Sunday, February 11, 2007

NYT: Puty breaks up with Bully Boy

First, this entry is focused on the New York Times. I've been up thirty-six hours straight and I'm not going in the e-mails this morning. This evening (hours away), after I've had some sleep, I will and we'll note anything of interest then (in "And the war drags on . . ."). I phoned Ruth this morning, hours ago, asking if she had done a report. She has, it's in the e-mails. I asked if it was okay for it to go up tonight and she said yes. Isaiah will be posted this morning and this will be a quick entry because I want to get some sleep.

On the front page, you learn that soul looks aren't all they used to be. Twas a time when Bully Boy could brag that he'd look into the soul of Puty, as he called him. Thom Shanker and Mark Landler's "Putin Says U.S. Is Undermining Global Stability" tells you the Bully Boy's soul kiss wasn't all that:

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia accused the United States on Saturday of provoking a new nuclear arms race by developing ballistic missile defenses, undermining international institutions and making the Middle East more unstable through its clumsy handling of the Iraq war.

I'm unsure of the Russian slang but I belive the American is, "SNAP!"

Inside the paper, A10, Damien Cave's "New Boss Takes Reins of U.S. Forces in Iraq" is the only article on Iraq proper. David H. Pertraeus "took command of American troops" reads the Times' equivalent of a birth announcement. Later on, Cave gets to more important topics:

A few hours later, the United States military announced in a statement that three American soldiers were killed Friday and four others wounded in an explosion at a building in Diyala Province, northeast of Baghdad. The statement said the explosion took place as soldiers searched the building for weapons.

Cave tells you that five died and 10 were wounded in a car bombing in Baghad. He quotes Mayson Umran (a woman, a rare thing for an Iraqi women to get quoted in the paper -- good for Cave) who owns a bookstore:

It's become something normal. Even children have lost the sense of fear now because everyone is expecting an explosion at any minutes. [. . . ] All of those who died today were simple people looking for their daily living. The terrorists want nothing but to keep Iraq unstable.

I'm not sure how well her bookstore will do with her calling Bully Boy a terrorist but it is true that an unstable Iraq has allowed him to force down various 'laws' and privatization schemes. (No, she wasn't referring to the Bully Boy.)

There's also an AP story (A21). No link to it. We'll note it via CBS where you don't need to register to read stories. Amanda Lee Myers reports on Mesa, AZ council member Tom Rawles who is not running for re-election (June 2008) and does not recite the Pledge of Allegiance at the city council meetings and intends to continue not reciting it at the meetings "until the troops come home." As for criticism of him from some, he says: "That's what political speech is supposed to do. It's supposed to infuriate and irritate and challenge and make people think. They apparently would prefer me just to walk lockstep and mouth ritualistic words to a mandatory ceremony."

They must have a lot of time in Mesa if they're reciting (like school children) a pledge at the start of every meeting. I wonder if it cuts into their recess? Rawles took a stand and he didn't back down. (Which makes you wonder if he's a Democrat -- if so, he's not one who'll make it into leadership these days, not with the attitude that you stand your ground.) Good for him.

New content at The Third Estate Sunday Review:

A Note to Our Readers
Editorial: The court-martial is over
TV: All just a bit of (CBS) history repeating
Roundtable
The Nation Stats
Women and the military
Cracked Up Crackdown
Update on Gallaudet University
MyTV's Fascist House
Highlights

Isaiah goes up right after this. I don't think there are problems with Flickr and the colors today but I honestly didn't even notice it when I posted it last Sunday. (Yellows showed up green due to Flickr -- the original illustration that Isaiah e-mailed was yellow.) Flickr's a new program and I guess we'll learn to adjust as we go along. My apologies to Isaiah that the colors didn't turn out right (Rebecca has worked and worked on that, trying to photoshop it but the colors come out green in Flickr no matter how she works on them. We normally don't photoshop Isaiah's illustrations but Rebecca repeatedly attempted to in order to get the colors right.)

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.






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