fitz!

Of course, Fitz, but after Colbert’s performance, he’s the man of the hour for me…

Pach you’re my hero. The way you’ve managed to build up the Roots project is nothing short of amazing.

Remember the days when you used to show up in threads and nobody could spell your name? I think that was before we even started late nite.

We’re so lucky to have you.

Jane, we can all spell that guy’s name now, but many of us still can’t pronounce it:)

Fitz me Fitzy!

Marky, 8:54 - SO darn true.

You’re great Pach, what a thoughtful, and thought provoking, post.

Talkleft just talked to Rove’s lawyer about Leopold’s article and Luskin was not in a good mood.

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/014835.html

Feingold

typo? “One way to build community and tease out what we believe in is to talk people” s/b talk ABOUT people?

Jeralyn of TalkLeft http://talkleft.com/new_archives/014835.html
As TalkLeft readers know, I try to stick to analyzing news rather than breaking news. I’m just not that kind of journalist. But Jason Leopold’s article today reporting Rove has been indicted was filled with such unique detail (analysis here) I wanted to know if it was true. Who better to ask than Robert Luskin, even though I don’t know him from Adam. I got his phone number, and here’s what happened. Shorter version: I doubt I’ll ever do this again.

******
7:55 pm. I just got off the phone with Rove’s lawyer Robert Luskin. I’m sure I made a new enemy. I called at 7:47 pm my time which is 9:47 his time. In a run-on sentence, I introduced myself as a criminal defense lawyer and said I was calling about Jason Leopold’s article because if it wasn’t true, I wanted to write that it wasn’t true. He said, “Why are you calling me at 10:00 on a Saturday night. It’s so inappropriate.” I apologized and said because it’s an important story and if it’s not true I wanted to say so. I looked at the clock on my computer and saw it was 9:48 or so his time.

He said something like “It’s completely not true and you shouldn’t be calling me at 10:00 on a Saturday night. You should be calling Mark Corallo [Rove’s media strategist.]

But here’s the thing. I didn’t even have a chance to explain which of Jason’s articles I was writing about or that Jason had reported Rove was indicted. For all I know, Luskin hasn’t seen that article and his denial pertained to an earlier article written by Jason.

Luskin continued to chastise me for calling so late on a Saturday night, saying “This is Washington, you don’t call people at 10:00 on a Saturday night.” I apologized again and said I was in Denver and it was two hours earlier and it hadn’t occurred to me that it would be too late to call Washington. He said “Well it should have occurred to you.” I asked if I could call him tomorrow. He said “No” and hung up.

Just thinking–it’s funny that the New York Times has taken down Cheney, if you think about it. Considering that his handwriting on their newspaper is taking him down. hehe

Right now, my hero is Patrick J. Fitzgerald.

I’m sorry but I just can’t get past my original “pack o’ Q-Tips.”

This belongs in the last thread, but to avoid EPUness, I’m posting it here. For a little comic relief, Dood Abides over at dKos has put up a new song in honor of what we all fervently hope is the coming good news: Fitz Brings the Frog March Again (yes, it’s the Rovey Horror Picture Show, complete w/Photoshop!).

Where do I start? With my mother and father, both children of the Depression and WWII, and the example they set. But I think when the smoke clears and we know more about the work and lives of Valerie Plame, Joe Wilson and Patrick Fitzgerald, we could be seeing a new generation of gifted public servants. High school kids just now becoming aware of the CIA scandal and its cast of characters will be impressed enough to consider a serving their country outside the military. I cannot wait to read Plame’s story and what motovated her to persue her CIA career. And Fitgerald could be catapulted into a high post at the Dept. of Justice under a future enlightened President.

I think we are on the verge of seeing the Good Guys win and the Bad Guys punished. It’s been a long process. I want to hear from the Good Guys speak from the heart.

Yeah, Fitz is my hero right now, too - and James Comey, and all the unsung public servants out there who have kept their integrity and are doing their jobs.

And I have kind of a fancrush on Pach the Magnificent. :)

Okay, I’ll take a risk, bec. I might well be slammed. I have heros, for sure. But what I stand for comes from my heart and my gut, not from outside. I don’t need heros on that account. But, what my “heros” have done is to show me the way to speak to a purpose. If I don’t always do that, the failings are mine.

Don’t know if it has been metioned in earlier threads, but Leopold is saying Rove is being indicted.

My hero is Dr. Paul Gatschet, retired Director of Composition at Fort Hays State University. It’s not really for one particular thing he did, but rather for the way he lives. He’s an educated man with a PhD in Rhetoric, but he also has a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Arts “just in case”.

When he wasn’t teaching, he was working on his farm and helping his wife raise their children. He placed a high priority on both academic learning and on common sense. He’s a Jesuit-educated man of honor (like our Fitz), and I wish there were more people like him.

I found out after I met my husband (also a Jesuit-educated man of honor) that Dr. Gatschet had been a father-figure for him. In fact, in his freshman yearbook picture, my husband is wearing a tie loaned to him by one of the Gatschet boys because he didn’t have one.

Easy. My parents.

Both led very hard lives, brought me up the right way, and sacrificed for my education. And both were gone before I was old enough to vote.

Fantastic Four Pach. Dr Reed was a rubber man who could stretch forever. The Flame was a human torch. Invisible girl could throw force fields and then there was the Thing. ‘ It’s clobberin’ time!’ Marvel comics. Stan Lee.
Whatever happened to the hero’s?

OT.

Re: Plame-gate

Has there ever been a “pro-bono” junket in world history?

-GSD

GSD, “pro-bono junket” is a bit of an oxymoron, isn’t it?

One last thing, before I return to my off-line life:

I think that what needs to be discussed at great, graphic and boisterous length is that what we’re witnessing is the widely disseminated defeat of conservative philosophy.

Think about it–this is huge. Contemplate scenarios you’ve never dared dream of.

Next to my father and grandfather, my hero is Jack Cafferty. One of the few…the proud…

http://thankyoujackcafferty.blogspot.com/

the NYTimes has a story by Johnson on the Cheney annotations http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05.....mp;emc=rss

nothing there new for us …

My hero is Dana Reeve, who got dealt a mondo bad fucking hand and played it with her whole heart.

Last week while everyone else in the left blogo-world was talking about the immigration rally, some friends and I were having our own rally, on the north Senate lawn.

Yes, I’m talking about a bunch of not-so-hopeless paralyzed people and their families, gathered to give each other hope and strength before rolling into the moldy old buildings that house our elected representatives.

We were joined by Hilary and John Kerry and Tom Harkin and Dana’s old friend Susan Sarandon–but mostly the day had to do with the incredible sacrifice and struggle of a couple of hundred quads and paras who are sick and tired of being ignored by a congress with nothing better to do than imagine the glory of voting against gay marriage.

Dana’s black and white image, smiling and strong, was on one side of the stage. Christopher’s was on the other. Their deaths have mobilized the spinal cord-injured community (including my husband, as of 3/7/01) like nothing else could.

Even before that, though, I had been in the habit on black days of thinking of Dana Reeve–her courage and grace and willingness to give her life over to something ugly and impossible and wretched with a shrug and direct look. Cancer gets people who live with stress, did you know that? Cancer got her, and we all lost big.

My husband was my political hero. When we married I had never voted at age 26. He was a lawyer and became Demo.county chairman and eventually state Vice-Chair. I became a precinct committeewoman and worked the polling places, ran headquarters, did mailings,organized county fundraisers, etc. We went to Dem.national convention in S.F. and I sat in the gallery next to a Canadian who asked me lots of questions about our political process which was educational for me as well to articulate why our parties are run the way they are. I was allowed to sit on the floor as an alternate when Geraldine Ferarro was nominated. My husband was murdered in 1987 3 days after a Christmas party where he verbally challenged two sitting county commissioners and one sheriff that he believed were corrupt.
I continued his fight and we unseated two in the primary election and the other in the general. I wish he were alive today to help people realize how our system is broken. He had such charisma and humor that people really busted their butts working their precincts and doing mailings etc. I am nearly 65 yrs old and still write letters to the Editor.

Hero: Dr. Albert Schweitzer, musician who went into medical mission work. Also Mother Teresa for focusing on the most helpless, innocent suffering people.

I didn’t get involved in politics until Bush II got elected and I was finishing up undergrad. My big issue is education and Bush II made it pretty clear that he was going to attack public education. Frankly, NSA spying is low on my priority list, well behind education, poverty, civil/equal rights, diplomacy and the environment.

I grew up with Reagan, Gingrich et al always telling me how bad and evil government is. As a first generation college graduate, I made it to where I am–Grad school–largely because my father had a government job and public schools provided me education and opportunity. I grew up next to poverty with many friends below or near poverty. Many of them were as talented or gifted as some of the graduate students I encounter. But due to circumstances beyond their control, they weren’t as fortunate as I have been.

My parents worked hard to make sure I had opportunities to succeed. Many of the people I grew up with didn’t share that luxury–whether negligent parents or parents who had to work too many hours. I believe the country misses out on a lot of talent because we don’t make sure every child has an opportunity. How many Mozarts or Einstein’s are we letting slip through the cracks?

Looking back on political historical figures, I’d say I grew up admiring Lincoln, FDR, and LBJ. Lincoln for obvious reasons. FDR because he demonstrated how government can serve to benefit of everyone. LBJ because he had the courage to sign civil rights legislation and was such a real champion of social justice issues. Oh yeah, Bill Clinton, too. For the first time in years, people of color actually had a chance during his time in office. He may have worked closely with corporations, but he was always making sure that those on the bottom benefited as well as those on the top.

I come to FDL because it’s a good source of information. I don’t generally agree with everything said here, but I do think we are on the same team. Or at least should be.

I have to mention that my best girlfriend since 3rd grade is also my hero. She defendeed her theseis last week and is now a doctor. She works at Mount Sinai in Harlem and I was with her last week in NY when the decision was made. To celebrate, we saw the off-broadway show “Menopause”. I am so proud of her for all her hard work and perseverence and for all the work she does with the families of drug addicts. Hat tip to you girlfriend!

Its all of you. Every manjack of you.

Jane of course.

As one who came of age during Watergate, my heroes are those who dealt with corruption:

Federal Judge John Sirica, who held that even the president is not above the law;
Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox who doggedly pursued the truth, as well as Elliot Richardson and William Ruckelshaus who refused to fire him; (boos and hisses to Justice Dept #3 Robert Bork, who did the dirty deed late one Saturday night)
reporters Woodward and Bernstein (as he worked then), and their editor Ben Bradlee;
Sam Ervin, Daniel Inouye, Peter Rodino, Howard Baker, Barbara Jordan, and the other members of the Senate Watergate Committee and the House Judiciary Committee

But big, big, BIG props to Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham, who backed her staff without worrying overly much about what the lawyers think

Where are they now?

I’ts a long story, I’m an old man. What brought me here is that I believed a whole bunch of stuff I read in highschool, like the constitution, and the bill of rights, and I believed (given that my father came through Ellis Island) the legend at the base of the Statue of liberty “Give me your tired, your hungry, your poor….etc) and lo, these 63 years, I have grown up in an America where we might not have been perfect (no, we were far from perfect), but at least there was hope. We had a Constitution, and we had a set of laws, and if their enforcement wasn’t always all that good, well, they were still there, and at least 50% of the time, the courts got it right. But I am also a child of the 1940s, when a man named Adolph Hitler was around, and I also read about another George, the one who ruled England in the 1700s. And then there was the so-called election that brought this king to power. I for one, do not believe that there will be another one if things are left to their own devices. And I for one, do not believe that a revolution of a civil war will do this country any good, because it will either leave us with a broken union, or a despot in Washington. And so when I think of it, the biggest terrorist in the world lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and there is still a chance that we can do something about it. When my son once asked me “Dad, if there is a draft, should I go to Canada?” I answered, no, this is your country, and you stay here and fight for it, even if that means going to jail to protest the injustice of what is being foisted on this country by they gang in Washington. They are not America. They are criminals. Jail is not easy, but if you are a patriot, you will fight them, by staying here, regardless of what that means. And that is what brought me here.

As wussy as it sounds, I think I would have to name my mother as one of my heroes.

I know she is not perfect by any means, but she is someone who taught me things that I live by everyday. And some of them I am nowhere near as good at as she.

When I was young my mother worked as a nurse. She coped with three little girls spaced two years apart each (and with miscarriages between them), a husband who not only was studying premeds, but also skirting very close to dying from asthma related health problems. More than once she had to face the likelihood of becoming a widow within the week.

She’d work nights and then deal with people who didn’t understand why she was still in bed during the day.

We always had the idea that my mother knew everything. She’d “teach” us French, if we asked. She sewed most of our clothing and knit our sweaters. She taught us to love to read and never tried to censor our choices. Our presents at Christmas were one fun thing and the rest sensible, but because she’d do things like make our dolls an outfit, it would be special. With no family around because they’d immigrated from England, my mother gave us lots of stuff that mattered.

At a time when airtravel was expensive, my parents decided it was more important for us to meet the family than spend the money on other stuff. The only memories I have of one grandfather and one grandmother are from that time. Ten years later they took us all again (when there 6 kids) for the same reasons.

A few years after the birth of my little sister, my parents decided that if they wanted a boy they should find another way. She was very concerend about zero population growth and felt guilty that they had 4 kids. They decided to adopt. At the time, biracial children were being “left on the shelf”.

So we got my little brother. The first time I took him out for a walk, I was eleven and he 15 months. A neighbour kid called him a nigger. It was at the same time that MLK and RFK were killed. My mother helped me understand it all and cope with such idiots.

Two years later we got my other little brother. About a week after that my dad almost died again. People suggested to my mother that it might make sense to give my brother back and she would just look at them as if they were insane.

My mother taught me about feminism and real women’s history. As she told me, she came from 5 generations of working women. Brought up in a very Victorian household, she traveled very far, not just in distance but in attitude. I don’t think much of her generation and her parent’s generation in the family understood her, but she stood her ground and never pretended to be something she was not.

She brought us up to be independent precisely because she hadn’t been.

At 75, she is active with Planned Parenthood. My mother has long been active with women’s health. She used to do BC demonstrations at high schools and it was not surprising when she used to keep a mound (literally) of condom packets (unopened) on her dresser in the few years before she retired. She told me it was so she’d have plenty to hand out to whomever needed them, but maybe I wasn’t privy to everything in her life. ;o)

She told me once that feminism was the new f word at the women’s clinic where she worked. She was appalled.

When I’ve needed help, she’s stepped in.
This is too long and not nearly complete but I’ll stop here. My mother made me a well rounded woman. I am a great mother. She made that as well.

Oh and I should mention my hero from high school mary jane mucklestone. She was a year older than me and really cool and lived up the street from me. I was just a geek and she took me under her wing anyway and taught me everything about the world and art and punk rock and travel and fashion and food and foreign films and everything outside our cloistered little neighborhood. She was (and is) my idol.

My hero is Hugh Thompson ( i think that’s right), the man who put himself between Calley’s butchers and saved the people in My Lai who weren’t dead already. He put his life on the line, and then his career.
He died not long ago.

Peterr #34 - you beat me to it and phrased it better than I would have. The Watergate era heroes helped define my political outlook.

Jane’s and Christy’s work here amazes me daily.

Hunter S. Thompson’s writings were a valuable tool for helping me cope with 12 years of Reagan-Bush I nonsense.

While not exactly heroes, Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert keep me amused, sane and hopeful.

I don’t want to suggest a new hero, but I’m reminded by cynic of a piece of history from the 30’s. Neville Chamberlain is greatly reviled for his “Peace in our time” speech, but isn’t it a fact that he was buying time for Britain to re-arm? In fact, had the war started at that point in time, the British would have had no chance. Is it possible that Chamberlain is actually a hero, and that he gave everything, including his reputation, to save his country?
I’m no expert on this history, so I’d be interested in feedback.

My hero is Ben Franklin for his lifetime of striving for the common good, for being an intellectual giant, and for making things happen, not just letting them happen. He was also totally wise and snarky.

kraftysue
May 13th, 2006 at 9:23 pm

Thanks for sharing that about your husband but how sad (and an inadequate expression of sorrow). Did they catch his murderer(s)?

marky
May 13th, 2006 at 9:39 pm

From what I remember from reading, the First War was still fresh in everyone’s mind, barely 20 years on, and no one in England wanted another war. Whether it was right or wrong, a lot of people wanted to hear that peace was ongoing.

Jane Hamsher
May 13th, 2006 at 9:35 pm

IMO You learned eveything Maryjane could teach you. You are ubercool in my books.

My Mother who strived to obtain an education as a young woman in the midst of the depression, who became a one-room schoolhouse teacher before the WWII. Her roots were Catholic and Irish. When the war broke out she became a Wave and taught young men who could not pass the entry exam adequate reading and writing. When the war was over she returned home and after a brief interval was stricken by Polio and during her recuperative period met and married my father who was also a vet and a polio victim. I am the youngest of their three daughters.The product of a home filled with accomidation to the needs of others with two wheelchairs to avoid and many chores to do. My mother managed to work as a teacher in elementary school and later a prison, participate in her church, lobby the state legislators to implement laws to facilitate access to the handicapped and raise three fine human beings. She was not without flaws, her iron will was a gift as well as a curse. As a result of these factors I became a nurse.

This is so easy to answer now that I am older, in my younger days I may have had a different answer but, without a doubt, it was my father.

My father was a strong Democrat. In my younger days we argued, sometimes strongly, about the merits of the two parties. He would put out a statement and in order to challenge him, I had to look up the opposite position. Darn, it was hard sometimes to take the Republican position but I did.

As I got older I understood when his often repeated “Republicans are no friends of the working man”. Many of his views on unions and politics hold true, probably 100% accurate in today’s environment.

He made me think and that is gift of tremendous value. To see both sides of a position and then make an informed decision has guided me my whole life.

My parents, depression era babies and WWII young adults, are both scientsts. My father is a physicist and my mother a botanist. Both love nature and music. Both are deeply religious, in the tradition of Liberal Southern Baptists (not an oxymoron!) and so I was an adult before I really understood that there are people who are convinced that there is some natural mutual exclusivity between science and religion.

The thought was foreign to me, like a proposed either/or choice between music and architecture, or painting and poetry.

There are people on both sides of what seems to me to be an artificial divide, that cannot tolerate people on the other side. That seems unfortunate.

All of the liberal Democratic politics that my parents espose and practice arise naturally and consistently from their belief in science and rational thought and from their religious faith. It is all of a piece.

This has strongly shaped my views of the universe and of myself and my fellows hominids. And, of course, my politics.

My parents represent to me a rational, thoughtful, and compassionate center that we seem to have lost in this angry and polarized environment. But I also think that it is a center we can regain.

(For example, this website gives me a lot of hope…)

I have another hero, but I don’t know his name offhand—the discoverer of insulin. My father became diabetic in 1928, only a few years after insuline was discovered. If it hadn’t been for that man, you wouldn’t be enjoying my company, even if you were:)

Peterr 34–a big YES to those you named.

My dad was pretty heroic to me, because he worked for a governor who became a senator (someone else died). He talked about people bringing in envelopes of cash. They didn’t touch them, didn’t accept them.
Didn’t last long in DC either, lol.
My mom, too. She endured and prospered through malaria, the 1918 flu, the Dust Bowl, Depression, etc. and got a college degree.
Other than that, several women were my heroes. A nursing supervisor…Babe Zaharias…Madame Curie…early nurses.
And a great-aunt who rode in a wild west show.

The Talk Shows (via WaPo)
Sunday, May 14, 2006; A05

Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows:

FOX NEWS SUNDAY (WTTG), 9 a.m.: First lady Laura Bush , author Mary Cheney and columnist Art Buchwald .

THIS WEEK (ABC, WJLA), 9 a.m.: Sens. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), actress Reese Witherspoon and Bush .

FACE THE NATION (CBS, WUSA), 10:30 a.m.: Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and national secuity adviser Stephen J. Hadley .

MEET THE PRESS (NBC, WRC), 10:30 a.m.: Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and journalists John Harwood , Judy Woodruff and Jon Meacham .

LATE EDITION (CNN), 11 a.m.: Sens. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.); Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdul-Ilah al-Khatib , former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and Hadley .

My hero? My grandmother Grace Tryon, born in 1882. Not college educated but a fanatical reader, interested in and curious about everything, fair to a fault, and the first true liberal in my life–although I didn’t realize that until years after she’d died. And, paradoxically, she initially registered as a Republican. She told me about the time in 1920 when American women were finally allowed to vote.

That cold November day, a group of them walked together (no cars then) to the polling place in the local Grange Hall–walked together because there’d been threats of violence to those females who dared to “overturn tradition.” Decades later when she spoke of it, her voice still shook in anger, and she ordinarily was the most serene of women. She said this group of new voters was taunted and spat upon. Rocks were thrown. Many of the women fell away and went home, afraid, and unable to face the public humiliation. When I asked her what she did, she said “I kept walking. No one was going to stop me from claiming my legal and civil rights!”

She cast her first vote that day.

Hunter S. Thompson. ‘nuf said.

Has this been posted? Is this german? meaning, already posted, old news: Rove already indicted. I saw Jason’s post in earlier thread…

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051306W.shtml

Karl Rove Indicted on Charges of Perjury, Lying to Investigators
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report

Saturday 13 May 2006

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald spent more than half a day Friday at the offices of Patton Boggs, the law firm representing Karl Rove.

During the course of that meeting, Fitzgerald served attorneys for former Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove with an indictment charging the embattled White House official with perjury and lying to investigators related to his role in the CIA leak case, and instructed one of the attorneys to tell Rove that he has 24 hours to get his affairs in order, high level sources with direct knowledge of the meeting said Saturday morning.

Robert Luskin, Rove’s attorney, did not return a call for comment. Sources said Fitzgerald was in Washington, DC, Friday and met with Luskin for about 15 hours to go over the charges against Rove, which include perjury and lying to investigators about how and when Rove discovered that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert CIA operative and whether he shared that information with reporters, sources with direct knowledge of the meeting said.

It was still unknown Saturday whether Fitzgerald charged Rove with a more serious obstruction of justice charge. Sources close to the case said Friday that it appeared very likely that an obstruction charge against Rove would be included with charges of perjury and lying to investigators.

An announcement by Fitzgerald is expected to come this week, sources close to the case said. However, the day and time is unknown. Randall Samborn, a spokesman for the special prosecutor was unavailable for comment. In the past, Samborn said he could not comment on the case.

For oh so many reasons, I have to say

William Ruckleshaus

Frankly, John Kerry is my political hero. Coming from a right wing family based in Texas and Georgia, I didn’t really care for politics until late 2003/2004. The only thing I had known to that point was that W was pretty much an unstoppable force and the Democrats, whoever they ran, would be slaughtered come Nov 2004. I used to laugh it up. Mind you, I was only 20 nearing 21. But the Kerry General Election campaign, as bad it was, managed to WAKE ME UP. When I told my parties that I had switched parties and would be casting my vote for Kerry, they were in absolute shock. There are members of my family who believe FDR was the worst thing to ever happen to this country, I kid you not. So since about March of 2004, I’ve put up with the jokes, the snide remarks, and the cheshire cat grins as they talk about the “inept Democrats.”

Curiously, the jokes have stopped. The off handed remarks about the platitudes of the Democratic party have stopped. The “Did you hear what Rush Limbaugh said today” comments have stopped. They’ve finally woken up to the fact that there are more important things in politics than simply playing for the team 24/7 and waving the pom-poms. This country is unrecognizable since 2001, and they know it.

I helped Kerry’s campaign from here in Texas. I attended a thank you and kids first healthcare event of his in Austin. I have a John Kerry 2008 bumper sticker on my car. My father, the Big Business republican, has even called Mr. Kerry’s office numerous times actually thanking him for his service and for the affect he’s had on my life the last 2+ years. I switched majors, from business administration to political science. With the hope of Law School in the future.

All because I paid attention to what John Kerry was saying in 2004.

Mom and dad. Both came from hard times. Mom had to quit school in the 9th grade to tend to her diabetic mother and take over the household. She knew the value of an education, and taught me to read and write early on. When Dad had a heart attack, she went to the textile mills to keep things going. After Dad died, she put herself thru nursing school, and retired this year. Dad’s word was bond; he taught me how to work hard, reason something thru, stand my ground, and at the end, how to keep the faith. He did WW II and Korea. They lived with dignity and honor, and I am blessed to be their son.

Thanks Pach for inspiring me. You almost got me to sign up for the roots project yesterday…even though I live in one of the few districts in the country where our Congressman voted against the Iraq invasion, and he just blogged on HuffPo against wiretapping (Jim McDermott). Our Senators are complete lightweights, though (Murray and Cantwell). I’ll get to it.

On who influenced me…would have to say John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. I discovered the Hobbit when I was eight, and then Lord of the Rings when I was nine. By 5th grade I had begun to suspect that Tolkien’s sense of history and his understanding of the human condition were keen indeed, deeper and truer than CS Lewis, and that LOTR was no mere allegory. This was later abundantly confirmed.

Obviously Tolkien’s books are meant to work at the level of positive myth, but there is far greater resolve and genius in Tolkien than is known, even by his fans. He probably knew more about the English language and where it came from than anyone who ever lived, yet at one time he was mere yards away from Adolf Hitler at the Somme in October 1916, both being seriously wounded within days of each other.

Fate takes strange turns indeed, and if there is one concept that Tolkien tried to convey it was to preserve and amplify the old theory of courage interwound with fate present in the North country myths…the importance of having done right even if defeated, and that fate favors those who do right despite long odds.

I believe that Tolkien began actively working on that message right after he was wounded as an intentional antidote which could be passed down across generations (as the Norse sagas and eddas were), an antidote to the death factory he was subjected to, which killed all his childhood friends, and he knew it would only become more horrible in the future. Hitler of course took a very different path in devoting his life to an antidote, but I think Tolkien’s is more powerful and lasting.

So here is one thing that inspired Tolkien (first in Old Norse, from the Dvergatal in the Elder Edda, the oldest known written language in all the north countries):

Myrct er uti, mal qvedth ec ocr fara
uerig fioell yfir
thyrse a thioed yfir
badthir vidth komonc, edtha badthir tecr
sa inn amatki ioetunn.

My translation:

Mirk lay outside, but our quest leads
over misty mountains
over tribes of thyrses:
we both come back, else both are taken
by the might of the giant.

marky
May 13th, 2006 at 9:47 pm

The discoverer of insulin was Sir Frederick Banting of my alma mater University of Toronto (With Charles Best). He was knighted for and won a Nobel prize for his discovery.

Here’s a link to his bio: http://nobelprize.org/medicine.....g-bio.html

My heroes are the 2400+ american mothers that will have a painful day tomorrow for Mother’s Day. I know from whence I speak having lost my firstborn after Gulf I to suicide. They some how pull themselves together to protect their families when they want nothing more than to crawl under the covers for a long time. Tomorrow many will be at a 24-hour vigil in front of the Whitehouse writing letters to Laura Bush and promoting peace. CODEPINK is doing an amazing job reaching out to the mothers in Iraq and Iran to have a dialog for peace. Grandmothers are organizing across the country to protest the war. They are my heroes. Please support them with a kind thought tomorrow.

I’ve learned a lot from my partner, a woman whose completely transformed my outlook on politics (I grew up in a Republican household). Conversation with her saved me from remaining a narrow-minded elitist from the Northeast for the rest of my days. Because of her, I made made it to the progressive end of the political spectrum.

Reaching out to people really can make a difference.

Tom Chicago, there’s a lot of discussion about it on the prior thread, and in Christy’s posts about the Libby filings, and at tnh. There’s a lot of speculation that our understanding of Fitzgerald’s focus has shifted. He may have been more focussed on Cheney these past few months then the corporate media realized.

Pea Ess

Off to bed now but I look forward to reading the rest of the stories posted here tomorrow. They are stories of true inspiration, whether family members, friends or famous people of history. I love ‘em.

Thanks everyone for sharing and thanks Pach for suggesting the topic.

There are many.

One of my favorite contemporary ones is Mikhail Gorbachev.

He could have put up a fight, sent out the troops, cracked down, held on like Ceauscescu in Romania….Instead, he did what so few in absolute power did..he let it go.

-GSD

my hero: fred rogers

WTF: it will take a much bigger techie/legal geek to figure this one out from kos:

He’s right in that the timing is really suspicious.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/5/12/232746/857

Why did Bush revoke Executive Order 13011 today?

by exmearden
Fri May 12, 2006 at 08:27:46 PM PDT

In scanning the whitehouse.gov site today, I noticed the following Executive Order:

Executive Order: Amendments to Executive Orders 11030, 13279, 13339, 13381, and 13389, and Revocation of Executive Order 13011

Most of the amendments in this Order pertain to existing orders and seem fairly innocuous. One item that caught my eye was the Revocation of Executive Order 13011.
I’m passing familiar with 13011, hanging around the technology industry as I have for a few years.

Executive Order 13011 is an Executive Order signed by President Clinton in 1996 and, in effect, goes hand in hand with the Clinger/Cohen Act of 1996. I’m oversimplifying here, but one of the reasons that the Clinger/Cohen Act was put into place was to enforce standards of information technology across the federal landscape, a mishmash at the time and sorely in need of some kind of structure.

There have been, and still are, other more dastardly motives implied in the passage of the Act, and by association implied in the creation of Clinton’s Executive Order. At the time, liberals and conservatives alike saw the passage of the Act and the signing of the Executive Order as a step taken toward a 1984 world (sound familiar?). The Executive Order loosely advocates sharing of information and technology structure across agencies and with nongovernmental entities. It could be implied that sharing of such information and structure across country borders when necessary was also supported in the Executive Order 13011.

READ MORE….

Wow! Now I see he was already mentioned. But I also admire him for his work for the EPA, and his continuing work for the environment, and for science-based decision making. He has been doing book tours recently related to those issues. Once in awhile, his role in Watergate (refusal to cooperate with Nixon) gets mentioned ;-).

I have had several people in my life who have shaped it and influenced it. First there are my mid 80 yr old parents, grew up during the depression, first of their families to obtain a high school and then college education through the GI bill because they both were Vets who served in WWII. Growing up they were elected members of city council, presidents of PTA, AAUW and leaders in our church.
Both sides of my family have strong union roots. My father learned his values from his uncles who participated in the Flint MI sitdown strike in the 30’s. His family came to America before America was a country. My maternal grandfather was a union letter carrier for 35 years.
And the last is my sweet Korean daughter who watched her adopted mother survive the divorce from “HELL” and make a new life for us all. I was discussing going back to college and make a change in careers, her comment to me was “Of Course you can do it Mom, you can do anything” and I did.
Any mother and grandmother who looks into the eyes of their babies, you see our history and our future. Those are the things that shape who I am and what I do now. My grand uncles participated in a historic strike which benefited all workers and my admiration of my 82 yr old father who works two days a week building houses for his local Habitat for Humanity Chapter. AND boy do I mean those old geezers work!

GSD -> “pro-bono junket” = these guys are so corrupt and inured to gifts that they can’t imagine anything being a non-junket…as if going to Niger in July was like playing St. Andrews.

I just read at WMR that Abu Gonzales was at the courthouse on Friday:

May 13, 2006 — Yesterday afternoon, WMR was staked out at the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington awaiting any developments in the CIA leak case. A little after noon, a large motorcade consisting of black and one green SUV, several police cars and police motorcycles sped into the street behind the courthouse. Two SUVs split from the motorcade and quickly dashed into the underground parking garage. Several personal security officers were spotted on guard in the annex of the courthouse where the CIA leak case grand jury was meeting. Although there is no final confirmation that the motorcade was that of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, there is every indication that he spent approximately a little under 30 minutes in the courthouse.

Last October, Gonzales made a similar trip to the courthouse on a Friday to hear the decision of the grand jury investigating Vice President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. The Attorney General’s appearance at the grand jury is a formality and there is an opportunity for him to pose questions to the jury. After last October’s visit to the grand jury, Gonzales informed the White House that Libby was to be indicted. One week later, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald delivered a five count indictment against Libby.

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/

Bob at 39: last night I ran into one of my ex students who proudly introduced his 10-month old son, named “Hunter” after H. Thompson. He’ll live on.

I find Ted Kennedy to be one of the most committed and compassionate of all political leaders these days. Every time I hear him passionately defend minority rights, women’s rights, and children I’m amazed and thankful that there are people like him holding public office.

Re: John Kerry, I never understood why so many liberals didn’t like Kerry. He was much more progressive on the issues than any of the other serious candidates.

So here is one thing that inspired Tolkien (first in Old Norse, from the Dvergatal in the Elder Edda, the oldest known written language in all the north countries):

Barring Old Irish, of course ;-)

I was lucky enough to be brought up in a home where we were taught that although you do your own thing we are all still in this together. Words like “Union” weren’t bad words as the cult that runs our country has been condidtioned to think.

Not something that could actually be proposed because there aren’t enough people who see reality anymore, even many dems, imho.

But I would love to see the dems pick up a real war Prez’s proposal LIKE THIS ONE:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyo.....20347/6147

or something like it. I know they are to a’skeered to do it though.

Diebold must be stopped. Even without saying if one believes or doesn’t believe that 2000 and 2004 were stolen, Diebold and a paper trail should be an issue along with stopping Choice Point and the republicans from purging legit voters.

If the voting machines and Republican voter purges aren’t stopped, we are all pissing into a gale…

Okay, I’ll come at this from yet another different angle.

I’ve already said that my beliefs come from my heart and my gut. So I can’t comment about “people in our lives who shaped our beliefs.”

But, I would like to name someone I met at FDL as my “hero”. Matt O. As some of you have already figured out, I am a prof., so I’ve had the chance to know many many university students in the 17-21 age range over the years.

I was really impressed by Matt O.’s initial post in the “bigotsphere” series, which also linked to his blog. Such wonderful writing. Such thorough research. I figured at first that he was one of those 30-something bloggers. But, then, it seemed that he was a “student”. Well, an older student, in some kind of Ph.D. program, I thought. And, I forwarded him an email I had gotten about nominations for Harvard fellows (lower experience limit, those completing Ph.D.s). I was astonished to learn that Matt O. was an undergraduate! Now a graduate. Yea Matt O. And, I learned from him more about his history and his upbringing. And, then, he did those incredible posts on war profiteering.

The undergrads I have seen over 20+ years mostly come from priviledged backgrounds, with every advantage. And, here is this “kid”, coming out of left field on FDL, and not from such a background, who so far surpasses them in talent and wisdom, that I am in awe.

So, Matt O. is my local hero, because he gives me hope for the future, and for the next generation. That is where I will be looking for my heros. Fresh minds, fresh talent.

Off top of my head, I’ll go with an economist: Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the idea of microfinance, the Grameen bank in particular. A revolutionary idea, and one that does not have all the kinks worked out yet. But, hey most hard headed practical powerful (arrogant, pompous, arid and intellectually sterile) economist know-it-alls said it was a joke and would be a disaster. It ain’t. Revolutionary development that tested out a “radical” economics idea that cultural, social, or accidential historical constraints on access to investment capital faced by poor individuals held back their human and economic development. Yunus idea was to put money, training, human capital investment in hands of women, old people, poor farm families, serfs, even beggars, and with proper incentives see if it can make a big difference in human welfare in poor communities. Check it out: google Grameen Bank or microfinance. Lotta micro stuff going on now: microinvestment, microagricultural and micropublic health development, microinsurnace in poor areas. You could even say that Rubin’s (in Clinton times) initiatives for channeling capital to inner cities was inspired by microfinance (actually I don’t know that, but there are parallels).
I think economics has a very high ratio of theoretical BS to actual practical payoff, especially recently. Not many economists can claim to have made a difference in human welfare for the better. I think maybe in modern times, Alexander Hamilton, Friederich List, Lord Beveridge, John M. Keynes are practical economists who made a huge difference. Muhammad Yunus will join that select group.
Personal: My frontier Aunt and Uncle, but that will have to wait until next time FDL does this.

I admire Cindy Sheehan. After visiting with her last November outside the Bush “ranch,” I sensed great humility, courage, intelligence, and sincerity, as well as profound grief. The other families speaking out about their children’s losses along with her deserve our respect too, and gratitude for speaking out when others were afraid to do so.

OfT: “The trail of Plame leads straight to Dick Cheney”
“The cognoscenti already read about it at The Next Hurrah, but here’s the official version from Mike Isikoff for Newsweek:
The role of Vice President Dick Cheney in the criminal case stemming from the outing of White House critic Joseph Wilson’s CIA wife is likely to get fresh attention as a result of newly disclosed notes showing that Cheney personally asked whether Wilson had been sent by his wife on a “junket” to Africa….”
By Swopa May 13 2006 - 7:45pm

Jane - if your friend Mary Jane Mucklestone is from the family of lawyers in Seattle, I know all her siblings, John, James and Jeannie. A truly wonderful family. Their dad died about a year ago.

My hero has always been my maternal grandmother. The youngest of five children in a very poor family, they made her quit school at age 15 to go to work and help put her brother through dentistry school. She never stopped learning though. She read everything she could get her hands on and dove into life. She and my grandfather built a business, raised children and made their home the central meeting place for any and all who needed succor. My grandfather died while my mom was pregnant with me and my grandmother took over the business. This brilliant, savvy, kind, tolerant and funny lady expanded the business into new creative areas and became more than the family matriarch - she became well-respected in the business world (west coast) and well-loved in her community. She taught me to read the Wall Street Journal stock pages at age nine (and what it all meant) She taught me that telling the truth was the only option and that family, friends, love and art mattered most of all. She never gave out any bullshit, or took any either. She treated every single person with the same dignity. I miss her everyday. She lived to be nearly 100.

My other hero is Wes Montgomery. He worked in a foundary by day to support his wife and six kids, and at night became the greatest jazz guitarist of all time. He was a true maverick (I think he was a genius) who played a style that literally gave him migraines. But he didn’t stop because he knew it sounded so good. His music is truth and beauty rolled into one.

John Casper #75: No, that is not off topic at all, since it leads to Patrick Fitzgerald. After Yunus, the person I admire 2nd most. Over at Talkingpointsmemo, they have the pic of the copy of the NYT Wilson column with Cheney’s crazed scribblings all over it. courtesy of Mr. Fitzgerald.
Wow, Fitz has their old newspaper clippings and notes. I admire that.

Hey VG,
Doesn’t GWBush rule from his “gut”? :p. Actually, I give a lot of credit to John Rawls for formalizing many of our “gut instincts” into a nice coherent theory of justice and political liberalism.

Marg - “…last night I ran into one of my ex students who proudly introduced his 10-month old son, named “Hunter†after H. Thompson. He’ll live on.”

That’s so cool! The kid is not only being raised by obviously cool parents, but he’ll eventually read the Good Doctor’s works and gain political wisdom and wit by default.

wesgpc,

I often wonder how backward our country would be right now if Hamilton hadn’t been the first Sec. Treas and someone like Jefferson or Madison was.

Hillary Clinton has also been a big fan of microcredit in third world countries, specifically when it’s given to female entrepreneurs. Phil Angelides, gubernatorial candidate in CA implemented a program called “The Double Bottom Line”, which invests state pension money into state communities so that they can develop. The program gives priority to plans that support “smart development”. (Sorry, had to plug my choice for the next CA governor.)

Did anybody see Gore’s opening of SNL tonight? Pretty good if you ask me.

Shoephone & Jane,

I grew up south of Seattle (Burien/Normandy Park) and I heard the name Mucklestone, but it was always a sort of joke name, like John Jacob Dinckleheimer Schmidt stuff. So they’re real? Now Muckleshoot, there’s a real name, er, tribe.

I hear SNL had Gore on tonight and he was sort of funny. Anybody know? It is still light up here - acually it will still be light up here until about August 5 - so SNL isn’t on yet.

gg #80: thanks for tip on Agnelides’ double bottom line. I’ll check it out.

OMG
Ed. Teller, We’re from the same area. I lived in Burien and later close to Normandy Park.

You know, it might be because it’s late, but I’m having a hard time thinking of a “hero”.

And that, honestly, has me sad.

I’ve gotten grumpy I guess, as most people piss me off far more than inspire me.

I can say that I do have a credo - that I found on a tea box when I was 17 or so - that I try to live up to. I have always kept this close to me, as a poor student, a struggling entrepreneur, a dot-com kabillionaire then washed up post-crash loser, as a parent and even today.

“Judge a man not by what he gains from his toil, but by what he becomes in spite of it”

Well I’m going to be like bionic all sloppy too. Two people both family:

My grandad - This was a man who as a child had been forced by the British police to watch his own father be put to death in a particularly horrible way by the British Authorities in Ireland. Unsurprisingly he joined the IRA and was one of Michael Collins’ fighters. Anyone who knows anything about the Irish War of Independence knows that means he had a lot of blood on his hands. He wasn’t proud of that. He was very proud of the fact that at the height of the civil war that followed the Treaty with Britain that he helped found the unarmed Irish Police force and insisted on being sent alone and unarmed to help police one of the most heavily hard line counties. He rapidly became loved. Our police are unarmed to this day, the British police in Northern Ireland have always been heavily armed. When the anti-treaty party his opponents in the civil war came peacefully to power in a democratic election he served them loyally. I only twice saw tears in his eyes once as he tried to describe how he’d felt watching his dad being killed and the other time describing how proud he was the day DeValera came to power peacefully.

He carried his belief in reconciliation into his personal life too. When my dad, met and fell in love with my mother he welcomed her like a new daughter despite the fact that she was from an English familiy whose record in Ireland was so apalling that in one part of the country their name was literally used as a curse.

The other person is Azheemah the Shia Lebanese lady of Iraqi extraction who helped bring up my son Dubhaltach. When my wife was killed I was really in rather a mess and hadn’t a clue about how to deal with the practicalities of being a suddenly single parent. She took on him and me both, despite the fact she had good reason to hate Christians and foreigners but she didn’t. What she took from the tragedies in her own life was the need for compassion. She housetrained me and treated him as one her own lots of love always, discipline when he needed it, and always seizing every opportunity to remind him that a real man loves peace and works for it. He calls her “umm” (mother) to this day and she’ll be guest of honour at his wedding in a few months time. I know that my late wife would really approve of how she raised him and how he turned out.

Ed Teller - I grew up in California, but have been here for 22 years. Jane actually grew up here (and went to Roosevelt, IIRC?)

This post is about heroes. Well, a little. I like the graphic, because it reminds me of my son. He loves the “Super Friends”. I’ve been thinking about him a lot lately, mostly missing him because I haven’t seen him in nearly two months. I talk to him on the telephone, but it’s always brief, it’s difficult to have a conversation with him. He’s nine years old, mildly autistic (PDD-NOS for those who may be curious or knowledgable), and doesn’t “do” telephones well. Or airplanes.
His mom and I are divorced, but we get along pretty well. We’re almost friends again, allies certainly when it comes to our children. My son has a big sister: she’s terrific, top in her grade, so like her mother it’s scary, and the best big sister you can imagine. I miss her too, but we talk.
Before Katrina, we all lived near New Orleans. My ex and I have joint custody, and my kids were with me one weekday and one weekend day every week; I went to almost all of their school functions. We all made out pretty well from the storm, only minor damage to our houses. But my ex had to move to Texas for job reasons, and we felt it was best if the children went with her, and I (and my wife — I re-married in 2004 — my kids and even my ex all like her) would follow when I (we) could. Job situations allowing and all that.
So my kids are in a new school, and doing very well. But this week, I’ve been reading and re-reading an evaluation of my son (sent by my ex) from the school’s autism assessment team. There are some things in there that are pretty hard for a parent to read. When they observed my son on the playground, he didn’t really play with other children. Although he tries, he has no idea how to interact socially with other children and they — for the most part, and not unexpectedly — ignore him. Still, at least none of the other children were bullying or teasing him. Not yet, or not this time. But I expect they will.
So tonight I was talking with my dad about this (on the phone) and he said something that really struck me. He said that when he was in school, when other kids ostracized another kid for whatever reason, he always did his best to treat that kid well. He didn’t elaborate or say why, but he didn’t have to: I knew, because I was exactly that way myself. I was that way not because I’m somehow an inherently “good” or “sensitive” person. Anyone who really knows me knows that I can be an insensitive clod, as socially clueless as my son but with no disability to excuse it. I was that way because I learned from my parents that the right way to treat other people was the same as you would want them to treat you. They didn’t just tell me “do unto others”, they lived that way themselves. And today I’m grateful to my parents that I didn’t mistreat kids who were different, that I included them