Robert Crook's blog

By Robert Crook

Arnold Schwarzenegger is throwing a bone to his right-wing constituents by vetoing Assembly Bill 849, which makes same-sex marriage legal in the state of California.

Let the wingnuts gnaw on that bone, because Schwarzenegger once again has shot himself in the foot.

From The Washington Post today:

Slightly more than half of the country says President Bush should meet with Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed last year in Iraq, who is leading a protest against the war outside Bush's ranch in Crawford, Tex., according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The survey found that 52 percent of the public says Bush should talk to Sheehan, who has repeatedly asked for a meeting with the president, while 46 percent said he should not. Fifty-three percent support what she is doing while 42 percent oppose her actions, according to the poll.

by Robert Crook

You know that British Prime Minister Tony Blair is in deep doo-doo when he evokes 9/11.

"Sept. 11 for me was a wake-up call," Blair said today, according to The Associated Press.* "Do you know what I think the problem is? A lot of the world woke up for a short time and then turned over and went back to sleep again."

By Robert Crook

Forget George Lakoff and his parsing of words.

Republicans/conservatives and progressives have very different views of the role of government and politics, and it's a difference that cannot be bridged by the simple parsing of words.

From DowningStreetMemo.com:

On Friday, July 22, we here at DowningStreetMemo.com (well, two of us, anyway) will visit the San Francisco office of Senator Dianne Feinstein. We're hoping to obtain an audience with her staff to ask why the senator -- a member of the Intelligence Committee -- has been silent about the issues raised in the Downing Street Memos.

I was disturbed to read the following news item from The Associated Press today. Apparently, the anti-Muslim sentiment that exists among many members of the U.S. military that we have seen manifested at places like Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay Concentration Camp exists here in Sacramento as well:

Shockingly, Sen. Dianne Feinstein is not listed on Salon.com* as being among the handful of Democratic senators who have signed on to Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry's letter to the chair and vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence urging the committee to investigate the Downing Street Memo.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, of course, has signed on to Kerry's letter. (Sadly, Sen. Boxer seems to be the only person truly representing our Sacramentans' interests in Washington.)

Contact Feinstein and tell her to start representing us!

The Democratic National Committee's Voting Rights Institute has released a report called "Democracy at Risk: The 2004 Election in Ohio."

The report is just more than 200 pages long, but you can read the much shorter executive summary.

The report is here:

http://democrats.org/vri/ohioreport/index.html

The Sacramento News & Review's cover story for this week is the discrimination against Latinos in West Sacramento by haphazardly branding them as gang members.

Story here:

http://www.newsreview.com/issues/sacto/2005-06-23/cover.asp

Just thought I'd share that according to downingstreetmemo.com, as of yesterday more than 500,000 people have signed on to Michigan Rep. John Conyers Jr.'s letter to "President" Bush asking Bush questions about the Downing Street Memo.

UPDATE 06/22: Rep. Matsui has apparently signed the letter (see comments below) although there is nothing on her website that confirms this, http://www.house.gov/matsui/

In case you haven't seen it yet, Arianna Huffington's new group blog, "The Huffington Post," made its debut today.

The blog begins with a bang -- with a piece about an upcoming (May 17) book by Gerald Posner (titled "Secrets of the Kingdom: The Inside Story of the Secret Saudi-U.S. Connection") that includes information on how the Saudi royal family has rigged Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure with explosives, including "dirty bombs," in order to stay in power.

I thought that I'd share this Associated Press article from today on the topic of gangs.

It seems to me that extreme examples of gang-related crimes are being used as a justification for doing nationally what's being done right now in West Sacramento...

by Robert Crook

Like Michael Moore's documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11," there's a lot packed into the documentary "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room." And like "Fahrenheit 9/11," "Enron" won't tell you much that you didn't know already if you follow the news, but it neatly puts the whole seedy saga all into one place.

While we are spending billions and billions of dollars to bring democracy to Iraq (wink wink), look at how dedicated we are to democracy here at home. This is from The Associated Press:

WASHINGTON -- The first chairman of a federal voting agency created after the 2000 election dispute is resigning, saying the government has not shown enough commitment to reform.