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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alan Smithee who wrote (40427)	9/16/2005 12:17:50 PM
From: paret	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Farrakhan : Levee blown up to destroy the black part of town and keep the white part dry. __________________________________________________________ Air America Hosts: Farrakhan Not Wrong on Levees NewsMax.com ^ \| Sept. 16, 2005 \| Carl Limbacher Two hosts at the liberal radio network Air America are defending Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan - saying he's not wrong to suspect that white people deliberately blew up the levees in New Orleans. "You cannot blame people for coming up with conspiracy theories," Air America host Chuck D. said, after he was asked Thursday about the paranoid pronouncement by MSNBC's Tucker Carlson. "They look on television and see that the government is four days late in saving people [who are] supposed to be their citizens," Chuck D. explained. Carlson gave him a second chance to denounce Farrakhan's lunatic declaration, saying, "You're a smart guy. You know that white people didn't blow up the levees to kill black people. You've gotta know that didn't happen." But the Air America host refused to budge, insisting instead that there was a chance Farrakhan could be right. "I can't say unless I know for sure what's the actual facts and what's actually false," the rapper-turned-talk host said. Carlson tried a third time, telling Chuck D.: "Look, I can say for certain that it was not a white conspiracy. White people did not blow up the levee to kill black people." Still, the radio lefty wouldn't denounce Farrakhan's poisonous rant, saying only, "I don't think it's a person at fault but I think the system needs revamping." After failing to persuade Chuck D., the MSNBC host turned to panelist Rachel Maddow, who also hosts a show on Air America. Asked if she believed that white people deliberately destroyed the levees, Maddow declined to render a personal judgment - and instead defended the sentiment behind the toxic hypothesis. "Conspiracy theories don't necessarily help but you have to understand where they come from," she told Carlson. "They come from people feeling like this disaster had a real racial component. I mean, it was a majority-black city that was absolutely abandoned by the country." On Monday, Farrakhan uncorked his ugly theory, telling a North Carolina audience: "I heard from a very reliable source who saw a 25 foot deep crater under the levee breach. It may have been blown up to destroy the black part of town and keep the white part dry."

To: Alan Smithee who wrote (40427)	9/16/2005 12:37:54 PM
From: paret	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Take Back the Memorial Alert (15 Major 9/11 Family Groups Reject LMDC Mediation Plan) Take Back The Memorial ^ New York, N.Y.—September 15, 3005—The alliance of 15 major 9/11 family organizations was stunned to learn through the media last week and not from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation of their plans to engage in mediated talks with 9/11 family members about the presence of the International Freedom Center on the World Trade Center memorial site. According to the media, the LMDC’s stated purpose in hiring an outside mediator was to facilitate ‘conversations that might otherwise not happen.” We hasten to point out that individual and collective members of the 9/11 family groups, along with of citizens from the Lower Manhattan community and other interested parties, have been meeting in good faith at LMDC-sponsored forums for more than three years. The last such meeting, held by the Civic Alliance for Rebuilding Lower Manhattan, took place just two days ago. If anything, the LMDC has once again demonstrated that it does not understand the difference between having meetings and actually listening to the public. The LMDC appears not to understand that the objection, in principle, to the presence of the IFC on the World Trade Center site is no longer a matter that can be resolved by 9/11 family groups alone. They have been joined by the 22,000 members of ‘New York’s Bravest”–the Uniformed Firefighters Association– which lost 343 of its active members and three of its retired members in the 9/11 attacks, as well as the Firemen’s Association of the State of New York, the state’s largest firefighter organization consisting of 110,000 volunteer firefighters, many of whom participated in the rescue and recovery effort at Ground Zero. These organizations are also joined by more than 46,000 people from all over the country who have signed an online petition calling for the LMDC to remove the IFC and the Drawing Center from the memorial site. We anticipate that the growing list of organizations joining this fight for a proper memorial will increase these numbers exponentially in the coming days. The LMDC’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge this wider rejection of the IFC mirrors its denial of other critical problems with the larger memorial and memorial museum plans. Constantly fuzzy and, curiously, always reduced projections on the millions of people per year who will visit the memorial do not add up when compared to other major memorials around the country such as the Statue of Liberty. The LMDC cannot demonstrate that the memorial itself and the underground museum on the site will be able to accommodate visitors without having to turn away millions per year and thousands daily. Nor can it demonstrate that it can safely and securely send 20,000 people underground every day, much less through one entrance and one exit. Additionally, the LMDC cannot show how precious 9/11 artifacts and the momentous story of the worst attack in the history of our nation can all be contained in a cramped underground space which will also house train tracks, a PATH terminal, loading platforms, passageways, waterfalls, ventilation shafts, soil and root systems from the forest above and infrastructure for a massive cooling plant below. In short, the problem of space may ultimately be the most practical reason not to allocate 300,000 square feet of space to any entity other than the memorial and the memorial museum. To do so will bring dishonor to the lost, discord to the living and disunity to the country. By creating yet another deaf and redundant ‘process” from which they are removed, the LMDC and Governor George Pataki are simply delaying resolution of an issue which has been clearly laid out before them, as well as wasting time and resources that could be better spent addressing other compelling problems that must be solved before the first shovel is sunk into sacred ground. The time is long overdue for civic and political leaders to act. The IFC must go.

To: Alan Smithee who wrote (40427)	9/17/2005 11:23:52 AM
From: paret	Respond to of 90947

Attorneys win again Waterbury Republican-American ^ \| September 17, 2005 \| Editorial ...for every dollar paid for actual "damages," the lawyers got $90. ...designed not to gain anything for the plaintiffs but rather to generate fees for the only true beneficiaries of this disgrace: the attorneys." Last month, Sony Pictures agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit by moviegoers who said they were duped into buying tickets to Sony films in 2001 based on ads featuring glowing reviews by David Manning of the Ridgefield Press. Mr. Manning never wrote such a review, and the Press never published it. But when the trial lawyers got wind of Sony's little scam, they went into writ-writing overdrive. Most media outlets let the story die after the settlement was announced, but The Washington Post followed up with a breakdown on how the loot was split. $250,000 covered the costs associated with alerting moviegoers to the settlement and processing the claims. $494,915 went to charity. That's what remained of the half-million dollars reserved for verifiable claims; the other $5,085 was shared by the 170 moviegoers who had saved their ticket stubs. It's probably best that they settled because it would have been tough for them to testify -- with a straight face -- that their movie-going decisions are dictated by a guy supposedly working for a weekly newspaper in Connecticut. $458,909 compensated the trial lawyers. In other words, for every dollar paid for actual "damages," the lawyers got $90. The trial bar hates it when we call the class-action system a racket, so we won't go there this time. Instead, we will give California Appellate Court Judge Reuben Ortega the last word: "This is the most frivolous case with which I have ever had to deal. ... We should be occupying ourselves with resolving legitimate disputes instead of laughable cases designed not to gain anything for the plaintiffs but rather to generate fees for the only true beneficiaries of this disgrace: the attorneys."