Weekend Quick Hits
But the conspiracy of absolution is starting to unravel. At a recent press conference with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Senegal's Foreign Minister Cheikh Tidiane Gadio declared the situation in Darfur "totally unacceptable." Moments earlier, Rice had stated: "We have worked hard, and we have been able to avert some of the humanitarian disaster that was forecast." To the secretary's evident irritation, Gadio lectured: "Madam Secretary, you know, you have to deal with the facts on the ground. . . . Those militias, they're still very active . . . killing people, burning villages, raping women."Then Gadio exploded the myth -- perpetuated by African and Western leaders alike -- that the A.U. troops alone can stop the killing in Darfur. Senegal, with its long record of effective peacekeeping, is slated to join the A.U. force. Still, its foreign minister confessed: "We are totally dissatisfied with the fact that the African Union . . . has asked the international community to allow it to be an African solution to an African problem, and unfortunately the logistics from our own governments did not follow." Now, he said, "The U.N. Security Council, the European Union, the African Union, the United States -- we should all come together in a new way of dealing with the suffering of the people of Darfur . . . . We have to do something."
So here you have African leaders practically begging for outside involvement, with the Bush administration clinging to it's track record of inaction. While certain others may bemoan that they don't even know if the problem can be solved, a good place to start is by putting more boots on the ground to stop the killing and to move humanitarian assistance to the camps (where many purely humanitarian groups fear to tread due to violence) more quickly.
The US Department of Agriculture, which administers the federal food stamp program, has raised a red flag on the rollout of the state?s new integrated enrollment and eligibility program and has yet to approve releasing federal funds, according to a series of letters secured by the Texas State Employees Union through an open records request.The USDA has been seeking specific documentation from the Health and Human Services Commissioner for more than a year. In a letter to Executive Commissioner Albert Hawkins, dated July 14, the federal agency chastised the state for failing to get USDA?s approval of the Accenture contract before its execution, required under the USDA?s advanced planning process. In earlier letters, the federal agency also expressed concerns that the state could maintain its current level of service using call centers.
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After reading the series of letters, TSEU has raised concerns about the readiness of call centers, as well as the incentives in the Accenture contract. The contract has incentives for Accenture to reduce the food stamps roll. TSEU questioned whether those reductions might come from Accenture failing to provide food stamps for eligible recipients or failing to forward incomplete applications to state employees for completion.
This basically puts at risk federal funds that we'd normally get. And to top it all off, the already proven ineffectiveness of Accenture in this line of work has a contractual reward that benefits them for their ineffectiveness. Somewhere, Mississippi is smiling.
There is a need evidently, in view of the demagoguery of Ken Mehlman, for a modern Diogenes to hold up his lantern in search of the truth, shrouded as it is by the darkness of some of this Bush Administration's deeds. Let's see --
-- Ken Melhman spoke to Black leaders and journalists, admitting that the Republicans had used the race-bating Southern Strategy from Nixon onwards to divide the country and carry the South and Electoral College. Yet, Melhman wants us to believe that the current right wing Republican leadership repents of its sins and is prepared to renounce this sort of race-bating.
-- There are just a few problems with this insincere apology and even less sincere Melhman pledge to make amends for sins of the past. George W. Bush himself has used the old Nixon-Reagan Southern Strategy. Just as Reagan went to Philadelphia, Missippi, in his bid against Carter, George W. Bush went to Bob Jones University. George W. Bush embraced the Confederate flag in the South Carolina primary of 2000 in his effort to land a knock out punch on McCain. Bush has refused to meet with the nation's Civil Rights leaders in the Oval Office. Bush's two presidential campaigns have heavily emphasized "voter suppression," especially the suppression of Black votes. Republican right wingers are resisting an unqualified and across the board extension of the historic Voting Rights Act.
-- Melman boasted that the Republican Party, not the Democratic Party, was the party of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. True enough. However, Lincoln-Roosevelt progressivism is long dead. Nelson Rockefeller sought to revive it, but Rockefeller Republicans themselves are now nearly an extinct species. It took the leadership of Johnson and Humphrey to push the key Civil Rights leadership through the Congress, althought they were doubtlessly assisted by the political tidal wave unleashed by the assassination of JFK.
-- Melhman boasted that Dwight D. Eisenhower sent troops to Little Rock to forcibly integrate the schools. However, Eisenhower did not do this on his own initiative. He did it under an edict from Earl Warren's Supreme Court. In any case, Eisenhower's own son, himself a retired flag rank officer, disavowed George W. Buh in the last election and resigned himself to supporting Kerry "as the lesser of two evils." He felt that Bush had betrayed the relative moderation on domestic issues and foreign policy realism and internationalism of his father.
I was sure you would give an assessment of Democracy Alliance, which the Washington Post featured yesterday. What do you think are the ramifications for the ideological direction of the Democratic Party? I note that many of the players involved are quite Liberal, possibly making for Think Tank counterparts to MOVEON.ORG and ACT. Let's hope not. What do you think that other factions (pro-Defense Liberals, New Democrats, Blue Dogs, etc.) of the the Democratic Party can do just to keep up? The Truman National Security Project is off the ground and making progress. The DLC has survived the Left's efforts to kill it. However, NDN founder Simon Rosenberg seems to be veering left and I know of few other like-minded efforts by competing factions of the Democratic Party. Of course, if your hero, Hillary Clinton, is elected President all Democrats will more or less be obliged to follow in her wake, or at least react to her initiatives.