Sunday Morning Blues--The Beat Goes On

The RNC attacked Barack Obama for taking his wife to New York to see August Wilson's "Joe Turner", while Americans are suffering. There's some truth to this, August Wilson's "Radio Golf" is playing here in Washington. He could have stayed home but he probably hasn't gotten that far in Wilson's cycle of plays. Next time, Barack, find a ranch to go to on a weekend.

There goes the neighborhood. President Obama has a habit of ruining favorite places to eat around Washington. Yesterday he stopped into Five Guys in Southeast to buy hamburgers for the White House staff. After he visited Ben's Chili Bowl recently, the place has been mobbed. As Yogi said,"No one goes there anymore, it's too crowded." At this rate all my favorite spots will be out of bounds. Thanks, Barack.

If you want to hear a serious discussion on the constitutionality of gay marriage, find the YouTube of Hardball with Ted Olson and David Boies discussing their defense of gay marriage. It's obvious that Chris Matthews doesn't like the idea and would like to avoid using the word "marriage" when it comes to gays. It's shocking television because someone was allowed to utter rational,sophisticated arguments for--anything.

Bad News for those of us who would like to be sponsors of the Uighurs held at Gitmo.
The Department of Justice informed the Supreme Court that the 17 Uighur men forcibly brought to Gitmo seven years ago "are free to leave" but have no right to come to the United States. The Uighurs are one of history's tragedies which we should be ashamed of contributing to. Muslims from western China, these particular men wandered to Afghanistan, where they lived in a ramshackle village and did received training --once--with old rifles by people 'associated with" the East Turkestan Independence Movement, a group that later allied themselves with Al Qaeda--but after these men had already been seized by American forces. It has been assumed that the United States seized these people in exchange for a vote at the UN on Iraq. Considered terrorists in China--along with the Dalai Lama for that matter, the Bush Administration allowed Chinese officials to interrogate them at Gitmo. There are no charges being brought against them. In fact, the US couldn't find any evidence they had ever participated in any acts of terrorism. Five have already been freed and sent to Albania in 2006. New Gingrich wanted them returned to China, where they would be executed. There is an Uighur American community in Arlington, Virginia who have said they are willing to house and monitor the former prisoners. But both Republicans and Democrats have whipped up local fears about this so forget about it. However, my counter prosposal is that Khalid Sheik Mohammed be released to live in David Addington's house here in Alexandria, which God struck with lightening last year.

The Anti-Defamation League has sent out a warning that White Supremacist groups plan to recruit at the July 4 Tea Parties. The statement is well-worth reading. "Whites Forward" created the Tea Party Americans Coalition (TPAC) as a "working group for serious White racialist Activists in the US who want to effectively coordinate our efforts and intervene for effect in Tea Party-type events." They hope that TPAC will be the "genesis of our new White mass movement and the fertile womb of our pro-White political party." The coalition includes the Council of Conservative Citizens, the Nationalist Coalition, David Duke's EURO and European Americans United. Erich Gliebe, who heads the West Virginia-based National Alliance, claims that he experienced an increase in applications and requests for information as a result of the April 15th tea parties.

Frank Rich decimated the whole Beltway circus concerning the Cheney speech at AEI. In his NYT piece "Who is to Blame for the Next Attack", he dismantles Cheney's arguments piece-by-piece. Most interesting is his paragraph on the planned hydrogen cyanide attack for the New York City subways. The plot was called off 45 days before zero hour. The reason was that Al-Zawahri nixed it because it was not enough of an encore to 9/11, which requires the creation "of an upward arc of rising and terrible expectation" that is "multiplied by time passing." In short, the follow-up has to be something on the order of a nuclear event.