With All Due Respect Madam Ambassador…

Last night Rachel Maddow had a discussion and dissagreement with UN Ambassador, Susan Rice. There's no shouting, no storming off, no sound-bites. No vacuous discussions of Tiger Woods or other fake distractions pretending to be news. Just two very well spoken, intellegent people debating a very important issue. The President's plan to send the War in Afghanistan into overtime and add at least 30,000 more troops.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Color My Manipulated Fear Level Orange

I know enough history to have been keenly aware that from about 2003 on the Bush administration was using those color coded terror alerts to manipulate the public and keep this Country in a constant state of  fear for political benefit.

It was reveled today that former Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge wrote in his upcoming book that Attorney General John Ashcroft and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld argued in favor of raising the threat level by noting the correlation it had with Bush’s approval rating.

Noting the correlation found between increases in the threat level and the president’s approval rating, Mr. Ridge writes, “I wondered, ‘Is this about security or politics?'"

Thank you I guess Tom Ridge for admitting being "aggressively pressured" to raise it  and being morally outraged by it.

The Origins of Rumors

Hey, what if we were governed by a sinister foreigner masquerading as a native born American, a real life Manchurian Candidate advancing a perverse plan to cull the population of the elderly? That’s either a plot for a bad Hollywood thriller, or this week in the wingnut o sphere.

This is a podcast from last week, but is still Zeitgeist worthy.
8 min, 49  sec.

NPRs On The Media

Elie Weisel Voices Words Many in the World Only Think

REMARKS BY PRESIDENT OBAMA, GERMAN CHANCELLOR MERKEL, AND ELIE WIESEL AT BUCHENWALD CONCENTRATION CAMP

Weimar, Germany / June 5, 2009

Here, in it’s entirety, is Mr. Wiesel’s amazing words.

MR. WIESEL: Mr. President, Chancellor Merkel, Bertrand, ladies and gentlemen. As I came here today it was actually a way of coming and visit my father's grave -- but he had no grave. His grave is somewhere in the sky. This has become in those years the largest cemetery of the Jewish people.

The day he died was one of the darkest in my life. He became sick, weak, and I was there. I was there when he suffered. I was there when he asked for help, for water. I was there to receive his last words. But I was not there when he called for me, although we were in the same block; he on the upper bed and I on the lower bed. He called my name, and I was too afraid to move. All of us were. And then he died. I was there, but I was not there.

And I thought one day I will come back and speak to him, and tell him of the world that has become mine. I speak to him of times in which memory has become a sacred duty of all people of good will -- in America, where I live, or in Europe or in Germany, where you, Chancellor Merkel, are a leader with great courage and moral aspirations.

What can I tell him that the world has learned? I am not so sure. Mr. President, we have such high hopes for you because you, with your moral vision of history, will be able and compelled to change this world into a better place, where people will stop waging war -- every war is absurd and meaningless; where people will stop hating one another; where people will hate the otherness of the other rather than respect it.

But the world hasn't learned. When I was liberated in 1945, April 11, by the American army, somehow many of us were convinced that at least one lesson will have been learned -- that never again will there be war; that hatred is not an option, that racism is stupid; and the will to conquer other people's minds or territories or aspirations, that will is meaningless.

I was so hopeful. Paradoxically, I was so hopeful then. Many of us were, although we had the right to give up on humanity, to give up on culture, to give up on education, to give up on the possibility of living one's life with dignity in a world that has no place for dignity.

We rejected that possibility and we said, no, we must continue believing in a future, because the world has learned. But again, the world hasn't. Had the world learned, there would have been no Cambodia and no Rwanda and no Darfur and no Bosnia.

Will the world ever learn? I think that is why Buchenwald is so important -- as important, of course, but differently as Auschwitz. It's important because here the large -- the big camp was a kind of international community. People came there from all horizons -- political, economic, culture. The first globalization essay, experiment, were made in Buchenwald. And all that was meant to diminish the humanity of human beings.

You spoke of humanity, Mr. President. Though unto us, in those times, it was human to be inhuman. And now the world has learned, I hope. And of course this hope includes so many of what now would be your vision for the future, Mr. President. A sense of security for Israel, a sense of security for its neighbors, to bring peace in that place. The time must come. It's enough -- enough to go to cemeteries, enough to weep for oceans. It's enough. There must come a moment -- a moment of bringing people together.

And therefore we say anyone who comes here should go back with that resolution. Memory must bring people together rather than set them apart. Memories here not to sow anger in our hearts, but on the contrary, a sense of solidarity that all those who need us. What else can we do except invoke that memory so that people everywhere who say the 21st century is a century of new beginnings, filled with promise and infinite hope, and at times profound gratitude to all those who believe in our task, which is to improve the human condition.

A great man, Camus, wrote at the end of his marvelous novel, The Plague: "After all," he said, "after the tragedy, never the rest...there is more in the human being to celebrate than to denigrate." Even that can be found as truth -- painful as it is -- in Buchenwald.

Thank you, Mr. President, for allowing me to come back to my father's grave, which is still in my heart.

Baracknophobia: Or Why Jon Stewart is Brilliant

Jon Stewart took on people "speaking crazy to power" last night. Rep. Michele Bachmann recently said that President Obama is going to put our children in reeducation camps, and Sean Hannity congratulated her for her crusade against tyranny. Stewart followed this clip with a brilliant & cogent litany of moves the Bush administration made to reduce American freedoms, transparency, and state's rights, and said the pair were confusing "tyranny" with "losing." Yes, crazy right-wingnuts, I've tasted that S**t Taco way too many times! It is bad, but it's democracy.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Baracknophobia - Obey
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor