Target of Racism, Swastika

A vandalized sign outside the office of Rep. David Scott, D-Ga., is shown Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2009 in Smyrna, Ga. Scott had a contentious community meeting on health care last week. Scott, who is black, said the swastika is the latest example of what he believes is an increasingly hateful and racist debate over reforming health care. The Atlanta lawmaker said he also has received mail in recent days that used N-word references to him, and that characterized President Barack Obama as a Marxist

The use of words and symbols of hate and intolerance has to eventually explode into some very ugly things. After Limbaugh called the President a Nazi and Beck called the President a racist, the tone got uglier. Palin followed with lies about death squads and evil. Now we have a manifestation of that ugliness.

The right-wing backlash against Democrats took a decidedly ugly turn in Smyrna, Georgia, home to moderate Democratic Rep. David Scott: On Tuesday, a swastika was found painted across a sign with the Congressman's name at his office.

Rep. David Scott: http://davidscott.house.gov/

A Rare Ray of Hope

“We are the place that has the light at the end of the tunnel.”



Jesus a Southerner? Southern Galilee?





West Point mayor Drew Ferguson IV stands in the middle of downtown West Point, Ga., where the new KIA auto plant is scheduled to open later this year








Slide Show: The Town That Won





Construction is still underway in West Point where the new KIA auto plant is scheduled to open later this year.










While much of the rest of the country remains mired in the depressing gray of recession, this rural town of fewer than 3,500 people on the Georgia-Alabama border, about 80 miles southwest of Atlanta, has somehow managed to draw the winning ticket in the nation’s economic lottery.

A new Kia Motors Corporation automobile manufacturing plant is opening here this year, an event that many residents of this former mill town, where life had slowly been ebbing away, can only describe as heaven-sent.

“We’re the only place in the nation that is fixing to put between 7 and 10,000 manufacturing jobs online,” said Mayor Drew Ferguson IV, a 42-year-old dentist who is charged with managing the town’s growth. “We are the place that has the light at the end of the tunnel.”

Small light that cost [Foreign automakers have flocked to the South, drawn by huge incentives offered by state officials, cheaper labor costs and the nonunion environment. (In the case of Kia, which is based in South Korea, state and local officials doled out some $400 million in tax breaks and other incentives.)], and that is non-union. Where did the 400 million dollars come from? Lowered taxes. Where will the $400 million hole

Assisted Suicide

John Celmer killed himself in June.















"There are millions of people who think what we do is just awful," said Jerry Dincin, president of the Final Exit Network.

London looks at US politics

Those wicked cartoonists from the London Times strike again.

Georgia is the graveyard of America's unipolar world

More on W's legacy.

what is clear is that America's unipolar moment has passed - and the new world order heralded by Bush's father in the dying days of the Soviet Union in 1991 is no more. The days when one power was able to bestride the globe like a colossus, enforcing its will in every continent, challenged only by popular movements for national independence and isolated "rogue states", are now over. For nearly two decades, while Russia sunk into "catastroika" and China built an economic powerhouse, the US has exercised unprecedented and unaccountable global power, arrogating to itself and its allies the right to invade and occupy other countries, untroubled by international law or institutions, sucking ever more states into the orbit of its voracious military alliance.

A fascinating article.

Bush Says Russia Must Stop ‘Bullying’ Georgia

This incident will be part of W's legacy.

Bush, Sending Aid, Demands That Moscow Withdraw

Enlarge This Image

Joao Silva for The New York Times

Russian soldiers traveled near the village of Orjosani, Georgia. More Photos »

This has the effect of more deeply involving the US in the ongoing war in Georgia. It is, to say the least, risky. It also fairly much guarantees that where the US wishes Russia's cooperation, primarily with Iran, that is now not going to happen. It is clearly a calculated move, calling Russia's bluff.

timedia

Slide Show

Convoys of Troops and Refugees

Map

The Question is: Why?

Just why did Russia unleash its mighty military machine on tiny Georgia? A geopolitical quiz.

Al-Jazeera has it this way: The heavy fighting between Russian and Georgian forces appears to have ended after the two sides agreed to an EU-backed ceasefire plan.

Now, Russia has about 140 million people, and the arsenal of a former, and nascent, super-power. Georgia has about 4.6 million people. [Dig: these are numbers from the CIA World fact Book, which likely means Big Brother is watching; do be careful.]

So, a former super-power wanting to assert its virility, up against a pup with less than 5 million people -- this is not a pissing contest between Georgia and Russia, but between Russia and and the US, and one has To hope that Condie Rice and W Bush got enough cojones to match up against Vlad Putin (not a bet I'd be glad to make).

Russia Widens Attacks on Georgia

Ain't getting any better.

Russia, Georgia Clash Over Breakaway Province

One of W Bush's bold moves is being challenged: he has called Georgia a beacon of freedom, and it, in turn, has sought to join NATO.

Sandwiched between Russia and Georgia, South Ossetia has a population of just 70,000. The pro-Russian region first sought to break from Georgia in the early 1990s in the tumult that followed the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

What will Bush do in response?

Russia and U.S. ally Georgia were on the brink of war Friday after Moscow sent troops and tanks into Georgia's breakaway province of South Ossetia, in a dangerous escalation of a long-simmering conflict in the strategically important Caucasus.

Georgia is right under Russia's southern border; to encourage it to join NATO is absurd, part of the Bush-Cheney arrogance.

In Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, President Mikhail Saakashvili said he was preparing to declare marshal law and that his country was under attack. "We have Russian tanks moving in," he told national television, ordering troops to mobilize. In a series of international TV interviews, he said the conflict was a struggle between the Western values he espouses and Russian aggression.

Marshal law? Is that General Marshal, or another marshal? Oy.

Bush endorses NATO expansion

An interesting geopolitical item.

Ukraine Gets Support From Bush Bush is putting his full weight behind the desire by Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO, and declared that Russia won't be able to veto former Soviet states joining the trans-Atlantic military alliance.