There are moments...

...in the Truman Show when cracks in the conjured reality inhabited by Truman Burbank start to widen. Like a mad detective, Truman tells his wife to look in the rear view mirror with him, "I predict, that in just a moment we will see a lady on a red bike, followed by a man with flowers and a Volkswagen Beetle with a dented fender...." and sure enough they materialize, passing by, almost as if he had a crystal ball.

Last night I had one of those Truman flashes... when I learned that, "a U.S. House of Representatives committee on Thursday approved a bill to create a corporation that would buy and redevelop tracts of land devastated by recent Gulf Coast hurricanes, helping property owners in Louisiana avoid massive defaults on home and business loans."

First the lady on a red bike...
Katrina floods breeches the 17th Street Canal levee with surgical precision, inundating the poorest sections of the city, leaving the poor and a majority of NOLA's (democ)rats left clinging to anything that floats for almost a week. Then, survivors are bussed as far as possible from the scene of the crime - Houston, Atlanta. Those who want to stay, undergo forced evacuation by sheriff's deputies in body armor, holding rifles. Shipwrecked, jobless, homeless, the refugees still hang on to their land back home, expecting to return someday.

Followed by a man with flowers...
Facing foreclosure with no solution in sight, they can thank Louisiana Republican and White Knight, Rep. Richard Baker for coming to the rescue with the Louisiana recovery bill. The House agreed yesterday to create the "Louisiana Recovery Corp." taking over the debt on "destroyed" properties at the request of owners unable to make their mortgage payments. The corporation would "relieve" hurricane victims of their mortgage obligations up to $500,000.

"This is a major step toward providing urgently needed financial options to tens of thousands of Louisiana citizens who right now face terrible choices, between continuing to pay the house note on a destroyed home they will never live in again or accepting foreclosure and an impaired credit record," Baker said.

"It's also a step toward rebuilding communities through the maintenance of a functioning market system, safeguarding a lending industry that will be essential for financing recovery efforts, and utilizing private sector resources to provide a fiscally responsible return on the taxpayer's investment," he said.

and a Volkswagen Beetle with a dented fender....


All of those beached and demolished waterfront casinos will magically reappear on dry land in the 9th Ward, bringing jobs and prosperity to a section of the city that was once wrought with poverty.

The Truman Show stars the first child ever adopted by a corporation... tune in any time for another episode in Louisiana's Electoral Disaster.

"When Hurricane Katrina broke the levees in New Orleans, it did more than create a wave of evacuees fleeing the city. Democracy itself is now a disaster area. Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco has postponed city elections indefinitely, thereby extending the term of the city's mayor by executive decree. Meanwhile, bureaucratic squabbling and flawed voting mechanics threaten to bar tens of thousands of people from future elections..."

"New Orleans needs to get absentee ballots to its many registered voters who are displaced, but only the Federal Emergency Management Agency has a relatively comprehensive list of new addresses. Citing privacy concerns, FEMA refused to share that list and later decided it was too costly to notify people about their voting rights. Just this week, under threat of a lawsuit, it agreed to pass the list on to the state. Louisiana now plans to send notices about how to apply for a mail-in ballot to those already registered, but the onus remains on displaced residents to register and apply for a mail-in ballot."

All we are saying...

...is give peace a chance. Seems like a harmless request, but in the run up to the Iraq war it was Clear Channel that published a list of banned anti-war songs and prohibited their stations from broadcasting them.

Wisconsin Democracy Campaign reports on another sign of the times....

A Madison radio station owned by national media conglomerate Clear Channel is selling the name of its newsroom, a move that drew sharp criticism from the Society of Professional Journalists. Under the naming rights deal, the station will deliver its newscasts from the "Amcore Bank News Center.

Imagine the discomfort in two corporate offices if this story ever needed to be told: Now this news update from the Amcore Bank News Center... Top Amcore Bank officials were indicted this morning by a federal grand jury on charges of financial fraud, criminal conspiracy and obstruction of justice. More on this breaking story at the top of the hour.

Death notices

An editorial, "Without mercy" in today's SF Chronicle states, "GOV. ARNOLD Schwarzenegger once characterized his conflicted feelings about the death penalty as a duel between his 'Austrian brain and the American brain.' He recalled that capital punishment was an 'absolute no-no' in his native Austria."

The writer concludes, "Perhaps there was a time when Schwarzenegger might have at least delayed the death of Stanley Tookie Williams until the California Assembly could consider the merits of AB1121, which would impose a moratorium on capital punishment while a commission assesses whether its application in this state is 'fair, just and accurate.'"

MTV reports, "In the end, the execution process took longer than usual as technicians struggled for more than 10 minutes to find a vein in Williams' muscular left arm. As the team searched, Williams visibly winced and lifted his head off the gurney several times and, according to the Times, at once appeared to say, 'Still can't find it?' Witnesses said his death from the lethal injection took close to 20 minutes."

Williams' friend Barbara... "Becnel and two other supporters of Williams turned toward the media in the witness room and yelled in unison, "The state of California just killed an innocent man!"

"Mr. Williams has maintained his innocence since the day he was arrested," Attorney Verna Wefald wrote in the petition filed to California's top court on Saturday. "Given that the state's case rests on the testimony of criminal informants who had an incentive to lie, not only to obtain benefits, but to hide the truth of their involvement in these crimes, it is imperative that discovery be granted at this critical stage of Mr. Williams' case."

The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), the national NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and several other civil rights groups filed an amicus (Friend of the Court) brief urging the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to consider racist injustices in jury selection during Tookie’s 1981 trial:

"His trial was based on circumstantial evidence and the testimony of several witnesses, all of whom were facing a range of felony charges, including fraud, rape, murder and mutilation. Even the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals stated in a September 10, 2002, ruling that the witnesses in Stan’s case had 'less-than-clean backgrounds and incentives to lie in order to obtain leniency from the state in either charging or sentencing.'"

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Tookie’s appeal to investigate the racism and discrimination at the heart of his case, as well as Tookie’s innocence issues. One issue highlighted the fact that the prosecutor in Tookie’s original case removed three African-American jurors from the jury. During Stan’s trial, this prosecutor made racially-coded remarks during his closing argument, comparing Stan during the trial to a Bengal tiger in the zoo and stating that a black community - South Central Los Angeles - was equivalent to the natural "habitat" of a Bengal Tiger.

Now upheld by the United States Supreme Court, this ruling will establish as "case law" for the nation the right for prosecutors to exclude jurors on the basis of race and to denigrate minority defendants in front of all-white juries.

The ruling is a frontal attack on the civil rights of all Americans.

The California State Supreme Court had twice censured this prosecutor for equally discriminatory behavior. Indeed, a member of the California Supreme Court at that time made the following statement about that prosecutor :

...I believe that we must place the ultimate blame on its real source - the prosecutor. It was he who unconstitutionally struck Black prospective jurors. The record compels this conclusion and permits none other... This prosecutor knew that such conduct was altogether improper. The trial court told him as much. And so did we... This court attempted to teach this same prosecutor that invidious discrimination was unacceptable when we reversed a judgment of death because of similar improper conduct on his part. He failed - or refused - to learn his lesson. The result is another reversal - and another costly burden on the administration of justice.

Robert G. says, "Today, the Times ran lengthy obits of Eugene McCarthy and Richard Pryor on opposing pages and one neat bit of symmetry was found in their definitions of truth that has stayed in my thoughts throughout the day."

McCarthy: "slowed his baritone for a plain definition of patriotism: 'To serve one's country not in submission but to serve it in truth.'"

Pryor: "a lie is profanity," he explained. "A lie is the worst thing in the world. Art is the ability to tell the truth, especially about oneself."

Talk 2 Action

What if there was a place you could go to talk about the religious right, whenever you had a question and needed an answer?

What if there was a place you could increase your knowledge, hone your skills and network with concerned and knowledgeable people all over the United States?

What if that place was not controlled by an organization with a narrow agenda?

What if people of any religious or nonreligious orientation who share a concern about the rise of the dominionist movement in the Unites States were equally welcome, and their perspectives were respected and taken into account as strategy discussions took place?

What if that place had an eclectic mix of people with considerable expertise as featured writers who you could read, and question and discuss with every day? And what if those same experts and all of the site participants shared a spirit of learning -- and learning in the open -- about things that could affect the outcome of the most important struggles of our time?

What if the goal of the site were not just education and the expression of opinions, but to think about and encourage taking action?

Talk to Action hopes to be that place. Become a registered user to participate.

"We are pro-religious equality and pro-separation of church and state. We are prochoice, and we support gay and lesbian civil rights -- including marriage equality. Therefore, debates about the validity of abortion and gay rights are off topic."