Worth a try, right?

You’ve got to give these folks credit for trying:

Victory in Iraq
On this November 22, 2008, join us in observing Victory in Iraq Day.

Let us honor the sacrifice, dedication and sheer determination of American, coalition and Iraqi troops who have brought freedom to the nation and people of Iraq.

Although our governments have chosen to not name any official day marking the end of this war, we the people have taken it upon ourselves to commemorate November 22, 2008 as the day of victory over the forces of tyranny, oppression and terror in Iraq.

And, of course, the raping and pillaging of our civil liberties and our national treasury really didn’t happen.

I say four years too late.

Watching catastrophe

Photo: Yasuyoshi Chiba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images via The New York Times

The United Nations warned today of “humanitarian black holes” in the North Kivu region of Congo as continued fighting has forced aid agencies to halt operations in some areas. At a camp for internally displaced people, a girl huddled near a fire in Kibati, just north of the provincial capital of Goma.

I trudged through Goma in late summer 1994. I was chronicling another human catastrophe, the outbreak of cholera and other disease in the wake of the Rwandan genocide that claimed over a million lives. You would think that lesson would be enough for the world to never let it happen again.

It is happening. Again. As the world watches.

Tony's Nobel grovel

I don’t remember who started it, or when it started, so let’s blame it on Jimmy Carter. The former president rehabilitated his public service record by becoming a world do-gooder in chief.

He built homes for the homeless, cured elections, and generally did whatever he could to expunge from the public mind, his four years of failure as president of the United States.
Today, more people remember Carter for his Nobel than for his presidency. Which is just as well. Carter was a decent man who was ill-suited for the presidency.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is another case. Blair had noticeable successes and following until he crawled into the lap of George W. Bush. He went to incredible lengths to help Bush sell a fraudulent war, eternally damning himself in the process. His once stratospheric popularity in England evaporated. He was soon chased from office.

Blair now wants to reconcile the world’s religion in the service of . . . globalization? What a crock. This effort might still win him the Nobel Peace Prize. It’ll still be stupid and fraudulent.

Webb

“Black America and Scots-Irish America are like tortured siblings. They both have long history and they both missed the boat when it came to the larger benefits that a lot of other people were able to receive. There’s a saying in the Appalachian mountains that they say to one another, and it’s, ‘if you’re poor and white, you’re out of sight,’ ” Sen. Jim Webb, D-Virginia, said in this video.

“If this cultural group could get at the same table as black America you could rechange populist American politics. Because they have so much in common in terms of what they need out of government,” he added.

Listening to Jim Webb in this rather too brief snippet convinces me more than ever that he should be Sen. Barack Obama’s running mate. I don’t know if he’ll accept the vice-presidency but, I think, together, he and Obama could craft a message that could reshape the Democratic Party for generations to come.

I want to take race off the table as a wedge issue. I want to make the Republican Party a minority party that speaks to only a small percentage of Americans, the very wealthy. I believe in Webb and his wisdom. He should definitely be a part of the national dialogue.

He mentioned in the video a Wall Street Journal opinion-editorial article that he wrote in Oct. 2004. In Secret GOP Weapon: The Scots-Irish vote , Webb examined the Republican Party’s success wooing poor and working class whites to their cause:

To an outsider George W. Bush’s political demeanor seems little more than stumbling tautology. He utters his campaign message in clipped phrases, filled with bravado and repeated references to God, and to resoluteness of purpose. But to a trained eye and ear these performances have the deliberate balance of a country singer at the Grand Ole Opry.

Continue reading “Webb” →

The Life and Death of Dennis Racine: Friendship, fear are part of street life

By Michael Allen, Free Press Staff Writer | Friday, June 23, 1989

Joe Martin and Shirley Boucher were not the only people who befriended Dennis Racine.

The street also brought Racine the friendship of “Action” Jackie Marselli, 41, a former welterweight boxer – now a transient – who wants to fight again some day. He recently suffered a cut under the left eye and deep wounds on his knuckles.

“Won’t be long before Johnny Scully is middleweight champ of the world,” Marselli said. “He’s with Moochie in Hartford.”

Racine also came to know Ed Ritchie, a 42-year-old street person who said he has had three attacks.

Racine’s best friend, Martin, often totters on spindly 1egs. A mop of unkempt brown hair covers his head and face and a pair of blue jeans hang at his waist.

“I’ll take me a bath next year,” Martin joked. “I’ve got a lung problem. I’m dying. I have lung cancer, right. So, I don’t cut any corners. I do what I want to do.”

Bill Provost said he sometimes fears he is going to end up like Racine. Provost, 32, said he has lived on and off – mostly on – the street for much of his life. He said his chances of making it off the street were set back last year by a drunken-driving conviction that cost him his driver’s license and earned him 120 days in the Chittenden Community Correctional Center.

On the evening of the vigil for the transients who died, Provost was standing on North Street, leaning against the same brick wall Racine leaned on when he was alive. Albert Ploof, 72, who lives next door, was standing next to Boucher.

Boucher asked Provost: “Why are you on the street? Why do you live the way you do? Are you doing this because you are out of choices, or is this the way you want to live?”

“It’s kind of a messed up situation really,” Provost replied. “I come down here because these are my friends.”

“Do you have a home?” Boucher persisted.

“Yeah.”

“Why do you choose not to go to it?”

“It’s hard to say,” Provost replied in exasperation.

“Do you ever think of the good Lord and ask him to help you?” interrupted Ploof, who said he’s a recovered alcoholic. “I did.”