The most recent images of abuse concerning Iraqi detainees will inevitably fuel the anti-Americanism that endangers American lives � not at the hands of sadistic young misfits but at the hands of our elected representatives. Members of Congress elbowing their way into camera range to question, in the absence of any evidence whatsoever, whether abuses were widespread and senior commanders were implicated and accusing the military of engaging in some cover-up are abusing the Abu Ghraib scandal and recklessly putting our troops at risk.

The Uncovered War: Permanent Bases in Iraq:

Liberation and liberal democracy were never the real reasons for the war to begin with. Those were just inserted in as throw enough mud to the wall and see what sticks policy. Let’s go through the litany, shall we?

1. Weapons of Mass destruction 3. America was in imminent danger from attack by Iraq (unmanned arial vehicles) 3. Ties to terrorists groups, namely Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda 4. Alleged ties to the Sept 11 War against Terror 5. Remake the Middle East 6. Fight them there so we don’t fight them here 7. Liberate Iraqis from Saddam Hussein 8. Establish Democracy in Iraq 9. Stop terror groups from getting their hands on the oil in Iraq 10. Stop the Iranians from taking control of Iraq 11. Establish safety for the state of Israel

Must we go on? I am quite sure that there are about 100 more rationales rolled out since last night for this war on Bush’s list that I have forgotten to mention……………

 For the Corrupt

TPMmuckraker December 18, 2006

* In March, the administration announced it would no longer produce
the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation, which
identifies which programs best assist low-income families, while also
tracking health insurance coverage and child support.

* In 2005, after a government report showed an increase in terrorism around the world, the administration announced it would stop publishing its annual report on international terrorism.

* After the Bureau of Labor Statistics uncovered discouraging data

about factory closings in the U.S., the administration announced it
would stop publishing information about factory closings.

* When an annual report called “Budget Information for States”

showed the federal government shortchanging states in the midst of
fiscal crises, Bush’s Office of Management and Budget announced it was discontinuing the report, which some said was the only source for comprehensive data on state funding from the federal government.

* When Bush’s Department of Education found that charter schools were underperforming, the administration said it would sharply cut back on the information it collects about charter schools.

* The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has to date failed to produce
a congressionally-mandated report on climate change that was due in
2004. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has called the failure an “obfuscation.”

* The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced

plans to close several libraries which were used by researchers and
scientists. The agency called its decision a cost-cutting measure, but
a 2004 report showed that the facilities actually brought the EPA a
$7.5 million surplus annually.

* On November 1st, 2001, President Bush issued an executive order

limiting the public’s access to presidential records. The order
undermined the 1978 Presidential Records Act, which required the
release of those records after 12 years. Bush’s order prevented the release
of “68,000 pages of confidential communications between President
Ronald Reagan and his advisers,” some of whom had positions in the Bush
Administration. More here. (Thanks to Roger A. and nitpicker below.) Update: TPMm Reader JP writes in to point out that Bush did the same thing with his papers from the Texas governorship.

* A rule change at the U.S. Geological Survey restricts agency scientists

from publishing or discussing research without that information first
being screened by higher-ups at the agency. Special screening will be
given to “findings or data that may be especially newsworthy, have an
impact on government policy, or contradict previous public
understanding to ensure that proper officials are notified and that
communication strategies are developed.” The scientists at the USGS
cover such controversial topics as global warming. Before, studies were
released after an anonymous peer review of the research. (Thanks to Alison below.)

* A new policy

at the The U.S. Forest Service means the agency no longer will generate
environmental impact statements for “its long-term plans for America’s
national forests and grasslands.” It also “no longer will allow the
public to appeal on long-term plans for those forests, but instead will
invite participation in planning from the outset.” (Thanks to libra below.)

* In March 2006, the Department of Health and Human Services took down

a six-year-old Web site devoted to substance abuse and treatment
information for gays and lesbians, after members of the conservative
Family Research Council complained.

* In 2002, HHS removed information from its Web site pertaining to risky sexual behavior among adolescents, condom use and HIV.

* Also in 2002, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission removed
from its Web site a document showing that officials found large gaps in
a portion of an aging Montana dam. A FERC official said the deletion
was for “national security.”

* In 2004, the FBI attempted

to retroactively classify public information regarding the case of
bureau whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, including a series of letters
between the Justice Department and several senators.

* In October 2003, the Bush administration banned photographs depicting servicemembers’ coffins returning from overseas.

* In December 2002, the administration curtailed funding
to the Mass-Layoffs Statistics program, which released monthly data on
the number and size of layoffs by U.S. companies. His father attempted
to kill the same program in 1992, but Clinton revived it when he
assumed the presidency.

* In 2004, the Internal Revenue Service stopped providing data demonstrating the level of its job performance. In 2006, a judge forced the IRS to provide the information.

* Also in 2004, the Federal Communications Commission blocked access
to a once-public database of network outages affecting
telecommunications service providers. The FCC removed public copies and
exempted the information from Freedom of Information Act requests,
saying it would “jeopardize national security efforts.” Experts
ridiculed that notion.

* In 2002, Bush officials intervened to derail

the publication of an EPA report on mercury and children’s health,
which contradicted the administration’s position on lowering
regulations on certain power plants. The report was eventually leaked
by a “frustrated EPA official.”

* In 2003, the EPA bowed to White House pressure and deleted

the global warming section in its annual “Rep
ort on the Environment.”
The move drew condemnations from Democrats and Republicans alike.

* Also in 2003, the EPA withheld

for months key findings from an air pollution report that undercut the
White House’s “Clear Skies” initiative. Leaked copies were reported in
the Washington Post.

Company – Theater – Review – New York Times:

THEATER REVIEW | ‘COMPANY’
A Revival Whose Surface of Tundra Conceals a Volcano
By BEN BRANTLEY

Fire flickers, dangerous and beckoning, beneath the frost of John Doyle’s elegant, unexpectedly stirring revival of “Company,” which opened last night at the Ethel Barrymore Theater. This visually severe, aurally lush reinvention of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s era-defining musical of marriage and its discontents from 1970 is the chicest-looking production on Broadway.

One glance at the symmetry, the starkness, the midnight-black palette that dominates the stage, and you feel like putting on a sweater. It’s surely no coincidence that the clear modules that serve as furniture resemble ice cubes. What could be more appropriate for a musical with a passive, willfully unengaged leading man (wearing black Armani, natch), who is almost never seen without a defensive drink in his hand?

But if Bobby the bachelor, embodied with riveting understatement by Raúl Esparza, at first comes across as a man of ice, it becomes apparent that he is in a steady state of thaw. Given the subliminal intensity that hums through Mr. Esparza’s deadpan presence, you sense that flood warnings should probably be posted.

Mr. Doyle is the inspired British director who last year gave New York the most unsettling, emotionally concentrated production on record of another Sondheim musical, the macabre “Sweeney Todd.” In that show, for which Mr. Doyle won a Tony Award, the cast members doubled as musicians, a device repeated in this “Company.”

This “I-am-my-own-orchestra” approach probably shouldn’t be used ad infinitum. Mr. Doyle applied the same stratagem to Jerry Herman’s “Mack and Mabel” in London last summer to underwhelming effect.

But there’s something about Mr. Sondheim that allows Mr. Doyle to find a new clarity of feeling through melding musicians and performers. It is, after all, the person who controls the music in a Sondheim production — in which there is usually a sophistication gap between the songs and the relatively pedestrian book — who has the best chance of finding the show’s elusive but resonantly human heart.

Mr. Doyle’s “Company,” first staged at the Cincinnati Playhouse earlier this year, isn’t the unconditional triumph that his “Sweeney Todd” was, partly because the show itself is less of a fully integrated piece and partly because much of the acting is weaker. Only a few of the 14 ensemble members — playing the couples who are permanent fixtures in Bobby’s life and his strictly temporary girlfriends — seem at ease dispensing Mr. Furth’s brittle, uptown, shrink-shrunk dialogue.

But they all blossom as musicians and singers of wit and substance. As soloists they’re more than adequate, but it’s their work as a team that sounds new depths in “Company” in ways that get under your skin without your knowing it.

Mr. Doyle and his invaluable music supervisor and orchestrator, Mary-Mitchell Campbell, have shaped “Company” into a sort of oratorio for the church of the lonely. The choral passage that opens the show — a litany of variations on Robert (a k a “Bobby, baby”), the name of the central character, about to celebrate his 35th birthday — is performed in near darkness a cappella, sounding like liturgical chant.

The effect is not flippant. The voices — belonging to “those good and crazy people, my married friends”— seem to echo through Bobby’s head like elements of some beautiful but arcane ritual that he can observe only from a distance. Watching is what Bobby does. His outsider’s status is confirmed with pointed eloquence when it registers that Bobby is the only person onstage who isn’t playing an instrument.

The production gets astonishingly diverse theme- and character-defining mileage out of this discrepancy. Bobby’s failure to pick up an instrument and join the band becomes a natural-born metaphor for his refusal to engage with others. Yes, he sings soulfully. But as the other cast members circle the lone Mr. Esparza, playing their instruments, it is clear they possess talents for connecting that Bobby lacks, fears and longs for.

Watching the couples carp and bicker in black-out vignettes — practicing karate, experimenting with pot, visiting a discothèque — you may wonder why Bobby would ever be envious of them (which has always been a problem with “Company”). It’s when they make music together that you understand.

Mr. Doyle’s staging repeatedly and ingeniously echoes this isolating difference. Mr. Esparza is often found climbing onto the top of a Steinway or one of those transparent cubes as others crowd him. Sometimes he stands at a skeptical, uneasy remove as different groups serenade him: the married men with the haunting “Sorry-Grateful”; three girlfriends, all playing saxophones as if they were assault weapons, in a scintillating version of “You Could Drive a Person Crazy.”

The seamlessness of these motifs lends a fresh coherence to “Company,” which was originally structured as a cabaret of urban neurosis. Stand-alone crowd pleasers like “Getting Married Today” (performed by a too-grounded-seeming Heather Laws as the skittish Amy) and “Another Hundred People” (warmly sung by Angel Desai) now blend into a general musical fabric of anxiety in search of reassurance.

Even the fabled character number, “The Ladies Who Lunch,” sung by the worldly, much-married Joanne (a fierce Barbara Walsh), feels less like a show-stopping appendage than it usually does. Instead, building to a climactic repeated note that suggests what Edvard Munch’s silent scream might sound like, it becomes the perfect preface to Bobby’s breakthrough breakdown at the end of the show.

If Ms. Walsh doesn’t erase the memory of Elaine Stritch, who created (and will probably always own) the part, she handles her vodka-stinger-flavored dialogue with a vintage Manhattan suaveness, which is more than can be said for many of the others.

Bruce Sabath, though, is touching and credible as Joanne’s patient husband. And Elizabeth Stanley is absolutely delicious as April, the ditzy airline stewardess, who sings “Barcelona” (the best one-night-stand song in musicals).

The sense that ambivalence and confusion are not unique to Bobby is enhanced by the cold, austere glitter of David Gallo’s set and Thomas C. Hase’s superb lighting. But it’s Mr. Esparza who is the top expert on ambivalence here, giving “Company” the most compelling center it has probably ever had. In previous productions, Bobby has registered principally as a wistful window onto other lives.

But Mr. Esparza is anything but a cipher. Though his Bobby can seem as laconic and drolly unresponsive as Bob Newhart, you are always aware that this is a man in pain. As anyone who saw him in “Cabaret” or “The Normal Heart” knows, Mr. Esparza is generally a pyrotechnic actor, sending sparks and smoke all over the place.

In keeping the lid on such volcanic energy, he makes Bobby’s climactic explosion inevitable. Though he sings beautifully throughout — in ways that define his character’s solipsism — he brings transporting ecstasy to the agony of the concluding number, in which Bobby finally joins the band of human life.

For much of Mr. Sondheim’s career, directors have approached his work as if “keep your distance” were woven into the copyright. More recently, a new generation of artists have heard an altogether different directive: “Come closer.” Mr. Doyle and Mr. Esparza make it clear that there are infinite rewards to be had in accepting that challenge.

COMPANY

A Musical Comedy

Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim; book by George Furth; directed by John Doyle; musical staging by Mr. Doyle; musical supervision and orchestrations by Mary-Mitchell Campbell; sets by David Gallo; costumes by Ann Hould-Ward; lighting by Thomas C. Hase; sound by Andrew Keister; hair and wig design by David Lawrence; make-up design by Angelina Avallone; associate director, Adam John Hunter; production stage manager, Gary Mickelson; resident music supervisor, Lynne Shankel; general manager, Richard Frankel Productions and Jo Porter; production manager, Juniper Street Productions, Inc. Presented by Marc Routh, Richard Frankel, Tom Viertel, Steven Baruch, Ambassador Theater Group, Tulchin/Bartner Productions, Darren Bagert and Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. At the Ethel Barrymore Theater, 243 West 47th Street, (212) 239-6200. Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes.

WITH: Raúl Esparza (Robert), Keith Buterbaugh (Harry), Matt Castle (Peter), Robert Cunningham (Paul), Angel Desai (Marta), Kelly Jeanne Grant (Kathy), Kristin Huffman (Sarah), Amy Justman (Susan), Heather Laws (Amy), Leenya Rideout (Jenny), Fred Rose (David), Bruce Sabath (Larry), Elizabeth Stanley (April) and Barbara Walsh (Joanne).

Spinach-Artichoke Dip

Chop and drain two 10 oz. packages of frozen spinach. Add a chopped can of artichokes. Add a jar of commercial Alfredo sauce. Add a little tabasco and lemon juice. Stir it up good. This will make three soup bowls full. Freeze one and cover the other two with parmesan and bake them. Serve wid salsa, sour cream and tortilla chips. It’ll take you two days to eat both bowls but it’s best on the second day.

Shrimp Enchilada

Clean some shrimp and put them in a bowl with a can of Mexican Rotel. Put lemon or lime juice on it and a few sliced green olives or some green onions. Throw the southwest seasoning to it. Add some chopped bacon and dip your flour tortillas in the bacon grease. Put your tortillas in a baking dish and spoon the shrimp and Rotel mixture onto the tortillas. Wrap up the tortilla, top with cheese and bake.

Blackened Tilapia

Put a little balsamic vinagrette and lemon juice on some Tilapia filets. Let ’em sit in the fridge for at least an hour. Dip the filets in melted butter and cover ’em up with blackened redfish seasoning. Cook on your George Forman grill. If you cook ’em in a black iron skillet, you’ll make a mess. I don’t think it’s worth it.

FOR THE ONLINE SKYPILOTCLUB RECIPE BOOK

CLICK ON

RECIPE

The strange dust-up over ‘Beat the Press’ – News – The Phoenix:

Personally, if blogging didn’t come with any media attention of any sort, I’d be happier. I deliberately followed my heart in my English BA and avoided the Journalism concentration like the plague. I liked poetry. That sort of writing you do in a little dark room at the back of the house where no one can see you, and since no one reads poetry anymore no one knows about you even if you publish. See, the core issue is that bloggers build up reputations over time, by writing and being held accountable. By not doing due dilligence on their story and subsequent (very hostile) commentary, they were attacking the one thing that Jerome and others have when blogging that keeps readers trusting you. I honestly was fooled by the story myself, and it would have colored my view of Jerome had I not the reading habits that lead me to the truth. You could say the same thing about the runup to the Iraq war, come to think of it…if it weren’t for my blogging habits, I might have been fooled like the rest of America. But I knew from the start that we were being lied to – because of people like Jerome, who connected the dots of SOME mainstream media reports and other experts out there who weren’t being covered. Without them, I’d have been a sheep too. The mainstream press thinks it doesn’t have to keep earning our trust. Well, John Carroll showed us it should be forced to. Why this keeps getting portrayed as an ego trip for said bloggers entirely misses the point, but it’s a typical MSM tactic to pick a story and make everything fit the narrative, so I guess in that respect yeah, we’re not going to take it anymore.

TULLYCAST IT!

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