Archive for July 14th, 2006
I caught a good chunk of the Sandy Beach show on WBEN today. Sandy’s guest was Tom Suozzi, democratic hopeful for Governor of NYS. Suozzi had well thought out positions which he clearly portrayed without the usual political doublespeak of his opponent, Eliot Spitzer.
Listening to the show I couldn’t help but to compare the contrasts between Suozzi and Spitzer. It is like the difference between substance and sound bites.
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Channel 4 led off the 6:00pm news with a fantastic story about the lack of security in WNY from terrorists attacks. Railroad tanker cars were cited as the most obvious potential targets. This story not only highlighted a problem, but allowed Tom Reynolds to provide the solution in what appeared to be a tightly scripted ploy for re-election. Reynolds was shown escorting around “top” government officials, by helicopter, to show them first hand the vulnerability of this region.
I couldn’t help but think about how convenient this solution is for a Congressman in danger of losing his re-election bid. He rushes in to save the day by working to get more money, that was taken from us originally, allocated to homeland security in our area. Whether or not we are at a genuine risk is suspect, but even if we are, it was approval of our current foreign policy, by Reynolds, that put us in this situation.
Now, barely more than a few months before the general elections, he manages to land smack in the middle of this “feel good” issue by adding extra protection from a problem that he helped create.
Read the Channel 4 story here and link to the video and see if you think this looks like a campaign commercial for Tom Reynolds.
The politicians are getting slicker and slicker all the time. And it is costing us dearly in terms of economic growth. The time for change is NOW!
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The Arab-Israeli situation is going from bad to worse. Afghanistan is experiencing more violence. Iraq is a nightmare. The price of oil is at a new high. When will the nation building and democracy-spreading stop? It doesn’t work. Check out this latest post from Baghdad Burning, click the link for the whole post.
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Atrocities…
It promises to be a long summer. We’re almost at the mid-way point, but it feels like the days are just crawling by. It’s a combination of the heat, the flies, the hours upon hours of no electricity and the corpses which keep appearing everywhere.The day before yesterday was catastrophic. The day began with news of the killings in Jihad Quarter. According to people who live there, black-clad militiamen drove in mid-morning and opened fire on people in the streets and even in houses. They began pulling people off the street and checking their ID cards to see if they had Sunni names or Shia names and then the Sunnis were driven away and killed. Some were executed right there in the area. The media is playing it down and claiming 37 dead but the people in the area say the number is nearer 60.
The horrific thing about the killings is that the area had been cut off for nearly two weeks by Ministry of Interior security forces and Americans. Last week, a car bomb was set off in front of a ‘Sunni’ mosque people in the area visit. The night before the massacre, a car bomb exploded in front of a Shia husseiniya in the same area. The next day was full of screaming and shooting and death for the people in the area. No one is quite sure why the Americans and the Ministry of Interior didn’t respond immediately. They just sat by, on the outskirts of the area, and let the massacre happen.
