It makes me weep. Truly. My father’s story is an example:
He was from a poor, rural town in Lousiana. Town wiped out in the 1927 Mississippi River flood. His father died when he was 12 yo. Mother gave the kids away — he left and went to work sweeping the floors of a newspaper office in Boyce, La. The typesetters taught him to read and set type. When he was 16 he got his apprentice type-setting card, and left to work in Hammond, La. The very, very kind owner of that paper (btw Hamiton Jordan, Sr.) arranged for him to board at the high school prinicpal’s home and the man tutored my dad at night. He was able to “finish” high school that way and signed up to take one class at a time at Southeastern Junior college in Hammond. He started with Math and kept on one class at a time: algebra, trigonometry, calculus, linear algebra, etc. When the war came, he signed up, was accepted to officer’s training and became a B-17 navigator who was (easily!) able to do celestial navigation. Did two tours in the ETO from Bassingbourne in 1943-1945 (the Memphis Belle squadron). Managed to survive! despite a 50% loss of planes during 1943. After the war he got the GI Bill (THE GREAT LEVELER!), went to medical school and raised a family all of whom went to college. IT IS A STORY THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE NOW! All because he started with a union card! And kind people helping him, and A GOVT POLICY that envisioned opportunity.

I read that the original prosecutor “disappeared,” and was found dead.

WOW, just WOW. I go to work today (and actually do something) and come home and WHAM.

But I can’t let this post go without commenting on the how very, very much you have brought us in your thinking, which, in its 4D capacity rendered me sitting on the edge of my seat late at night reading Emptywheel. We can’t begin to thank you enough, or even acknowledge your accomplishments, so numerous and deep are they. Know that we are very grateful for being on the thinking and moral front of the American Decline. I remember being insatiably curious about the Libby trial, googling to find out whatever I could and landing at TNH. What a find! I’ve been following you ever since. And I’ve told mr. posaune many times that it will be EW who writes the ultimate history of the last decade (a la Shirer).

Best of all things we wish for your future, both EW and bmaz! We will follow you where ever you go! Please let us know if we can help in any way & where to send contributions! Nashledanou!

There must have been a lot behind the scenes. Remember when Kwasniewski came to the WH to visit W? It was a big deal. Supposedly, the F-16 offsets and the visa issues were to be settled. The Poles have NEVER gotten the visa requirements lifted — their the only state in the EU that needs visas for US visitation. And they didn’t get the offsets, either. Wonder what they did get for running Szymany?

Was that the same trip Dick made in January 2005 to Oswiecim (Auschwitz) for the 60th anniversary of liberation? The one where everyone wore formal topcoats & Dick showed up in a ratty green parka? Hmm. he probably went straight to Szymany from there.

I knew someone who worked at the US embassy in Warsaw, starting in 2005, where he was posted after Pakistan. Quite fluent in Urdu and Pashto, but not Polish. hmmm. His next posting, in mid-2006, not according to the usual 4-yr rule was to Afghanistan. I always wondered about this.

Wow, Marcy – what a good hair day! You look awesome.
Now to read . . . . .

OT —
Why did O go to Puerto Rico this week?
To convince those folks to be come a state so he can tax them? (no fed tax in PR now).
Just what exactly was the agenda? anyone know?

And O’s payoff to the Poles will be lifting the visa requirements. W dangled the visa lifting in front of Kwasniewski, in his deal for the black sites (along with the F-16 offsets, but that didn’t happen either.

Funny, I saw Monica Goodling leaving the Capitol Bldg tonight. Weird

Worthy of the National Enquirer . . oh wait, that was John Edwards, John Ensign Strauss-Kahn.

Having adopted a child with real mother-loss issues, I have learned about all the Disney stories with a consistent theme of the mother getting killed: 101 Dalmations, Bambi, etc.

I loved Naomi Klein’s story about her grandfather who was fired from Disney in the 1930′s for starting a cartoonist’s union.

Yes, feels like the end of the Soviet Union, rotting from the inside out.
What will the post-collapse country be like? Think of Poland.
So many apparatchiks hunkering down for a while and showing up changed.
Until the Lustroviania Tydzien (Transparency Week) when Adman Michnik published the list of all the collaborators.

Gotta sign off so I can get the kid to school tomorrow.

But, I gotta say thanks to bmaz, for this and the thousand other things you do to educate us all. I can’t tell you, bmaz, how very, very much we appreciate your insights, analysis, integrity. And to think we can come here every day for our dose of ethics.

You
and
EW

are

a

gift.