Little post

By Jennifer J. Foster

If you’re here looking for the analysis of Ted Little’s columns, you’re in the right place ... they’ll be along soon.

Zimbabwe upheaval

By Jennifer J. Foster

From CNN:

Robert Mugabe apparently retained his presidential post Sunday after the opposition candidate dropped out of this week’s runoff because, he said, asking Zimbabweans to vote was asking them to risk their lives.

“The courageous people of Zimbabwe, of this country, and the people of the MDC have done everything humanly and democratically possible to deliver a new Zimbabwe and new government,“ candidate Morgan Tsvangirai said after a closed-door meeting of his Movement for Democratic Change.

A government official, however, said Tsvangirai dropped out only because he fears being handed a “humiliating defeat” in the runoff.

Um, right. I’m sure it has nothing to do with this:

Zimbabwe’s opposition party said four of its activists and the wife of Harare’s mayor—an opposition member—have been killed by supporters of President Robert Mugabe, just days ahead of next week’s presidential runoff.

Thursday’s report came as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Mugabe of sponsoring efforts to starve, beat and kill supporters of his opponent Morgan Tzvangirai so he can win the election ...

A spokesman for the MDC blamed Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party for the five most recent deaths, saying they brought to 70 the number of MDC party members killed since a bitterly contested election three months ago.

The body of the mayor’s wife, 27-year-old Abigail Chiroto, was found in a mortuary close to the couple’s house north of Harare. She had been beaten so severely with rocks and iron bars that her face was almost unrecognizable, MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said.

Chiroto was kidnapped, along with her 4-year-old son, on Tuesday. Some of her kidnappers wore military uniforms, Chamisa said. Chiroto’s son was released unharmed.

Her husband, Emmanuel Chiroto, is an MDC member who was recently elected mayor of Harare. He was not home at the time of the kidnapping.

Also Thursday, the MDC said that four other activists were found dead in Chitungwiza. The victims’ bodies showed evidence that “they were heavily tortured until they died,“ an MDC statement said.

“It’s unbelievable the way people are being killed or murdered,“ Chiroto said. “It’s almost mass butchering.“

From the Associated Press:

On Monday night, Abigail Chiroto, the wife of opposition mayor elect of Harare, and her four-year-old son, Ashley, were seized from their house in the suburb of Hatcliffe, family friends said Thursday. The friends, who did not want to be identified for fear of repercussions, said the two were taken to a nearby farming area where Chiroto’s body was found Tuesday.

The boy, who was left at a nearby police station, told family members that he saw his mother being blindfolded and taken off into the bush. When Chiroto’s body was found, she was still wearing a blindfold. Her body was identified Wednesday by her husband Emmanuel Chiroto who was out of town at the time.

What is worse: Your last memory of your mother being blindfolded and dragged into the bushes, where she was beaten to death and beyond recognition? Or not remembering your mother at all?

Americans forget how good we have it. We whine about the tone of the primaries—Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton “attacking” each other, for example—while forgetting that there are plenty of places around the globe where candidates and their supporters really do attack each other, in the organic sense of the word ... and there are places where, because of violence and intimidation, there are no elections at all.

The American campaign finance system may be in shambles. But thank God that atrocities like this—political atrocities like this—are unheard of in the United States.

Don’t take your vote for granted this year. Remember what goes on beyond our borders, and don’t take your vote for granted. Ever.

One more thing ...

By Jennifer J. Foster

... about the salmonella/tomato outbreak:

Lou Dobbs has been screaming about the length of time it’s taking the FDA to trace the source of the salmonella outbreak. But it seems that his anger is misplaced. If he’s dissatisfied with the speed of the investigation, perhaps he should be taking it up with the victims. Investigators have to rely heavily on the information given to them by sickened people—what they ate, when they ate it, where they got it, etc.—for leads into how the outbreak started, and as it turns out, the FDA hasn’t had great information from the public from the start.

Read this article from the Associated Press for more.

Not surprisingly, I found the article on the web site of the Bradenton Herald, Manatee County’s newspaper since 1922 ... not Lou Dobbs Tonight.

Loony loopy Lou

By Jennifer J. Foster

If you’re a fan of reasoned, evenhanded debate, you’ve probably never seen Lou Dobbs’ show on CNN.

Actually, I take that back. If you’re a fan of reasoned, evenhanded debate, you’ve probably seen the show, but you actively avoid it.

And if that’s true, then you likely missed Lou’s latest grandstanding stunt. From the Business & Media Institute:

The “Lou Dobbs Tonight” host placed the blame for the recent salmonella outbreak squarely on President George W. Bush, calling for his impeachment on the June 19 broadcast. Contaminated tomatoes from an unknown source or sources have sickened 383 people since April, according to the Associated Press.

According to the article, in the runup over the last few days to his groundbreaking agreement with U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Dobbs was “visibly angry” and called the FDA leadership “excessively intellectually challenged,“ “complete moronic, unengaged incompetents” and “arrogant” “idiots.“ He added that the administration’s management of the salmonella outbreak was “insane.“

Name calling is easy. Actually solving a problem is significantly harder. It takes a lot of arrogance—it takes a special type of presumptive arrogance—to assume that one knows more, sitting on your economics degree on some television set, about the source and cause of the outbreak than the federal agency actively investigating it.

But Lou Dobbs is a special type of guy.

His tagline for his show on CNN end with him asking the rhetorical head-scratcher, “Doesn’t anybody deserve a government that works?“

No, Lou. We DESERVE government waste, incompetence, miscarriage of responsibility and fraud. In fact, I look forward to your reports wherein you engage in shameless pile-on for ratings at the expense of productive dialogue that could actually contribute to solving the problems in the government you pillory so pretentiously.

Here’s Lou’s tomato statement, along with the video of the report that aired on his show. More and better information about the outbreak? It must be because the FDA is deliberately lying about it; it couldn’t have anything to do with the ongoing investigation—right, Lou?

I’m originally from Bradenton, Fla. There are a good number of tomato operations—fewer than there used to be, for sure, but still a good number. Florida is the largest domestic producer of tomatoes, and the value of its crop is estimated to be around $500 million, according to this report in the Orlando Sentinel. The farms and people of Manatee County are a good part of that production. The fearmongering that Lou Dobbs is engaged in with regard to the salmonella outbreak is hurting people who work in the tomato industry—not just here, in Manatee County, but elsewhere in Florida and throughout the U.S. It’s hurting the middle class for which Lou Dobbs so sanctimoniously claims to speak.

Guess what I found?

June 22, MEXICO CITY—The U.S. has cleared tomatoes in 28 of 31 Mexican states from suspicion in a recent salmonella outbreak, a move that drew praise from Mexican officials Saturday.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration now appears to be narrowing its investigation into the outbreak, which has sickened more than 550 people, to some counties in Florida and three Mexican states: Jalisco, Coahuila and Sinaloa.

Hmm. I wonder if Lou will update us about that.

If you haven’t yet mortgaged your brain to Lou Dobbs and you’re still in the habit of thinking for yourself, here is the FDA’s page on the tomato investigation.

Lou Dobbs. He is self-aggrandizing, bombastic, pompous and obstinant (or “tough, relentless, independent,“ if you prefer his euphemisms).

Come to think of it, is the FDA hiring? I might have a guy for them.