A blog for the politically curious, angry American.
"Whatever you can do, or dream you can,
begin it. Boldness has genius,
power and magic in it."
- Goethe
"It's never too late to become the
person you might have been."
- George Elliot
A tiny blurb that disgusts me to post. A video of American soldiers teasing, taunting and ultimately acting in a disgraceful way toward Iraqi children. We leave our troops in harm's way and treat them as fodder and they begin to act as if common decency and rules of behavior don't matter. These soldiers should be ashamed of themselves and I hope they are disciplined. Seeing children treated like this shames our country. This administration's despicable conduct in the prosecution of this ugly occupation is the shocking reason these soldiers are even in Iraq. Think about it.
This video was made "unavailable by user". [note:FOUND A NEW VIDEO H/T TO RF]I guess the controversy of the behaviors by American soldiers was too much light on a very dark problem. I am adding an equally disturbing video which in a different way, highlights the disfunction created by a military in Iraq for "no good reason". I am also posting a counterpoint to the above soldiers behavior. A CMSgt in the 332nd Expeditionary Squadron comforts an Iraqi child, read his story. [H/T to Imm for the catch on the 332nd]
“Slaughter is just laughter with a ’s’ in front,” Bush said at an informal White House meeting earlier today, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The President went on to say, “some in the media think we’re going to lose, but we know the only way we lose is if we quit, so we’re just gonna keep on laughin’.”
Good to know your president is keeping his good humor about it all.
Happy Thanksgiving all! We are celebrating tomorrow actually because of schedules and such. I did want to post something that makes me feel thankful, and that would be music. I give you "Little Fluffy Clouds" by The Orb featuring Rickie Lee Jones. May your day be blessed and your heart open.
Not being right about whatever it is, just contextualizing and changing the focus in such a way that one is left with a fuzzy-brained logic, shrugged shoulders, and a "who-gives-a-fuck-attitude".
In today's NYT, a story by Frank Rich "It's Not The Democrats Who Are Divided", happens to be behind the Times Select wall and cannot be accessed without a membership, so I have taken the liberty of posting it in its entirety. Read it. Think critically. Then tell me how the mainstream media isn't influenced by the corporate masters they serve who find the 'power in politics' is behind the 'red curtain'. The Red Curtain that separates, albeit to a lesser degree now, the ideologies of Republican and Democrats. Frank Rich tells of the "entrancement by a fictional storyline about the Democrats...". The storyline being all the Dems are in a power struggle that ultimately will paralyze them from making real change.
First things first. There is certainly some tussling going on in the new majority in Washington. It would be impossible for people who have been silenced for more than 6 long years, pushed nearly to the brink of being incidental, inconsequential and irrelevant to not want to 'parry' a little about priorities. Think about it. If you read at the "cooler medium" at all you understand that right now the GOP is in bigger disarray than Democrats have ever been. BushCo policies, strong-arm tactics, lies, deceit, incompetence, corruption and nearly total rejection of "true conservative ideals" i.e, smaller gov't, lower taxes, etc., are not a part of Dubya's plan. This has forced the GOPers to 'take stock' and 'pick sides' regarding what they truly believe. It will make me far too angry to go into all that I think is wrong with current rethuglican ideology, but suffice to say there is a selfishness inherent within their ranks that shocks me to my very core.
Then remember the GOP sweep in 1994, Newt Gingrich's "Contract on America". Tom DeLay and Newt Gingrich were at each other's throats over the power structure of the House. Eventually, DeLay would force Gingrich out so he could "Hammer" the house into utter submission. After whatever internal struggles in the Republican party were 'worked out', the 104th Congress went on to write some devastating legislation.
The point is, We are at a turning point in America. We The People must not rest on our laurels, intellectually or emotionally. We still have much work to do. We need to hold our newly-elected Democrats' feet to the fire to encourage, no, demand, that they have the investigations into the corruption, raise the minimum wage, renegotiate the Medicare drug bill, reverse the Military Commissions Act, and a long list of other vastly important legislation. But we must not let the propagandists of the mainstream media frame our thoughts for us by telling us over and over that the new power structure in Washington is really just like the battling between Britany Spears and her soon to be ex-husband KFed, and as unimportant.
It’s Not the Democrats Who Are Divided By FRANK RICH ELECTIONS may come and go, but Washington remains incorrigible. Not even voters delivering a clear message can topple the town’s conventional wisdom once it has been set in the stone of punditry.
Right now the capital is entranced by a fictional story line about the Democrats. As this narrative goes, the party’s sweep of Congress was more or less an accident. The victory had little to do with the Democrats’ actual beliefs and was instead solely the result of President Bush’s unpopularity and a cunning backroom stunt by the campaign Machiavellis, Chuck Schumer and Rahm Emanuel, to enlist a smattering of “conservative” candidates to run in red states. In this retelling of the 2006 election, the signature race took place in Montana, where the victor was a gun-toting farmer with a flattop haircut: i.e., a Democrat in Republican drag. And now the party is deeply divided as its old liberals and new conservatives converge on Capitol Hill to slug it out.
The only problem with this version of events is that it’s not true. The overwhelming majority of the Democratic winners, including Jon Tester of Montana, are to the left of most Republicans, whether on economic policy or abortion. For all of the hyperventilation devoted to the Steny Hoyer-John Murtha bout for the House leadership, the final count was lopsided next to the one-vote margin in the G.O.P. Senate intramural that yielded that paragon of “unity,” Trent Lott. But the most telling barometer is the election’s defining issue: there is far more unanimity among Democrats about Iraq than there is among Republicans. Disengaging America from that war is what the country voted for overwhelmingly on Nov. 7, and that’s what the Democrats almost uniformly promised to speed up, whatever their vague, often inchoate notions about how to do it.
Even before they officially take over, the Democrats are trying to deliver on this pledge. Carl Levin and Joe Biden, among the party’s leaders in thinking through a new Iraq policy, are gravitating toward a long-gestating centrist exit strategy: a phased withdrawal starting in four to six months; a loosely federal Iraqi government that would ratify the de facto separation of the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds and fairly allocate the oil spoils; and diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy to engage Iraq’s neighbors, including Iran and Syria, in securing some kind of peace.
None of these ideas are radical, novel or much removed from what James Baker’s Iraq Study Group is expected to come up with. All are debatable and all could fail. At this late date, only triage is an option, not “victory.” There’s no panacea to end the civil war that four years of American bumbling have wrought. But the one truly serious story to come out of the election — far more significant than the Washington chatter about “divided Democrats” — is that the president has no intention of changing his policy on Iraq or anything else one iota.
Already we are seeing conclusive evidence that the White House’s post-thumpin’ blather about bipartisanship is worth as little as the “uniter, not a divider” bunk of the past. The tip-off came last week when Mr. Bush renominated a roster of choices for the federal appeals court that he knew faced certain rejection by Democrats. Why? To deliver a message to the entire Senate consonant with the unprintable greeting Dick Cheney once bestowed on Patrick Leahy, the senator from Vermont. That message was seconded by Tony Snow on Monday when David Gregory of NBC News asked him for a response to the Democrats’ Iraq proposals. The press secretary belittled them as “nonspecific” and then tried to deflect the matter entirely by snickering at Mr. Gregory’s follow-up questions.
Don Imus has been rerunning the video ever since, and with good reason. The laughing-while-Baghdad-burns intransigence of the White House makes your blood run cold. The day after Mr. Snow ridiculed alternative policies for Iraq, six American soldiers were killed. It was on that day as well that militia assailants stormed the education ministry in Baghdad in broad daylight, effortlessly carrying out a mass abduction of as many as 150 government officials in some 15 minutes. Given that those kidnappers were probably in cahoots with a faction of the very government they were terrorizing, it would be hard to come up with a more alarming snapshot of those “conditions on the ground” the president keeps talking about: utter chaos, with American troops in the middle, risking their lives to defend which faction, exactly?
Yet here was what Mr. Snow had to say about the war in this same press briefing: “We are winning, but on the other hand, we have not won” and “Our commitment is to get to the point where we achieve victory.” If that’s the specificity the White House offers to counter the Democrats’ “nonspecific” ideas about Iraq, bring back Donald Rumsfeld.
Mr. Snow’s performance was echoed by the more sober but equally nonsensical testimony of Gen. John Abizaid, our chief commander in the Middle East, before the Senate Armed Services Committee less than 48 hours later. It was déjà stay-the-course all over again. The general is not for withdrawing American troops or, as John McCain would prefer, adding them. (General Abizaid delicately pointed out to Mr. McCain that a sustainable supply of new American troops is in any case “simply not something that we have right now”; the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, doesn’t want them even if we did.) The general’s hope instead is for more Iraqi troops, even though, as he conceded, we still don’t have any such forces operating “completely independently” of their embedded American advisers. In other words: We are still, so many sacrifices later, waiting for the Iraqis to stand up so we can stand down.
An even more telling admission was to follow. “General Abizaid,” Jack Reed of Rhode Island asked, “how much time do you think we have to bring down the level of violence in Baghdad before we reach some type of tipping point where it accelerates beyond the control of even the Iraqi government?” After some hemming and hawing came a specific answer: “Four to six months.” Thus did our commander in Iraq provide the perfect exit ramp into the Democrats’ exit strategy, whether intentionally or not: the Iraqis must stand up by exactly the same deadline that Mr. Levin proposed for the start of a phased withdrawal.
Everyone outside of the Bush bunker knows that’s where we’re heading. As the retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey told Keith Olbermann last week, “The American people have walked away from the war.” The general predicted, as many in Washington have, that the Baker commission, serving as a surrogate Papa Bush, would give the White House the “intellectual orchestration” to label the withdrawal “getting out with honor.” But might this Beltway story line, too, be wrong? Everything in the president’s behavior since the election, including his remarkably naïve pronouncements in Vietnam, suggests that he will refuse to catch the political lifeline that Mr. Baker might toss him. Mr. Bush seems more likely instead to use American blood and money to double down on his quixotic notion of “victory” to the end. Not for nothing has he been communing with Henry Kissinger.
So what then? A Democratic Congress can kill judicial appointments but cannot mandate foreign policy. The only veto it can exercise is to cut off the war’s funding, political suicide that the Congressional leadership has rightly ruled out. The plain reality is that the victorious Democrats, united in opposition to the war and uniting around a program for quitting it, have done pretty much all they can do. Republican leaders must join in to seal the deal.
Don’t count Mr. McCain among them. His call for more troops even when there are no more troops is about presidential politics, a dodge that allows him to argue in perpetuity that we never would have lost Iraq if only he had been heeded from the start. True or not, that gets America nowhere now. Look instead to two other Republican military veterans in the Senate, one who is not running for president and one who yet might. The first is John Warner, who said a month before the election that he would seek an overhaul of Iraq policy in 60 to 90 days if there was no progress. The second is Chuck Hagel, who has been prescient about the war’s potential pitfalls since 2002 and started floating exit strategies parallel to the Levin-Biden track last summer.
There’s an incentive for other Republicans to join them in advancing the endgame. Even if the Democrats self-destructively descend into their own Abramoff-style scandals — Mr. Murtha referred to House ethics reforms as “total crap” — that may not be enough to save the Republicans if they’re still staring down the bloody barrel of their Iraq fiasco in 2008.
But most of all, disengagement from Iraq is the patriotic thing to do. Diverting as “divided Democrats” has been, it’s escapist entertainment. The Washington story that will matter most going forward is the fate of the divided Republicans. Only if they heroically come together can the country be saved from a president who, for all his professed pipe dreams about democracy in the Middle East, refuses to surrender to democracy’s verdict at home.
[Thanks to Barbara B. for the link to the NYT story]
Photo courtesy of Daniel SolisYes, good news indeed. The vitrolic, passionate, Madman of the Airwaves had landed at NovaM Radio Network. If you've never listened to Mike Malloy before, give him a try. He is a good man who doesn't take any shit from anyone. He's unabashedly outspoken, on-point and makes great talk on pertinent political and social issues in America and the world-at-large. His show is available on a live feed Monday through Friday 10PM-12AM and in a podcast all the time. Check it out, and don't let his shouting scare you--he's a pussycat with a big heart, sharp mind and a big mouth. I missed him and I'm glad he's back.
“We see evidence of pervasive fraud, but apparently calibrated to political conditions existing before recent developments shifted the political landscape,” said attorney Jonathan Simon, co-founder of Election Defense Alliance, “so ‘the fix’ turned out not to be sufficient for the actual circumstances.” Explained Simon, “When you set out to rig an election, you want to do just enough to win. The greater the shift from expectations, (from exit polling, pre-election polling, demographics) the greater the risk of exposure–of provoking investigation. What was plenty to win on October 1 fell short on November 7.” … Read the rest of the OpEd story here. [H/T to Lotus for the heads-up]
Why are we really in Iraq? The election has shown that We The People want a change of course. The bush administration has and continues to show disregard for what the American people say they want. Why? Democracy? Terrorism? Our security? If you believe any of those reasons I have some swampy desert acreage and a couple of bridges to sell you.
Oil. The war profiteering for bushco cronies and the 3rd largest oil reserve in the world are the reason we went into Iraq. That is the reason there was no exit strategy, and the reason Bush won't leave. Don't believe me? Do your homework. Read. I googled "oil" and got 425 million hits. There are many, many sources of information at your disposal. I have posted here today a 50 minute video about why this administration has made this war its priority over ALL else. Give this documentary "Oil, Smoke and Mirrors" 50 minutes of your time today and see if you feel differently about the so-called, "War On Terror".
Now that the election is over, and the Democrats are left to clean up another series of republican messes, I thought it would be good to be reminded of what there is to 'fix'. My friend and a reader here, Anne, gives us another great essay: by Anne — November 3, 2006
A few thoughts before I have to cede the computer to husband…
When the president of the United States tells us to go shopping and go about our business so the terrorists don’t win, he also gives us permission to be selfish, to think of ourselves and not the people in NY and DC and PA.
When the POTUS refuses to allow coverage of caskets coming back to the US, he allows us to ignore the death and the grief and to downplay the magnitude of the war.
When the POTUS doesn’t bother to interrupt his vacation time to even speak to the nation about Katrina, he gives us all permission not to care too much.
When the POTUS gives Medals of Freedom to people who were directly involved in getting us into a war we had no business waging, he tells us what his values and his priorities really are.
This president may say that he cares and that he grieves, but his actions tell a different story. He has conducted himself much like a lot of these evangelicals who think God has set them on a course to be rich, and so whatever it takes to get there is just swell. They can preach about fidelity and cheat on their spouses. They can preach against drugs and alcohol and be seriously addicted. They can preach morals and ethics and be cheating and stealing and lying. They can preach against homosexual sex and be soliciting for it.
For six years we have watched one Republican after another go hip deep into corruption and crime, and waited for them to pay some price. We watched the Enron boys fleece billions from their stockholders and their employees. We watched lobbyists corrupt the system and corrupt the Congress. And like sports figures and Hollywood stars, they became role models for a lot of people. It was all about getting what people felt was due them, and if Jack Abramoff could do it, why not us ordinary folk?
We have also watched as one administration official after another screwed up and got rewarded for it. Almost no one has suffered any consequence for their actions - apparently, it was okay for us to suffer the consequences of their poor decisions, their lies and their distortions.
They don’t call it a culture of corruption for nothing, and that culture has bred indifference and intolerance and selfishness.
A blog I was directed to by a soldier/nurse/friend serving in a war zone. He has an audio essay up from the NPR series, "This I Believe". Give it a listen. http://candle_in_the_dark.blogspot.com/
Photo courtesy of Village Photos Will Bunch at Attytood has a must-read article especially for the tin-foiliest among us (to which I must profess to being). Try to get through the comments as well, it's an interesting piece. Then weigh in here about what you think. After the blow-out last Tuesday, it's tempting to rest (needed) on our laurels and wait for the newly-elected to "do their jobs". Rarely though, are politicians motivated to make changes, unless moved to by the public. They also want to sit back and relax. We must not let them. Reader meta has just the stuff to get us re-invigorated:
This really is the strangest time. When the shock wears off, I think you’re going to see even more anger. It’s so late in the game to be acting like we’ve been involved in anything remotely resembling normal.
Ain't it the truth? I think the voter turnout so overwhelmingly for Democrats scared the GOP cheating machine right out of its socks and they chose to let the elections be more or less "fair". Of course there were still big election day problems with all the usual suspects, Ohio, Florida and the hotly contested Senate races in Montana and Virginia, both had exit polls which did not match the vote count(both states going overwhelmingly to the now-elected Democrats in exit polls, rather than the very close races we witnessed). So what does it all mean?
I believe because of the weight of evidence over the last 6 years that the GOP has and maintains a certain disregard for "The American Way" or to say they desire a country free of any disonance or 'interference' from the left is an understatement. As Americans we may not agree about all things but most of us have a certain "live and let live" philosophy that is crucial to maintaining all of our freedoms. The GOP facist-right-wing agenda wants ALL Americans to be in their image. No freedom to be who you are, just conform to their idea of what is correct according to them. Period. I have never particularly agreed with the conservative right but I have always placed in the same regard their freedoms to live and believe as they please as mine, so long as it doesn't infringe on my freedom to do the same. These people won't tolerate anyone's "freedom" but their own. In the word's of Stephen Sondheim, "It's intolerable being tolerated".
Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean say "Impeachment is off the table". I agree that in order to impeach the president and his minions we must have all our ducks in a row and the American people behind the the effort for justice. Until that time comes, and I believe it will come, we have many GOP messes to clean up. First things, first.
“Bush is the most impeachable president in American history. However, the incoming speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, has declared impeachment to be “off the table.” Obviously, this means that Bush will not be held accountable and that the Bill of Rights is a casualty of the vague, undefined, and propagandistic “war on terror.” “If Democrats cannot bring themselves to rectify the inhumane and barbaric practices that now pass for U.S. justice, then they, too, (ed. will) have failed the American people.”
Freedom requires vigilance and commitment. This seems to be a thought lost on some of the newer generations of Americans. We have fought the good fight to reinstall some balance into the government and we are a bit tired. So take a vaction, rest up from the fight of trying to take our country back from the unyielding who would have us shut up and be 'good', and then remember we have a responsibility to show up and do our jobs as citizens and protectors of freedom for all.
Graphic courtesy UC Berkeley Alumni Services I've heard and read a number of different analyses on the 2006 election results. A wide range of opinions are available with a varied of spectrum to choose from depending on who's spinning who. It shapes up something like this: The House Republicans blame the President for not firing Rumsfeld sooner; the Evangelicals say the incumbent Republicans didn't support "values voters" who as a result they say, didn't show up in sufficient numbers to retain the GOP majority; Republican pundits blame the miscalculations of Karl Rove; Donald Rumsfeld says,"...the situation in Iraq is too complex for Americans to understand"; the President blames the American electorate for not comprehending what he calls, "the importance of taxes and security". So, according to the powers that were, We The People are too stupid, immoral, and obsessed with a single member of the Bush administration that believes his incompetently prosecuted war is too much for the average person to grasp and for all these reasons, we the voters, were unable to come to the right decision in the midterm elections.
When republicans talk about or rather, avoid the "culture of corruption " issue, they frame it as a "few bad apples" without acknowledging the huge deficit-producing, GOP-fueled pork bills that went unvetoed and the overwhelming preponderance of corporate interests in the senate chamber and K Street, the protection of GOP members over safe-guarding our children, the absolute unwillingness to exercise any oversight, the unfathomable shredding of the Constitution and Habeas Corpus, the stunning permission to torture and 'round-up' American citizens without charge plus a laundry list too long to repeat item for item.
The GOP also keeps telling us to "put the election behind us" their favorite party line anytime they screw things up, or get caught with their pants down. GOP pundits are also trying to push the notion that this election is "average" historically in terms of the 6th year of presidency, or "nothing special" in terms of turnout and turnover of seats. Simply said, poppycock.
A NYT's reader, Robert Passman of Silver Spring, Md., says it well in his Letter to the Editor: "A return to the arrogance and ignorance that has characterized this administration for six years may very well be more disastrous two years from now. Characterizing millions of Americans who have served their country and who recognize the administration’s failures, as cowards and idiots isn’t very bright. I don’t care which party has control of the executive or legislative branches of government if it acts intelligently and in the interests of all Americans. Mr. Bush can’t make that transition."
Anyone recall the crowing from the Republicans about how they would maintain dominance far into the future, comments as recently as this year? Republicans were certain that their sophisticated gerrymandering was so clever that dominance in the future was a slam dunk — just like those W.M.D.’s in Iraq.
The GOP was at the top of its game, Chris Bowers says: "Republicans broke all of their fundraising and voter contact records this year. They had better maps than ever before. They had a better opportunity to pass whatever legislation they liked than every before. And they were still crushed."
The Democrats haven't been much better in their analysis of the election.
The DCCC's Rahm Emmanuel takes the credit for the sweep in the house. His choice to back "conservative Democrats" with the DCCC machine politics and money say to him, "I made the correct choice." And the calls from 'prominent' Democrats for the ousting of Howard Dean as DNC chairman, and for Nancy Pelosi to "tread lightly" are not only incorrect but are certainly not what the American electorate says it showed up for. It's the war/occupation in Iraq and the GOP corruption, stupid. [Link to CNN's "Broken Government"]
After much reading and critical thinking on a number of articles the conclusion to be drawn from the higher-than average turnout, the highest seat turnover since 1974, the most senate seats won in a single cycle, the youth vote its highest in 20 years with 10 million turning out to "rock the vote", women voting 55% to men's 45% and voting 63% for Democrats, The GOP not gaining a single Governership, House, or Senate seat, 'the geographic shift' which is for the first time in 54 years the ruling majority won without a southern majority, the evangelical turnout being slightly higher than it was in 2004 but was 34% lower for Republicans and Independents voted for Democrats at a greater rate than ever before, the conclusion can only be that Democrats, Independents, and Republicans alike turned out at this record event election because finally, finally it would appear we've Had Enough.
A pleasure to see the country significantly less stratisfied. Click here to compare to the 2004 election map. Because densely populated areas of the country tend to vote Democratic, the "blue" districts occupy smaller area on average, but they are nonetheless large in terms of numbers of people, which is what matters in an election. We can correct for this by making use of a cartogram, a map in which the sizes of districts are rescaled according to their population. That is, districts are drawn with a size proportional not to their sheer topographic acreage – which has little to do with politics – but to the number of their inhabitants, districts with more people appearing larger than districts with fewer, regardless of their actual area on the ground. For more in- depth maps and info click here. [H/T to ld for maps link. Map courtesy of Mark Newman, Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan]
Keeping it simple today: Jon Swift, "The Reasonable Conservative" gets it right in his post about Rumsfeld's resignation; "...Rumsfeld's greatness may not be recogized by historians for many years to come. Unfortunately, you sometimes have to go with the legacy you have, not the legacy you want." Read the rest of Jon's post here.
War Crimes Case Prepared Against Rumsfeld Amy Goodman's Democracy now has an interview here.
Noteable Rumsfeldisms “Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know” February 2003
“I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past. I think the past was not predictable when it started.” 2003
“We do know of certain knowledge that he [Osama bin Laden] is either in Afghanistan or in some other country or dead” 2001
“Freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and do bad things . . . Stuff happens” On looting in Iraq after the 2003 invasion
“Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war” 2003
“You get a lot more with a kind word and a gun than you do with a kind word alone” Quoting Al Capone to express views on international diplomacy in 1998
“As you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time” 2004
“We do have a saying: if you’re in a hole, stop digging . . . um, I’m not sure I should have said that” 2002
“Be able to resign. It will improve your value to the President and do wonders for your performance” 1974
Exhausted from my 15 hours at the polls in South Texas working as an "Election Official', today I am pleased with the results of the election but know the fight has just begun. We must hold our newly-elected officials feet to the fire. I will post more later, but now I will have a richly deserved cup of coffee. Thank you all for your support and for getting out the vote that has brought us to the brink of real change in our country and its future.
I plan to add links all day, so please check back. Here is the first of many from d r i f t g l a s s. And Dependable Renegade here. For my local Texas compatriots I link a Texas blogger with great insights into Texas' inability to "move forward" with the rest of the nation. Please visit McBlogger. Here are the election results for California via the SF Gate. A site I found while phone-banking for Jerry McNerney (CA-11 Winner), check out this blog on progressive CA-11 politics. From My DD Chris Bowers updates us on the HISTORIC Democratic victory nationwide. NTM the serious note of the Unruly Mob.
I have a final message, via my good friend RF, for the re-thugs in this country who have used the truly UNAMERICAN tact of trashing the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, setting Freedom back 900 years and trying to inflict their view of the world on everyone:"Time for you to sit back, relax and enjoy a big, steaming cup of Shut The Fuck Up."
Those Texans sure know how to turn a phrase.
Seems Katherine Harris has already recieved the memo from RF.
I just received an election ballot slate card in the mail called “Information Guide for Democrats.” I’ll bet you have too. Look for it. Then throw it away. It’s pure deception. And then get mad. Pretending to be a Democratic slate, this mailer recommends against Propositions 87 and 89, the Clean Energy and Clean Money Initiatives. Above there is a picture of this mailer, so you can identify it.
Corporate interests are spending tens of millions of dollars to defeat these two initiatives. And they don’t mind lying and cheating to get what they want. We have to fight this with the simple truth. And with word of mouth. Please pass this email on to all your friends and relatives in California. We’ve got to get out to vote and defeat these guys.
Don’t Be Fooled. Big Oil paid for this bogus voting guide.
Found this over at Making Light. A great site recommended by Nefarious Leslie that I am now adding to my 'Blogroll'. They have the perfect piece up in Mr. Fawkes honor which I post here. [links and graphic added in this post are mine -Swim]
Happy Guy Fawkes Day, everyone.Gunpowder, Treason, and Plot
Just to recall: al Qaeda isn’t the only source of terrorism in the world, nor would establishing a pro-Western government in Iraq stop terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic: it has been with us from the beginning of recorded history; I suspect it will be with us to the end of time. Who signs the truce in the war on terror? What treaty will bind the likes of Timothy McVeigh, William Krar, Eric Rudolph, or Carl Drega? How many divisions should we send to what country to eradicate the KKK? Who should be imprisoned without charges to defeat the Sword and Arm of the Lord? How many must be tortured to end the Christian Identity Movement?
Remember, remember, the Fifth of November The Gunpowder Treason and plot; I know of no reason why the Gunpowder Treason Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, ‘Twas his intent. To blow up the King and the Parliament. Three score barrels of powder below. Poor old England to overthrow. By God’s providence he was catch’d, With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, Holloa boys, let the bells ring Holloa boys, Holloa boys, God save the King!
Hip hip Hoorah! Hip hip Hoorah!
A penny loaf to feed the Pope, A farthing cheese to choke him. A pint of beer to rinse it down, A faggot of sticks to burn him. Burn him in a tub of tar, Burn him like a blazing star. Burn his body from his head, Then we’ll say the Pope is dead.
That is what the GOP has done. A little follow-up on the scorecard hall of shame from The Unruly Mob, read it and weep. Then watch Who Cares What You Think? A telling short courtesy of Jesus General.
Merely a tiny sample of prose so clever and biting it was difficult to feel truly insulted by the speaker; rather one might be a bit flattered that such commentary was inspired by one. Check and see if anyone in particular comes to mind as you read these pithy quotes. Thank you to Op99 for the compilation.
“He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.” — Winston Churchill
“Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I’ll waste no time reading it.” — Moses Hadas
“He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.” — Abraham Lincoln
“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.” — Groucho Marx
“He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.” — Oscar Wilde
“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play, bring a friend . . . if you have one.” — George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill RESPONSE: “Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second . . . if there is one.” — Winston Churchill to GBS
“I feel so miserable without you, it’s almost like having you here.” — Stephen Bishop
“I’ve just learned about his illness. Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.” — Irvin S. Cobb
“He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up.” — Paul Keating
“He had delusions of adequacy.” — Walter Kerr
“There’s nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won’t cure.” — Jack E. Leonard
“He has the attention span of a lightning bolt.” — Robert Redford
“They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.” — Thomas Bra ckett Reed
(about Richard Nixon) “He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them.” — James Reston
“In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily.” — Charles, Count Talleyrand
“Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?” — Mark Twain
“His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.” — Mae West
“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.” — Oscar Wilde
If this doesn't top the cake someone better tell me what does. Just reported on by Greg Mitchell of Editor&Publisher "American Servicewoman Commits Suicide After Objecting to 'Interrogation Techniques' Used in Iraq" Read the story here. And then watch this new ad with General Wesley Clark and VoteVets
A tidbit for those of you keeping score on FBI investigations into the 109th Congress-critters. Justin Rood tells us all about it. TPM also has the latest poll numbers on the mid-term elections here.
Tidbit number 2: Emptywheel over at The Next Hurrah has a great pic and piece about Dick Cheney's shred-o-matic parked in front of his house. Classic.
Last but not least a little something for my California homies about the proposed change to the California Constitution, "No on Prop. 85":
I often wonder as I read around the internet at various conservative sites how the denial and delusion that runs so deep, survives. As if anymore proof were needed, Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone Magazine has written the definitive article on the 109th do-nothing-but-fuck-up-the-country-congress. Ths 109th has managed to work less than any congress in American history, topping the old Truman congress of the 40's by more than a month. Then of course is the corrution that runs deeper than the Mariana Trench abyss. Read the terrific story, The Worst Congress Ever by Matt Taibbi
Take a listen to interview of Matt by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!
I have been away from the keyboard for a number of days because of commitments here at home. Some political work, some social obligations and family matters. Today in order to break the monotony I am featuring a short but potent post from a guest and my friend, Anne. I give you,
We The People
Seems to me the response to all the fear-mongering by Republicans is:
We are Democrats
We are the people who have been trying to raise the minimum wage, so people have more money to spend.
We are the people who are trying to protect your Social Security benefits from the false promises of private accounts.
We are the people who are trying to ease the tax burden on working families by asking the wealthiest to shoulder a more proportionate share.
We are the people who have been working for veterans’ funding, and health care.
We are the people who tried to give Medicare the authority to negotiate with the drug companies to make prescription drugs more affordable to our seniors.
We are the people who tried to structure prescription drug coverage for the elderly as part of Medicare, to keep it out of the hands of private insurers who were more concerned with the bottom line than looking out for seniors.
We are the people who have tried to bring new thinking and new ideas to the table for months and months and months, as Iraq descended further and further into chaos.
We are the people who have consistently sided with consumers against the interests of big business and the energy companies and banks.
The Republicans trying to scare you are the same people who have abandoned your interests time and time again, who have failed to listen to your concerns and address your needs. They are the people who think changing the rhetoric will fool you into thinking they are changing their policies.
The choice is yours: you can either fall victim to the scare tactics, or you can stand up for what you know is the truth, and vote Democratic on November 7th.
A last minute addendum to Anne's brilliant observations. A one minute video to remind you of the lies of George W. Bush. Read the accompanying LA Times story.
In case you need more proof that the chimp-master is lying checkhere.
I complain constantly about the mainstream media's indolent stenography of rovian talking points they call 'the news'.The only true exception that I'm aware of is Keith Olbermann. Keith Olbermann of MSNBC has once again proven he is the Edward R. Murrow of our time. In the brilliant new feature, "Special Comment" on his show "Countdown with Keith Olbermann", he displays courage of conviction as well as concise, literate critiques of BushCo's criminal behavior. I'm featuring today Keith Olbermann's commentary on "The Death of Habeas Corpus". For an in-depth article on this latest attack on the Constitution, please read Glen Greenwalds piece at Unclaimed Territory. Olbermann knocks out the chimp-in-charge, hammering away at the president-criminal with head-blow after bodyshot. I think the former sports reporter would appreciate the 'sports analogy'. Two videos, an 'uppercut' explainer of habeas corpus followed by the 'killshot'. You've been KO'ed Mr. President. ,
An update on the Bill Moyers program on Net Neutrality which is tonight at 9PM. Please watch and email others to bring attention to this critically important special report. "The Net at Risk" Tune in to PBS tonight to see the SavetheInternet.com Coalition featured in "The Net at Risk," a documentary produced by award-winning journalist Bill Moyers. Then join Save The Internet members in an online Web discussion at PBS.org. Watch the preview of "The Net At Risk" here.
Bill Moyers' show airs at 9 p.m. in most cities (check local listings). Immediately following the East Coast broadcast, PBS.org will host a live Internet debate between Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott and phone industry flack and former clinton spokesman, Mike McCurry. You can be a part of this online debate. Here's how to join in:
You'll be asked to log in to participate in the online discussion. With your help, we hope to light up the PBS Web site with our campaign to save Net Neutrality. It's important to have you there. In the six months since the SavetheInternet.com Coalition was launched, millions of Americans have joined the campaign, spoken out for Internet freedom, and put Congress and the phone companies on notice.
Tonight's program could make millions more aware of this issue.
They need to hear the real voices of people like us instead of industry mouthpieces. Help us use the Internet to save it from corporate efforts to stifle online innovation, free speech and competition. Please join us tonight!
For the latest information on the campaign visit Save The Internet Don't miss Bill Moyers' new essay on Net Neutrality: "Against an Imperial Internet" available for reading at the Bill Moyer's website Remember the 1996 Telecommunications Bill? Remember how they told us, "This bill will make cable tv more accessible, cheaper, and more reliable..." What's your cable like now? Cheaper? No. Cable tv rates have tripled in the past 10 years. The service is tiered and options are limited unless you pay much higher rates. This is what is instore for the internet if the corporate interests win. Please tune in, turn on and join the Net Neutrality fight.
Update: I recieved an interesting comment after this post went up, check my comments section to see the coalition that wants you to know "the other side" of the net neutrality debate. When I checked their website, I found a few of the 'members' of the coalition: AT&T, Bell South and Cingular. I could be wrong but it appears to me from the content of the comment and the 'sponsors' of the website that they are pushing an pro-government intervention agenda written purposely to decieve.
Ever seen a state intiative written in "positive" language but read further into the 'fine print' and the true intention of the proposed legislation is negative? A forest intiative in California several years ago comes to mind. Its sponsors were several large timber companies. The intiative was for "Tree Planting in California". Sounds good right? Read further and after they tell you how many trees they'll plant, find out their actual goal was to clear-cut large swaths of forestland, and then plant 1/10th of the trees they had cleared. I think the coalition Hands Off is trying to pull the same trick.
Below is text from the Save The Internet website, the pioneers that truly are fighting government intervention. Take a look here and tell me what you think about my analysis of "the other side". Leave me a comment with your thoughts.
"Right now Congress is pushing a law that would abandon the First Amendment of the Internet -- a principle called "network neutrality" that preserves the free and open Internet. Congress needs to hear from you today or they will hand over control of what you do online to companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast.
Politicians are trading favors for campaign donations from these companies. They're being wooed by people like AT&T's CEO, who says "the Internet can't be free." Sign this petition to tell your elected representatives to protect Internet freedom now."
Now I give you a quickie from Slate.com's Jon Dickerson. He has taken 3 campaign ads and 'disected' then for us. I think he's done a good job. Critical thinking is so absent from the public sphere these days and if nothing else you may be encouraged to do some critical thinking of your own in regards to politicals ads for your local candidates. Give it a shot. Check the link.
Update: The Net Neutrality live chat with Bill Moyeys was quite good and informative. The conference had much information to desseminate so I will save a comprehensive update for a later post. The main thing is that this threat to the internet-as-we-know-it is real. We know that BushCo gives away the store to corporate interests virtually always with fredom and access to the regular Joe absent from any deals. Please call and write your Senators or go to Save the Internet's site and sign their petition. Unless you have unlimited money to spend on what is currently free and available access to the information you seek, that is.
Links to Senate offices and phone numbers just below. Scroll down.
Now is the time. We have momentum. And the GOP is dying to kill it. If you've noticed the banner over there-----> Its about Net Neurality and how we can help save the internet as we've known it. Here's a primer and a little info about it. If you prefer your information video style check out the videos below. If free, unencumbered internet access as it is today, without government or corporate interference and much higher fees, is what you want, please look into the Net Neutrality debate and contact your Senator202-224-3121, or click on the the net neutrality banner.
Now that you know what net neutrality is, I would also like to invite all readers to the event "A Conversation with Bill Moyers" SavetheInternet.com has invited me and I extend an open invitation to all those who care about future access to the internet to an exclusive online discussion with award-winning journalist Bill Moyers about his upcoming PBS special, "The Net at Risk," on the fight over Net Neutrality and the future of the Internet.
Bloggers and online activists have transformed the issue of Net Neutrality from a closed-door discussion with lobbyists into a public debate involving millions of Americans. This online forum will give bloggers and writers covering the issue a chance to offer feedback before this new documentary airs nationwide.
I hope you'll join me for this special event. Here are the details:
What: Live Web Discussion with Bill Moyers of "Moyers on America" Who: Bill Moyers & Rick Karr (PBS), Josh Silver (SavetheInternet.com) When: Tuesday, Oct. 10, 3:00 p.m. EDT Where: Login online at http://67.19.231.218/v4/login.asp?r=1b261dc2&p=0
The forum will include sneak peek at "The Net at Risk," followed by a question-and-answer session. To learn more about "Moyers on America," visit http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/index.html To learn more about Net Neutrality, visit www.SavetheInternet.com The forum will include sneak peek at "The Net at Risk," followed by a question-and-answer session. In order to attend this online chat with Bill Moyers please register and see the details below.
Please RSVP to press@freepress.net
I hope you'll join us on Tuesday.
How to attend: To attend this event, go to the OPAL (Online Programming for All Libraries) Web site (http://www.opal-online.org/) and enter the Texas Forums Meeting Room, or log on directly at http://67.19.231.218/v4/login.asp?r=1b261dc2&p=0. You will need a computer with speakers and will need to download some software so plan ahead. If you have a microphone attached to your computer, you will be able to pose questions to the panelist verbally. Otherwise, you can interact via text messaging in the virtual auditorium.
Or anxious allitertion from an apprentice anchor with an affinity for afflatus affectation albeit absolute amenability to adventurous adversaries. On a lighter note after today's so-so turnout (60-70) in San Antonio for the World Can't Wait nationwide protest, I diverge from the usual for a musical interlude, a triptych of sorts. I was tipped off to the first video from a participant at today's festivities titled, "Asshole" and the second is just good, ole, righteous Eminem, and finally yet another Keith Olbermann manifesto. Eminem "Mosh"
Thursday, October 5th is the day to protest, to use your constitutionally protected (at least for now) to peacably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances. The World Can't Wait has created and is hosting protests all over the country. 117 cities all over the country. Find your location and show up!
Here is the text from their site about the protest:
On October 5, people everywhere will walk out of school, take off work, and come to the downtowns & townsquares and set out from there, going through the streets and calling on many more to join us - making a powerful statement: "NO! THIS REGIME DOES NOT REPRESENT US! AND WE WILL DRIVE IT OUT!"
Please don't wait for the criminal bush regime to suspend our right to protest before you participate in what may be your only public protest, it is the protest of a lifetime. I will be there, will you? Don't forget to bring your velour.
Again today, I find myself overwhelmed by the news. I almost don't know where to begin. The past few days have been absorbed by a visit from my in-laws, which most people know can take the life out of one. It did. My in-laws are not progressive thinkers. They represent to a tee what I fight against on my blog. Suffice to say, this was not my best weekend ever.
I spent much of this past Thursday preparing for the arrival of my conservative in-laws, and crying over the loss of my country to our version of Hitler , George W. Bush. His 'torture bill' sailed through with 'nary a bit of opposition. There is debate over the current use in the blogesphere of the terms "Nazi", and "Fascist". The debate being whether it is 'useful' to use such strong terms with loaded histories in regard to the current administration regardless of the similarities in style and content. I have no such debate raging in my head. I call 'em as I see 'em. BushCo is no better than the Nazi regime and more dangerous (if you can fathom that) and I will do a post on it soon to prove what I see as the obvious, dangerous similarities.
What I found today as I opened my mailbox was this email from my friend Bob over at JABob. He included in his email a link to an essay by William Rivers Pitt from TruthOut.org about the 'torture bill'. The first bit is the email from Bob and the link is to the essay. read his essay and Bob's response to it. I give you these valuable documents and attachments to further fill your arsenal and fuel your rage. I believe that unless people are angry they will not feel empowered enough to act, and Action is our last, best hope to restore our Democracy.
Because the senate & house voted to passed bills that promotes Bush to king...
These bills allow the president of the U.S. to now declare anyone (outside or inside our country) an “enemy combatant” and to have them arrested and held without habeas corpus. Disappeared! In other words you’re imprisoned without the ability to ask why, without the ability to say you’re innocent (because you don’t know why you’ve been arrested) or to even contact anyone. They can now torture you because the president can now (in this bill) define what torture is, otherwise called “aggressive interrogation methods.”
“Well,” you say, “that will never happen to me ‘cuz I follow the law. And, besides, someone will miss me and call the police!”
I’m sorry to say they didn’t tell you what law you broke and the police will know nothing because you’ve been arrested by the C.I.A. The C.I.A. won’t tell anyone and you can be damned well sure the President won’t either. You, or your daughter, or son, or nephew, or even your Mom or Dad will have vanished off the face of the earth with no recourse. No recourse from you, or anyone you know.
Scared yet?
WAKE UP! We have lost our freedom! Corporationism (Nazism) is here! If you don’t believe me go to the Library of Congress website and read senate bill S3039 passed by the house and the senate and see what our politicians have done to us. This bill has been changed so that it does not exclude U.S. citizens and does include anyone who “supports” an enemy combatant. I know, I know, the president hasn’t signed it yet. Who do you think asked for this in the first place? They (he and his cronies) WANT to be the unitary power. That means a sovereign entity. King.
So, if I disappear, just know it wasn’t me taking off. It means I got too “political” and verbal about it. Or, I have the wrong sexual orientation or the wrong religion or even worse, no religion at all. At least I’m not a Muslim. This would apply to me especially if I organized an anti-war anything or even wore an anti-war T-shirt. If I disappear, or someone you know mysteriously disappears, just know that if that happens it’s probably too late to do anything about it.
I’m not scared for myself, just for the future of this world as I now know it.
Write this off as the ranting of a delusional man if you will, but this is what I feel and I had to say it. Please, let me know that I’m wrong about all this. I just hope I can one day look back and say, “Boy was I wrong!” But right now I think THAT’s being delusional!
Now I will sleep on this and either delete it or send it tomorrow. Bob
I slept on it. I re-read it. I still feel strongly about this. I have reached my "tipping point". I'm sending it. If you agree with this in any degree, please forward this on to everyone you know. Thanks, Bob
Please take Bob's advice to heart, I have and Am doing this post. What will you do? And if I disappear, it wasn't because I was going on a trip...
Fear and smear is what the republicans know how to do.
The long line of lies from this assministration is shocking and undeniable. Last month I posted a link to the Mother Jones article by Tim Dickenson and Jonathon Stein called, "Lie By Lie: Chronicles of a War Foretold" Truth was a casualty long before we invaded Iraq. This article matches up statements made by the bush administration with the lies they turned out to be, and shows how BushCo knew they were lies. This one is worth revisiting, especially if you didn't read it the first time. This piece is full of sinister revelations of the BushCo crimeline.
UPDATE: This is an article that reports The Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, 3 weeks from retiring at the Pentagon, tells that Donald Rumsfeld REFUSED to let any post-invasion planning for Iraq take place. Un-fucking-believable. And we just thought he was incompetent...
Being a native San Franciscan I could'nt help but post this quickie I found in the wake of all the furor over ABC's "Path to 9/11" docu-lie. If you missed all the kerfuffle about Disney's rewrite of history, this is an inside joke but it's still funny.
The Path to San Francisco Earthquake
Additionally if you haven't seen the Keith Olbermann's afterword to the wingnut ambush that Fox News tried to pull on Bill Clinton, please watch it here:
Torture, is this what we want? Sydney Blumenthal writes a great article succintly describing the curent state we find ourselves via the thugs in the White House and Congress.
Is this how you want your country to act? Is this how you want our soldiers treated? Has anyone heard of the Golden Rule? When will this stop? When you demand it from your elected officials in Washington. They work for us, remember? If they refuse to do what we say is the right thing, time to pack their bags, kick them to the curb. Now they are trying to dumphabeas corpus, the very foundation of legal rights in this country. Not only dump it but make it retroactive as to cover the butts of the people who gave already committed and continue to participate in TORTURE. Which part of this don't the American people understand? This compromises everything about who we are as a nation, irrevocably changing our position as a 'free country'. This must end NOW. Today, call your representatives and senators in office and tell them to STOP NOW! Here's a link that explains WHY. Contact info for senate Contact info for the House Capitol Switchboard: 888-355-3588 or 866-808-0065 Call Now!!
When is enough enough for you?
Watertiger has a great post up on this over at fdl. Please read it. Read what he links to, it is worth the effort. Please let your concern and outrage boil up into action. If you are not sick to your stomach about this, your are definitely not paying attention. I want my country back!! Do you?
This is a post for a friend of mine stationed in harm's way. She struggles between Iraq and the hard place of trying to do her job while feeling the futility of the war bearing down on her spirit. She is coming home in December and will begin the tasks of taking her life back from the life-altering experiences of dealing with war casulties.
There has occured an odd confluence of events and emotions for me over the last few weeks. A friend of a friend died tragically young from cancer a few weeks ago and another friend of a friend died in a car accident very recently. I did not know either of the women that passed but I know the people that lost them and it brings up for me feelings of my own losses, and of loss in general.
My friend wrote a lovely post about his friend that was taken by cancer and also has links to her music. Please read this post about Elissa Hadley and check out the links to cancer resources; it is well worth your time. The other friend-of-a-friend told me that the woman friend she lost was, in her words, "The woman I wanted to be..."
I would rather feel sorrow than feel nothing at all. The numbness that comes with feeling overwhelmed either by grief or some other set of circumstances is also a feeling but it is a feeling of separation from that which seems too much to bear. Like when you get novacaine at the dentist and you can bite the inside of your cheek without pain, but eventually the anestetic wears off and you are left with feeling, and a chewed-up cheek.
Difficult situations bring on hard-to-deal-with emotions. It is always seemingly easier to tuck the feelings away until a time we think we can 'handle' them. Many studies have shown that these repressed feelings get expressed in unconscious and often destructive ways, both psychologically and physically. As it turns out these emotions end up handling us.
I have been attempting to express my anger and outrage about the current state of the nation in the productive if not cathartic manner of blogging with political activism as the main topic. It has helped. But the cost of awareness has been high dealing with so many feelings. I often get overwhelmed. So I withdraw a bit and try to fill my inner environment with things that bring me joy. One of those things for me is music.
Where the roads of awareness and healing converge for me of late has been 2 of the songs by Elissa Hadley, the woman who succumbed to cancer on August 27th. She was with the band 'Breathlanes' and the songs are "Day" and "Twirling". Give them a listen and see what you get out of it. Listen to the lyrics, very powerful.
Then the web of interconnectedness continues. My friend that's coming home in December will be finished with her service and a Veteran, like me. This video comes courtesy of Nate over at "Get In Their Face"
Listening to this music is bittersweet. The messages, powerful. The vehicle of music easier to absorb oftentimes than a great lecture or the best written article. What I take away from my listening is hope. Hope in myself, hope in the future and hope in you.
Citizenship was a part of classroom instruction I remember from the 4th grade. We learned about being neighborly, polite and the ever-popular "Golden Rule". We learned about why it was important to throw trash in a recepticle instead of on the ground. We were educated on the importance of showing up and telling the truth. We began our relationship with common sense and duty. It was the beginning of instilling the import of public service and fairplay. Today Citizenship means scarcely more than voting (maybe, if I have time...) and jury duty (God I hope I can out of it...).
What Citizenshipreally means is a sense of belonging, participating and caring about the community you live in. A socialization of values and personal responsibility. Citizenship implies working towards the betterment of one's community through participation, volunteer work and efforts directed at improvement of life for all citizens. This to be sure, includes voting, jury duty and picking up trash. But it also means noticing and speaking up when you see basic rights and freedoms of the community you live in slipping away. The responsibilities and tasks it takes to run our homes and do our jobs we tend to take for granted that these same responsibilities and tasks are necessary in the larger public sphere. It hasn't been made easy to show up and do your civic duty. Oh yeah, no free rides, you don't something for nothing, Freedom isn't free.
Over the centuries since our birth as a nation, these rights and responsibilities have been thwarted by the powers that be. A brand of control and domination that has taken the form of no voting rights for African Americans and Women, poll taxes, 'voter tests' and now, the current criminal vote-stealing machines and dirty tricks played by the GOP corruption machine. Certainly this is not a complete list but you get the idea that government thinking has been "What can we get away with?"
Citizenship as defined by the Bush administration demonstrates next-to-nothing of these values we all learned. This White House's policy for Americans is to shut up and do what you're told regardless of what The Constitution says. People that speak up are silenced in any number of ways from false imprisonment and torture to ruining your reputation and infringing upon your ability to pursue your livelihood. If you read the recently posted partial list of BushCo atrocities or you read here or elsewhere in the liberal blogosphere, you have some sense of the depth and breadth this violent right-wing massacre of civil rights has taken.
They treat us like children who haven't the good sense to make a proper decision about our own futures. When we refuse to go to the trouble of voting or speaking out or writing a letter about the injustices or demanding that we have a fair and investigative media not owned by only six mega-conglomerates that use, without charge, the PUBLIC airwaves and depend upon that very government they are lapdogs to, to change laws and let their corporate interests super-flourish like never before, what do we expect? When we can't be bothered because of the time and effort it takes to show up, the inconvenience of it all, the difficulty of access to polling places ("You're polling place is on Jupiter, under a Moose Lodge, behind a donut shop in the basement of a school, good luck" -Kathleen Madigan)and given all we need to do to have a decent life, who can blame anyone for saying, "I just can't do it now, I'm too busy, someone else will do it"? You are someone else. To borrow the slogan from Nike, "Just Do It" No one of us can do this alone without help, that's what citizenship is; a community of people coming together to better the lives of all its members.
Zephyr Teachout, founder of The Sunlight Foundation,says if very succintly, "If we don't have a culture of citizenship, we don't have a Democracy, it's that fundamental"
Have to do it. Jane Hamsher of firedoglake.com was on 'Countdown With Keith Olbermann' tonight. Woo Hoo! What a blast! If you read here, you know I'm a fdl fan and Jane's website has been my 'coming out' into the Blogosphere. Tonight Jane rocked the house and made a national news show her stage for promoting the influence of liberal blogs on the American political scene. Jane did us proud, watch for yourself.
Former DJ, contractor, and USAF officer who grew up in a San Francisco bar, loves music, girls and beer (not necessarily in that order) and looks forward to all that life has to offer.
[H/T to Imm for the catch on the 332nd]
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