Flutterby™! : depressing news 2007-03-16 19:49:21.465222+00

depressing news

2007-03-16 19:49:21.465222+00 by Dan Lyke 4 comments

Ya know, ya just can't make this sort of stuff up. And it scares me: Kyle Sampson, counselor to John Ashcroft, talked about firing U.S. attorneys:

we would like to replace 15-20 percent of the current U.S. attorneys -- the underperforming ones. ... The vast majority of U.S. attorneys, 80-85 percent, I would guess, are doing a great job, are loyal Bushies, etc., etc.

Valerie Plame points out that if she's not safe, no undercover agent is:

"If our government cannot even protect my identity, future foreign agents who might consider working with the Central Intelligence Agency and providing needed intelligence would think twice," Plame said in response to a question.

Indeed. And, on another note (sorry), KDFC, a Bay Area classical station, has pulled an ad whose copy included:

In his new bestseller, Chris Hedges challenges the Christian Right and its dark ideology. He challenges their religious legitimacy and makes a compelling case that these zealots have merely found a mask for fascism in patriotism and the pages of the Bible.

so we'll plug the book here. That's American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America, by Chris Hedges.

Could it be that the listeners were just pissed off at the publisher's redundancy in the advertisment?

"Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays."

Rather than paraphrase, I quoted part of the definition of fascism from the site below. Maybe the publisher should understand the book's concepts before approving an advertisment.

On the first item, I would like to see a reporter ask John Ashcroft if he thought that Kyle Sampson was claiming that 80-85% of U.S. attorneys are "Bushies", and therefore "doing a great job", or if there are 6-10 underperforming attorneys who are still employed because they're Bushies.

Of course, you're absolutely right. BTW, I've gone back to edit my first sentence-putting a question mark at the end. However, the statement was made tongue-in-cheek (altho' it didn't really sound that way). Misunderestimating the 5th grade intellect of the much of the American populace has not been one of the many shortcomings of my own. To me, the wording of the ad demonstrated the publisher's lack of familiarity (or understanding) of the writers' subject matter. Becoming toooooooo serious about the seriousness of an "advanced" cultures' reluctance to let go of a fantasy and, in turn, obstucting the rights and evolution of others in that population tends to drive me bonkers. (Sh*t, I get so annoyed with people who insist on living in the Dark Ages, don't even know if that sentence made sense).

Anyway, I'm new to your site, and I wanted to let you know it's a breathe of fresh air. Intelligence without arrogance. The people are genuinely nice to each other-even in disagreement.

Oh, we get arrogance here too. I'm probably the worst, although I prefer to call it self-confidence... We just try not to take our arrogance too seriously.

New entries on the front page (and hence new threads) are entered by me or a select few people I've either known for ages, or with whom I've developed a relationship online. The software evolved from something single contributor, so I don't have any mechanism for feedback or filtering on the front page, although that's been a feature request, but as such I've kept it rather tightly controlled.

What I'd really like is for people to start their own sites and me to link to 'em, and to develop better ways to share or point out links between sites and have discussions between sites, the way we did back in the early days of weblogging (back in the '90s). However, as this site has evolved a bit I've started moving my personal weblogging elsewhere, so I'm open to ways to make this place more about multiple contributors.