD — If you are still around, Bill Scher has something up from TBA on the York mistaken reportage. Just FYI.

Gracias.

-GSD

Cassie at 50 — Make sure you have your volume turned up on the YouTube. There are a number of quiet passages and solos that won’t be heard if you have the volume down.

The Founders called usurping the Constitution treason.

It still is.

Tom Steele @ 32

Interesting factoid: Appalachian Spring was originally written as a dance piece for Martha Graham.

SnarKassandra 50

suggest Tom’s “factoid” as a clue ;->

Christy,
Alot of us were watching the Lawrence Tribe speech on CSPAN the other night during Late Night and several people missed most or part of it. Some folks don’t have CSPAN-3 or access to radio. Those of us who caught it were extremely impressed. I know that we would all love to see Boston’s transcription. I’ve been looking for a transcription of that speech and haven’t found one. Please, please, please?

Adie @ 55

Tom Steele @ 32

Interesting factoid: Appalachian Spring was originally written as a dance piece for Martha Graham.

SnarKassandra 50

suggest Tom’s “factoid” as a clue also ;->

G’morning!

Please excuse the prevthread OfT, but:
If anyone can stand it, Richard Cohen has a chat up right now at WaPoO. It’s moving quite slowly, as he sorts through the uncivil questions, I’m sure. But it might be fun.

Or just vomitorious.

D. Moore at 56 — As I said above, I’m working on it — only so many hours in my busy day of reading, writing, homekeeping, raising a 4 year old, wifing, cooking….

Biodun @ 9

Copland’s Appalachian Spring indeed!

Also, Fanfare for the Common Man!

Kudos to fellow Brooklynite Aaron Copeland, born into the new century in 1900!

It was great Spike Lee used Fanfare in the one-on-one basketball game in “He Got Game”.

Christy Hardin Smith @ 34

nomolos at 31 — Well, given that this was an op-ed piece and not a “call from the media,” I’d say that’s a bit harsh. Moynihan was a Clinton Administration official and, if I remember correctly, is related to the late Sen. Pat Moynihan.

It is now “fashionable” to be against the bushies and decry some of their actions so I do take these bits of punditry with a large heaping of salt. Where the hell were these people when it really counted like before the damned invasion, before the secret wire taps, before the ruination of the DOJ, before the kangaroo courts and when it became bloody obvious that cheney/bush were trampling the rights of the citizenry. Where were these people then? Doing the works of corporate media or just waiting until the blogosphere got the ball rolling so they would not have to be out front and take a stand?

I burned my draft card and handed it to an FBI agent on Boston Common forty years ago, I did not have to wait until Kent State before protesting, I did not wait until it became “fashionable” to protest. I had my head beaten in by cops and was chased by nixon’s dogs we did not wait until it was “OK” to protest, we did not need to have approval that it was now fashionable to protest. Nope, he can be the son of god for all I care he is still late to the party and I am still piss*d

Off Topic: I know Aunt Betsy sometimes watches CSpan stuff with y’all during the day. Is there anything today?

Ed*ard Teller @ 35:

This misspelling must be common. From wiki:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Aaron Copeland)

Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland (November 14, 1900 – December 2, 1990) was an American composer of concert and film music. Instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, he was widely known as “the dean of American composers.”

My bold. (And even the wiki link has it with an “e” [???])

Christy,

I just watched that section of the video of Hillary Clinton at TBA.

Byron York is a lying sack of shit.

-GSD

nomolos @ 61

Christy Hardin Smith @ 34

nomolos at 31 — Well, given that this was an op-ed piece and not a “call from the media,” I’d say that’s a bit harsh. Moynihan was a Clinton Administration official and, if I remember correctly, is related to the late Sen. Pat Moynihan.

It is now “fashionable” to be against the bushies and decry some of their actions so I do take these bits of punditry with a large heaping of salt. Where the hell were these people when it really counted like before the damned invasion, before the secret wire taps, before the ruination of the DOJ, before the kangaroo courts and when it became bloody obvious that cheney/bush were trampling the rights of the citizenry. Where were these people then? Doing the works of corporate media or just waiting until the blogosphere got the ball rolling so they would not have to be out front and take a stand?

I burned my draft card and handed it to an FBI agent on Boston Common forty years ago, I did not have to wait until Kent State before protesting, I did not wait until it became “fashionable” to protest. I had my head beaten in by cops and was chased by nixon’s dogs we did not wait until it was “OK” to protest, we did not need to have approval that it was now fashionable to protest. Nope, he can be the son of god for all I care he is still late to the party and I am still piss*d

Some of us had to wait until we got home from Vietnam to become engaged.

Biodun @ 63

Ed*ard Teller @ 35:

This misspelling must be common. From wiki:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Aaron Copeland)
Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland (November 14, 1900 – December 2, 1990) was an American composer of concert and film music. Instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, he was widely known as “the dean of American composers.”

My bold. (And even the wiki link has it with an “e” [???])

oh tee hee! good catch ;->

[epu’d from below. . .]

okay — gotta’ LOVE this!

libby’s actual application for
release pending appeals includes,
IN THE PDF, a linked-video snippet,
hosted at lawrence s. robbins’ lawfirm
website(!) — of andrea mitchell
dissembling on valerie plame wilson’s
“widely-known” covert status!

[it is about 20 seconds long. . .]

let’s help mr. robbins out, and
play his video over and over and
over, giving his servers a good
“running-in“, yeah?

i’ve set an embedded video link
right here — see above. . . it
should autostart if you have windows
media player — it is a 388.wmv
file at his website, in the sub-
directory called /pdf/388.wmv. . .

he he!

nolo at 67 (also a reprint from below) — I don’t think we should be in the business of trying to shut down someone else’s website. That is a two-way street and, frankly, I wouldn’t want someone trying to shut down FDL out of spite, either.

You write so well. Thank you for expressing this sentiment.

For years, Bush has already been framing for blame of his failures anyone who has opposed anything that he wanted.

As you express it, the problem will be, not to engage and fight the blame game, but to set things back on course to promote human rights and restoring our liberties.

Yikes. Sorry about reverting back to my old name — using a computer at work. Sorry. Don’t want to confuse or pi** off the mods.

scarecrow @ 36

Hugh — I assume you saw Gordon’s latest in the NYT — seems like another unthinking transcription.

I am not sure he is capable of writing anything else. Particularly irritating is his simplistic and false conflation of al Qaeda with the insurgency. The insurgency has many different and partially overlapping elements, shifting alliances, etc. Although the conflict has been going on for years, Gordon still hasn’t begun to sort them out. Since his reporting often regurgitates reflects the views of his handlers, this is troubling. It could indicate that they too hold this simplistic view, which means bad things for us and the Iraqis on so many levels.

D. Moore @ 56

Christy,
Alot of us were watching the Lawrence Tribe speech on CSPAN the other night during Late Night and several people missed most or part of it. Some folks don’t have CSPAN-3 or access to radio. Those of us who caught it were extremely impressed. I know that we would all love to see Boston’s transcription. I’ve been looking for a transcription of that speech and haven’t found one. Please, please, please?

Hear Hear on the Tribe speech, was excellent.

off topic — YEAY!!!!!!!!

Fired Wal-Mart pharmacist awarded $2M

PITTSFIELD, Mass. – A pharmacist who claimed she was fired by Wal-Mart after asking to be paid the same as her male colleagues has won a nearly $2 million award against the retail giant

A Berkshire Superior Court jury concluded Wal-Mart discriminated against Cynthia Haddad and awarded her nearly $1 million in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages Tuesday.

“It sends a message that you can’t treat people poorly because of who they are,” said David Belfort, Haddad’s attorney.

Wal-Mart’s attorneys didn’t comment after the verdict.

Haddad was fired in April 2004 after more than 10 years at a Wal-Mart store in Pittsfield.

She claimed in court that she was fired because she asked to be paid the same as her male counterparts, including a bonus given to pharmacy managers. The company paid the bonus, then fired her two weeks later.

Lawyers for the retailer said she was fired because she left the pharmacy unattended and allowed a technician to use her computer security code to issue prescriptions during her absence, including a fraudulent prescription for a painkiller.

Haddad’s lawyers argued that the prescription was filled 18 months before she was dismissed and without her knowledge, and that more severe infractions by male pharmacists went unpunished.

OK, as of 12:16 EST I’ve read Richard Cohen’s first three answers.

I believe that he will win the Nobel Prize for Physics,
for confirming the Anthropic Landscape String Theory.

Not only are there alternate universes, with their own laws of
causality and inference, but Richard Cohen lives in one.

OT – from Richard Cohen’s live chat at the WAPO going on now.

“This was a perjury trap — you set him up to ask a question that he almost had to lie about. Once you go past that point and lie to the grand jury, no one can support it, but you can understand the reason for the lie. In Libby’s case, I don’t know the reason for the crime. I don’t know whether or not he was telling the truth and simply forgot he leaked this information — it’s a remote possiblity but I don’t buy it. I don’t know if he was covering up for someone else’s political embarassment. But I don’t think that’s the same thing as actually committing a crime.”

Read it and Weep

Lovely Christy.
We’ve got lot of work ahead, and sometimes it seems like we may never get it done.
But after seeing that mob on stage last night, I am more encouraged than ever. They, and you, and so many others we’ve encountered in the ’sphere and beyond are out front. That’s reason to believe.

Demi @ 70

Yikes. Sorry about reverting back to my old name — using a computer at work. Sorry. Don’t want to confuse or pi** off the mods.

Don’t worry. We know it’s you.

SnarKassandra @ 50

Why is there so much quiet space in this? Does all music of this kind have pauses?

When I was about your age – the summer between 9th and 10th grade – I was visiting a friend and she pulled out a recording of Appalachian Spring and asked me if I could explain it to her. We sat on the floor, listening to the whole composition. I had just become familiar with it myself a few months before. She thought the quiet parts and silences were easier to understand than the leaps in the first fast section – where the violin part gets cool, as Adie noted above.

The work is a ballet, written for Martha Graham. It was the first huge success for Copland as a composer, and for Graham as choreographer. The subject is a Shaker wedding, and the quiet and silent parts are meant to reflect the simplicity of rural life in a devout community. It is far easier to understand when one sees the work as a ballet accompanied by chamber group than when one hears it in the far better known concert version for full orchestra in the video.

Christy Hardin Smith @ 59

D. Moore at 56 — As I said above, I’m working on it — only so many hours in my busy day of reading, writing, homekeeping, raising a 4 year old, wifing, cooking….

I read what you said, sorry to offend. I know from busy, but I’m on a job right now where I have some to to go and search; if I go and find it at Pull Up A Chair, may I copy it and share it tonight on Late Night?

raven @ 65

Some of us had to wait until we got home from Vietnam to become engaged.

Yeah they tried to send me there but I kept them in court (paid for by Ted Kennedy) until they gave up but I still had to do six years in the damn military even though I was an Irish citizen.

Very sorry you ended up in vietnam hell but I was not going to go there under any circumstances.

Ed*ard Teller @ 78

SnarKassandra @ 50

Why is there so much quiet space in this? Does all music of this kind have pauses?

When I was about your age – the summer between 9th and 10th grade – I was visiting a friend and she pulled out a recording of Appalachian Spring and asked me if I could explain it to her. We sat on the floor, listening to the whole composition. I had just become familiar with it myself a few months before. She thought the quiet parts and silences were easier to understand than the leaps in the first fast section – where the violin part gets cool, as Adie noted above.

The work is a ballet, written for Martha Graham. It was the first huge success for Copland as a composer, and for Graham as choreographer. The subject is a Shaker wedding, and the quiet and silent parts are meant to reflect the simplicity of rural life in a devout community. It is far easier to understand when one sees the work as a ballet accompanied by chamber group than when one hears it in the far better known concert version for full orchestra in the video.

OK Thanks. I can’t imagine any of my friends sitting and listening to music like that, just to understand it. But cool!

Cassy, these may be more “your” music. Good old Irish folk music!!
Same “tune” different interpretations!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P7yf0FY3iM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtB1tgpjIGY

Helen @ 75

OT – from Richard Cohen’s live chat at the WAPO going on now.

“This was a perjury trap — you set him up to ask a question that he almost had to lie about. Once you go past that point and lie to the grand jury, no one can support it, but you can understand the reason for the lie. In Libby’s case, I don’t know the reason for the crime. I don’t know whether or not he was telling the truth and simply forgot he leaked this information — it’s a remote possiblity but I don’t buy it. I don’t know if he was covering up for someone else’s political embarassment. But I don’t think that’s the same thing as actually committing a crime.”

For somebody who doesn’t know anything he sure seems eager to comment nonetheless.

nomolos @ 80

raven @ 65

Some of us had to wait until we got home from Vietnam to become engaged.

Yeah they tried to send me there but I kept them in court (paid for by Ted Kennedy) until they gave up but I still had to do six years in the damn military even though I was an Irish citizen.

Very sorry you ended up in vietnam hell but I was not going to go there under any circumstances.

Water under the bridge but people become aware and radicalized by different circumstances.

The Lurking Mod @ 77

Demi @ 70

Yikes. Sorry about reverting back to my old name — using a computer at work. Sorry. Don’t want to confuse or pi** off the mods.

Don’t worry. We know it’s you.

my mom had eyes in the back of her head, too

Woke up this morning with computer problems. All my bookmarks are gone..sigh.

Before I get booted off again, I want to point everyone this morning to Democracy Now. Amy Goodman interview Josh Rushin, who has written a book about Al Jaz***ra. Anyway, he describes that when he was in the marines, leading up to the Iraq war, that there was a Republican operative, instead of a colonel telling the marines the Republican talking points to tell the media. Please go read the transcript. The operative is named in the interview. It all ties into everything. There might be “something” there, there to follow-up on to nail these people.

Helen @ 75

OT – from Richard Cohen’s live chat at the WAPO going on now.

“This was a perjury trap — you set him up to ask a question that he almost had to lie about. Once you go past that point and lie to the grand jury, no one can support it, but you can understand the reason for the lie. In Libby’s case, I don’t know the reason for the crime. I don’t know whether or not he was telling the truth and simply forgot he leaked this information — it’s a remote possiblity but I don’t buy it. I don’t know if he was covering up for someone else’s political embarassment. But I don’t think that’s the same thing as actually committing a crime.”

Read it and Weep

Good God! Even Richard Cohen has fallen for Copland today. Cohen’s playing his rendition of Hoedown!

diogenes @ 54

The Founders called usurping the Constitution treason.

It still is.

I agree that subversion of the Constitution is the only real treason..The Founders, however, didn’t put that in the Constitution..treason is limited to “levying war” or giving “aid and comfort”. Maybe we need a new amendment to the Constitution.

Sounds like Cohen isn’t pleased to be doing this chatz….

Let me just say that I put my name on my column, so I don’t even know why I’m responding to someone without a name, but since I’m answering to other people, I’ll say that the ability of the press to ferret out information and use anonymous sources and to guarauntee to those sources that they’ll remain convidential has been shredded by this case.

dear mods.

Apologies. I see i double-posted above.

With the new format, is there any way of editing one’s post, or is that an obsolete function (short of laboriously quoting, then manually removing each ‘extra’ quote command)?

Just wondering… Thanks. ;->

Also the best way to avoid a perjury trap is to tell the truth.

It has been said many times, Libby lied. All he needed to do a la Abu Gonzales was not remember but he didn’t. He created a complicated lie that could be and was contradicted by everyone else.

Richard Cohen is completely worthless and is well on his way like Broder to becoming a laughingstock.

Ah. I love this movement by Copland so much. My daughter learned it this spring for her school’s orchestral competition; I think I know the viola and violin parts by heart now. Thanks, Christy.

SnarKassandra @ 81

OK Thanks. I can’t imagine any of my friends sitting and listening to music like that, just to understand it. But cool!

You might be surprised. Music is a universal language. Maybe 1 in a few hundred can hear it, but once they hear it they won’t really care what anyone else thinks about it.

JeffinBerlin @ 82

Cassy, these may be more “your” music. Good old Irish folk music!!
Same “tune” different interpretations!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P7yf0FY3iM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtB1tgpjIGY

I like the first one for the music and singing and the second one for the dancing!

sanc•ti•mon•i•ous piece of s**t, n. , as in

Richard Cohen: No. I didn’t mean to minimize it, I just meant to write in shorthand because it’s a column and I have a maximum amount of words. But the special prosecutor knew immediately who leaked to Novak — and it wasn’t Libby. Let me just say that I put my name on my column, so I don’t even know why I’m responding to someone without a name, but since I’m answering to other people, I’ll say that the ability of the press to ferret out information and use anonymous sources and to guarauntee to those sources that they’ll remain convidential has been shredded by this case. Reporter after reporter was compelled to give up their sources. This has been a very bad case for the American press and for the American public and it’s all about nothing. A leak. And I think the people who were pressuring the DoJ to appoint a special prosecutor were angry about the war and were hoping pulling the string could unravel the whole thing. They lost sight of the basic principles involved taht had to do with the ability of the press to cover a story. You had the jailing of a reporter and now the jailing of a White House aide that almost no one had heard of before this started.

TeddySanFran @ 89

Sounds like Cohen isn’t pleased to be doing this chatz….

Let me just say that I put my name on my column, so I don’t even know why I’m responding to someone without a name, but since I’m answering to other people, I’ll say that the ability of the press to ferret out information and use anonymous sources and to guarauntee to those sources that they’ll remain convidential has been shredded by this case.

exactly. I mean, why is he even bothering?

Christy Hardin Smith @ 68

nolo at 67 (also a reprint from below) — I don’t think we should be in the business of trying to shut down someone else’s website. That is a two-way street and, frankly, I wouldn’t want someone trying to shut down FDL out of spite, either.

sorry CHS — i am not looking to
shut it down, just increase his traffic.

it seems — like much of his filing — to
be a pure PR, rather than legal points and
authorities, play-to-the-media. . .

so, i’ll indulge his proclivities. . .

feel free to delete mine if it offends. . .

i mean no harm to him, or this fine website — FDL.

but, as i say — feel free to delete it.

my apologies.

sincerely,

– nolo

TeddySanFran @ 89

Sounds like Cohen isn’t pleased to be doing this chatz….

Let me just say that I put my name on my column, so I don’t even know why I’m responding to someone without a name, but since I’m answering to other people, I’ll say that the ability of the press to ferret out information and use anonymous sources and to guarauntee to those sources that they’ll remain convidential has been shredded by this case.

Cohen mocks the anonymity of webnames and then goes on to stress the importance of anonymous sources.

There must be a pith with his brain DNA on it somewhere in Dr. Cheney’s lair.

-GSD

TeddySanFran @ 89

Sounds like Cohen isn’t pleased to be doing this chatz….

Let me just say that I put my name on my column, so I don’t even know why I’m responding to someone without a name, but since I’m answering to other people, I’ll say that the ability of the press to ferret out information and use anonymous sources and to guarauntee to those sources that they’ll remain convidential has been shredded by this case.

Not to worry, Richy, your version of suck up access journalism is still very much alive and well or you would be out of a job.

Mr. Cohen ought to know by now that Libby could have either (a) been honest or (b) taken the 5th. The very same rights afforded to every person under investigation in every criminal case. That Libby chose (c) lying, both to federal investigators and under oath to a grand jury means that he committed crimes, for which he was charged, convicted by a jury of his peers and sentenced by a federal judge — just like every other criminal defendant so charged and convicted.

And Cohen’s problem with our nation’s justice system as it normally functions is…what, exactly? That people like Scooter Libby are held to account under the law just like everyone else?

oddmommy @ 96

TeddySanFran @ 89

Sounds like Cohen isn’t pleased to be doing this chatz….

exactly. I mean, why is he even bothering?

I Think I figured out what sanc•ti•mon•i•ous means :)

SnarKassandra @ 81

Ed*ard Teller @ 78

When I was about your age – the summer between 9th and 10th grade – I was visiting a friend and she pulled out a recording of Appalachian Spring and asked me if I could explain it to her. We sat on the floor, listening to the whole composition. I had just become familiar with it myself a few months before. She thought the quiet parts and silences were easier to understand than the leaps in the first fast section – where the violin part gets cool, as Adie noted above.

The work is a ballet, written for Martha Graham. It was the first huge success for Copland as a composer, and for Graham as choreographer. The subject is a Shaker wedding, and the quiet and silent parts are meant to reflect the simplicity of rural life in a devout community. It is far easier to understand when one sees the work as a ballet accompanied by chamber group than when one hears it in the far better known concert version for full orchestra in the video.

OK Thanks. I can’t imagine any of my friends sitting and listening to music like that, just to understand it. But cool!

whoever mentioned turning up volume might have a point also. there are some lovely solos in the piece (oboe in particular), that might not be heard well at all, depending on the recording skills, or lack thereof, of those who positioned the mikes during the performance, etc.

“AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the kind of information that was presented at CENTCOM and how you were feeling as someone in the Marines who was part of shaping that message, and how you changed along the way.

JOSH RUSHING: Yeah, no. This part was really rough for me, because as a military spokesperson, you don’t talk about policy. You talk about the way you’re going to conduct an action, not why you’re going to conduct an action. So if someone were to ask me before the war, “Why are you going to invade Iraq?” — and reporters did — the only honest answer I could give is, “We’ll invade Iraq if the President orders us to. And we won’t if he doesn’t. We don’t get to pick and choose our battles.” That way, it’s left to a politician in a suit behind a podium at the White House to explain why they made that decision.

But instead, what we did, we had a Republican operative who was put in charge of our office, displacing a colonel that had started doing media liaison when this Republican operative was about probably five years old. And what this guy knew how to do was run a campaign, and so we were run like a political campaign. And the first step in that political campaign was to sell the product, and that was sell the invasion. So they gave the reasons down to the young troops, guys like me, to go out to reporters and give the reasons we’re going to invade a sovereign nation.”

I think Cohen needs some lessons from Joe Klein on how this internets thingy works.

For the record, Copland wrote Appalchian Spring as music for Katherine Graham’s dance performance of the same name. I enountered the piece while in high school and played it constantly. The main theme in the piece is an Ameridan traditional, “The Plough that Broke the Plain.” It is a quintessentially American work written by a homosexual Jew from Brooklyn.

Now, my son says that Copland is his favorite American composer. Must be in the genes.

TeddySanFran @ 89

Sounds like Cohen isn’t pleased to be doing this chatz….

Let me just say that I put my name on my column, so I don’t even know why I’m responding to someone without a name, but since I’m answering to other people, I’ll say that the ability of the press to ferret out information and use anonymous sources and to guarauntee to those sources that they’ll remain convidential has been shredded by this case.

that’s laugh out loud funny

“JOSH RUSHING: Jim Wilkinson is the Republican operative I was talking about. He’s a guy that — he’s about my age. He’s from a small town in Texas. Again, I don’t believe he’s a bad guy. I just — I disagree with what he was ordered to do, what he volunteered to do. He worked in Dick Armey’s office. He is credited with coming up with a line about Gore having invented the internet. That was Jim’s work.

Then, in the 2000 elections, he was in charge of the media down in the Florida recount, where there was one point where the Dade County voting board was going to recount the ballots down there. The Republicans didn’t want them to recount it until a decision had been made by the courts, and so they stormed the office. The office had to shut down, couldn’t do the recount. It was Jim in the press — you can go back and look at the articles — who says it was just a moment where a bunch of Americans felt the voting process was being taken away from them, and so, you know, they got a little over-emotional, and that’s what happened. But if you actually look at the pictures, it’s called the “Brooks Brothers Riot” these days, because everyone in the picture, the rioters, are all in bowties and nice suits [inaudible]. They’re young, twenty-something, blond hair. And if you start to kind of circle the faces and identify them, they’re all congressional staffers, Republican congressional staffers. But if that was an organized event, it would be illegal. It would be voter intimidation. So — moving them across state lines to perform that kind of thing, because they were all out of Washington, D.C. So that’s why Jim was in the press saying, “Oh, you know, this wasn’t organized. These were just emotional people who felt the system was being taken from their grasp.”

AMY GOODMAN: So it was this party operative, Republican Party operative –

JOSH RUSHING: That was Jim Wilkinson.

AMY GOODMAN: — that was designing –

JOSH RUSHING: Yeah, designed the whole thing.

AMY GOODMAN: — that was setting the scene at CENTCOM.

JOSH RUSHING: Yeah. He did so well there down in Florida, the next place he pops up is September 14, 2001, right here in New York, where he hands the bullhorn to President Bush, for Bush to tell the workers at Ground Zero that “I hear you, and soon the world will hear you.” And it’s a huge media event, and that, again, was Wilkinson. Wilkinson goes from there to CENTCOM.”

demi at 79 — If I recall, the session with Tribe was rather long, so that would be one huge comment — which would be a great big drag on the servers. I’d prefer to take a peek at it myself as I get time and proceed from there if everyone can please just be a bit patient. Thanks!

allan_in_upstate @ 74

OK, as of 12:16 EST I’ve read Richard Cohen’s first three answers.

I believe that he will win the Nobel Prize for Physics,
for confirming the Anthropic Landscape String Theory.

Not only are there alternate universes, with their own laws of
causality and inference, but Richard Cohen lives in one.

Cohen’s live chat is infuriating. Full of self-serving lies, inaccuracies, and hypocracy. “Politics as usual in Washington, everybody does it, whoever heard of Scooter?… no underlyng crime…terrible for anonymous sources…”

‘Scuse me while my head explodes.

btw, gang, I hear that C-Span3 will be covering the McNulty testimony. Just FYI.

If you watch the film “Control Room” you get to see Josh Rushing evolving before your eyes.

From a Rove-spin spouting Bush-bot to a man questioning what he is doing by spewing forth such tripe.

Very worthwhile to see.

-GSD

GSD @ 98

Cohen mocks the anonymity of webnames and then goes on to stress the importance of anonymous sources.

He did it all in the same sentence! Granted, it was an awkward and badly-constructed sentence, but it’s still impressive.

If it’s simply a question of “did Vice President Cheney set out to destroy the credibilty of Joe Wilson” that may be a bad act, but it’s not a crime. Did they proceed knowing that his wife was a covert CIA agent? Maybe, but taht turns out not to be a crime either.

****************

What I meant is that there are unsavory aspects to politics — as there are to almost anything else — and you just have to accept it.

I guess what he’s defending is that they’re ALL corrupt, they ALL do it, so we just have to accept it . . . but the world should still look to us for moral guidance and leadership.

I WAS eating lunch but the “baloney” sandwich I was eating (and the one I just read) don’t taste so good any more.

Ed*ard Teller @ 78

SnarKassandra @ 50

Why is there so much quiet space in this? Does all music of this kind have pauses?

When I was about your age – the summer between 9th and 10th grade – I was visiting a friend and she pulled out a recording of Appalachian Spring and asked me if I could explain it to her. We sat on the floor, listening to the whole composition. I had just become familiar with it myself a few months before. She thought the quiet parts and silences were easier to understand than the leaps in the first fast section – where the violin part gets cool, as Adie noted above.

The work is a ballet, written for Martha Graham. It was the first huge success for Copland as a composer, and for Graham as choreographer. The subject is a Shaker wedding, and the quiet and silent parts are meant to reflect the simplicity of rural life in a devout community. It is far easier to understand when one sees the work as a ballet accompanied by chamber group than when one hears it in the far better known concert version for full orchestra in the video.

Got to hit the road to work now, but here are the lyrics to the Shaker song that opens the Copland clip above:

Words to “Simple Gifts”- 1848

mc @ 109

allan_in_upstate @ 74

OK, as of 12:16 EST I’ve read Richard Cohen’s first three answers.

I believe that he will win the Nobel Prize for Physics,
for confirming the Anthropic Landscape String Theory.

Not only are there alternate universes, with their own laws of
causality and inference, but Richard Cohen lives in one.

Cohen’s live chat is infuriating. Full of self-serving lies, inaccuracies, and hypocracy. “Politics as usual in Washington, everybody does it, whoever heard of Scooter?… no underlyng crime…terrible for anonymous sources…”

‘Scuse me while my head explodes.

Cohen’s is the head that’s exploding. His last answer just degenerated into spluttering gibberish.

Bearpaw @ 112

GSD @ 98

Cohen mocks the anonymity of webnames and then goes on to stress the importance of anonymous sources.

He did it all in the same sentence! Granted, it was an awkward and badly-constructed sentence, but it’s still impressive.

The Cohenian dialectic.

dreamcatcher @ 105

For the record, Copland wrote Appalchian Spring as music for Katherine Graham’s dance performance of the same name. I enountered the piece while in high school and played it constantly. The main theme in the piece is an Ameridan traditional, “The Plough that Broke the Plain.” It is a quintessentially American work written by a homosexual Jew from Brooklyn.

Now, my son says that Copland is his favorite American composer. Must be in the genes.

OOOPS! I mean Martha Graham. Katherine was of course the doyenne of WaPo.

Marie Roget @ 114

Got to hit the road to work now, but here are the lyrics to the Shaker song that opens the Copland clip above:

Words to “Simple Gifts”- 1848

Hands to work and hearts to God.

Christy Hardin Smith @ 110

btw, gang, I hear that C-Span3 will be covering the McNulty testimony. Just FYI.

Thanks for the heads up, Christy. I’ll surely be watching.

GordonM @ 93

SnarKassandra @ 81

OK Thanks. I can’t imagine any of my friends sitting and listening to music like that, just to understand it. But cool!

You might be surprised. Music is a universal language. Maybe 1 in a few hundred can hear it, but once they hear it they won’t really care what anyone else thinks about it.

Yep! Go to an outdoor summer performance in casual setting, sometime. Watch the uninhibited reactions of the little kids. Universal language indeed!

Music is also becoming more and more valued for its amazing positive effects in therapy, whether trauma, autism, senile dementia, simple need for relaxation & relief from stress…

Ask a musician, sometime, what it’s like for them to be performing. ;->

Ed*ard Teller @ 78

SnarKassandra @ 50

Why is there so much quiet space in this? Does all music of this kind have pauses?

When I was about your age – the summer between 9th and 10th grade – I was visiting a friend and she pulled out a recording of Appalachian Spring and asked me if I could explain it to her. We sat on the floor, listening to the whole composition. I had just become familiar with it myself a few months before. She thought the quiet parts and silences were easier to understand than the leaps in the first fast section – where the violin part gets cool, as Adie noted above.

The work is a ballet, written for Martha Graham. It was the first huge success for Copland as a composer, and for Graham as choreographer. The subject is a Shaker wedding, and the quiet and silent parts are meant to reflect the simplicity of rural life in a devout community. It is far easier to understand when one sees the work as a ballet accompanied by chamber group than when one hears it in the far better known concert version for full orchestra in the video.

Nice work explaining this, ET. I think it would be important for a young person to consider watching this piece played by an ensemble or orchestra, too, as the parts that seem quiet are really not as much as they are restrained and pared down to utter simplicity, an economy that marks real artistry. One need not even see the ballet to experience that conveyed in the spareness and control in the piece. Hence the title of this movement, Simple Gifts.

Adie @ 120

GordonM @ 93

You might be surprised. Music is a universal language. Maybe 1 in a few hundred can hear it, but once they hear it they won’t really care what anyone else thinks about it.

Yep! Go to an outdoor summer performance in casual setting, sometime. Watch the uninhibited reactions of the little kids. Universal language indeed!

Music is also becoming more and more valued for its amazing positive effects in therapy, whether trauma, autism, senile dementia, simple need for relaxation & relief from stress…

Ask a musician, sometime, what it’s like for them to be performing. ;->

My boyfriend plays clarinet in the school band but I know some pro musicians also.

Look at Oklahoma!!!!!!! What kind of storm IS this? The red part was in Central Texas 2 hours ago.

Christy, Your Cohen piece yesterday was excellent. Such a silly tapdance Cohen is performing right now. Its guys like Cohen who give liberals a bad name. How I wish Cohen and the rest of the so-called liberal media could be correctly branded in the eyes of the public. They are simply fops and tools of the Corporatocracy. Cohen can make a neocon proud with his liberal application of Karl Rove talking points in his answers.

So when will Richard Cohen start railing against “All you young whippersnappers don’t know anything. We had real journalists back in my day. Whenever that was, my memory’s not so good, but Harding or was it Coolidge, now there was a man. How long until my lunch anyway and can I have some of those nice wienies. I really like the wienies and that young guy, Bob Barker.”?

What a bright shiny dildo this Cohen character is. He says on one hand that the Cheney office was intent on scuttling Wilson and then goes on to allege that the exposure of Valerie Wilson was an accident.

Sad.

-GSD

ok, now Cohen is blaming Joe Wilson for Valerie being outed. This is really too much even for me.

Sometimes, like today, when I read Christy, I imagine her standing in front of us, telling us like it is. And then I’m not really reading as much as listening.

No country had a stronger system of checks and balances. In no country was freedom so central to individual identity or civic institutions so deeply rooted. Wealth was comparatively widely distributed and a belief in fairness ruled. Yet each of these assets has been taxed.With the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as its excuse and using fear as its political currency, a clique around President Bush appropriated an unprecedented level of control over the levers of power.

I think Moynihan misses the moment when the principles of checks and balances began to shift. That was the moment when SCOTUS decided Bush v Gore and stopped the Florida vote count. At that moment, the authoritarians knew that they could take control with nary a whimper from the media, thus marginalizing those who insisted in the right of the people to their voice. Fairness ruled no more.

Silly me — totally unaware that event was a verb, and a transitive verb at that!!

Boston MA: If Bush felt he needed to respond to Wilson, why not do it openly, on-the-record, based on the merits?

Richard Cohen: Good question. I’m not sure Bush was involved in this at all, but in general I agree. We in the press have been too willing to allow people to abuse confidentiality for political reasons to attack. And I don’t think we should permit it, but believe me, Dick Cheney didn’t event this.

wtf?

does event = do?

oh, oh, oh — he means invent

dreamcatcher @ 105

For the record, Copland wrote Appalchian Spring as music for Katherine Graham’s dance performance of the same name. I enountered the piece while in high school and played it constantly. The main theme in the piece is an Ameridan traditional, “The Plough that Broke the Plain.” It is a quintessentially American work written by a homosexual Jew from Brooklyn.

It’s worth noting that “The Plough that Broke the Plains” was scored by Virgil Thomas for a documentary film of the same name, produced in the 1930’s and covering the human behavior that triggered the great dust storms. Available from Netflix on the DVD “Our Daily Bread & Other Films of the Great Depression”, and well worth watching. I recommend watching it after watching (and/or reading) “The Grapes of Wrath”.

Ralph Kramden @ 129

No country had a stronger system of checks and balances. In no country was freedom so central to individual identity or civic institutions so deeply rooted. Wealth was comparatively widely distributed and a belief in fairness ruled. Yet each of these assets has been taxed.With the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as its excuse and using fear as its political currency, a clique around President Bush appropriated an unprecedented level of control over the levers of power.

I think Moynihan misses the moment when the principles of checks and balances began to shift. That was the moment when SCOTUS decided Bush v Gore and stopped the Florida vote count. At that moment, the authoritarians knew that they could take control with nary a whimper from the media, thus marginalizing those who insisted in the right of the people to their voice. Fairness ruled no more.

I gotta say, it is funny to imagine the “real” Ralph Kramden making such a comment.

Did Cohen’s wife send him on a junket (to Dumph*ckistan)?

What prominent Washington pundit wrote:

And I don’t think we should permit it, but believe me, Dick Cheney didn’t event this.

?

My cat could write a better column than Richard Cohen.

SnarKassandra @ 123

Look at Oklahoma!!!!!!! What kind of storm IS this? The red part was in Central Texas 2 hours ago.

I noticed it earlier westward of there, & could hardly believe the solid block of nasty red-orange storm.

It’s truly awful looking, folks. Anyone with friends & relations there and eastward might want to give ‘em a heads-up, seriously!

SnarKassandra @ 123

Look at Oklahoma!!!!!!! What kind of storm IS this? The red part was in Central Texas 2 hours ago.

For lack of a better description, it looks like an inland hurricane. Better keep an eye on the weather, Cassie, doesn’t look at all stable in the Plains.

Going to let the kids check the Weather Channel for this just because it’s so spectacular (they’re not allowed to watch TV otherwise during the day).

oddmommy @ 115

Cohen’s is the head that’s exploding. His last answer just degenerated into spluttering gibberish.

Cohen the Blurbarian

Mutant Poodle @ 15

The fact that the walls of the Constitution can be breached can never be un-done. The sick feeling that I have is that, with a Dem President and Congressional majorities after 01/20/09, the theme will be “heal the country and move on”. The criminals will escape justice and the Rule of Law will be further subverted. As with Watergate and Iran-Contra, the evil will go to ground and will resurface with increased virulence in the future.

I am so afraid of one of those ‘let the healing begin’ moments. We are dealing with a lethal virus. If we don not kill it *dead-dead-dead* it will mutate into something that is immune to all our checks and balances and oversight.

“What does not kill [them] makes [them] stronger.”

Cohen said this, he actually, honest to dog said this:

Look, the public has a right to know and a right to honest public officials, but we recognize there has to be some area of gray, and you shouldn’t permit prosecutors to prosecute everything that is technically or actually a crime.

Cassie @ 62

I’m watching Senator Clinton hold a presser in the hearing room following her hearing on 9/11 contamination in NY. It’s on CSpan3 … should go on for a bit yet. And McNulty’s up later today on the DOJ Attorneys scandal.

Copland is great! Loved him since I was a kid and my parents played his stuff. True Americana.

hi punaise!

My understanding of it is that a covert agent — in order for you to commit a crime by exposing a CIA agent, they had to be stationed overseas in a covert position,

Shorter Richard Cohen: I think Vicky T. is hot.

allan_in_upstate @ 134

What prominent Washington pundit wrote:

And I don’t think we should permit it, but believe me, Dick Cheney didn’t event this.

?

My cat could write a better column than Richard Cohen.

Listen to me now or hear me later, Believe me and make no mistake, Dick Cheney didn’t emit this.

hackworth @ 124

Christy, Your Cohen piece yesterday was excellent. Such a silly tapdance Cohen is performing right now. Its guys like Cohen who give liberals a bad name.

I stopped thinking of Richard Cohen as a liberal back in the first Clinton administration. Can’t remember what set me off, but it was an attack timed for maximum effect to help the GOP prior to their takeover of Congress in the ‘94 elections.

new thread

allan @ 95

Based on his own words, it seems to me that at least some of Cohen’s stupidity is motivated by the idea that the Libby affair has been an attack on reporters and their sources. And I wonder how many in the media are being driven by this unfounded, mis-placed personal, emotional reaction?

washington dc: Did you favor Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon?

Richard Cohen: No. I didn’t, in the first place, Nixon had been indicted…..

I asked Cohen if he just makes stuff up. Nixon was an unindicted co-conspirator who had not yet been impeached by the House.

TeddySanFran @ 141

hi punaise!

backatcha!

allan_in_upstate @ 95

Richard Cohen: …
You had the jailing of a reporter and now the jailing of a White House aide that almost no one had heard of before this started.

Translation: Assistants who are ordered by Very Important People to break the law shouldn’t have their crimes investigated because no one has ever heard of them, and Very Important People who everyone has heard of shouldn’t have their crimes investigated because it’s obviously a witch hunt.

So that means only people who have no connection to Very Important People should have their crimes investigated. QED.

“Equal Justice Under Law” is just a pretty slogan, I guess.

Rayne @ 136

SnarKassandra @ 123

Look at Oklahoma!!!!!!! What kind of storm IS this? The red part was in Central Texas 2 hours ago.

For lack of a better description, it looks like an inland hurricane. Better keep an eye on the weather, Cassie, doesn’t look at all stable in the Plains.

Going to let the kids check the Weather Channel for this just because it’s so spectacular (they’re not allowed to watch TV otherwise during the day).

Infrared satellite shots are not predictors of storms, they’re representations of the clouds altitude and temperatures.

FYI-Robbins law firm has a pdf version of what they apparently plan to file with the court. There’s nothing on PACER yet, but click on the link and scroll down to United States vs. Libby.

It’s 122 page file.

Wait…maybe it’s not really Richard Cohen at all.

The real RC is bound and gagged in Fred Hiatt’s closet,
and Barbara Comstock is the one actually answering the questions.

Someone had better call 911.

Bearpaw @ 131

dreamcatcher @ 105

For the record, Copland wrote Appalchian Spring as music for Katherine Graham’s dance performance of the same name. I enountered the piece while in high school and played it constantly. The main theme in the piece is an Ameridan traditional, “The Plough that Broke the Plain.” It is a quintessentially American work written by a homosexual Jew from Brooklyn.

It’s worth noting that “The Plough that Broke the Plains” was scored by Virgil Thomas for a documentary film of the same name, produced in the 1930’s and covering the human behavior that triggered the great dust storms. Available from Netflix on the DVD “Our Daily Bread & Other Films of the Great Depression”, and well worth watching. I recommend watching it after watching (and/or reading) “The Grapes of Wrath”.

My synapses short-circuited again. Copland’s folk theme is of course “Simple Gifts,” and I believe Thompson used the same theme in “The Plough…”

Part of Richard Cohen’s answer to a question on line:

“As I wrote in a column, I’m not even sure I’d like to see Scooter Libby pardoned so that there’s no consequence for what he did — although he’s spent every cent he’s had on legal fees and not slept for eight months — but I think the sentence is excessive, particularly without an underlying crime…. When, as I keep going back to over and over again, you ask yourself if Scooter Libby was lying — about what? About not much.”

So Cohen knows that Libby is spending down his own money and not sleeping nights?? And he was lying about “not much?” It is infuriating that this self-righteous, incurious, uninformed hack has a platform of any kind, never mind the prime real estate he inhabits in the WaPo.

These are Moynihan’s opening sentences:

…”America began the 21st century with freshly burnished democratic credentials from its support of democratic transitions abroad and the world’s strongest democracy at home. No country had a stronger system of checks and balances. In no country was freedom so central to individual identity or civic institutions so deeply rooted.”

Many of us who have come here, or back here after many years abroad, know that all three sentences are just not true, that most Americans just do not know what they do not know.

Sentence 1.
The US is not a democracy but a plutocracy normally, at the moment an oligarchy. The endless mantra “democracy” has about as much meaning as Erich Honeker’s German Democratic Republic. Until there are fixed limits as to how much may be spent on getting elected, and until the bribery called “lobbying” is stopped, until tens of thousands are permitted to be appointed by each incoming, administration, until te various levels of judiciary are not appointed politically, until electoral boundaries cease to be jerrymandered, until elections cannot be rigged, there will be no democracy.

Sentence 2.
If “no country had a stronger system of checks and balances”, how come it has been so easy for GW Bush/Cheney/Rove to ignore them, unchallenged by any controlling authority.

Sentence 3.
A large number of us coming here from experience and time in Western Europe consider the US to be a police state. Ladies and gentlemen, it just is not true that “….freedom so central to individual identity or civic institutions so deeply rooted.” A really baby example is that I am required by law to keep my dog on a leash. In free countries I do not, and I am jumped on by the law if my dog is unruly. So the freedom comes first, and the sanction follows if I break the rules. I was walking a dog with her 75 year-old owner at 6am in LA/Hollywood: the only other people there were also walking their dogs. A “park ranger” drove her truck at great speed across the grass, leapt out with her hand on her gun (Why would such people wear that?) and threatened the assembled Hollywood luminaries for not having a). their dogs on leashes, and b). if they were not carrying personal identification she threatened them wit arrest.

Freedom?

LS, this if fascinating. Please keep the info flowing! Thank you.

maunga@155:

Your comment is an eye-opener. I would like to read more of your perspective.

you know there’s a huge issuen we are being faced with…I predicted this a short while ago too;

the more we expose the depravity of these people the more brazen they become

they feel like they have less and less time to accomplish their goal and they have less and less to loose

look at torutre…the American public has somehow begun to accept torture as some kind of tool that works (it doesn’t work but Americans are convinced it does)

look at abu gonzales…clearly a liar, clearly using his position to steal whatever the administration can steal, and in the face of more and more depravity he enjoys stronger and stronger support

look at libby…this man is clearly a traitor, he clearly exposed vital national secrets at our nations peril, he clearly is covering up the tracks of other traitors and it’s becomming acceptable to actually consider a friggin pardon!

look at war…this president clearly lied us into war and is somehow able to lie more to begin a new war on a new front in Iran

look at the world trade center…we know as a fact the president was given presice intel informing him of the attack certain to come…intel this precise is almost impossible to aquire…he actually stood down even though there was a successfull template to follow he did none of it…yet even though the public knows these facts he can still act as if he defends this country

look at the economy…we know as a fact the president has given middle class investments aquired over generations to people so wealthy they will never ever spend it…yet the president coninues his tax giveaway programs and continues to claim they are working

look at our military…general after general has informed the public the president has destroyed the armed forces of this nation, has squandered the assets and reduced it’s ability to dangerous levels…we know as a fact the president did exactly the oposite of the military advice given…yet the president is able to claim he is strengthening our security

we are told he has increased the amount of terrorists exponentially yet he continues to claim he is fighting terrorism

the list goes on and on…the more he is exosed the more brazen he becomes.

what is left for us?

who would have possibly guessed how much damage we would uncover when we won the majority, if even one of the things this president did were exposed of a democrat the press would have had that persons head…yet we are helpless

the more they are exposed the more brazen they become

we have to do something, we have to start talking to the republicans and deal, we have to stop what is happening to this country, America can’t wait, the world can’t wait

perris @ 158

you know there’s a huge issuen we are being faced with…I predicted this a short while ago too;

the more we expose the depravity of these people the more brazen they become

they feel like they have less and less time to accomplish their goal and they have less and less to loose

look at torutre…the American public has somehow begun to accept torture as some kind of tool that works (it doesn’t work but Americans are convinced it does)

look at abu gonzales…clearly a liar, clearly using his position to steal whatever the administration can steal, and in the face of more and more depravity he enjoys stronger and stronger support

look at libby…this man is clearly a traitor, he clearly exposed vital national secrets at our nations peril, he clearly is covering up the tracks of other traitors and it’s becomming acceptable to actually consider a friggin pardon!

look at war…this president clearly lied us into war and is somehow able to lie more to begin a new war on a new front in Iran

look at the world trade center…we know as a fact the president was given presice intel informing him of the attack certain to come…intel this precise is almost impossible to aquire…he actually stood down even though there was a successfull template to follow he did none of it…yet even though the public knows these facts he can still act as if he defends this country

look at the economy…we know as a fact the president has given middle class investments aquired over generations to people so wealthy they will never ever spend it…yet the president coninues his tax giveaway programs and continues to claim they are working

look at our military…general after general has informed the public the president has destroyed the armed forces of this nation, has squandered the assets and reduced it’s ability to dangerous levels…we know as a fact the president did exactly the oposite of the military advice given…yet the president is able to claim he is strengthening our security

we are told he has increased the amount of terrorists exponentially yet he continues to claim he is fighting terrorism

the list goes on and on…the more he is exosed the more brazen he becomes.

what is left for us?

who would have possibly guessed how much damage we would uncover when we won the majority, if even one of the things this president did were exposed of a democrat the press would have had that persons head…yet we are helpless

the more they are exposed the more brazen they become

we have to do something, we have to start talking to the republicans and deal, we have to stop what is happening to this country, America can’t wait, the world can’t wait

Wow. That was so concise it’s scary. Really scary.

minor point- That video clip was the end of Appalachian Spring, not the first and second movements. (just in case you ever go to a concert and expect to hear that at the start of the piece) Lovely. Thanks for posting it!

“To this day, I stop whenever I hear Copland and smile – such a wonderful composer, and so gifted at incorporating American folk idioms into his work.”

Aaron Copeland: the Norman Rockwell of symphonic composition.

SnarKassandra @ 10

Where do we stand? I am SO there!

Thanks, Cassie, for being here, and being aware! –and for your efforts to provide your peers with a way to become involved, at least in thinking about these issues at your website. Did you watch the video of Digby’s speech yesterday?

Bob in HI

HotFlash @ 138

Mutant Poodle @ 15

The fact that the walls of the Constitution can be breached can never be un-done. The sick feeling that I have is that, with a Dem President and Congressional majorities after 01/20/09, the theme will be “heal the country and move on”. The criminals will escape justice and the Rule of Law will be further subverted. As with Watergate and Iran-Contra, the evil will go to ground and will resurface with increased virulence in the future.

I am so afraid of one of those ‘let the healing begin’ moments. We are dealing with a lethal virus. If we don not kill it *dead-dead-dead* it will mutate into something that is immune to all our checks and balances and oversight.

“What does not kill [them] makes [them] stronger.”

Don’t suppose the penalty for treson is what it is, the only sure antidote for those infected with the virus. Bullets can’t stop an idea, they do stop minds that carry virulent ideas and stop the direct spread of the contagon.

I trace the decline of this country back to the Kennedy assasination when a laughable cover story carried the day and there was nothing anyone could do about it. 9-11 was more of the same. Lots of loose ends. According to Michael Moore the Pentagon is surrounded by video cameras photographing everything, but no camera that anyone knows of caught the plane crash.

As for Libby’s emergency appeal, the discussion reveals an interesting dichotomy. On the one hand there is belief in the rule of law and precedent (emergency appeals are rarely granted). On the other we have all the criticism of the little man in the White House who does what he pleases and the law be damned. For what it’s worth, we have always had a rule of men (and increasingly women) not law. It’s not like precedent is never overruled.

But Christy’s post, a call to arms, mostly brought comments about Arron Copland or Copeland, not about things we can do as we await 2008. Somehow we have to motivate Congress, something more than writing letters, something involving the internet and great numbers of people. We should start talking about that and leave Aaron Copland or Copeland to the musicologists.

Mutant Poodle @ 15

We cannot wait for someone else to act on our behalf. We must do this work ourselves, and we must begin now.

I’m game. Perhaps it’s time for a Democracy/Constitutional renewal event – would next spring’s equinox be a good time?

Asking your Senator to support Sen. Dodd’s bill, “Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007”.

That would be a good place to start!

Bob in HI

The rot’s been going on underneath longer than that though. The wealth distribution, for example, has been steadily widening for decades, not just the last seven years. Still this administration has been a severe blow precisely backed up by the build up of rot, so the trends have accelerated. But the point is there was a reason that this admin was so successful.

We have a LOT of work ahead of us. I hope we get a chance to do it.

Ed Kunin 164

Perhaps you have missed other recent columns, or you might try a search up under the archives at the “Categories” heading (mid-upper right on each page) to find what you seek.

Yes, FDL does pause periodically to let folks catch their breath and refresh the spirit. This savvy policy is guided by wiser heads than my own, no doubt partly as a way to break tension and enable all to continue tackling the toughest and most complex problems the world can offer – hands on, no flinching, no turning away.

Consider this an open invitation to scroll around, read more posts, read the comment trails. Think. Act. Become involved in trying to improve your world. There must be something you can find to do other than snip out one little moment in time to fuss about. If not, I am truly sorry for you and yours, for you have missed the point of it all.

perris at 158 – We need Samuel Adams linky

I had lunch with my favorite history PhD recently and she academically briefed me on the fact that it has never been this bad, ever. The country is really in trouble. But I’m a true believer. I believe in all of you, I believe in everyone else fighting the good fight, and I believe that we will restore those greatest aspects of America. Struggle is never fun, but it is fulfilling when part of a fight for what we know is right. I believe we will pull through and we will look back upon the pain and suffering inflicted upon us, remembering the valor and courage we showed in the face of overwhelming power. We will do this standing on a new foundation for our way of life, a renewed republic, a foundation more sound in its structure than its predecessor. I believe this because I see it happening; I see it in the eyes of people all around. I see people thinking globally and acting locally. I see the restoration of community, of a sense of common struggle, of a need for shared sacrifice. I see the utter lack of fulfillment that a life given to the workings of the systems receives. I see a reevaluation of who we are, what the world is, and how we all fit in it together. It is the yearning in the voices of my friends and loved ones. It is the friction of progress.

Nice post as far as rhetoric goes — but what can each of us actively DO to help restore our nation?

So long as there are passionate people about politics like DIGBY, ET AL., there just, just might be light at the end of this dark tunnel we are living in right now. So glad we now have a forum such as the www to finally start LIVING a TRUE DEMOCRACY!!!

POWER TO PROGRESSIVES AND BLOGGERS AND F*** THE MSM–THE ARE ENABLERS OF THE CORRUPTION IN THIS COUNTRY

THANKS TO ALL THE TRUE BELIEVERS WHO STAND UP FOR WHAT IS RIGHT REGARDLESS OF THE BACKLASH…
UNITED WE STAND, I DO HAVE HOPE NOW THAT AMERICA CAN BE RESTORED. THANK YOU JANE, MARCY, CHRISTY,…YOU ARE ALL GREAT

todd @ 170

Nice post as far as rhetoric goes — but what can each of us actively DO to help restore our nation?

GET INVOLVED AND SPREAD THE TRUTH

Jonny Boy @ 169

I had lunch with my favorite history PhD recently and she academically briefed me on the fact that it has never been this bad, ever. The country is really in trouble. But I’m a true believer. I believe in all of you, I believe in everyone else fighting the good fight, and I believe that we will restore those greatest aspects of America. Struggle is never fun, but it is fulfilling when part of a fight for what we know is right. I believe we will pull through and we will look back upon the pain and suffering inflicted upon us, remembering the valor and courage we showed in the face of overwhelming power. We will do this standing on a new foundation for our way of life, a renewed republic, a foundation more sound in its structure than its predecessor. I believe this because I see it happening; I see it in the eyes of people all around. I see people thinking globally and acting locally. I see the restoration of community, of a sense of common struggle, of a need for shared sacrifice. I see the utter lack of fulfillment that a life given to the workings of the systems receives. I see a reevaluation of who we are, what the world is, and how we all fit in it together. It is the yearning in the voices of my friends and loved ones. It is the friction of progress.

I AGREE WHOLEHEARTEDLY…FUNNY HOW I DID NOT EVEN READ THE PREVIOUS POSTS TO MY POST, BUT THEY REFLECT THE SAME FEELINGS, MOOD AND THOUGHTS…UNITED WE STAND

re. the speech on top: wanna know a secret? The reason why the rest of the world didn’t have much of a problem with Clinton – wasn’t actually because he resided over a beacon of liberty and a gloriously great democracy.

It was because he could charm the US into believing that relatively sane policies the rest of us could support – in reality consisted of saving the world, magically.

And, you know, not much have changed with the politics, see.

Adie 167

I’m not sure what ticked you off other than I wasn’t especially taken with the Copland discussion. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about world conditions and have come up with a theory of group behavior which I immodestly believe explains hierarchical societies. It’s self advertising but you get to my home page by clicking on my name. You also attribute policy here to heads wiser than yours. I’m assuming you disagree with some aspects of that policy. I suggest you start seeing yourself as wise as any, which you are. All of us, even wingnuts, are entitled to that respect.

As for what I want, I want people to be able to get the confidence to rise up in unison. I’m not talking revolution. I’m talking petitioning the government in large numbers. I’m not sure how or if that can be done. That’s what I’d like to talk about.

Bob Schact 165

Legislation like Dodd’s resembles the War Powers Act in which the Congress asks the President not to declare war without its consent. Congress has not protected its Constitutional powers. Dodd’s bill seeks the return of what never should have been ceded.

What to do? How about something like grassroots.com with branches in the 50 states whose purpose is to have people write individual letters to senators and congressmen, enough to enundate them. I’m not sure how to begin or whether most Americans can be persuaded their letter means enough to sit themselves down.

dear ed 175. oh my goodness. where to start?!?

not really. good for u & keep reading from WIDE variety of sources. respect is good. theories are -um- just that, no better than facts on which they are based. with advanced degrees & lotsa miles behind me, i’m not suffering from lack-of-sufficient-wisdom-syndrome problems, nor their opposite, as far as i know.

that’s about it. bye.