Saturday, December 10, 2005

Former Sen. Eugene McCarthy, 89, Dies


(12-10) 13:16 PST WASHINGTON, (AP) --

Former Minnesota Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy, whose insurgent campaign toppled a sitting president in 1968 and forced the Democratic Party to take seriously his message against the Vietnam War, died Saturday. He was 89.

McCarthy died in his sleep at assisted living home in the Georgetown neighborhood where he had lived for the past few years, said his son, Michael.

Eugene McCarthy challenged President Lyndon B. Johnson for the 1968 Democratic nomination during growing debate over the Vietnam War. The challenge led to Johnson's withdrawal from the race.

The former college professor, who ran for president five times in all, was in some ways an atypical politician, a man with a witty, erudite speaking style who wrote poetry in his spare time and was the author of several books.

"He was thoughtful and he was principled and he was compassionate and he had a good sense of humor," his son said.

When Eugene McCarthy ran for president in 1992, he explained his decision to leave the seclusion of his home in rural Woodville, Va., for the campaign trail by quoting Plutarch, the ancient Greek historian: "They are wrong who think that politics is like an ocean voyage or military campaign, something to be done with some particular end in view."

McCarthy got less than 1 percent of the vote in 1992 in New Hampshire, the state where he helped change history 24 years earlier.

Helped by his legion of idealistic young volunteers known as "clean-for-Gene kids," McCarthy got 42 percent of the vote in the state's 1968 Democratic primary. That showing embarrassed Johnson into withdrawing from the race and throwing his support to his vice president, Hubert H. Humphrey.

Sen. Robert Kennedy of New York also decided to seek the nomination, but was assassinated in June 1968. McCarthy and his followers went to the party convention in Chicago, where fellow Minnesotan Humphrey won the nomination amid bitter strife both on the convention floor and in the streets.

Humphrey went on to narrowly lose the general election to Richard Nixon. The racial, social and political tensions within the Democratic Party in 1968 have continued to affect presidential politics ever since.

"It was a tragic year for the Democratic Party and for responsible politics, in a way," McCarthy said in a 1988 interview.

"There were already forces at work that might have torn the party apart anyway — the growing women's movement, the growing demands for greater racial equality, an inability to incorporate all the demands of a new generation.

"But in 1968, the party became a kind of unrelated bloc of factions ... each refusing accommodation with another, each wanting control at the expense of all the others."

Although he supported the Korean War, McCarthy said he opposed the Vietnam War because "as it went on, you could tell the people running it didn't know what was going on."

In recent years, McCarthy was critical of campaign finance reform, winning him an unlikely award from the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2000.

In an interview when he got the award, McCarthy said that money helped him in the 1968 race. "We had a few big contributors," he said. "And that's true of any liberal movement. In the American Revolution, they didn't get matching funds from George III."

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, McCarthy said the United States was partly to blame for ignoring the plight of Palestinians.

"You let a thing like that fester for 45 years, you have to expect something like this to happen," he said in an interview at the time. "No one at the White House has shown any concern for the Palestinians."

London's Double-Decker "Routemaster" Buses Retired - I Never Got to Ride One!


After 53 years of services, the famous London "Routemaster" Buses are being retired. I'm unhappy, because I never got to ride one at all! Of course, I've not yet visited London.

Richard Pryor Passes at 65 - A True American Icon


I just walked in the house, turned on my TV set, and learned that Richard Pryor passed away at 65. CNN's interviewing his wife Jennifer.

Pryor was a seemingly permanent part of the Zeitgeist, and was a big part of my life growing up in Chicago and then here in Oakland. It kind of feels like a part of my life has been ripped away. He was battling MS.
Pryor used his humor to reflect on race relations at the time. But, and as Martin Scorsese said, it was a savage -- and I would add, honest -- humor. It made people think and talk about what was going on, particularly in the 70s.

As Spike Lee just said, "it comes at you quick: Ossie Davis, Richard Pryor-- we're losing giants."

Thursday, December 08, 2005

First the SF 49ers "Videogate", then The Racist Stanford Video Before "The Big Game" , Now The SF Police Video - All This Year. What's Going On?

At the start of 2005 the San Francisco Bay area was rocked by the revelation that the San Francisco 49ers created a racist and sexist "traning tape." Then, just before this year's Cal / Stanford "Big Game" a group of Stanford Students made a video said to be, again, racist and sexist. Now, the San Francisco Police Department's dark underbelly of racial intolerance is being exposed in the release of information on another video that is, yep, called racist and sexist.

Wait. This is the SF Bay Area, right? What's going on?

Well, my theory is that the kind of subtile racism Bay Area African Americans have always complained about has found its way into these videos and are quickly being exposed to the public in this Internet Age.

The fact that the general public was made aware of all three of theese videos just this year is no spritual accident, in my view. The arrows of policy and institutional reform point to the need to one-and-for-all solve this problem of racial intoleerance in our local institutions.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom should convene a Task Force on the Elimination of Racism and Sexism. I think it will be not only his most provacative action, but the most eye-opening. Mayor Newsom wiill find people and organizations running for cover or moving to prove that they are models of diversity and understanding. The effort would cut to the very core of San Francisco's culture and force the city -- and the Bay Area -- to take a hard look at itself.

Some will say that the videos "were all in fun" but that's the point: "fun" should not be obtained by hurting someone's feelings because they are minority, or female, or any person who -- until the last 30 years of economic advancement -- were not part of the socioeconomic mainstream. Yet, it seems to be some kind of sport in some circles to do this.

It's not right. Humor does not have to come from physical differences.

The San Francisco Bay Area should know better.

Oakland Creates Another White Elephant - The Case of The Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center


You know, with so many Oakland-related posts, I may create another blog on Oakland-related matters. I just don't know what to call it. Until then..

The Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center is an enormous building that sits on the western shore of Lake Merritt, and opposite Laney College. It has an 8,000 seat arena, a 2,000 seat auditorium, and with all of that, the City of Oakland can no longer afford to keep in open. The Oakland Tribune reports the Oakland City Council made that decision Tuesday night.

11th-hour plan can't save center
Oakland council decides the city doesn't have the money to keep Kaiser open after Jan. 1
By Heather MacDonald, STAFF WRITER

OAKLAND — A last-minute proposal from a Chicago-based consulting firm and the Peralta Community College District will not save the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center from being mothballed.
The Oakland City Council decided unanimously Tuesday night that the city simply does not have the money to keep the historic building's doors open after Jan. 1.

"We tried," said council President Ignacio De La Fuente (Glenview-Fruitvale), adding it would take a "miracle" to keep the center open.

Although International Facilities Group promised to operate the center with a subsidy of only $175,000, City Administrator Deborah Edgerly recommended the council reject the deal because the city would be on the hook if the center's performance failed to meet expectations.

IFG planned to rebrand the Kaiser center and make 10th Street Oakland's "Avenue of the Arts," tying together the Oakland Museum of California and Laney College.

The community college district would have used the center, which includes an 8,000-seat arena, the 2,000-seat Calvin Simmons Theater and two smaller ballrooms, as a performing arts center to showcase its theater and dance programs.

But the city would have had to give IFG, which was founded by the son of Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, the center's $1 million budget up front, said Anne Campbell Washington, assistant to the city administrator.

"That puts all of the burden on the city," said Councilmember Pat Kernighan (Grand Lake-Chinatown). "We shouldn't risk all of our money."

Joseph J. Briglia, IFG president of business development, said the company would continue to work on a viable plan to keep the Kaiser center open, saying it is a valuable resource.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The City's never had a marketing plan for the facility, and I know the Convention and Visitor's Bureau could have determined a way to bring it into its efforts.

New Orleans East Side "A Wasteland" According to M. Barnett at www.mgno.com


Post by: Michael Barnett at www.mgno.com:

I made it back to New Orleans on Thursday afternoon and here were my initial thoughts:

I started my 1996 Honda Civic EX's engine at 0100 EST. I rocketed up I-75 to I-10 and then headed west on 10 all the way in. At 0900 CST, I hit the Twin Single Span across the Lake. Moments later I realized that New Orleans will never be rebuilt in my lifetime.

New Orleans East cannot be described; it can only be seen. You must drive through it. What you see on television is nothing. Nothing. You have not seen devestation until you have driven through NOE. There is no life -- mammalian, avian -- nothing outside the plant kingdom (and whatever mold falls into). It is uninhabitable and must be bulldozed. This will take decades. Yes, the cleanup will take decades. In fact, it's likely that the cleanup will never be complete.

I fully expect New Orleans to be a mostly dead city until I am an old, old man, maybe in my late 60s or my 70s. My guess is that no place on Earth compares to the ghost town of New Orleans East. Maybe some cities in the former Yugoslavia were close during the recent clashes. Close. But there, people still lived. No one lives in New Orleans East.

It's been something like three months and most and perhaps even all of Carrollton Avenue still has no functioning street lights; neither does Earhart Expressway.

Unreal.


It has been a week now, and I've had a chance to drive all around the city.
All I can say is that this place is broken down. Crushed. Demolished.
It is a moral lapse of the first order for politicians to keep telling people to come back. I am going to take some flack for telling the truth, but since that's what this blog is for, that's what I'm going to do. New Orleans is a wasteland. Sure, there are a lot of contractors out there trying to clean up, but it's barely making a dent.

You have to see it in person to understand. There are MASSIVE dead areas. Areas of several square miles which will have to be completely torn down. Hell, they ARE STILL FINDING BODIES in some areas.

The idea that this city is going to try to do Mardi Gras boggles the mind.

Anyway, a close friend of mine is trying to do the Lord's work in another brutalized area along the Gulf Coast. You can read what he's got to say in the email at the bottom of this entry. If you can do anything to help, it will be greatly appreciated. There is a link to the school and my friend's email included. Please help if you can.

From: eli lucas
To: Michael Barnett

Michael,
As per our conversation last weekend, I'm writing regarding
St. Clare Elementary School of Waveland, Mississippi. St.
Clare's beach-front location on the Gulf was in the direct
path of Katrina's greatest destruction. The school was
totally devastated - washed from the surface of Earth;
albeit their recovery thus far is amazing.

While New Orleans evacuees complain from afar about the lack
of improvement in New Orleans, St. Clare Elementary is
returning to business. To date approximately 85% of their
student body returned to class. St. Clare is neither
waiting for the FEMA elf, nor any other governmental agency
to rebuild their paradise. Funded solely by private
donations, St. Clare's new home consists of nineteen white
tents surrounded by total devastation. The link to their
website is http://www.stclareelementary.org.

Continued progress at St. Clare is not without costs.
Although the limited amount of tuition revenue thus far
fails to meet salary expenses, St. Clare accepts everyone
regardless of their ability to provide tuition. I hope your
readers will consider assisting in this remarkable
renaissance in Waveland. Donation information is included on
their web site.

Thank you for your help in this matter.
Regards,
Eli

New Orleans Police Misused Federal Funds - From "The Dead Pelican"


Police Commissioner Kevin Riley shown
According to the Dead Pelican website, the controversial New Orleans Police department deliberately overstated the number of officers to be paid by the federal government, and then gave more money to "connected" officers.

Here's the account from their website:

FEDS ASKING TOUGH QUESTIONS OF NOPD: INDICTMENTS PREDICTED XXXX DECEMBER 03, 2005 5:27 PM
**EXCLUSIVE! MUST CREDIT THE DEAD PELICAN!**

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the Feds are asking a number of very specific questions of the NOPD, sources tell The Dead Pelican. Among the questions that the Feds are asking, one stands out: "Where are all these officers that we were paying you for?"

As reported earlier, it is widely known that NOPD's real troop strength has never been more than approximately 1000 commissioned officers but the "official" number (that is, the number given out by the Superintendent's office) has always been 1500 to 1700.

But The Dead Pelican has learned that the actual numbers are quite different.

The Dead Pelican has learned that the NOPD has been taking Federal money supposedly earmarked for hiring and training officers, and using it for things like overtime for "connected" officers, rather than hiring new officers.

And, of course, there is the "phantom officer" situation, that is, "officers" who drew and cashed paychecks but cannot be found to exist.

So now there is a lingering question: where did the money go? "Something this widespread and blatant can't go on without the Superintendent's knowledge and implied consent," said a source.

Insiders say that indictments are inevitable...

Developing...
----------------------
by Chad E. Rogers
DECEMBER 03, 2005
(c)THE DEAD PELICAN
http://www.thedeadpelican.com for updates