Truthout 5/27

BP: Obama's Do-Nothing "Root Causes" Commission
Max Ajl, Truthout: "Obama had this frozen, robotic expression on his face when he announced that he'd put his signature on the executive order establishing the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. He looked a bit like he'd been replaced with an animatronic doll, one programmed to speak very eloquently and say precisely nothing. Obama's commission is supposed to carry out a six-month investigation into the reasons underlying the explosion of the Deepwater Horizons offshore drilling rig. Securely informed and enlightened by such knowledge, the United States will be able to 'prevent and mitigate the impact of any spills that result from offshore drilling.'"
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Obama to Suspend Arctic Drilling
Steven Thomma, McClatchy Newspapers, "The Obama administration Thursday will suspend planned exploratory oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean off Alaska until at least 2011, a casualty of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill."
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The American Century Is So Over
Dilip Hiro, TomDispatch.com: "Irrespective of their politics, flawed leaders share a common trait. They generally remain remarkably oblivious to the harm they do to the nation they lead. George W. Bush is a salient recent example, as is former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. When it comes to foreign policy, we are now witnessing a similar phenomenon at the Obama White House."
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Chief Drill Regulator Birnbaum Fired
Steve Thomma and Lesley Clark, McClatchy Newspapers: "The director of the Minerals Management Service, Elizabeth Birnbaum, has been fired in the wake of the Gulf oil spill, a government official told McClatchy Newspapers today."
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Screw the Environment: BP and the Audacity of Corporate Greed
Dave Lindorff, Truthout: "Even as BP's blown well a mile beneath the surface in the Gulf of Mexico continues to gush forth an estimated 70,000 barrels of oil a day into the sea, and the fragile wetlands along the Gulf begin to get coated with crude, which is also headed into the Gulf Stream for a trip past the Everglades and on up the East Coast, the company is demanding that Canada lift its tight rules for drilling in the icy Beaufort Sea portion of the Arctic Ocean."
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The US-Russia START Treaty: Just What Does "Arms Control" Really Mean?
Darwin Bond-Graham, Truthout: "There's a funny if intimidating gun-nut bumper sticker you may have seen on the road: 'Gun control means using both hands.' It's clever, invoking and mocking gun control at the same time."
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BP Worker Takes Fifth, Making Prosecution a Possibility
Erika Bolstad, Joseph Goodman and Marisa Taylor, McClatchy Newspapers: "A top BP worker who was aboard the Deepwater Horizon in the hours leading up to the explosion declined to testify in front of a federal panel investigating the deadly oil rig blowout, telling the US Coast Guard he was invoking his constitutional right to avoid self-incrimination."
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News in Brief: BP Stabilizes Gushing Flow of Oil and More ...
Yana Kunichoff, Truthout: "BP has stabilized the gushing flow of oil and gas from a ruptured well into the Gulf of Mexico, according to US officials, hoping to mitigate the catastrophic environmental effects of the leak. The BBC reported that Thad Allen, the Coast Guard commander, said it was too early to declare success, but the company's 'top kill' effort had 'stabilized the wellhead.' BP is using mud and cement to seal the well, which opened after an explosion took place on the Deepwater Horizon rig five weeks ago, killing 11 people and sending millions of gallons of oil into the sea."
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What Rand Really Believes
Joe Conason, Truthout: "Rand Paul, tea party flavor of the month, is said to be avoiding 'overexposure.' Senior Republican Party operatives, worried by the Kentucky Senate nominee's all-too-revealing remarks after his primary victory, have urged him not to grant any interviews for a while. So he flip-flopped on his criticism of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, flaked out on a 'Meet the Press 'appearance and has scarcely been heard from since."
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Karzai's Washington Visit: The War Awaiting Kandahar
Ramzy Baroud, Truthout: "Clad in his usual attire of a colorful, striped robe, Afghan President Hamid Karzai appeared more like an emperor as he began his fourth day in Washington. Accompanying him on a somber visit to the Arlington National Cemetery were US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen and top US (and NATO) commander in Afghanistan Stanley A. McChrystal - the very men responsible for the war and occupation of his own country."
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The Muddle Oozing From the Gulf
E.J. Dionne Jr.: "So who is in charge of stopping the oil spill, BP or the federal government? The fact that the answer to this question seems as murky as the water around the exploded oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico suggests that this is an excellent moment to recognize that our arguments pitting capitalism against socialism and the government against the private sector muddle far more than they clarify."
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Is the Parthenon Sculpture a Permanent Hostage at the British Museum?
Evaggelos Vallianatos, Truthout: "On March 8, 2010, Dyfri Williams, Research Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum, delivered a lecture on 'The Parthenon Sculptures' at the University of Southern California....Williams justified the holding by the British Museum of the plundered Parthenon treasures. I found the reasons why the British government refuses to return the Parthenon 'marbles' to Greece unacceptable - and not a little insulting."
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To Fix Immigration, Look North
Froma Harrop,Truthout: "Ripped from the news: Haitians are illegally crossing into Vermont from Canada, looking for work. Why didn't the Haitians stay in Canada, where the social safety net is far cushier? Because, as the head of a Haitian radio station in Montreal told The New York Times, 'they saw that they had no chance to become Canadian permanent residents.' And, he added, 'people thought that the United States were going to receive all the Haitians.'"
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Activists in Chicago Push Against Rahm Emmanuel
Micah Uetricht, Truthout: "Activists in Chicago are some of the nation's fiercest agitators for immigration reform, as more than two dozen were arrested at a civil disobedience at the entrance to a detention facility in the city's downtown area yesterday, the second such action in a month."
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BP Oilpocalypse Creates Underwater Nightmare

Who Wants to Elect a Millionaire?

By GAIL COLLINS
New York Times

Today, let’s play Political Kingmaker.

Pretend you’re the Republican leadership in a smallish state with an open United States Senate seat. The opposition is running a popular, longtime officeholder whose sense of inevitability was shaken by recent revelations that he had referred to himself as a Vietnam War veteran when he isn’t one.

Your own options are:

A) A well regarded former congressman who is a decorated Vietnam War veteran.

B) A political novice who made her fortune building up an entertainment business that specialized in blood, seminaked women and scripted subplots featuring rape, adultery and familial violence. In which the candidate, her husband and children played themselves. Also, the family yacht is named Sexy Bitch.

Well, obviously, you go for the yacht owner.

Yes, this week the Connecticut Republican Party chose Linda McMahon, the former C.E.O. of World Wrestling Entertainment, to be their Senate candidate. Her main opponent, the former Representative Rob Simmons, packed up his war medals and went home.

“You can’t argue with arithmetic,” he told The New London Day.

The math in question is $50 million, the amount McMahon claimed she was prepared to spend on her campaign. Connecticut has just under two million registered voters, so maybe she’ll just invite everybody in the state to a nice dinner at Red Lobster.

So far this season, the Republicans have offered two new models of their future. One is the Tea Party vision, in which outsiders full of spirit and excitement overthrow the old order. In North Carolina, there was so much spirit and excitement that voters gave the top spot in a Congressional primary to a former drug addict who, according to court documents, once referred to the United States government as the Antichrist and claimed to have personally located the Ark of the Covenant.

Meanwhile in Kentucky, primary voters nominated Rand Paul, an ophthalmologist, for the Senate, ignoring the pleas of party leaders to go for somebody less spirited and exciting. Paul promptly got into trouble over his lack of enthusiasm for requiring restaurants to serve black people and his criticism of Barack Obama for being disrespectful of oil-drilling companies.

The other model is the one on view in Connecticut: richest bidder wins. For governor, the Republican convention endorsed Tom Foley, a longtime party fund-raiser who was once George W. Bush’s ambassador to Ireland. Foley, whose 100-foot yacht makes the McMahons’ 47-footer look like a dinghy, instantly identified himself as an “outsider.”

Both Foley and McMahon are what political pros like to call “self-financers.” And while McMahon doesn’t dwell on her willingness to pay all the campaign freight, her sales pitch is all about financial success.

“People call Linda McMahon a C.E.O., job creator, business leader. But I just call her Mom,” says daughter Stephanie in a much, much repeated TV ad. W.W.E. fans all remember Stephanie from the day she slugged Mom in a spat over the Wrestlemania fight card, but we are not going there anymore. In fact, the McMahon organization has been busily scrubbing the Internet of every embarrassing clip it can claim a copyright on.

The McMahons made a mint off the formerly seedy, small-town entertainment known as professional wrestling by adding heavy doses of sex, more spectacular violence and a raw tone that bordered on pornography. Linda McMahon now likes to brag that she’s “created a product that is one of America’s greatest exports,” as if there’s no question that bringing half-naked women wrestling in pudding to 145 countries was one of America’s greater accomplishments.

You can overlook a lot of sleaze for $50 million. Simmons distributed a video of Vince McMahon, Linda’s husband, standing in the ring and telling a weeping female wrestler to take off her clothes, get down on her knees and “dammit, bark like a dog.” Nobody paid attention.

On the plus side, ever since Linda McMahon developed political ambitions, the W.W.E. has attempted to clean up the more outrageous elements in its act, sparing millions of impressionable children from the old hints of necrophilia, the abundance of gore and the side stories in which Stephanie lost her blouse in the ring, Vince ran off with a floozy and Linda was sexually assaulted by a competing promoter.

“One good thing has come from her run: Vince McMahon putting out an edict that there will no longer be any cutting of your foreheads with razor blades,” said Superstar Billy Graham, a retired wrestler who contracted hepatitis from a bloody competitor. “He has actually stopped wrestlers from cutting their heads with razor blades. This is a big deal!”

We take progress anywhere we can get it.

FP morning brief 5/27

Obama to extend drilling moratorium as BP waits for news of "top kill"

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Top news: BP officials say they may know today whether their latest attempt to stop the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was successful. As part of the procedure known as "top kill," drilling mud is being applied to the gushing well at a rate 65 barrels per minute.

White House aides say that President Obama will announce a six-month extension on the moratorium on offshore drilling today, to allow an independent presidential commission to continue its investigation of the incident. Offshore drilling had been a key component of Obama's proposed energy policy, meant to attract Republican votes. Obama is also expected to discuss other recommendations from a 30-day review he ordered shortly after the Deepwater Horizon rig sank.

The New York Times reports today that shortly before the explosion at the rig, BP had chosen, partly for financial reason, a type of casing for the well that was less secure than another option. Leaks through the cement casing, installed by contractor Halliburton, are believed to have caused the explosion.

Washington: The Obama administration released its first National Security Strategy, which argues for expanding the nation's security focus beyond counterterrorism.

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Americas At least 44 people were killed as Jamaican authorities raided a Kingston housing complex to arrest drug lord Christopher Coke, who is still at large. The leader of Mexico's Beltran Levya drug cartel was killed in a shootout with federal police. A Peruvian indigenous leader who had fled to Nicaragua to avoid charges of causing a riot was arrested as he tried to return home. Asia North Korea has cut off its naval hotline with South Korea. Afghan officials are investigating reports that Pakistani Taliban leader Maulana Fazlullah was killed in Eastern Afghanistan. Former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra denied financing or organizing the recent Red Shirt protests. Middle East Iraq dissolved its national airline over a reparations dispute with Kuwait. Israel indicted two prominent Arab activists on charges of spying for Hezbollah. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted an invitation to visit the White House next week. Africa Omar al-Bashir was sworn in for another five-year term as president of Sudan. Niger's military leader Salou Djibo met with Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan on his first foreign trip since taking power in a military coup. French authorities arrested a Rwandan doctor accused of participating in the 1994 genocide. Europe Britain revealed its full nuclear arsenal of less than 225 weapons. Spain's parliament narrowly approved an $18.4 billion austerity package. An E.U.-organized conference on deforestation opened in Oslo.   -By Joshua Keating

Zimbabwe Ambassador Calls U.S. Diplomat a 'House Slave' The Lament of the Lesbian in the 10th Mtn. Division Did Bush Reach Out to the Muslim Brotherhood by Accident? How Ganja Warlords Took Over Jamaica

Win McNamee/Getty Images

The 'doll tests' and what our children learn about race

By Leonard Pitts Jr. 
The Miami Herald

Last week, Soledad O'Brien made a young mother cry.

It came in the midst of a special series, "Black Or White: Kids on Race" on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360. The series was based on a new version of the famous "doll tests" pioneered by husband and wife psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark in the 1930s and '40s, and recreated in 2005 by Kiri Davis, a teenage filmmaker.

In the tests administered by the Clarks and Davis, black children were presented two dolls, identical in appearance except that one was dark and the other, light.

Asked which doll was bad, stupid, or ugly, most of the black kids picked the black doll. Asked which was good, smart, or pretty, they chose the white one.

CNN's study was similar, except that children were presented with pictures, not actual dolls, and the images ran a color gamut from very light to very dark. One other difference: CNN tested white children along with black ones.

Which is how this little five-year-old white girl in Georgia came to be sitting at a table facing an unseen researcher as her mother sat with O'Brien and watched on video. Asked to point out the "good child," she touched one of the lighter skinned figures. Why is that the good child, she was asked. "Because I think she looks like me," the little girl said.

Asked to point out the "bad child," she touched the darkest image on the paper. And why is that the bad child? "Because she's a lot darker," the little girl said.

And watching, her mother softly wept.

Your heart broke for her, because you just knew she never saw that coming. Your heart broke because you just knew she had bought into the myth that children are not soiled by the prejudices that stain their elders.

Your heart broke, because how many times have you heard it said that, since they are growing up in the era of Oprah and Obama, our children will live beyond the belief that character is a function of color.

But children are not idiots. They hear us and see us. They watch television, they listen to radio, they read magazines, they live in our world. So very early on, they know what we think. And often enough, it becomes what they think, too.

Thus, it is no surprise that CNN found both black and white kids maintain a decided bias toward whiteness. For instance, 76 percent of younger white kids pointed to the darker figures when asked to identify "the dumb child." Because this is a pilot study, those results are not definitive. But they are instructive.

So is this: A few months ago, a white teacher brought a black girl up to me as I was preparing to give a speech. The teacher wanted me to talk to her. She doesn't think she is beautiful, said the teacher, because she is dark. I asked the girl if this was true and in a soft voice, with eyes averted, she said that it was.

And man, what do you say to that? How do you explain the psychology of self-loathing and the futility of judging oneself by someone else's beauty standards, and the cumulative psychological weight of 400 years of being told you are not good enough and the need to embrace and love and value yourself just as you are?

How to explain all that in 90 seconds or less while people are pulling at you, and the event is about to begin and you've got a speech to give and this little girl won't even look up?

I did the best I could. It was not nearly good enough.

As I watched her walk away, I was troubled by my failure to make the case. And by the enduring need to do so. We are over 40 years beyond the Civil Rights Movement, 40 years beyond a burst of pride and racial consciousness that transfigured our very understanding of what it means to be black, 40 years into a future where Michael Jordan is an icon, Bill Cosby is a national father figure and a Kenyan's son is president of these United States.

Forty years. And still...

And still.

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/05/27/94722/commentary-the-doll-tests-and.html#ixzz0p8HeiAYY

McClatchy Washington report 5/27

Top Story

• BP worker takes 5th, making prosecution a possibility

  A top BP worker who was aboard the Deepwater Horizon in the hours leading up to the explosion declined to testify in front of a federal panel investigating the deadly oil rig blowout, telling the U.S Coast Guard he was invoking his constitutional right to avoid self-incrimination. The move Wednesday by BP's Robert Kaluza for the first time raises the specter of criminal liability in the April 20 explosion that killed 11 and continues even five weeks later to spew hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico each day.

Spotlight

• Citing gulf oil spill, Obama to suspend Arctic drilling

  The Obama administration Thursday will suspend planned exploratory oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean off Alaska until at least 2011, a casualty of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The move will stop Shell from drilling five wells in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas off northern Alaska weeks before it had hoped to start work, an administration official told McClatchy.

Latest Headlines

• Texas Gov. Perry calls Obama's troop move on U.S.-Mexico border 'a good start'

  Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Wednesday that President Barack Obama's decision to deploy 1,200 more soldiers as part of a $500 million effort to help secure the U.S.-Mexico border is "a good start." Obama's plan, announced this week, has sparked criticism from all sides. Many conservatives say his response is too little, too late. Human-rights groups are disturbed by the decision and are staging a series of protests, including one today in El Paso by the Border Network for Human Rights.
• BP wants Houston judge with oil ties to hear spill cases

  Oil giant BP is asking the courts to place every pre-trial issue in the hands of a single federal judge in Houston. That judge, U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes, has traveled the world, expenses paid, giving lectures for the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. His financial disclosure forms show he collects royalties from several energy companies.
• Bell Helicopter to pay $16.6 million for overcharging Defense Dept.

  Bell Helicopter has agreed to pay the U.S. government $16.6 million to settle claims that it overcharged the Defense Department for work on military contracts. The Justice Department announced the settlement Wednesday, bringing an end to investigations that began in August 2004, when Bell attorneys first notified the Pentagon's inspector general that the company had overcharged the government for work done by Bell subsidiaries and affiliates.
• Napolitano defends federal response to Gulf oil spill during Kansas City stop

  Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Wednesday that BP — and only BP — can stop the gush of oil into the Gulf of Mexico caused by the April explosion of an offshore drilling rig. Napolitano, in the Kansas City area to discuss homeland security preparedness, said the government isn't capable of stopping the oil, but has taken an active role in mitigating the damage.
• Haley rumors dominate S.C. gubernatorial race coverage

  Keep your head down and follow the campaign plan. That's what the four Republicans running for South Carolina governor said they would do as blogger Will Folks' still-unproven allegations of an "inappropriate physical relationship" with candidate Nikki Haley continue to dominate news coverage.
• Jamaican expatriates express concern over crisis on island

  Scores of South Florida Jamaican leaders, troubled at the unfolding crisis back home, gathered at a Miami Gardens church Wednesday to express their concerns and call on government officials to move quickly to solve the problem. At least 48 Jamaicans have been killed surrounding the attempts to arrest suspected drug trafficker Christopher "Dudus" Coke, who's wanted on a U.S. Justice Department warrant.
• BP sued by Florida Keys charter boat company over 'perception' oil from spill

  Captain Duck is suing British Petroleum, saying the oil company giant is responsible for his small charter boat business losing tourist customers in Key West. Although no oil from last month's Deepwater Horizon blowout has reached the Florida Keys, Michael J. Burge, who goes by the nickname Captain Duck, said it's the "perception" that has cost him significant snorkeling, diving, fishing and dolphin encounter business over the past few weeks.
• Obama pledges independence from fossil fuels during California visit

  President Barack Obama reaffirmed Wednesday his commitment to containing and cleaning up the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and pledged to wean the country off its dependence on fossil fuels. Obama said that the spill in the gulf "underscored the necessity of seeking alternative fuel sources," and that the administration is "intensively engaged with scientists and engineers to explore all alternative options" as relief wells are completed.
• Commentary: Enough anger to go around over government irresponsibility

  The angry people getting most of the attention lately are the Tea Party screamers — mostly older, white, more affluent folks who preach a gospel of selfishness. They see the problem as "big government." But I encounter a larger, quieter, though still angry group of people every day. They don't wave flags, wax nonsensically about the Constitution or seek to live in some idealized past.
  These people, both Democrats and Republicans, think the Tea Partiers' diagnosis of what is wrong with America is missing a couple of words and most of the point. They see the problem as "big business" and "irresponsible government".
• Commentary: The 'doll tests' and what our children learn about race

  Last week, Soledad O'Brien made a young mother cry.
  It came in the midst of a special series, "Black Or White: Kids on Race" on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360. The series was based on a new version of the famous "doll tests" pioneered by husband and wife psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark in the 1930s and '40s, and recreated in 2005 by Kiri Davis, a teenage filmmaker.