Twenty-eight years ago, a complete unknown sprang into the international lime-light. His name was Eugene Hasenfus, shown above having his hands bound. The guy third from the left in the photo (facing the camera and wearing no cap) is José Fernando Canales, a young Sandinista militiaman. On Oct. 5, 1986, he shot down the CIA plane from which Hasenfus had been kicking crated cargo to the anti-government terrorists known as
contras in the back-country of Nicaragua. It was his 11th flight doing that. Hasenfus' capture by the Sandinistas led to the exposure of what would become known as the Iran-contra affair. Three other crewmen died in the crash, but Hasenfus, against orders, had borrowed his skydiver brother’s parachute and, luckily for him—his name in German means "rabbit’s foot"—it opened. He landed in jungle terrain where he would manage to evade a Sandinista militia patrol for less than 24 hours. Upon Hasenfus' arrival at the Managua airport, a Sandinista soldier smiled and asked the sunburned, grime-caked soldier of fortune, "What now, Rambo?" With this auspicious event began what should have been the complete unraveling of the Reagan administration. After all, Hasenfus' boss far up the secret chain of command was Lt. Col. Oliver North, who was working for the National Security Council out of the White House basement. You can read my 2009
piece on Hasenfus here.
Every week, Fairness and Accuracy in Media offers a mini-critique of media coverage of a few events and issues. Here's the latest edition:
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2008—Set Sarah free!:
The wingers think Palin was a smashing success because when you pulled the string in her back, she looked down at her cue cards and recited her talking points perfectly. Awesome! Of course, it's easy to avoid any deer-in-headlights moments when you ignore the questions you can't possibly answer, but let's give it to her.
Palin is totally awesome, an asset to the ticket, and really, really competent to be vice president.
So let her free. Take her out of Cheney's undisclosed location and let her campaign. Let her do media interviews. Let her do town hall meetings. Take her out of tightly-scripted environments, shed the McCain chaperon (which is a bit creepy and quite a bit sexist), and "let Palin be Palin."
I'm sure she'll just do great. Because really, all that Palin awesomeness shouldn't be limited to the single vice-presidential debate. It should be unleashed on the country! If not, Republicans will be deprived of a potent weapon in this final weeks of the campaign.
And yes, this is concern trolling. The only question is whether the McCain campaign is stupid enough to take this "advice," given facetiously by me, but in all seriousness by the deluded crazies in the wingnutosphere.
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Tweet of the Day
Anwar Shaikh at #PikettyTNS: neoliberalism was a planned social construction, and can therefore be socially deconstructed
— @GennaroZezza
On
today's Kagro in the Morning show,
Greg Dworkin shared the jobs news, a take on economic inequality from an unlikely source, and the next Christie traffic apocalypse. A chart that shows the economy being eaten whole by the rich. And
Rosalyn MacGregor has even more on the subject and its effects on businesses large and small. Squeezing the prison population for profit.
Gideon asks opponents of the ISIS strikes whether there's evidence for the proposition that bombing is worse than doing nothing. But there may be no clear answer about that, or any other aspect of the issue, given how some of the strikes have gone, and the alleged paucity of intelligence behind them.
High Impact Posts. Top Comments