BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIX MIX -- DC.
THIS JUST IN!
MARTINEZ IS IN!
IF HIS ABRAMOFF TIES DON'T OUT HIM!
AFTER BEING OUTED BY BILL MAHER LAST WEEK ON LARRY KING LIVE, KEN MELHMAN WAS ON THE OUTS WITH THE G.O.P. THINGS ARE SO BAD THAT TO HEAD THE G.O.P., THEY'RE ENLISTING A SERVING U.S. SENATOR, MELQUIADES RAFAEL MARTINEZ.
CONDI RICE STATED, "I DON'T KNOW HOW MELQUIADES DOES IT. I HAVE ENOUGH TROUBLE JUST TRYING TO SLACK OFF 1 JOB. HE'S GOING TO HAVE TO SLACK OFF 2 JOBS!"
IF HE CAN KEEP THEM!
BEFORE MARTINEZ WAS A SENATOR, HE WAS THE SECRETARY OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT (HUD) AND BACK THEN, CONVICTED FELON BOB NEY CAME CALLING. IN COURT TWO MONTHS AGO, FELON BOB NEY ADMITTED, IN WRITING, TO LOBBYING MARTINEZ AND THE THEN MARTINEZ HEADED H.U.D. "AWARDED ABOUT $4 MILLION FROM 2002 TO 2004" TO ABRAMOFF'S CLIENT WHICH RESULTED, IN 2004, IN A $250,000 CONTRIBUTION TO HIS SENATE CAMPAIGN THANKS TO ABRAMOFF.
THEN THERE IS HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH WILLIAM SCOTT DELOACH WHO THE FBI ANNOUNCED PLED GUILTY SEPTEMBER 28TH TO EMBEZZELING OVER $35 MILLION: "WITH RESPECT TO THE CAMPAIGN FINANCE CHARGE AGAINST DELOACH, COURT RECORDS REFLECT THAT IN 2004, DELOACH LEARNED THAT PBSJ SUPPORTED THE U.S. SENATE CAMPAIGN OF MEL MARTINEZ. DELOACH WROTE A PERSON CONTRIBUTION CHECK TO THE MARTINEZ CAMPAIGN AND ASKED FOUR PBSJ EMPLOYEES TO DO THE SAME. THE FOUR EMPLOYEES, AND TWO OF THEIR SPOUSES, MADE CONTRIBUTIONS TOTALING $11,000 FOR WHICH EACH WAS UNLAWFULLY REIMBURSED".
MELQUIADES!
IF HE CAN KEEP THE PRESS FROM TALKING ABOUT THE SCANDALS, IT SHOULD BE A PERFECT FIT. MELQUIADES HAS DEMONSTRATED HIS ABILITY TO RAISE FUNDS AND HE'S NOT GOING TO BUSY HIMSELF WORRYING WHERE THE MONEY COMES FROM.
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
Last week (Thursday), the US military announced they were moving to a court-martial of Ehren Watada -- the first commissioned officer to publicly refuse to deploy to Iraq. The court-martial is expected to be held early next year. Sunday, Teresa Watanabe (Los Angeles Times) reported that Eric Seitz, Watada's attorney, is predicting the court-martial will "be a spectacle. It's going to raise a lot of issues that frankly I don't understand why the Army wants to raise." Ehren Watada refused to deploy to Iraq because his studies, encouraged by his superior, led him to realize the Iraq war is illegal. Courage to Resist quotes Ehren Watada explaining, "The reason I spoke out, I saw that what was being in terms of this war was so illegal and so immoral and not being checked. It was a danger to our troops and a danger to our country. So, I think what needs to be done is some kind of accountability in Washington, D.C. and also investigations into how this war started in the first place."
In the first place? The fact that many would rather talk fine-tuning, the reality that the war is illegal and built on lies is too little examined. Speaking with Joshua Scheer (Truthdig) last week, Congress member Dennis Kucinich declared, "We need to have hearings on Iraq again. We need to go over again why we went there. We need to review the statements and all the errors that were made, and from that we bring the country together to take a new direction. It's all fact-based. And then we start to heal our nation. But we cannot heal America if we continue with policies that are based on lies. We'll never be able to bring closure to this Iraq matter unless we tell the truth about what happened. So America needs a new approach of truth and reconcialiation." [Micah noted that yesterday.] In March of this year, Kucinich declared "Not One more Dime" noting: "After three years arrogance and incompetence, contempt and lies, death and destruction, Congress should say enough is enough and provide not one more dime for this Administration's ill-conceived, ill-advised, misguided and failed Iraq policy." Quite a bit more than many asked by Aaron Glantz on Countdown 2006 were willing to state. Writing for IPS, Glantz notes Pratap Chatterjee on the issue of stopping the war via the Congressional purse: "The main control Congress has is financial. Congress can refuse to pay for the war, which is what they did in Vietnam, but they can't really dictate how it's waged." For the article, Glantz also speaks with Tom Hayden who sees some hope in the public stance Democrats offered against the war but "[w]here they aren't so good yet is what to do about it, and they don't have that obligation yet because they aren't to take back the presidency -- if they ever do -- for two years. There will be an attempt by both parties to keep the war going and get rid of Iraq as a public issue, but that seems to me to be impossible." Writing at The Huffington Post, Hayden advises: "The peace movement needs to gear up for the 2008 elections, by establishing anti-war coalitions that no candidate can avoid in the primary states. The first four states -- Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina -- have large peace-and-justice constituencies."
Mobilizing took place Saturday in Chicago. Ofelia Casillas and Charles Sheehan (Chicago Tribune) report that Vietnam Veterans Against the War held a ceremony that brought out at least fifty and the closer was US war resister Kyle Snyder who stated: "I followed my conscience. And I'm being persecuted for that." Kyle Snyder self-checked out and moved to Canada after serving in Iraq. He returned to the United States last month and, on October 31st, turning himself in at Fort Knox only to self-check out again after discovering the military had lied yet again. As Courage to Resist notes, "At the risk of arrest, he is speaking out bravely on behalf of war resisters and active duty GI's." They are asking that you: "Call Ft. Leonard Wood Fort Leonard Wood Office of the Commanding General Major General William McCoy, Jr., 573-596-0131 and the Public Affairs Office, 573-563-4013 email: alleym@wood.army.mil -- Demand that the Army 'Discharge Kyle Snyder with No Punishment'."
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