Whatever happened to?
•Getting a governor
We've followed the strongly contested governor's race in Washington during the three weeks it has been undecided. The results from the initial recount came in this week. MSNBC has the details.
OLYMPIA, Wash. - Republican Dino Rossi on Wednesday won a recount for Washington governor by just 42 votes out of more than 2.8 million cast, but Democrats were expected to order yet another recount.
A statewide machine recount left Rossi clinging to the narrowest victory ever in a state gubernatorial race over Democratic Attorney General Christine Gregoire. Rossi had also won the regular count, his 261-vote margin just a tiny fraction of 1 percentage point, triggering an automatic recount.
A statewide machine recount left Rossi clinging to the narrowest victory ever in a state gubernatorial race over Democratic Attorney General Christine Gregoire. Rossi had also won the regular count, his 261-vote margin just a tiny fraction of 1 percentage point, triggering an automatic recount.
In the final Thanksgiving Eve flurry of vote tallies, Gregoire gained ground on Rossi in Democratic-leaning King County and picked up votes in Kitsap County, completing the 39-county tally in a near tie.
Even before the last big surge of ballots was tallied, Democrats had signaled they would seek a hand recount in at least part of the state if Gregoire ended up on the short end.
Persons who have not watched the cliffhanger closely may think 42 votes is tight. But, the differential has been as narrow as 19 votes.
•The muddled mortician
Tales of funeral homes and crematoriums gone stingy are not all that unusual. From time to time, we hear about the cost-cutter who saves money by reusing expensive caskets. He transfers bodies to cheaper ones after viewings. The helicopter pilot for crematoriums who dumps the remains just anywhere appears and reappears. Ray Brent Marsh of Georgia captured our attention because of the volume of his neglect and where the remains were found. He failed to cremate hundreds of corpses and allowed them to deteriorate on the property around his home. Marsh is headed for prison.
ATLANTA -When former crematory operator Ray Brent Marsh pleads guilty Friday to dumping 334 bodies and passing off cement dust as their ashes, the victims' relatives and resident of a rural northwest Georgia community may still be left asking the question "Why?"
Marsh will reportedly be sentenced to 12 years in prison, with credit for time served, and, one assumes, good behavior. There are also charges pending against him in Tennessee.
I would be remiss if I did not emphasize that I believe the mental health issue in this case, and many other, is being ignored. An estimated 30 percent of inmates nationally suffer some form of psychiatric debilitation. If Americans took mental health issues seriously and funded treatment, many cases like this one would not occur. Read more about Marsh's mental health at Silver Rights.
•The image of the American soldier
The image of U.S. troops has been subjected to retouching by the powers that be since the invasion of Iraq began. But, the carefully planned stories of heroism topple as easily as statues when they are looked into. A Pfc. from West Virginia and a former pro football player were victims of negligence, not Iraqi gunfire. The Guardian has considered the image of the American soldier in Iraq.
. . .Stuff happened and terrible errors were made in the early days of Donald Rumsfeld's occupation-lite: disbanding the army and de-Ba'athising as if Iraq were Nazi Germany helped fuel an insurgency in which Iraqis now far outnumber the "foreign fighters" we have heard so much about.
It emerged only afterwards that the statue-toppling was staged for symbolic effect, a piece of political theatre as carefully managed as George Bush's wildly premature action-man "mission accomplished" gig on an aircraft carrier's flight deck a few weeks later. And we know, from the 24/7 TV news channels and their extraordinary pictures, that this story is far from over.
Many will remember the footage shot by an NBC cameraman of a US marine killing an injured and apparently unarmed Iraqi in a Falluja mosque, the Americans' laconic profanities and blank faces washed in eerie green light. Others will think of the casually-posed snapshots of Lyndie England and the abuses of Abu Ghraib prison as the moment that the brutality of occupation came home to them.
A single American soldier, Shane Werst of Wyoming, has been charged with killing an Iraqi detainee, ten months after the episode. I can't speak for anyone else, but as I watch the footage of cheerful troops shouting season's greetings on television, I am well aware of what is not (for some people, cannot) be said about the abuses that are an integral part of the invasion and occupation.
