QUADKITE

This blog is dead. Visit my other one.

2012-01-05T10:14:00.000-08:00

Please go visit my other blog, almost as neglected, but not as polemic. http://grundoom.blogspot.com/

Also follow on twitter!
http://twitter.com/#!/DoonTube

Random Access Information: Shonen Knife at Asia Society

2010-11-06T22:21:00.000-07:00

Random Access Information: Shonen Knife at Asia Society

Et Tu Markos?

2010-03-11T15:38:00.001-08:00

Et Tu Markos?

Posted using ShareThis

Howard Zinn (1922-2010): A Tribute to the Legendary Historian

2010-01-28T10:12:00.000-08:00

with Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker, Naomi Klein and Anthony Arnove
Zinnweb

Democracy Now pays tribute to the late historian, writer and activist Howard Zinn, who died suddenly on Wednesday of a heart attack at the age of eighty-seven. Howard Zinn’s classic work A People’s History of the United States changed the way we look at history in America. It has sold over a million copies and was recently made into a television special called The People Speak. We remember Howard Zinn in his own words, and we speak with those who knew him best: Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker, Naomi Klein and Anthony Arnove.

Kill The Bill

2009-12-18T10:19:00.001-08:00

Dear Senator,

This bill is a gift to the very forces which caused the health care crisis in the first place. It's a disgrace and a shame.

You claim it's expanding coverage. It does this by forcing people to buy insurance with NO price protections or trust/collusion protections or real competition with a Public Option. If I may paraphrase candidate Obama, it's like solving the homeless crisis by passing a law that everyone buys a house! Shame.

Insurance companies can't kick you out? But they can PRICE you out! Sham. Disgrace. Shame!

Resistance to the assault on women's reproductive healthcare is hardly a feature. It should be EXPECTED.

If the Democrats can't pass REAL UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE law now, when they are the majority in both houses and hold the presidency, they'll never be able to "improve" on this bill.

There's NO room for profit in healthcare. Profiting off of other peoples' suffering should be a CRIME.

Healthcare is a HUMAN RIGHT! Nobody in our nation, not even the 6% you find to be an acceptable number of uncovered citizens, should be denied healthcare when they need it.

I urge you to KILL THIS BILL. Pass some sort of real reform in conference committee if necessary, or go back to the drawing board. THIS bill makes things WORSE. Rahm, Obama and the other elected Democrats are making a serious miscalculation if they think the base or the electorate in general are going to applaud or support or feel anything other than contempt for this effort.

What We Can Learn From the Right

2009-07-20T16:38:00.001-07:00

In the last 35 years, Progressives have been lost in the policy wilderness. The parties have been up and down, but the shift of American politics has been inexorably to the right. The question is: why?

Let’s start by asking: what is the right? Broadly speaking, the Right started as a coalition of Libertarians, Theocrats, and Business types that might be at odds, but were unified by extreme anti-communism. When the Wall fell, the Right had achieved its ultimate object, but lost its unifying cause. Libertarians, Evangelicals, and Corporate executives seeking special market advantage through government will naturally be at odds about every significant issue.

“Liberalism” is a weak rallying point because, well, it doesn’t really exist. There are liberals in both houses of Congress, but no more than, say, Corvair fans. It would make just as much sense to construct a political philosophy around opposing the philatelist menace.

Yet these rebels without a cause have won every important political battle of the last thirty years! Clinton got elected, but couldn’t even pass a health care bill. He wound up abolishing AFDC, declaring the “era of big government is over,” deregulating the banks, keeping the inevitable tax hike limited to a one percent top bracket marginal bump, balancing the budget, and keeping the defense budget intact. The only concession the conservatives had to make was the letter after the President’s name. Clinton was the most effective Republican president of the Twentieth Century.

Then, they crooked their crazy nephew in, and he screwed the pooch. His administration was so corrupt and inept they actually managed to convince the smarter type of conservatives (all six of them) not to be conservatives any more. Still, they keep winning battles. They bottled up the Employee Free Choice Act, watered down the cap-and trade bill, gutted the stimulus bill, turned a slam-dunk Supreme Court confirmation hearing into a circus, and may well end up killing health care reform. And that’s with large Democratic majorities in both house and the White House in Democratic hands!

How do they pull off controlling the course of American politics without holding the seats of power? They control the terms of the debate. When the handful of Progressives that actually exist proposed that we reform our health care system by instituting a single-payer national insurance plan that will actually address the problems behind escalating health-care costs, we were told by our betters that it was politically impossible. One of the people delivering this message was our “Yes We Can,” “Change We Can Believe In,” “Muslim Socialist” President explaining, in conservative terms, that change would be too disruptive. We have to preserve a system of employer-based health insurance born out of the unique experience of World War II that no longer makes sense in a country where people change jobs every few years because it had somehow become “the American Way.” In one lifetime? Really?

Conservatives didn’t have to beat Barack Obama, and they didn’t have to join him. They swallowed him whole. This is why the Birthers are so crazy. They are so out there they don’t even realize they are unnecessary.

Conservatives have turned the preservation of corporate interests into a national religion. They control the language of national debates, they set the baseline of acceptable policies, and they have a stranglehold on my model voter, the radiology tech from Casselberry. When I talk politics with him, his questions, concerns, and objections may as well have been written by Frank Luntz himself.

They did it with money, time, and attacking ideas first and people second. The conservative foundations (Bradley, Scaife, Olin, Coors, Annenberg, et al.) committed themselves to funding the think tanks and media outlets that spread conservative ideas. These institutions plucked right-wingers out of college and gave them jobs, nurturing three generations of conservative leaders and providing an economic base for the movement. They established quiet, invite-only meetings in Washington where staffers, elected officials and lobbyists receive their marching orders. They maintain safe houses in the DC area so they don’t get caught influence-peddling and screwing around. They are a real movement.

We are a disorganized grab-bag of people motivated mostly by common attachment to basic decency and empirical reality. We splinter more easily than a balsa-wood glider in a hurricane, so we litter the landscape with tiny factions devoted to a handful of issues. At the end of the day, we lose all the major policy battles because they are all playing on the same team and we are not.

The first thing we need to learn is to stop trying to sell our issues to the public. This is a waste of time. Right-wingers didn’t control the economic policy debate by sending every American a copy of “The Road To Serfdom.” No, they convinced Americans that pro-labor, pro-environment, pro-consumer policies were anti-American. They used the existing Horatio Alger myth to good effect, equating General Electric with the Gold Rush spirit. There are now tens of millions of poor, mostly white men certain that any measure to protect them as workers or consumers is taking the money out of their pockets they will have when they, uh … win the lottery or something, they’re not sure, but however these abused people are going to get rich, they don’t want some bureaucrat taxing them to pay for vital services or telling them that cannot cheat their workers or poison their customers.

If we want to undo the incalculable damage these maniacs have done, we must patient and think strategically. We must work through the universities, think tanks, and the media. We must discredit the Church of Gimmie, expose conservative policies as crony capitalism, espouse real markets and level playing fields, and make conservatives as ashamed of their c-word as Democrats were of the L-word for thirty years.

Then, when our viewpoint has permeated the culture, we insist that our party conform. We challenge any Democrat, no matter how powerful, who persists in conservative heresy and drum them out of our party. We take over from the counties to the Speaker’s office. Then, and only then, can we address global warming, worker’s rights, economic security, and equal rights for all Americans. Until we turn the Democratic Party democratic, then electing corporate “Democrats” is just a waste of time and money.

Bill Moyers & Michael Winship: Some Choice Words For "The Select Few"

2009-07-14T11:41:00.000-07:00

If you want to know what really matters in Washington, don't go to Capitol Hill for one of those hearings, or pay attention to those staged White House "town meetings.” They’re just for show. What really happens – the serious business of Washington – happens in the shadows, out of sight, off the record. Only occasionally – and usually only because someone high up stumbles -- do we get a glimpse of just how pervasive the corruption has become.

Case in point: Katharine Weymouth, the publisher of THE WASHINGTON POST – one of the most powerful people in DC – invited top officials from the White House, the Cabinet and Congress to her home for an intimate, off-the-record dinner to discuss health care reform with some of her reporters and editors covering the story.

But CEO’s and lobbyists from the health care industry were invited, too, provided they forked over $25,000 a head – or up to a quarter of a million if they want to sponsor a whole series of these cozy get-togethers. And what is the inducement offered? Nothing less, the invitation read, than “an exclusive opportunity to participate in the health-care reform debate among the select few who will get it done.”

The invitation reminds the CEO’s and lobbyists that they will be buying access to “those powerful few in business and policy making who are forwarding, legislating and reporting on the issues…

"Spirited? Yes. Confrontational? No." The invitation promises this private, intimate and off-the-record dinner is an extension “of THE WASHINGTON POST brand of journalistic inquiry into the issues, a unique opportunity for stakeholders to hear and be heard.”

Let that sink in. In this case, the “stakeholders” in health care reform do not include the rabble – the folks across the country who actually need quality health care but can’t afford it. If any of them showed up at the kitchen door on the night of this little soiree, the bouncer would drop kick them beyond the Beltway.

No, before you can cross the threshold to reach “the select few who will actually get it done,” you must first cross the palm of some outstretched hand. The WASHINGTON POST dinner was canceled after a copy of the invite was leaked to the Web site Politico.com, by a health care lobbyist, of all people. The paper said it was a misunderstanding – the document was a draft that had been mailed out prematurely by its marketing department. There’s noblesse oblige for you – blame it on the hired help.

In any case, it was enough to give us a glimpse into how things really work in Washington – a clear insight into why there is such a great disconnect between democracy and government today, between Washington and the rest of the country.

According to one poll after another, a majority of Americans not only want a public option in health care, they also think that growing inequality is bad for the country, that corporations have too much power over policy, that money in politics is the root of all evil, that working families and poor communities need and deserve public support if the market system fails to generate shared prosperity.

But when the insiders in Washington have finished tearing worthy intentions apart and devouring flesh from bone, none of these reforms happen. “Oh,” they say, “it’s all about compromise. All in the nature of the give-and-take-negotiating of a representative democracy.”

That, people, is bull – the basic nutrient of Washington’s high and mighty.

It’s not about compromise. It’s not about what the public wants. It’s about money – the golden ticket to “the select few who actually get it done.”

When Congress passed the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act, "the select few” made sure it no longer contained the cramdown provision that would have allowed judges to readjust mortgages. The one provision that would have helped homeowners the most was removed in favor of an industry that pours hundreds of millions into political campaigns.

So, too, with a bill designed to protect us from terrorist attacks on chemical plants. With “the select few” dictating marching orders, hundreds of factories are being exempted from measures that would make them spend money to prevent the release of toxic clouds that could kill hundreds of thousands.

Everyone knows the credit ratings agencies were co-conspirators with Wall Street in the shameful wilding that brought on the financial meltdown. But when the Obama administration came up with new reforms to prevent another crisis, the credit ratings agencies were given a pass. They’d been excused by “the select few who actually get it done.”

And by the time an energy bill emerged from the House of Representatives the other day, “the select few who actually get it done” had given away billions of dollars worth of emission permits and offsets. As THE NEW YORK TIMES reported, while the legislation worked its way to the House floor, “it grew fat with compromises, carve-outs, concessions and out-and-out gifts,” expanding from 648 pages to 1400 as it spread its largesse among big oil and gas, utility companies and agribusiness.

This week, the public interest groups Common Cause and the Center for Responsive Politics reported that, “According to lobby disclosure reports, 34 energy companies registered in the first quarter of 2009 to lobby Congress around the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. This group of companies spent a total of $23.7 million – or $260,000 a day – lobbying members of Congress in January, February and March.

“Many of these same companies also made large contributions to the members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which has jurisdiction over the legislation and held a hearing this week on the proposed ‘cap and trade’ system energy companies are fighting. Data shows oil and gas companies, mining companies and electric utilities combined have given more than $2 million just to the 19 members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee since 2007, the start of the last full election cycle.”

It's happening to health care as well. Even the pro-business magazine THE ECONOMIST says America has the worst system in the developed world, controlled by executives who are not held to account and investors whose primary goal is raising share price and increasing profit – while wasting $450 billion dollars in redundant administrative costs and leaving nearly 50 million uninsured.

Enter "the select few who actually get it done." Three out of four of the big health care firms lobbying on Capitol Hill have former members of Congress or government staff members on the payroll – more than 350 of them – and they’re all fighting hard to prevent a public plan, at a rate in excess of $1.4 million a day.

Health care policy has become insider heaven. Even Nancy-Ann DeParle, the White House health reform director, served on the boards of several major health care corporations.

President Obama has pushed hard for a public option but many fear he’s wavering, and just this week his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel – the insider del tutti insiders – indicated that a public plan just might be negotiable, ready for reengineering, no doubt, by “the select few who actually get it done.”

That’s how it works. And it works that way because we let it. The game goes on and the insiders keep dealing themselves winning hands. Nothing will change – nothing – until the money lenders are tossed out of the temple, the ATM’s are wrested from the marble halls, and we tear down the sign they’ve placed on government – the one that reads, “For Sale.”

the Dirty Fucking Hippies were right!

2009-03-25T16:39:00.002-07:00

Bust The Trusts

2009-03-20T08:07:00.000-07:00

Expressing outrage over Wall Street's continuing misuse of bailout money, Olberman declares: ENOUGH!

Why I'm Not Now and Have Never Been the Democrats' "Rush Limbaugh"

2009-03-09T13:57:00.000-07:00

- by Michael Moore
I have watched with mild amusement this week the self-immolation of the Republican Party as it bows before the altar of Rush Limbaugh, begging for mercy, pleading for forgiveness, breathlessly seeking guidance and wisdom from The Oracle.

President Obama and the Democratic Party have wasted no time in pointing out to the American people this marriage from hell, tying Rush like a rock around the collective Republican neck and hoping for its quick descent to the netherworld of irrelevance.

But some commentators (Richard Wolffe of Newsweek, Chuck Todd of NBC News, etc.) have likened this to "what Republicans tried to do to the Democrats with Michael Moore." Perhaps. But there is one central difference: What I have believed in, and what I have stood for in these past eight years -- an end to the war, establishing universal health care, closing Guantanamo and banning torture, making the rich pay more taxes and aggressively going after the corporate chiefs on Wall Street -- these are all things which the majority of Americans believe in too. That's why in November the majority voted for the guy I voted for. The majority of Americans rejected the ideology of Rush and embraced the same issues I have raised consistently in my movies and books.

How did this happen? Considering how, for the past eight years, the Republican machine thought they could somehow smear and damage the Democrats if they said it was "the party of Michael Moore," it appears that the American public heard them loud and clear and decided that, 'hey, if you say Michael Moore is connected to the Democrats, then the Democrats must be OK!'

During this past election, a Democrat in Michigan, Mark Schauer, was running against the incumbent Republican congressman, Rep. Tim Walberg. Schauer asked me to endorse him and campaign for him, and I did. The Republicans were thrilled. They acted like they had been handed manna from heaven. They filled the airwaves with attack ads showing pictures of me and asking voters, 'is this the guy you want influencing your congressman?' The voters of western Michigan said "YES!" and threw the Republican out of office. The newly elected congressman told me his poll numbers had gone up once the Republicans started running ads likening him to me.

There have been over a half-dozen attack documentaries on me (Michael Moore Hates America, Fahrenhype 9/11, etc.), plus a feature film starring Kelsey Grammer and James Woods that had me being slapped silly for 83 minutes. Several books have been written by the Right in a concerted attempt to denounce me. One book, 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America, had me listed at #1. The author was so sure people would know why, he didn't even bother to write a chapter on me like he did for the other 99. You just get to the end of the book and all it says is "#1" with nothing but a big picture of me that takes up a full page.

What made the Republicans so sure that Americans would recoil upon the mere mention of my name, or by simply showing a photo of my face?

The result of this was one colossal backfire. The more they attacked me, the more the public decided to check out who this "devil" was and what he was saying. And -- oops! -- more than a few people liked what they saw. Overnight I went from having a small, loyal following to having millions go to movie theaters to watch... documentaries? Wow.

Yes, the more the Right went after me, the more people got to hear what I was saying -- and eventually the majority, for some strange reason, ended up agreeing with me -- not Rush Limbaugh -- and elected Barack Obama as president of the United States, a man who promised to end the war, bring about universal health care, close Guantanamo, stop torture, tax the rich, and rein in the abusive masters of Wall Street.

Think about this road I've traveled. At the beginning of the Bush years, I was pretty much an outsider, referred to as being on the "far left." I usually found myself holding viewpoints that differed from the majority of the people in this country. When I spoke out against the war -- before it even started -- I was marginalized by the mainstream media and then booed off the Oscar stage in "liberal Hollywood" for commenting about a "fictitious" president. Seventy percent of the public back then supported the war and approved of the job George W. Bush was doing.

But I stuck to what I believed in, kept churning out my movies, and never looked back. The Right and the White House spokespeople came after me time after time. President Bush 41 called me an "a**" on TV, and I became a favorite punching bag at both the 2004 and the 2008 Republican National Conventions in speeches by John McCain and Joe Lieberman. On the front page of this morning's Washington Post, Mark McKinnon, a top adviser to George W. Bush, revealed -- for the first time -- the Bush White House strategy of singling me out in the hopes of turning the country against me and the Democratic Party. Here's what the Post said:

Mark McKinnon, a top adviser in President George W. Bush's campaigns, acknowledged the value of picking a divisive opponent. "We used a similar strategy by making Michael Moore the face of the Democratic Party," he said of the documentary filmmaker.

In the end it all proved to be a big strategic mistake on their part. Thanks to the Republican attacks on me, average Joes and Janes started to listen to what I had to say. Contrary to Richard Wolffe's assessment that "there were no Democrats as far as I can remember who were saying they stood with Michael Moore," Democrats, in fact, have stood side by side with me during all of this. Here's the Congressional Black Caucus supporting me on Capitol Hill in 2004. Here's Terry McAuliffe, the head of the Democratic National Committee, enthusiastically attending the premiere of "Fahrenheit 9/11" with two dozen senators and members of Congress. Here's a group of Democratic congresspeople endorsing my film Sicko in the chambers of the House Judiciary Committee in 2007. And here's President Jimmy Carter inviting me to sit with him in his box at the Democratic National Convention. Far from making me into a pariah, the Republicans helped the Democratic leadership realize that to identify themselves publicly with me meant reaching the millions who followed and supported my work.

Though John Kerry lost in 2004, my focus that year had been to get young voters registered and out to vote (I visited over 60 campuses). And so, just a few short months after the release of Fahrenheit 9/11, America's young voters became the only age group that John Kerry won. They set a new record for the largest 18 to 24-year-old turnout since 1972, when 18-year-olds were given the right to vote, thus sending a signal about what would happen four years later with the youth revolution that ignited Obama's campaign.

After Fahrenheit, I kept speaking out, the Republican machine kept attacking me, and two years later, in 2006, the American public sided with me -- not Rush Limbaugh -- and voted in the Democrats to take over both houses of Congress.

And then, finally, two years after that, we won the White House.

That's the difference -- The American people agree with me, not Rush.

The American public believes that health care is a right and not a commodity.

They want tougher environmental laws and believe that global warming is real, not a myth.

They believe that the rich should be taxed more.

They want to go after the crooks on Wall Street who got us into this mess and the politicians who enabled them.

They want more money invested in education, science, technology and infrastructure -- not in more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

They believe that, whether Democrats or Republicans have been in power, wealthy corporations have been calling the shots for the past few decades and the American people's voices have not been heard as their country has slowly been driven into the ground. Our politicians and our media have been bought and paid for by the highest bidders and we don't trust them anymore.

Finally -- they want us to get the hell out of Iraq and to investigate the criminals who sent us there for fictitious reasons.

Obama and the Democrats going after Rush is a good thing and will not do for him what the Republican attack plan did for me -- namely, the majority of Americans will never be sympathetic to him because they simply don't agree with him.

The days of using my name as a pejorative are now over. The right wing turned me into an accidental spokesperson for the liberal, majority agenda. Thank you, Republican Party. You helped us elect one of the most liberal senators to the presidency of the United States. We couldn't have done it without you.

Cut the Military Budget--II

2009-02-13T09:42:00.000-08:00

By Barney Frank

This article appeared in the March 2, 2009 edition of The Nation.

I am a great believer in freedom of expression and am proud of those times when I have been one of a few members of Congress to oppose censorship. I still hold close to an absolutist position, but I have been tempted recently to make an exception, not by banning speech but by requiring it. I would be very happy if there was some way to make it a misdemeanor for people to talk about reducing the budget deficit without including a recommendation that we substantially cut military spending.

Sadly, self-described centrist and even liberal organizations often talk about the need to curtail deficits by cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other programs that have a benign social purpose, but they fail to talk about one area where substantial budget reductions would have the doubly beneficial effect of cutting the deficit and diminishing expenditures that often do more harm than good. Obviously people should be concerned about the $700 billion Congress voted for this past fall to deal with the credit crisis. But even if none of that money were to be paid back--and most of it will be--it would involve a smaller drain on taxpayer dollars than the Iraq War will have cost us by the time it is concluded, and it is roughly equivalent to the $651 billion we will spend on all defense in this fiscal year.

When I am challenged by people--not all of them conservative--who tell me that they agree, for example, that we should enact comprehensive universal healthcare but wonder how to pay for it, my answer is that I do not know immediately where to get the funding but I know whom I should ask. I was in Congress on September 10, 2001, and I know there was no money in the budget at that time for a war in Iraq. So my answer is that I will go to the people who found the money for that war and ask them if they could find some for healthcare.

It is particularly inexplicable that so many self-styled moderates ignore the extraordinary increase in military spending. After all, George W. Bush himself has acknowledged its importance. As the December 20 Wall Street Journal notes, "The president remains adamant his budget troubles were the result of a ramp-up in defense spending." Bush then ends this rare burst of intellectual honesty by blaming all this "ramp-up" on the need to fight the war in Iraq.

Current plans call for us not only to spend hundreds of billions more in Iraq but to continue to spend even more over the next few years producing new weapons that might have been useful against the Soviet Union. Many of these weapons are technological marvels, but they have a central flaw: no conceivable enemy. It ought to be a requirement in spending all this money for a weapon that there be some need for it. In some cases we are developing weapons--in part because of nothing more than momentum--that lack not only a current military need but even a plausible use in any foreseeable future.

It is possible to debate how strong America should be militarily in relation to the rest of the world. But that is not a debate that needs to be entered into to reduce the military budget by a large amount. If, beginning one year from now, we were to cut military spending by 25 percent from its projected levels, we would still be immeasurably stronger than any combination of nations with whom we might be engaged.

Implicitly, some advocates of continued largesse for the Pentagon concede that the case cannot be made fully in terms of our need to be safe from physical attack. Ironically--even hypocritically, since many of those who make the case are in other contexts anti-government spending conservatives--they argue for a kind of weaponized Keynesianism that says military spending is important because it provides jobs and boosts the economy. Spending on military hardware does produce some jobs, but it is one of the most inefficient ways to deploy public funds to stimulate the economy. When I asked him years ago what he thought about military spending as stimulus, Alan Greenspan, to his credit, noted that from an economic standpoint military spending was like insurance: if necessary to meet its primary need, it had to be done, but it was not good for the economy; and to the extent that it could be reduced, the economy would benefit.

The math is compelling: if we do not make reductions approximating 25 percent of the military budget starting fairly soon, it will be impossible to continue to fund an adequate level of domestic activity even with a repeal of Bush's tax cuts for the very wealthy.

I am working with a variety of thoughtful analysts to show how we can make very substantial cuts in the military budget without in any way diminishing the security we need. I do not think it will be hard to make it clear to Americans that their well-being is far more endangered by a proposal for substantial reductions in Medicare, Social Security or other important domestic areas than it would be by canceling weapons systems that have no justification from any threat we are likely to face.

So those organizations, editorial boards and individuals who talk about the need for fiscal responsibility should be challenged to begin with the area where our spending has been the most irresponsible and has produced the least good for the dollars expended--our military budget. Both parties have for too long indulged the implicit notion that military spending is somehow irrelevant to reducing the deficit and have resisted applying to military spending the standards of efficiency that are applied to other programs. If we do not reduce the military budget, either we accustom ourselves to unending and increasing budget deficits, or we do severe harm to our ability to improve the quality of our lives through sensible public policy.

See Ya! Worst President Ever!

2009-01-23T08:14:00.000-08:00

From AreWeReally's blog:

President Barack Obama 2009 Inauguration and Address

2009-01-20T12:49:00.001-08:00

New Footage of Oakland Man Murdered By BART Cop

2009-01-07T12:58:00.000-08:00

Your browser is not able to display this multimedia content.

UPDATE: Ex-Cop Charged With Murder in California Shooting

Wednesday 14 January 2009
by: Terry Collins, The Associated Press

Johannes Mehserle, 27, was arrested Tuesday in Nevada and on Wednesday appeared briefly in court, where he waived extradition to California. He was expected to be returned to California later Wednesday.

War Talk, the Death of the Social, and Disappearing Children: A Lesson for Obama

2008-12-16T15:39:00.000-08:00

Tuesday 16 December 2008

by: Henry A. Giroux, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Afghan girl in a war-torn region. (Photo: Reuters)

Under the Bush administration, the language of war has taken on a distinctly new register, more expansive in both its meaning and its consequences. War no longer needs to be ratified by Congress since it is now waged by various government agencies that escape the need for official approval. War has become a permanent condition adopted by a nation state that is largely defined by its repressive functions in response to its powerlessness to regulate corporate power, provide social investments for the populace and guarantee a measure of social freedom. This has been evident not only in the all-embracing militarization of public life that emerged under the combined power and control of neoliberal zealots, religious fanatics and far right-wing conservatives, but also in the destruction of a liberal democratic political order and a growing culture of surveillance, inequality and cynicism.

The concept of war occupies a strange place in the current lexicon of foreign and domestic policy. It no longer simply refers to a war waged against a sovereign state such as Iraq, nor is it merely a moral referent for engaging in acts of national self defense. The concept of war has been both expanded and inverted. It has been expanded in that it has become one of the most powerful concepts for understanding and structuring political culture, public space and everyday life. Wars are now waged against crime, labor unions, drugs, terrorism and a host of alleged public disorders. Wars are not just declared against foreign enemies, but against alleged domestic threats.

The concept of war has also been inverted in that is has been removed from any concept of social justice - a relationship that emerged under President Lyndon Johnson and exemplified in the war on poverty. War is now defined almost exclusively as a punitive and militaristic process. This can be seen in the ways in which social policies have been criminalized so that the war on poverty developed into a war against the poor, the war on drugs became a war waged largely against youth of color...Read the whole article here.

Open Letter to the Lamest Duck on Vets Day from Cindy Sheehan

2008-11-12T06:36:00.000-08:00

president@us.gov

November 11, 2008

George Bush
1600 Pennsylvania Ave
Washington, DC

Dear George,

I am writing this to you on the fifth Veteran's Day I have mourned the death of my son, Casey Sheehan. Casey was a soldier in the Army. You killed my oldest son with your lies and greed for Empire. Casey never became a Veteran because he came home in one of those pesky flag draped coffins that your mother doesn't want to bother her "pretty mind" with.

During that other illegal and immoral war that you and your VP, Dick, had the good sense to dodge, your mother never had to go through one second of worry for your safety, did she? You were too busy doing your drugs and going AWOL to bother her "pretty mind" about that. What galls me the most when I think about my brave and honorable son's needless and untimely death, is that you were so cowardly and worthless when you were his age and you had the nerve to condemn thousands of our children to death or disability with your lies.

George, I have written you letters before. I have demanded your resignation and also promised you that I would work for your impeachment. If you remember, I even started a peace camp of thousands of protesters outside your Crawford ranch and I even tried to get into Congress so I could impeach your criminal hide. You never answer my letters and you have never had the integrity to tell me what "Noble Cause" killed my son. This is the last letter you will receive from me while you are infecting our Oval Office, but it won't be the last time you hear from me.

George, I guess I could "rest on my laurels" and allow you to slink off into the quiet desperation of leaving the White House as the most detested President in American history, but that is not enough for me: Millions are dead, wounded, displaced and suffering life-long pain because of your actions. You are the number one terrorist in the world today and this country catches, tortures and prosecutes "terrorists" doesn't it? Haven't you said so yourself? You have turned the USA into a nation of imperial mobsters and we have the ignominy of being torturers and you do not deserve to retire with any kind of peace or honor.

George, if Nancy Pelosi and the other complicit Congressional leaders won't hold you accountable, I will. This nation has a very short memory and we have been assaulted on a daily basis by your arrogance and stupidity and most of America is buying the hype of pre-packaged and aggressively marketed, Hope, but I don't have the option of burying your deadly legacy like it never happened and moving on. The hole in my heart that used to contain the living and breathing presence of my son will never heal and you are the one who put it there. If you think you are going to live a comfortable life in Dallas, or Paraguay, or wherever, a la Johnson, Nixon, McNamara or Kissinger, you are wrong.

George, this country too hastily moved on from the abomination of Vietnam and we never healed from that horror because we never did the hard work of holding American leaders accountable for crimes against humanity. If history repeats itself, as it tends to do, you won't be held accountable for your crimes, but I won't let you forget the faces of my son, Casey and his comrades or the legion of faces of the Afghan and Iraqi dead. Are your dreams haunted by the souls of the people massacred by your hubris?

If I have to buy or erect a billboard near your home and plaster it with the faces of the people you murdered, I will. I will also work with my contacts in the international community to have you indicted for crimes against humanity. I will do whatever it takes to be the thorn in your side as you have been my sorrow. There are many people around the world who thirst for justice and healing who will join me in this noble cause.

This Nation forgot the faces of the 58,000 plus Americans and millions of Vietnamese who were slaughtered for imperial greed, but they won't forget the faces of the ones you have sacrificed on your altar of deception or the ones who will be sacrificed for the President Elect's continued War OF Terror. If Obama does not declare a speedy and complete end to the USA's war of terror on the world, someone should set up camp at his vacation home (which I bet will be nicer than Crawford, TX in August).

On this Veterans Day, I make this pledge to you. Unless we stop the bloody tide of war for profit and US hegemony by seeking justice for your war crimes and crimes against our Constitution, more Casey's will die and more countries that unfortunately lie in the path of imperial conquest will be decimated.

On this Veteran's Day, I also send my love and support to the Vets from all wars who live on our streets and are substance abusers because they can't get help from this hypocritical government. My heart goes out to all Gold Star Mothers who have nothing but a box of medals, a triangular folded flag and memories of a dead child and regrets for a life not lived with him/her. The war machine in collaboration with our government chews people up and rolls on oiled with pain.

George you broke your oath to "faithfully" execute your office and you betrayed the troops that you command due to nothing but election fraud, but I will not break my promise to you.

Cindy Sheehan
Mother of Casey Austin Sheehan
KIA in Sadr City, Baghdad
April 04, 2004

Civil War Will Just Be The Beginning

2008-10-24T08:30:00.000-07:00

by Bob Alexander of Superbeans Coffee

Hey Mike,

Anytime anyone takes pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and attempts to predict the future … the end result is invariably wrong. It's a fool's game. Because anytime you play "If This … Then That" you can never know all the variables in play … so you can never know which unknown variable will change the outcome.

But I'm going to play it anyway … and hope that I'm wrong.

The two Naomis, Wolf and Klein, wrote books explaining How We Got Here.

Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism depicts how Milton Friedman and his Chicago School's economic policies of privatization, free trade, and slashed social spending, directly caused depressions, mass poverty, private corporations looting public wealth, and the loss of democracy in the unfortunate countries that followed Friedman's blueprint.

Naomi Wolf's The End of America, warns we are living through a dangerous "fascist shift" as the Bush Regime follows the "Ten Steps to Fascism." The same path of the worst dictatorships of the 20th century; Germany, Italy, Russia, China, and Chile.

When taken together, their books show how Fascism can exist without dictatorship, and Capitalism flourishes best without Democracy.

If their warnings go unheeded, we, the citizens of The United States, are facing an Orwellian future, for us and for those who follow.

America has already taken the "Ten Steps to Fascism." And the Shock Doctrine is being practiced here … now.

And to add to the Chaos, The Powers That Be, as manifested in The Republican Party, are actively working to dismantle, again, the electoral process.

http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=74139

10/20/2008 03:29 AM
Early Voting: Machines Switch Votes from Obama to McCain

"In two West Virginia counties, early voters have complained that voting machines have switched their choice from Barack Obama to John McCain, and from other Democratic candidates to other Republican candidates."

"In both counties, Putnam and Jackson, the elections are overseen by registered Republicans."

This time, they are taking it to a level that proves they are literally trying to destroy the country. Their mouthpieces on radio and television are cranking out vicious lies that inspire fear and hatred among the Republican Base. The Noise Machine that did everything possible to delegitimize Bill Clinton's presidency is working full-blast to do the same to Barack Obama. Before he is even elected. Before he even takes office. The Noise Machine is making sure that if Obama wins … the lies, distortions, and the disinformation, coupled with inflamed racism, guarantee that almost half the country will never accept Barack Obama as their legitimate president.

And at that moment … The Shock Doctrine begins to work in deadly earnest.

As Mike Davis wrote recently:

http://www.truthout.org/101508D

Can Obama See the Grand Canyon? On Presidential Blindness and Economic Catastrophe

"… we are looking into an unprecedented abyss of economic and social turmoil that confounds our previous perceptions of historical risk. Our vertigo is intensified by our ignorance of the depth of the crisis or any sense of how far we might ultimately fall."

"… both candidates have endorsed … an intensified war in Afghanistan, that will enlarge the military-industrial complex, none of this will replenish the supply of decent jobs nor prime a broken national pump. However, in the midst of a deep slump, what a huge military budget can do is obliterate the modest but essential reforms that make up Obama's plans for healthcare, alternative energy, and education."

Obama will ostensibly inherit a 10 trillion dollar deficit and we're still on the hook to bail out Wall Street. The 700 billion dollar bailout passed, but according to Bloomberg TV analyst Marc Faber, who may or may not know what he's talking about, the actual cost could be closer to $5 trillion.

http://www.businessandmedia.org/printer/2008/20080926110602.aspx

The world-wide investors who lost trillions of dollars expect us to pay them back. At the same time Obama wants to quit the quagmire in Iraq and expand the quagmire in Afghanistan. Will he pay for that war on the same credit card The Bush Regime used for the war in Iraq?

When these bills come due during an Obama presidency … what will happen?

Mike Davis writes:

"What took three years at the beginning of the 1930s -- that is, the full globalization of the crisis -- has taken only three weeks this time around. God help us, if, as seems to be happening, unemployment tops the levees at anything like the same speed."

A sharp, fast, vicious, Depression could unhinge an already divided America.

After the fall of Saddam Hussein, how long did it take for the Sunni and Shiite sects to begin tearing at each other's throats? How long before the "Cleansing" began? And how much money was made, and is still being made, behind the scenes of Baghdad, and all of Iraq, in chaos?

At this point you could easily dismiss all these dark thoughts of a new American Civil War with the "It Can't Happen Here" bromide.

Can't it?

The American Civil War 2.0 may be my darkest paranoid bad dream but look at the spreading inflammable pools of racism, distrust, and hatred spewing from Republican mouthpieces. All that is needed is the burning match.

It can't happen here?

The deadliest war in American history, Our Civil War, caused 620,000 soldier deaths and an undetermined number of civilian casualties.

It happened here.

Our Ruling Elite cares little for COG, Continuity Of Government. The only COGS they're concerned with are the Cost of Goods Sold. There's a lot of money to be made during social upheaval. Naomi Wolf has written extensively about how the Military Industrial Complex has morphed into the Military Industrial Security Complex under The Bush Regime.

We are being socially engineered into a Nightmare we might not wake up from for the rest of our lives.

The Powers That Be are systematically shutting down Democracy in this country like Keir Dullea shut down the higher functions of the H.A.L. 9000 computer in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. I can feel it. I can feel it. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I'm afraid.

But today the sun is shining and I'll remain an optimist though I have no reasons for being so. We could pretend that this is just a big-budget version of Orson Welles War of the Worlds Halloween broadcast.

But what if it's not? What are the solutions to these very bad outcomes? How do we prevail? Will we prevail?

Step One: Trust in our common humanity.

Step Two:

From Chris Hedges in his latest column:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081020_the_idiots_who_rule_america/

The Idiots Who Rule America

"Our oligarchic class is incompetent at governing, managing the economy, coping with natural disasters, educating our young, handling foreign affairs, providing basic services like health care and safeguarding individual rights. That it is still in power, and will remain in power after this election, is a testament to our inability to separate illusion from reality. We still believe in "the experts." They still believe in themselves. They are clustered like flies swarming around John McCain and Barack Obama. It is only when these elites are exposed as incompetent parasites and dethroned that we will have any hope of restoring social, economic and political order."

"… But I do know that what is coming, as long as our oligarchy remains in charge, will not be good. We will either recover the concept of the public good, and this means a revolt against our bankrupt elite and the dynamiting of the corporatist structure, or we will extinguish our democracy."

That sounds easy enough doesn't it?

Regards,

Bob

Concerns about deployment of military on U.S. soil growing -- while mainstream media buries its head in the sand: Naomi Wolf

2008-10-22T15:23:00.000-07:00

by Naomi Wolf

The following is the spin of military spokespeople in response to questions about the deployment of the First Brigade on US soil for the first time in over 200 years.

The Army Times initially reported that the First Brigade would handle domestic crowd control and subduing 'unruly individuals' and that they had 'lethal and nonlethal technologies' to do so. Then it issued a correction declaring that the 'nonlethal' package was not for domestic crowd control. Then after a hue and cry was raised by many citizens, Northern Command (NorthCom) offered a wholesale revision of their mission – and the mainstream media is eating it up. Here is an excerpt from the articled linked to in the previous sentence:

Despite conspiracy theories that this could be a first step toward martial law in the U.S., there won't be tanks on Main Street or active-duty troops putting down demonstrations. That is barred by federal law banning the military from being used on U.S. soil for domestic law enforcement.

Instead, the soldiers of the 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Ga., have been training to back up civilian authorities in providing medical care and dealing with chemical, biological, high explosive or nuclear attack.

Not only does this entirely contradict the first Army Times reports, it also egregiously misrepresents to readers the status of US law in regards to this deployment. Yes, there are laws against military policing on US streets -- they are part of both the 1807 Insurrection Act and 1879's Posse Comitatus Act -- but the Defense Authorization Act of 2007 gutted them.

Congress restored some limitations on the President's ability to deploy troops to engage in military policing in 2008 -- but President Bush issued a signing statement declaring he did not feel bound by those limitations. He also can direct these troops -- and the National Guard, and Blackwater -- to engage in military policing of civilian populations simply by verbally and unilaterally declaring a national emergency of whatever kind he wishes.

Unfortunately, the US Army spokespeople are parsing their words and misleading us. And, whatever the stated mission is today, the fact remains that military up the chain of command report to the Commander in Chief -- not to Congress or to you and me, and not to the Governors as most of the National Guard do.

Why do I insist on raising an alarm about this deployment in spite of a great deal of opposition and criticism? (Though I am grateful, too, for a great deal of support.) I insist on raising an alarm because I am aware of world events and not just blinded by American recent history.

In Zimbabwe, a nominal democracy, President Mugabe sent troops to harass, arrest and even kill voters during a closely contested election. Mugabe's challenger called off his own supporters, telling them they should not risk being killed just in order to vote.

In Sierra Leone, a nation I visited shortly after elections, during a fragile democratic voting process troops and militias were both deployed by the contesting political parties to intimidate, beat and arrest voters. In Azerbaijan, troops were sent to intimidate the opposition during the elections -- and now there is no meaningful opposition. Don't trust me -- ask Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International. Troops are sent by leaders in power, even in weakening democracies, to intimidate voters, arrest and harass opposition leaders in tightly fought elections, all over the damn world.

And nothing, nothing, nothing prevents the First Brigade from being positioned around poll locations, intimidating or silencing or threatening or worse those who challenge their voting outcome or their having been purged from the rolls. This at a time when Prof. Mark Crispin Miller of NYU and Robert Kennedy and many others are documenting MILLIONS of voters being systematically purged from rolls -- overwhelmingly by Republican actions -- and early voting is already showing machines flipping selections from Democrat to Republican, and voters becoming upset.

I am having a surreal experience with the mainstream media, as well, as I try to raise questions. A source at The Philadelphia Inquirer says that nothing has appeared on the wires about the First Brigade -- so they can't cover it. A source at The New York Times says they are 'looking into it' -- but no coverage yet. "The Today Show" asked if I was a 'fear-monger' and 'paranoid' for raising alarms and reproduced NorthCom's soundbite intact about the First Brigade being here to help with communities affected by weapons of mass destruction -- but did no independent reporting of their own. I know from hearing from citizens across party lines that I am not the only American concerned about what information the Army may have about such threats to lead to this deployment now -- the first time since the Indian Wars that troops have been sent onto US soil.

If you would like to see how average Americans are responding to the news about the deployment of the First Brigade, check out some of the posts from readers on a military-oriented Web site that posted the recent Colorado Springs Gazette article on the subject:

'Since 9/11 the Department of Homeland Security has spent billions to prepare civilian law enforcement, local fire departments and civilian agencies to deal with such [crises]. This smells of despicable mission creep for the Armed Forces. In the late 1980's, I participated in several exercises focused on "counter insurgency" operations that specifically dealt with demonstrators and civil unrest. Backing up law enforcement officials is a end run around Posse Comitatus and this should be exposed for what it is, unconstitutional.'

'Just why is a combat brigade being tasked for these scenarios and not Chemical, Biological and Nuclear Warfare commands? Medical Commands? Construction Battalions?

'This seems much too similar to the use of troops to put down the Bonus March of WW I veterans in which Army Troops fired on and killed veterans in DC protesting the government's failure to pay their promised [bonuses].'

'This job can AND SHOULD be handled by National Guard troops (domestic issues).'

'This smells...no, it stinks. Posse Comitatus is in place for very valid reasons. This looks like pre-positioning equipment in preparation for a fight.

'The Defense Authorization Act of 2006 empowers the president to impose martial law in the event of a terrorist "incident," if he or other federal officials perceive a shortfall of "public order," or even in response to antiwar protests that get unruly as a result of government provocations.

'The terms "incident" and "public order" are left wide open to interpretation under the Military Commissions Act...'

"Just why is a combat brigade being tasked for these scenarios and not Chemical, Biological and Nuclear Warfare commands? Medical Commands?

Construction Battalions?"

'Back in the late seventies I was apart of a force that had a similar responsibility, except we were trained to handle "civil disturbance", thank god we were never needed. This is not the first time something like this has happened, the only difference, we were Arty. Every Batt. had to train so many troops, from Inf. to Medical. I enjoyed it, we all did because for the time we were apart of it, we were exempt from all duty. To have the troops on stand-by is not a problem, to deploy the troops to take over civil responsibilities is...'

'This is quite disturbing. 4000 troops may not be enough to impose martial law on an entire country, but they could do it to a moderately sized city.'

'There is already a group to do this its called the National Guard Civil Support team. They are all over the country and are more trained than these rotating people will ever be.'

'As a former member of the 10th Civil Service Detachment/Weapons of Mass Destruction, I do feel a bit insulted. The unit is a full time National Guard unit that was in place for two years before the 9/11 attacks. We were trained to do exactly what this article says this combat brigade is being trained to do. Is this another example of the services not talking to each other, or are these commanders really that ignorant of the world around them?'

'Reorganize FEMA and keep the Combat Military out of the picture. Our Combat troops are for Combat. SeaBees are Construction Battalions that have the expertise for disaster related occurrences. They understand support missions and are the best in the world when it comes to Can-Do.

If the Combat Military has to become involved, it means Martial Law is a scribble away with the pen.

'If we actually need this Brigade, take it away from the Combat Army and assign it to the SeaBees.'

'Did anyone catch the articles in the Army Times in September about this. The first article on 8 Sept. mentioned the Oct 1 deployment was to be prepared for any civil unrest during the election. The Next article I read on line around 26 Sept Changed 3 times in one day. From explaining about the extensive training they have received in IRAQ, the new non lethal weapons for use against (American Citizens) for civil unrest to a final article of they just here to help for emergencies.'

"Despite conspiracy theories that this could be a first step toward martial law in the U.S., there won't be tanks on Main Street or active-duty troops putting down demonstrations. That is barred by federal law banning the military from being used on U.S. soil for domestic law enforcement."

'Did you read the Army Times article?

Have you read the Military Commissions Act 2006?

Have you read the Military Budget Act of 2007?

Have you read the Patriot act?...

'What they are saying is that the local, state and federal police departments can't handle a crisis?'

'If you're reading these posts, you've already read the words "mission creep," "end-run around Posse Comitatus" and "unconstitutional"'.

'I joined the Navy to make sure NO GOVERNMENT WOULD NEVER DEPLOY TROOPS ON OUR SOIL. Why did you join? I believe every Governor should recall all National Guard troops to defend your states.... This detachment must stand down. This is an illegal order.'

So don't take the warning from me. Take it from many these patriots in military circles.

* Scroll Down For New Posts *

2008-10-21T05:59:00.000-07:00

The Fourth Estate
This is a sticky post because I think it goes to the heart of what QUADKITE.COM has become.
(scroll down for newer posts)
WHERE DID THE FUN STUFF GO?
I hope that you're viewing this in a frame in my home page at Quadkite.com!
I hope to use this handy BLOG service to offer my thoughts on the current events and culture that are important to me a few times a week. Or at least FEATURE a particularly pertinent article I find. Something to supplement the dismal lack of informational nourishment the American people are receiving.
What does Quadkite mean? If you play Everquest, you'll recognize it. But for those of you who don't, let's just say it's a tactic for fighting 4 enemies at a time.
Everquest is a really fun game, and I wanted to start a website devoted to my hobby. It was totally a FUN site where I shared my life, in game and out, with my friends and family.
But some things happened on the way to the bazaar...

Two polls, one by the University of Maryland , and the other by the respected Harris poll, showed that as many as 75% of Bush supporters believe Saddam Hussein was involved in the 911 attacks despite massive evidence to the contrary. Almost half of the Bush supporters believe several of the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11 were Iraqis. Neither of these is true, which has been admitted by the administration.

How could so many people entertain such illusions? How could an illegitimate collection of gangsters occupying Iraq, Afghanistan and Washington, D.C. so effectivly hoodwink these folks? What happened to the Watchdog of Democracy? The Fourth Estate? OUR PRESS?!?!?

I received an email from a high school History teacher. This is a fellow who surely considers himself well informed. He should be, at least by virtue of the fact that every Tuesday each of his students turns in a summary of some "current event" taken from a noteworthy news item reported by some recognized news source. Every week he would have to have been presented with at least a dozen different headlines. Imagine my surprise when he indicated he'd only JUST heard about the Downing Street Memo that week, a full month after it had first been reported in a few papers, as well as Air America Radio!

The corporate controlled mainstream media tried to ignore this news for most of the month. Then some of them tried to claim it was "old news". They claimed that everyone knew that Bush had wanted the war with Iraq since before he was elected and that WMDs were just an excuse. How could everyone know this if they NEVER REPORTED IT? Paul Krugman addressed this very nicely in his article 'The war president' .

So how can this cabal of criminals continue to bamboozle so many citizens? How can reasonable well read and conscientious citizens be taken by surprise? Because the press, which in this country is primarily the TV news, is derelict. Even when the cable news networks were beating the drums of war, (good for thier ratings) I was screaming that the reasons offered were obviously mere pretexts and the REAL reason for this illegal act of agression was merely political gain for prince george and his cronies. Over a year ago carreer intelligence officers were writing articles about the criminal manipulation and abuse of our information and how it was being MANUFACTURED, not gathered or analyzed.

So my wood elf druid still occupies much of my time, but not as much as before. And there just doesn't seem to be room for the serial "Perils of Pa and Ma" on the menu anymore either, although dad hasn't really submitted any new stories lately. All there seems to be room for is a BUNCH of RSS feeds and LINKS to information so vital, I try to put it all on my front page.

The Cause Endures

2008-10-20T10:10:00.000-07:00

Well, things worked out a little different from the way I thought, but let me tell you, I still love New York.
My fellow Democrats and my fellow Americans, I have come here tonight not to argue as a candidate but to affirm a cause. I'm asking you--I am asking you to renew the commitment of the Democratic Party to economic justice.
I am asking you to renew our commitment to a fair and lasting prosperity that can put America back to work.
This is the cause that brought me into the campaign and that sustained me for nine months across 100,000 miles in 40 different states. We had our losses, but the pain of our defeats is far, far less than the pain of the people that I have met.
We have learned that it is important to take issues seriously, but never to take ourselves too seriously.
The serious issue before us tonight is the cause for which the Democratic Party has stood in its finest hours, the cause that keeps our Party young and makes it, in the second century of its age, the largest political party in this republic and the longest lasting political party on this planet.
Our cause has been, since the days of Thomas Jefferson, the cause of the common man and the common woman.
Our commitment has been, since the days of Andrew Jackson, to all those he called "the humble members of society--the farmers, mechanics, and laborers." On this foundation we have defined our values, refined our policies and refreshed our faith.
Now I take the unusual step of carrying the cause and the commitment of my campaign personally to our national convention. I speak out of a deep sense of urgency about the anguish and anxiety I have seen across America.
I speak out of a deep belief in the ideals of the Democratic Party, and in the potential of that Party and of a President to make a difference. And I speak out of a deep trust in our capacity to proceed with boldness and a common vision that will feel and heal the suffering of our time and the divisions of our Party.
The economic plank of this platform on its face concerns only material things, but it is also a moral issue that I raise tonight. It has taken many forms over many years. In this campaign and in this country that we seek to lead, the challenge in 1980 is to give our voice and our vote for these fundamental democratic principles.
Let us pledge that we will never misuse unemployment, high interest rates, and human misery as false weapons against inflation.
Let us pledge that employment will be the first priority of our economic policy.
Let us pledge that there will be security for all those who are now at work, and let us pledge that there will be jobs for all who are out of work; and we will not compromise on the issue of jobs.
These are not simplistic pledges. Simply put, they are the heart of our tradition, and they have been the soul of our Party across the generations. It is the glory and the greatness of our tradition to speak for those who have no voice, to remember those who are forgotten, to respond to the frustrations and fulfill the aspirations of all Americans seeking a better life in a better land.
We dare not forsake that tradition. We cannot let the great purposes of the Democratic Party become the bygone passages of history.
We must not permit the Republicans to seize and run on the slogans of prosperity. We heard the orators at their convention all trying to talk like Democrats. They proved that even Republican nominees can quote Franklin Roosevelt to their own purpose.
The Grand Old Party thinks it has found a great new trick, but 40 years ago an earlier generation of Republicans attempted the same trick. And Franklin Roosevelt himself replied, "Most Republican leaders have bitterly fought and blocked the forward surge of average men and women in their pursuit of happiness. Let us not be deluded that overnight those leaders have suddenly become the friends of average men and women."
"You know," he continued, "very few of us are that gullible." And four years later when the Republicans tried that trick again, Franklin Roosevelt asked "Can the Old Guard pass itself off as the New Deal? I think not. We have all seen many marvelous stunts in the circus, but no performing elephant could turn a handspring without falling flat on its back."
The 1980 Republican convention was awash with crocodile tears for our economic distress, but it is by their long record and not their recent words that you shall know them.
The same Republicans who are talking about the crisis of unemployment have nominated a man who once said, and I quote, "Unemployment insurance is a prepaid vacation plan for freeloaders." And that nominee is no friend of labor.
The same Republicans who are talking about the problems of the inner cities have nominated a man who said, and I quote, "I have included in my morning and evening prayers every day the prayer that the Federal Government not bail out New York." And that nominee is no friend of this city and our great urban centers across this Nation.
The same Republicans who are talking about security for the elderly have nominated a man who said just four years ago that "Participation in social security should be made voluntary." And that nominee is no friend of the senior citizens of this Nation.
The same Republicans who are talking about preserving the environment have nominated a man who last year made the preposterous statement, and I quote, "Eighty percent of our air pollution comes from plants and trees."
And that nominee is no friend of the environment.
And the same Republicans who are invoking Franklin Roosevelt have nominated a man who said in 1976, and these are his exact words, "Fascism was really the basis of the New Deal." And that nominee whose name is Ronald Reagan has no right to quote Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The great adventures which our opponents offer is a voyage into the past. Progress is our heritage, not theirs. What is right for us as Democrats is also the right way for Democrats to win.
The commitment I seek is not to outworn views but to old values that will never wear out. Programs may sometimes become obsolete, but the ideal of fairness always endures.
Circumstances may change, but the work of compassion must continue. It is surely correct that we cannot solve problems by throwing money at them, but it is also correct that we dare not throw out our national problems onto a scrap heap of inattention and indifference. The poor may be out of political fashion, but they are not without human needs. The middle class may be angry, but they have not lost the dream that all Americans can advance together.
The demand of our people in 1980 is not for smaller government or bigger government but for better government. Some say that government is always bad and that spending for basic social programs is the root of our economic evils. But we reply: The present inflation and recession cost our economy $200 billion a year. We reply: Inflation and unemployment are the biggest spenders of all.
The task of leadership in 1980 is not to parade scapegoats or to seek refuge in reaction, but to match our power to the possibilities of progress. While others talked of free enterprise, it was the Democratic Party that acted and we ended excessive regulation in the airline and trucking industry and we restored competition to the marketplace. And I take some satisfaction that this deregulation was legislation that I sponsored and passed in the Congress of the United States.
As Democrats we recognize that each generation of Americans has a rendezvous with a different reality. The answers of one generation become the questions of the next generation. But there is a guiding star in the American firmament. It is as old as the revolutionary belief that all people are created equal, and as clear as the contemporary condition of Liberty City and the South Bronx.
Again and again Democratic leaders have followed that star and they have given new meaning to the old values of liberty and justice for all.
We are the party. We are the party of the New Freedom, the New Deal and the New Frontier. We have always been the party of hope. So this year let us offer new hope, new hope to an America uncertain about the present, but unsurpassed in its potential for the future.
To all those who are idle in the cities and industries of America let us provide new hope for the dignity of useful work. Democrats have always believed that a basic civil right of all Americans is their right to earn their own way. The party of the people must always be the party of full employment. To all those who doubt the future of our economy, let us provide new hope for the reindustrialization of America. And let our vision reach beyond the next election or the next year to a new generation of prosperity. If we could rebuild Germany and Japan after World War II, then surely we can reindustrialize our own nation and revive our inner cities in the 1980s.
To all those who work hard for a living wage let us provide new hope that the price of their employment shall not be an unsafe workplace and a death at an earlier age.
To all those who inhabit our land from California to the New York Island, from the Redwood Forest to the Gulfstream waters, let us provide new hope that prosperity shall not be purchased by poisoning the air, the rivers and the natural resources that are the greatest gift of this continent.
We must insist that our children and our grandchildren shall inherit a land which they can truly call America the beautiful.
To all those who see the worth of their work and their savings taken by inflation, let us offer new hope for a stable economy. We must meet the pressures of the present by invoking the full power of government to master increasing prices.
In candor, we must say that the Federal budget can be balanced only by policies that bring us to a balanced prosperity of full employment and price restraint.
And to all those overburdened by an unfair tax structure, let us provide new hope for real tax reform. Instead of shutting down classrooms, let us shut off tax shelters.
Instead of cutting out school lunches, let us cut off tax subsidies for expensive business lunches that are nothing more than food stamps for the rich.
The tax cut of our Republican opponents takes the name of tax reform in vain. It is a wonderfully Republican idea that would redistribute income in the wrong direction. It is good news for any of you with incomes over $200,000 a year. For the few of you, it offers a pot of gold worth $14,000. But the Republican tax cut is bad news for the middle income families.
For the many of you, they plan a pittance of $200 a year, and that is not what the Democratic Party means when we say tax reform.
The vast majority of Americans cannot afford this panacea from a Republican nominee who has denounced the progressive income tax as the invention of Karl Marx. I am afraid he has confused Karl Marx with Theodore Roosevelt--that obscure Republican president who sought and fought for a tax system based on ability to pay. Theodore Roosevelt was not Karl Marx, and the Republican tax scheme is not tax reform.
Finally, we cannot have a fair prosperity in isolation from a fair society. So I will continue to stand for a national health insurance.
We must not surrender to the relentless medical inflation that can bankrupt almost anyone and that may soon break the budgets of government at every level. Let us insist on real control over what doctors and hospitals can charge, and let us resolve that the state of a family's health shall never depend on the size of a family's wealth.
The President, the Vice President, the members of Congress have a medical plan that meets their needs in full, and whenever senators and representatives catch a little cold, the Capitol physician will see them immediately, treat them promptly, fill a prescription on the spot. We do not get a bill even if we ask for it, and when do you think was the last time a member of Congress asked for a bill from the Federal Government?
I say again, as I have before, if health insurance is good enough for the President, the Vice President and the Congress of the United States, then it is good enough for you and every family in America.
There were some who said we should be silent about our differences on issues during this convention, but the heritage of the Democratic Party has been a history of democracy. We fight hard because we care deeply about our principles and purposes. We did not flee this struggle. We welcome the contrast with the empty and expedient spectacle last month in Detroit where no nomination was contested, no question was debated, and no one dared to raise any doubt or dissent.
Democrats can be proud that we chose a different course and a different platform. We can be proud that our party stands for investment in safe energy instead of a nuclear future that may threaten the future itself.
We must not permit the neighborhoods of America to be permanently shadowed by the fear of another Three Mile Island.
We can be proud that our party stands for a fair housing law to unlock the doors of discrimination once and for all. The American house will be divided against itself so long as there is prejudice against any American buying or renting a home.
And we can be proud that our party stands plainly and publicly and persistently for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment.
Women hold their rightful place at our convention, and women must have their rightful place in the Constitution of the United States. On this issue we will not yield, we will not equivocate, we will not rationalize, explain or excuse. We will stand for E.R.A. and for the recognition at long last that our nation was made up of founding mothers as well as founding fathers.
A fair prosperity and a just society are within our vision and our grasp, and we do not have every answer. There are questions not yet asked, waiting for us in the recesses of the future, but of this much we can be certain because it is the lesson of all our history: Together a president and the people can make a difference. I have found that faith still alive wherever I have traveled across this land. So let us reject the counsel of retreat and the call to reaction. Let us go forward in the knowledge that history only helps those who help themselves.
There will be setbacks and sacrifices in the years ahead but I am convinced that we as a people are ready to give something back to our country in return for all it has given to us.
Let this be our commitment: Whatever sacrifices must be made will be shared and shared fairly. And let this be our confidence: At the end of our journey and always before us shines that ideal of liberty and justice for all.
In closing, let me say a few words to all those that I have met and to all those who have supported me, at this convention and across the country. There were hard hours on our journey, and often we sailed against the wind. But always we kept our rudder true, and there were so many of you who stayed the course and shared our hope. You gave your help, but even more, you gave your hearts.
Because of you, this has been a happy campaign. You welcomed Joan, me and our family into your homes and neighborhoods, your churches, your campuses, your union halls. When I think back of all the miles and all the months and all the memories, I think of you. I recall the poet's words, and I say: What golden friends I have.
Among you, my golden friends across this land, I have listened and learned.
I have listened to Kenny Dubois, a glassblower in Charleston, West Virginia, who has ten children to support but has lost his job after 35 years, just three years short of qualifying for his pension.
I have listened to the Trachta family who farm in Iowa and who wonder whether they can pass the good life and the good earth on to their children.
I have listened to the grandmother in East Oakland who no longer has a phone to call her grandchildren because she gave it up to pay the rent on her small apartment.
I have listened to young workers out of work, to students without the tuition for college, and to families without the chance to own a home. I have seen the closed factories and the stalled assembly lines of Anderson, Indiana and South Gate, California, and I have seen too many, far too many idle men and women desperate to work. I have seen too many, far too many working families desperate to protect the value of their wages from the ravages of inflation.
Yet I have also sensed a yearning for new hope among the people in every state where I have been. And I have felt it in their handshakes, I saw it in their faces, and I shall never forget the mothers who carried children to our rallies. I shall always remember the elderly who have lived in an America of high purpose and who believe that it can all happen again.
Tonight, in their name, I have come here to speak for them. And for their sake, I ask you to stand with them. On their behalf I ask you to restate and reaffirm the timeless truth of our party.
I congratulate President Carter on his victory here.
I am confident that the Democratic Party will reunite on the basis of Democratic principles, and that together we will march towards a Democratic victory in 1980.
And someday, long after this convention, long after the signs come down, and the crowds stop cheering, and the bands stop playing, may it be said of our campaign that we kept the faith. May it be said of our Party in 1980 that we found our faith again.
And may it be said of us, both in dark passages and in bright days, in the words of Tennyson that my brothers quoted and loved, and that have special meaning for me now: "I am a part of all that I have met....Tho much is taken, much abides....That which we are, we are-- One equal temper of heroic hearts, ...strong in willTo strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die. Hear this .WAV 173K
Senator Edward M. Kennedy - August 12, 1980

Running Scared

2008-10-16T15:19:00.000-07:00

by Brian Morton | October 16, 2008 - 10:24am

America is now a nation living on a foundation built of fear.

It's as if we're living in an alternate universe where time started traveling backward from the Gilded Age and Pearl Harbor, and now we're skidding toward the stock-market crash of 1929. We are afraid of fear itself. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have thrown us headlong into the past.

I recall driving around downtown D.C. the evening of Bush's second inaugural and remarking how it truly looked like something out of Escape From New York. Armed police at every corner, in black shock-troop style uniforms, automatic weapons at the ready. The last two nominating conventions for the major political parties featured mass arrests of peaceful protesters, giant roundups of people in no way violent or subversive, and the creation of Orwellian "free speech zones" blocks away from any press coverage or visibility.

If you've had a street encounter with police, you can probably recall asking the officer a question, and the cop replying with some variant of, "If you don't shut up, I'll take you downtown, too." What you'll probably find unsurprising is how completely unconstitutional this is--and how little that matters.

In February 1982, one Raymond Wayne Hill of Houston saw a friend on foot trying to stop busy traffic to allow a vehicle to enter the road when a police officer intervened. During the heated exchange, Hill, then a paralegal and the executive director of the Houston Human Rights League, began shouting at the officer from across the street, trying to distract him from his friend. After yelling, "Why don't you pick on somebody your own size," the officer arrested Hill, under the Houston Code of Ordinances, for "willfully or intentionally interrupt[ing] a city policeman... by verbal challenge during an investigation." The friend was not arrested, and Hill was acquitted after a nonjury trial.

Hill then sued the city in federal court over the incident, and provided records showing how often police arrested people under the ordinance, including evidence of reporters arrested in similar fashion. Five years later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Hill on First Amendment grounds in the case of Houston v. Hill, the majority opinion stating, in part:

The ordinance's plain language is admittedly violated scores of times daily yet only some individuals--those chosen by the police in their unguided discretion--are arrested. Far from providing the "breathing space" that "First Amendment freedoms need... to survive," the ordinance is susceptible of regular application to protected expression... [T]he First Amendment recognizes, wisely we think, that a certain amount of expressive disorder not only is inevitable in a society committed to individual freedom, but must itself be protected if that freedom would survive.

This opinion was handed down 21 years ago. Do you have any doubts that today, under the John Roberts court, such a ruling would be in favor of the police and not Hill?

In the post-Sept. 11 world, federal monies are disbursed to localities in order for metropolitan police departments to outfit themselves with riot-style gear worthy of the Italian carabinieri, despite the greatest everyday danger they face is from their own irate citizenry unused to being treated automatically as terrorist suspects. The Maryland State Police, in 2005, entered the names of nonviolent anti-death penalty protesters into the federal database that tracks terrorism suspects, and the former state police superintendent who authorized the addition recently justified it by claiming the program staved off possible future violence and called the activists "fringe people."

For years the tools have been there for a slide into an authoritarian state, but the feds never availed themselves of them. Bush and Cheney, after Sept. 11, saw that opportunity, and from "Total Information Awareness" and warrantless wiretapping to "homeland security," we are seeing the intrusion of the government into our privacy, our security, our liberty, and our freedoms down to the level of the state and city.

We are on the precipice of an era that can define ourselves as a people. Do we succumb, a little bit each day, to a fear that makes us enemies of ourselves, terrified of our neighbors at home and around the world? Or do we recognize that the world is a sometimes dangerous yet complex place, worthy of thoughtful responses to actual threats?

I'm wagering it won't be long before we know the answer.

Who owns you Americans?

2008-10-14T07:44:00.000-07:00

An Endorsement, a Condemnation and an Election Reflection

2008-10-13T09:08:00.000-07:00

by Bob Higgins

During the 1968 election, one of the keystones of Dick Nixon's campaign was his "plan to end the war in Vietnam." Of course he had no real plan, or, if he did it was a poor one, evidenced by the fact that the war dragged on for seven brutal years after that sad election season.

It has been said in some quarters that the "plan" Nixon alluded to, but never spelled out, was a nutty scheme (nutty schemes seem to abound in the halls of power) to have Kissinger convince the Russians that Tricky Dick was just batshit crazy enough to use nuclear weapons if the North Vietnamese would not come to the table and end the war on his terms.

History has shown that Nixon was nuts enough. So was and is, Henry the K, but the Vietnamese, after fighting a collection of Yankees, French, Japanese and Chinese among others, for uncountable hundreds of years weren't impressed with new and improved threats, from new and unimproved enemies.

They had been hardened over the centuries to leave early for work knowing that they might have to bury their dead or rebuild a bridge or two on the way. They would not be cowed by threats of death and destruction; death and destruction was all around them, forever.

Some might say that their difficult history made the Vietnamese nuttier than Dick Nixon but I'll leave that to the scholars and shrinks of history. After all, most of the witnesses are dead.

The presence of whackos and sociopaths at the highest levels of government is not a new thing, we have seen Caligula, and Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler, the Bushes and Cheneys, Saddam and Kim il Sung, but I believe that “extreme erratic eccentricity” in power is, unfortunately, a growing trend.

There are hundreds of rising stars and starlets of the future of political and religious subjugation and terror waiting in the wings or auditioning on corporate and theocratic casting couches as I write this.

As people, (the voting public,) continue to divorce themselves from the affairs of their own governance, continue to abrogate their fundamental responsibility to maintain a decent awareness of, and control over, their own public affairs, they open the door ever wider to the cold dark winds of tyranny and oppression.

People around here set their deadbolts at night; they make sure the kids put the bikes in the garage. They protect their property, their stuff. They keep their cash in the safe or a bank. (Perhaps not so much this week) The bikes and snowmobiles will be there in the morning but what of their freedoms? What of the rule of law, what of their democracy?

While we were busy obsessively obtaining, and guarding our wealth and its trappings, bigger SUVs, more palatial drywall estates, we left our only truly necessary and sacred possessions, things like liberty, privacy and due process, out on the lawn, discarded it seems as unnecessary abstractions.

Thieves and opportunists, both public and private, came and stole them in broad daylight. They practically rang the doorbell and announced what they were about. We paid no attention. The way they marketed their programs made it sound as if we would profit. I think that they scammed us, I'm afraid that they will be back for the rest, the tangible as well as the abstract; I fear that they want, and will have, it all.

I've listened to John Sidney McCain III for many years. I’ve lived through several of his ever more pathetic and increasingly panicky runs for the one office that he believes will enable him to prove to his father and grandfather that he is worthy of their respect, in spite of his record. (Does that not sound like a “cover” of a record that we’ve heard for years?)

John Sidney McCain III says that he knows where Osama bin Laden is. "I can get him," he says with Nixonian certainty, as he continues to insist that we must continue to fight bin Laden where we know that he isn't.

He claims that he knows how to put Americans back to work as he fights against workers rights, the minimum wage, social security and colludes with powerful interests which would deny them health care. He tells us that he has a "plan" to solve the financial crisis, after telling us that it doesn't exist.

Why is he hiding this important information? Does he really have a plan?

He does not, only people who readily believe his opportunistic pandering, the malicious lies being spread by him and his "running Babe," and other cynical surrogates speaking on their behalf, believe that he has a plan for anything broader than the continued aggrandizement of himself, his family and his wealthy friends and cronies.

I think John Sidney McCain III is an exceptional fraud. Had he not been the son and grandson of admirals he probably would not have made it through the Naval Academy, nor would he have been permitted to continue flying after his third crash due to pilot error.

Had he been cashiered (at least grounded) after wrecking that third aircraft he would have been saved a long imprisonment and we would have been protected from the sad spectacle of an embittered old man desperately grasping for a presidency that he has come to believe is his birthright, his "lifetime achievement award."

He claims to be a patron saint of America's veterans. He is not. His record on veteran's issues is shameful. I am a disabled veteran; I pay attention to "patron saints."

No I don't believe that he should have been commissioned a Naval Officer and should never have held an office of public trust. His willing and eager involvement in the Keating five affair, his everlasting closeness with dozens of the most powerful and probably the most destructive lobbyists in Washington, and his gambling habit, (Senators, Presidents rolling dice in casinos?) has shown him incapable of honoring that trust.

He certainly should never be trusted to replace the current sociopath in chief. America, what's left of it, cannot afford another decade of wanton abuse of power and privilege, of wanton theft from the public treasury, of wanton waste of the lives of our children and grandchildren.

Like George Bush John Sidney McCain III was a coddled child of privilege, propped up at every turn by family name and money.

In its broad strokes, McCain's life story is oddly similar to that of the current occupant of the White House. John Sidney McCain III and George Walker Bush both represent the third generation of American dynasties. Both were born into positions of privilege against which they rebelled into mediocrity. Both developed an uncanny social intelligence that allowed them to skate by with a minimum of mental exertion. Both struggled with booze and loutish behavior. At each step, with the aid of their fathers' powerful friends, both failed upward. And both shed their skins as Episcopalian members of the Washington elite to build political careers as self-styled, ranch-inhabiting Westerners who pray to Jesus in their wives' evangelical churches.
From "Make-Believe Maverick " By Tim Dickinson at Rolling Stone

John Sidney McCain III is an anti intellectual of the first order. No surprise there, as his party, or the modern version of it, has made anti intellectualism a cornerstone of its appeal to its base, that voter they call "Joe Six Pack."

As an aside, that pisses me off because I am Joe Six Pack as are most of my friends and most of us are Democrats or Independents of varying degrees of liberality who despise what John Sidney McCain III represents.

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. Gimme a beer.

They hate the "scholarly elite," deride legitimate research, deny climate change, evolution, gravity, and "publicly" despise gerund endings. They build museums with "Barney riding Dino" exhibits and try to sell it as “creation science education?"

Back in 79 or so I took a class at the Chicago Planetarium, titled "New Frontiers in Cosmology." The class was taught by David Schramm, a professor of astrophysics from the University of Chicago. During those few months, Dr. Schramm changed how I viewed the world by successfully inserting into the mind of this untutored layman a delightful stew which he made from a mixture of the fields of astronomy, astrophysics, particle physics, and nuclear physics.

I have enjoyed few things in life as much as I enjoyed his teaching and his company. Dave was a class act, a well respected, inspired, passionate, wild haired man of science. I was overwhelmed with his brilliance and his almost childlike enthusiasm. I think the class cost me $75.00. My guess is that it was presented to the public as part of one of those evil "government grants."

During the last “debate” John Sidney McCain III castigated Barack Hussein Obama (I'm not afraid of him or his name) for the expenditure of three million dollars for a new overhead projector. McCain was, or acted outraged.

I think John Sidney McCain III equates the word "projector" with Lone Ranger and Tonto movies flickering on the wall of a darkened room of his childhood.

Any time the Chicago Planetarium or any institute of legitimate research and learning wants to spend a few million bucks on an incredible learning tool, to bring scientific knowledge to the public, I say, "buy it." The anti intellectuals of the McPalin camp be damned.

They would rather spend public money on death, destruction or giveaways to already wealthy swindlers.

Trillions to Wall Street flimflam men, hundreds of billions to defense cronies, oil cronies and merchants of death, but declare holy war over a few million for research which might save a species, educate the public or provide health care and education for children, rebuild our infrastructure and move us to renewable fuels.

The only "steady hands on the tiller' in my lifetime have been attached to the wrists of Democrats. Hell, I have a plan too. Get rid of these damn Republicans. Again, thanks, I needed that.

At every whistle stop, (do campaign planes have whistles?) John Sidney McCain III asks, "Who is Barack Obama,” do we really know who he is?

I think that I know Barack Obama well, because I know John Sidney McCain III very well and the contrast between these two men is profound in every way.

The recent counterpoint of public appearances, of debate, of Vice Presidential choices, the demeanor of their wives and families, and the conduct of their campaigns has exposed an overwhelming and obvious fact.

There is only one person in this race qualified to be the President of my America. I'm voting for "that one." Barack Obama for President.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

Mad Cow Republicans

2008-09-17T07:04:00.000-07:00

What does a Police State look like?

2008-09-10T09:25:00.000-07:00

The Amerikan Stasi

2008-08-25T10:46:00.001-07:00

From Cindy Sheehan about her trip to Denver to demonstrate before the Democratic Convention:

"The most troubling thing happened, though, when I arrived back to my hotel. We got back early because the altitude and sleeplessness were starting to take a toll on us. We did not march after the rally, so we decided to rest before the next event at 7pm. As I walked toward my room, I noticed that the door was opened with the security bolt blocking the complete closing of the door. I knew immediately that I had not left the door open, and I double checked to make sure it was the right room because, as a frequent traveler, I have been known to forget my room number, but it was the right room.

I was upset at first thinking that housekeeping had made a mistake and left my room open and I was worried that something might be missing.
So I walked into my room and bigger than life, there was a man standing by my desk holding the room phone with a screwdriver in his hand!

I immediately said; "What the hell are you doing? Are you putting a bug on my phone?" He looked like he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar and stammered out: "N--no, we are having problems with the phone." I told him to get out of my room because my phone was fine and I called the front desk and the person at the front desk stammered something out about "problems" with some of the phones.

This room was reserved soon after we got to Denver last night because the room we had was inadequate for 3 people. The room was reserved under my campaign manager's name with a CFC debit card. By the time we left for the march, it could have very well been ascertained that I was the one in this room, and the room we did reserve could be bugged, also. I am confident that that's what was happening when I walked in on the "maintenance" man and I am becoming more shocked every day with what the ruling class are capable of....that's why...

My phones are in the room fridge. Let them listen to refridgerator noise.

CFC is feeling a little shaky on the security front, because there is no way to reasonably expect privacy from a Party and a government that has discarded our 4th amendment rights to be secure in our persons and papers...in other words, our safety and our campaign can be compromised by a government that exists to protect our rights, not abuse them at will.

OUTRAGEOUS!!!"

Outrageous indeed. These are the sort of actions we used to hold up as an example of the wickedness of the East German Ministry of State Security. They used the same excuse too. Protecting the Fatherland. Protecting State security.

Those Police and FBI and Homeland Security people are protecting us from the leader of the modern peace movement. From a congressional candidate. From the mother of a fallen soldier! They're protecting our freedom from the threat that Cindy Sheehan poses. I know I can sleep better at night.

I swear I'd like to thrash the next "Well at least we're free" right-wing knuckle scraper soundly with a clue bat when I hear them spew that drivel.

2008-07-10T07:02:00.000-07:00

Dear Senator Feinstein,

"There is nothing to fear but fear itself!" Because of the fear mongering by the adminsitration, and its supporters, including you, what we have to fear here is fascist tyranny!

Your eagerness to preserve police-state surveillance methods at any cost came at a very dear cost indeed!

"Congress has no more authority to suspend an article of the Constitution by majority vote than the president has to do the same with a signing statement or a declaration of unfettered war powers. The insidious part of this tyranny is that both claim their actions to be in defense of constitutional freedom. The simple truth is that the Democratic congress has now become a full-fledge enabler and co-conspirator of executive criminality in the guise of democracy." -sulphurdunn on Buzzflash.com

In another critical vote, you once again aid the move towards fascism.

"IN A TRAGIC, SHAMEFUL AFFRONT TO THE US CONSTITUTION, THE
SENATE APPROVED THE FISA AMENDMENTS ACT passed by the House
last month. The bill radically expands the president's
spying powers and grants immunity to phone companies that
cooperated in the illegal warrantless wiretapping program.
Many senators courageously opposed telecom immunity, and
several amendments were offered in an attempt to remove or
modify the immunity provision, but they failed." -EFF

It's a shameful affront to the citizens of California that you weren't among the senators who courageously opposed telecom immunity.

AP "journalist" Pamela Hess says it all in her headline: Senate bows to Bush, approves surveillance bill. "Bows to Bush." As a commoner would bow to a purple-draped, jewel encrusted head of a despotic monarchy. The Nixon era remains one of the most progressive eras in US history Why? The Congress actually acted like the primary branch of government, as the Constitution intends it to be. Have you heard that Congress' approval rating is in the SINGLE DIGITS? The lowest EVER? Today's Congress is nothing but a pack of sycophants.

I can't adequately express my disgust.

KENNEDY ON FISA

2008-07-08T08:43:00.000-07:00

Think about what we’ve been hearing from the White House in this debate. The President has said that American lives will be sacrificed if Congress does not change FISA. But he has also said that he will veto any FISA bill that does not grant retroactive immunity. No immunity, no new FISA bill. So if we take the President at his word, he is willing to let Americans die to protect the phone companies. The President’s insistence on immunity as a precondition for any FISA reform is yet another example of his disrespect for honest dialogue and for the rule of law.

It’s painfully clear what the President’s request for retroactive immunity is really about. It’s a self-serving attempt to avoid legal and political accountability and keep the American public in the dark about this whole shameful episode.
- Senator Edward M. Kennedy

John McCain: Too dangerous to trust with your healthcare

2008-07-02T08:18:00.000-07:00

Throughout his career, Sen. John McCain has consistently opposed overarching supervision of financial institutions, and now he wants to deregulate the health insurance industry in the same way conservatives dismantled prudent supervision of Wall Street. To quote him, “opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation."

Senator McCain’s plan would:

Threaten the coverage of over 160 million people in the United States who receive health benefits through work. The Economic Policy Institute projects 11-27 million Americans could lose their coverage. In sheer numbers, the biggest impact comes in the states with the most population. In California, some 2.4 million people can be expected to lose employer coverage, followed by New York with losses estimated at 1.6 million, and Ohio and Texas at 0.9 million. The greatest percentage of losses in coverage would occur in a mix of large and small states, with the greatest losses of 16.4 percent of employer coverage in the District of Columbia followed by 15.5% in New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont, and by 15.4 percent in Connecticut. Sixteen states would see losses of at least 13 percent (The above list plus OR, MA, KS, MD, ME, OH, NJ, MT, and OK.)

Eliminate the employer health care tax benefits that enable many businesses, especially small businesses, to provide group insurance to their employees.

Put at special risk coverage for the 56 million non-elderly people across the country struggling with diseases like cancer and diabetes who are now covered through their jobs. Insurance companies would be free to “cherry pick” only those individuals for coverage who do not have costly health conditions and avoid state regulations that keep health care accessible and affordable.

Raise taxes on the health insurance benefits paid by millions of American families. A typical family could pay over $1,100 more in taxes by 2013 if McCain imposes both income and payroll taxes on their health coverage.

Additionally McCain’s plan directly threatens the health of women who make up 14 percent of the uninsured in the United States. The results of a new report from Planned Parenthood and the Center for American Progress show that McCain’s health care solutions would threaten women’s health and lives. According to the report, McCain’s plan would gut state requirements aimed specifically at protecting women’s access to some of their most basic health needs. In Wisconsin, state statute requires that insurers provide coverage of basic health care services such as mammograms, drugs for treatment of HIV infection and maternity leave. McCain’s plan jeopardizes coverage of these services and devastatingly:

eliminates coverage of cervical cancer and HPV screening

eliminates coverage of the HPV vaccine

eliminates comprehensive drug benefit plans that include contraceptives

eliminates coverage of breast reconstruction

Our health care system faces deep problems. There are 46 million people without insurance and nearly as many who have insurance for only part of the year, costs are rising and increasingly unaffordable and quality of care is inconsistent. But Sen. McCain’s prescription would worsen the disease, creating a deregulated insurance market, leaving millions of Americans with serious illnesses without insurance coverage and millions more paying higher taxes for their insurance coverage.

John McCain:

Too dangerous to trust with your healthcare

Election Day is in just 34 days

Email from Senator Wexler

2008-06-18T09:35:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday the largest newspaper in my congressional district - the South Florida Sun-Sentinel - published an editorial lambasting my enthusiastic support for immediately holding impeachment hearings for President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Numerous letters to the editor have also criticized my support for this movement.

Below, you'll find the original Sun-Sentinel editorial, followed by my response, which was printed yesterday.

I assure you that I will not back down from this fight – no matter the consequences or political cost. The only thing that maters is that we deliver accountability for the Bush Cheney Administration and defend our government and our constitution.

If you would like to write a letter to the Sun Sentinel, you can email letters@sun-sentinel.com.

Thank you for your continued support.

Robert Wexler

https://www. wexlerforcongress. com/contribute. asp

Sun-Sentinel Editorial

Impeachment not worth another minute of anybody's time
South Florida Sun-Sentinel Editorial Board

June 12, 2008

ISSUE: Some in Congress want an impeachment.

The nation does have a few pressing issues pending that could use some attention from our federal lawmakers.

Let's see. There are a couple of wars going on, unemployment is on the rise as the value of a house continues to fall, millions of Americans have no health insurance, and did we mention that gas prices are expected to hit $5 a gallon? You get the idea. And still, some in Congress feel the nation is just itching for another presidential impeachment.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, who has made a career out of eye-rolling issues like these, said this week he wants the House to consider a resolution to impeach President Bush. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Delray Beach, who is smarter than this, supported the Articles of Impeachment, which won't go anywhere and thankfully have been buried in a committee not likely to hold hearings before Bush leaves office.

Last year, Kucinich led the misguided charge to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney, and Wexler supported that. In the case of Bush, Wexler called it a "sworn duty" of Congress to act.

Actually, it's nobody's sworn duty to take up any time to go after a badly battered president with only a few months left in office. This is a president so unpopular, presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain won't make many public appearances with him.

This is a president who is such a non-entity, peace activists didn't even
bother to protest his appearance in Berlin this week.

Nor should Congress bother with the ridiculous idea of impeachment, which Kucinich contends is warranted because Bush deceived the nation into war.

There's plenty of evidence to fuel Kucinich's ire, but not his choice of remedy. If Congress needs more things than impeachment to keep lawmakers busy, it has myriad options.

BOTTOM LINE: Get on with REAL issues.

Copyright (c) 2008, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

The Wexler Response:

The Sun-Sentinel recently ran an editorial criticizing my support for the articles of impeachment against President Bush opining that Congress should instead "get on with REAL issues" such as the Iraq war. In fact, it is this very war -- entered into following an unprecedented campaign of lies and manipulated intelligence by the Bush Administration -- that necessitates impeachment hearings. This war has cost us the lives of 4,090 US soldiers, injuries to over 30,000, and more than a trillion taxpayer dollars when it is all said and done.

It is a dark day when the Sun-Sentinel has the gall to tell the parents of the soldiers who have died in Iraq that pursuing
consequences for those that prosecuted this war of choice based on outright deception is not a "REAL" issue that Congress should address.

Sadly, the war is only the beginning. We now know that this Administration illegally ordered the torture of prisoners, obstructed justice by lying about the outing of a covert CIA agent and authorizing warrantless spying on American citizens.

No one can deny that if proven these allegations amount to High Crimes. Our failure to act sets an awful precedent and enables future Presidents to break the law and violate our Constitution without sanctions from Congress.

The Sentinel says impeachment is the wrong "remedy" for this litany of crimes.

What then is the proper remedy? A harsh lecture? A strongly worded editorial? Or how about doing absolutely nothing in the face of these outrageous abuses of power?

Impeachment hearings need not distract us from other important priorities such as the economy, gas prices and bringing the troops home from Iraq. Congress can and should address all important issues - including safeguarding our constitutional rights and obligations.

Yer Gas Prices Aren't That High

2008-06-12T14:46:00.000-07:00

[The oil companies] are sitting on tens of billioins of NET profit. It's just that the corporate mentality is to make as much money with as little investment as possible. If they can buy off government to improve their bottom line then to them it is a good business decision. The United States and the Ameirican People can go to hell for all they care and our National Security be damned. (Read more...)

UN Inspector Scott Ritter: Fools would Bomb Iran

2008-06-06T07:22:00.001-07:00

:: Blue Dog Democratic Caucus ::

2008-05-28T07:14:00.000-07:00

Recognize these Democratic members of Congress, and
vote in a PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATIC Candidate
when their term is up!!

In the last decade the Blue Dog Caucus has systematically
voted along Neo-Con ideology; bankrupting our economy
through deregulation and outsourcing, bringing us into an
occupation that has cost over a million innocent lives,
and now is making sure that our VETS don't get the
proper increases in benefits through the new GI bill !!!

If there's anyone who hasn't been redistricted yet,
WAKE UP, and vote these people OUT !!!

CA, 53rd - Susan Davis is not in this caucus, but has voted to fund the war every time, and has refused to support impeachment.
Vote for MIKE COPASS! in the 53rd
AR, 4th - Mike Ross
AR, 1st - Marion Berry
AZ, 8th - Gabrielle Giffords
AL, 5th - Bud Cramer
CA, 47th - Loretta Sanchez
CA, 29th - Adam Schiff
CA, 43rd - Joe Baca
CA, 20th - Jim Costa
CA, 18th - Dennis Cardoza
CA, 1st - Mike Thompson
CO, 3rd - John Salazar
CA, 36th - Jane Harman
FL, 2nd - Allen Boyd
FL, 16th - Tim Mahoney
GA, 12th - John Barrow
GA, 3rd - Jim Marshall
GA, 2nd - Sanford Bishop
GA, 13th - David Scott
IN, 2nd - Joe Donnelly
IL, 8th - Melissa Bean
IN, 8th - Brad Ellsworth
IN, 9th - Baron Hill
IA, 3rd - Leonard Boswell
KS, 3rd - Dennis Moore
KY, 6th - Ben Chandler
LA, 3rd - Charlie Melancon
MS, 4th - Gene Taylor
MA, 2nd - Mike Michaud
MN, 7th - Collin Peterson
NY, 24th - Mike Arcuri
NY, 20th - Kirsten Gillibrand
NY, 2nd - Steve Israel
NC, 7th - Mike McIntyre
NC, 11th - Heath Shuler
ND - Earl Pomeroy
OH, 18th - Zack Space
OH, 6th - Charlie Wilson
OK, 2nd - Dan Boren
SD - Stephanie Herseth Sandlin
PA, 10th - Chris Carney
PA, 17th Tim Holden
PA, 8th - Patrick Murphy
TN, 5th - Jim Cooper
TN, 4th - Lincoln Davis
TN, 6th - Bart Gordon
TN, 8th - John Tanner
TX, 22nd - Nick Lampson
UT, 2nd - Jim Matheson

United States Tortures Innocent People

2008-04-02T07:26:00.000-07:00

Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan

2008-03-13T08:23:00.001-07:00

Watch the whole move at IAVW.

Blackwater Shadow Army in Iraq - Jeremy Scahill

2008-03-13T08:12:00.000-07:00

Emergency Petition to Stop Telecom Immunity

2008-02-26T16:29:00.001-08:00

Dear John Edwards,

2008-02-13T08:50:00.000-08:00

I supported your candidacy enthusiastically. You seemed to be the only candidate who recognized the threat that corporations posed to our Republic. But I see reports that you are weighing the notion of endorsing Hillary Clinton. This seems to reveal to me a politician, not a statesman. If this report has any truth to it, I'm relieved you dropped out before super Tuesday, when I might have voted for you with the belief that you were sincere.

The time is long past that we drum these DLC mugwumps from our party! To return to the ideals of FDR and the support of our core constituencies: Labor, Civil Rights, Equality and the Environment.

Perhaps my understanding of the news article was incorrect. Perhaps you really were a genuine progressive, in which case I sincerely apologize. If we are to save this nation from the tightening grips of an Orwellian-Fascist tyranny, we need leaders NOW who can wake up and motivate the populace. I was conviced it was you. Please show me my faith was not misplaced.

One Day = $720 Million

2008-01-24T09:17:00.000-08:00

THE CAT THAT CONTROLS NEW HAMPSHIRE ELECTION PROGRAMMING

2008-01-08T11:31:00.000-08:00

Dennis Kucinich on The Rachel Maddow Show

2008-01-02T08:47:00.000-08:00

"This plan is immoral! This plan is a disgrace!"

Looking at America

2008-01-01T12:30:00.000-08:00

There are too many moments these days when we cannot recognize our country. Sunday was one of them, as we read the account in The Times of how men in some of the most trusted posts in the nation plotted to cover up the torture of prisoners by Central Intelligence Agency interrogators by destroying videotapes of their sickening behavior. It was impossible to see the founding principles of the greatest democracy in the contempt these men and their bosses showed for the Constitution, the rule of law and human decency.
It was not the first time in recent years we’ve felt this horror, this sorrowful sense of estrangement, not nearly. This sort of lawless behavior has become standard practice since Sept. 11, 2001.
The country and much of the world was rightly and profoundly frightened by the single-minded hatred and ingenuity displayed by this new enemy. But there is no excuse for how President Bush and his advisers panicked — how they forgot that it is their responsibility to protect American lives and American ideals, that there really is no safety for Americans or their country when those ideals are sacrificed.
Out of panic and ideology, President Bush squandered America’s position of moral and political leadership, swept aside international institutions and treaties, sullied America’s global image, and trampled on the constitutional pillars that have supported our democracy through the most terrifying and challenging times. These policies have fed the world’s anger and alienation and have not made any of us safer.
In the years since 9/11, we have seen American soldiers abuse, sexually humiliate, torment and murder prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq. A few have been punished, but their leaders have never been called to account. We have seen mercenaries gun down Iraqi civilians with no fear of prosecution. We have seen the president, sworn to defend the Constitution, turn his powers on his own citizens, authorizing the intelligence agencies to spy on Americans, wiretapping phones and intercepting international e-mail messages without a warrant.
We have read accounts of how the government’s top lawyers huddled in secret after the attacks in New York and Washington and plotted ways to circumvent the Geneva Conventions — and both American and international law — to hold anyone the president chose indefinitely without charges or judicial review.
Those same lawyers then twisted other laws beyond recognition to allow Mr. Bush to turn intelligence agents into torturers, to force doctors to abdicate their professional oaths and responsibilities to prepare prisoners for abuse, and then to monitor the torment to make sure it didn’t go just a bit too far and actually kill them.
The White House used the fear of terrorism and the sense of national unity to ram laws through Congress that gave law-enforcement agencies far more power than they truly needed to respond to the threat — and at the same time fulfilled the imperial fantasies of Vice President Dick Cheney and others determined to use the tragedy of 9/11 to arrogate as much power as they could.
Hundreds of men, swept up on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, were thrown into a prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, so that the White House could claim they were beyond the reach of American laws. Prisoners are held there with no hope of real justice, only the chance to face a kangaroo court where evidence and the names of their accusers are kept secret, and where they are not permitted to talk about the abuse they have suffered at the hands of American jailers.
In other foreign lands, the C.I.A. set up secret jails where “high-value detainees” were subjected to ever more barbaric acts, including simulated drowning. These crimes were videotaped, so that “experts” could watch them, and then the videotapes were destroyed, after consultation with the White House, in the hope that Americans would never know.
The C.I.A. contracted out its inhumanity to nations with no respect for life or law, sending prisoners — some of them innocents kidnapped on street corners and in airports — to be tortured into making false confessions, or until it was clear they had nothing to say and so were let go without any apology or hope of redress.
These are not the only shocking abuses of President Bush’s two terms in office, made in the name of fighting terrorism. There is much more — so much that the next president will have a full agenda simply discovering all the wrongs that have been done and then righting them.
We can only hope that this time, unlike 2004, American voters will have the wisdom to grant the awesome powers of the presidency to someone who has the integrity, principle and decency to use them honorably. Then when we look in the mirror as a nation, we will see, once again, the reflection of the United States of America.

Bush and Cheney would not have been able to carry out their crimes against humanity without the mass media and Congress permitting them to do so. When the Times had the information that the White House was spying on us all it sat on the information for a year before publishing it. When Bush and Cheney stole the 2000 and 2004 elections the Times didn't mention that the exit polls showed that the elections were fraudulent. Indeed, the Times coverage didn't even bring up the subject of exit polls in its coverage.While I am pleased that you are editorializing - in essence - against the high crimes and misdemeanors of this criminal gang, why aren't you calling for their impeachment? If you were mute when the last two elections were stolen, why should we have any confidence that EVEN IF a Democrat does get the most votes in '08 that the election won't be stolen once again and the Times won't be mute once again?None of the major candidates for president have called for the repeal of the Military Commissions Act or the Warner Act. None of them have committed to pulling the troops out of Iraq by even the end of their first hypothetical term. Clinton, Obama and Edwards have all endorsed a military attack on Iran. None of them have called for impeaching Bush and Cheney. Nancy Pelosi, we now know, knew for years about the spying and the torture and said nothing.In times such as these, the American people must speak up and make their sentiments known, acting independently as THE PEOPLE. Let us not go down in history as infamously standing silent in the face of grave crimes the way the "Good Germans" allowed the Nazis to carry out their atrocities.Wear orange - a ribbon, wristband, bandana, and so on - daily. Its wearing is a sign of solidarity with those our government imprisons and tortures. Its wearing means that you stand against torture and tyranny. The time for private grumbling is over. The time for speaking out and acting is here. (dennisloo.blogspot.com)
— Dr. Dennis Loo, Los Angeles

The road to justice in Jena

2007-10-08T07:57:00.000-07:00

The chances for the Jena 6 to achieve justice have dramatically improved.

Their story has been forced into the mainstream media, the Governor was finally forced to speak on the issue, Mychal Bell is facing a new trial with a maximum penalty of 4 years instead of 22, and the systemic problem of unequal justice across this country is getting more attention.

As the fight moves to court trials, ColorOfChange.org members have helped put the legal teams on solid ground by generously contributing $212,399 to the legal defense of the Jena 6, $106,000 of which has already been spent at the direction of the families to help get investigators on the ground, bring in expert witnesses, and to secure the best legal counsel available for these young men.¹.

Having well-funded legal teams and more media attention is important, but we can't forget that these young men could be free of these charges completely if not for one man: LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters. He is still representing the State of Louisiana in the case and needs to be removed and disciplined for his misconduct immediately.

Can you file a letter of complaint with the Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board asking them to investigate Walter's conduct?

http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/walters/?id=1671-156865

After nooses were hung from the "white tree" at Jena High School in September 2006, the adults in Jena could have taken actions to reduce tensions and help the community heal, but their actions only further aggravated tensions. Reed Walters was one of the main instigators. He came to the school and threatened Black students who protested peacefully under the "white tree."² He used his prosecutorial discretion to refuse to pursue incidents of white-on-black violence that preceded the beating of Justin Barker, and then abused that same discretion to overcharge the young men who allegedly beat Barker, claiming that tennis shoes were a "dangerous weapon" and the assault was attempted murder.³ From the day he threatened to "make [their] lives disappear with the stroke of a pen," Walters has had a clear agenda, and has followed it aggressively, unfairly, and outside of the boundaries of his position.

Now he's trying to cover his tracks. In a public statement on September 19, 2007, DA Walters claimed that there was no connection between the assault on Justin Barker and the hanging of nooses in the "white tree" several months before.⁴ In an op-ed in the New York Times, Walters claimed that the noose hanging "broke no law. I searched the Louisiana criminal code for a crime that I could prosecute. There is none." ⁵ But two attorneys we're working with easily found Louisiana Revised Statute 14:107.2, which creates a hate crime for any institutional vandalism or criminal trespass motivated by race. Walters was creative enough to turn a schoolyard assault into an attempted murder case; he surely could have figured out how to make nooses into hate crimes.⁶

After the massive protest on the 20th, Governor Blanco was forced to act, but sadly her only action was to give Walters cover to continue his aggressive prosecution. Blanco grandly proclaimed that Walters was not going to appeal the 3rd Circuit Court's nullification of Mychal Bell's conviction in adult court, and would instead prosecute him as a juvenile.⁷ Sounds good until you remember that 4 young men still face charges in adult court, and 2 are still facing charges as juveniles, for a fight that occurred at school. And Walter's "generosity" sounds even worse when you remember that only one of the young men who attacked Robert Bailey three days before Justin Barker was assaulted was even charged; that he was charged with a misdemeanor; and that he has never spent a minute in prison.⁸

It is outrageous that Walters is still pursuing charges against the Jena 6, and it's even more outrageous that he's being given political cover by the Governor, by Louisiana's District Attorney Association, and even by the New York Times. Anyone can file a complaint against an attorney by sending a letter to the Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board, the organization that has the power to take action against Walters, and we want them to hear from as many of us as possible. We've prepared the letter. All you have to do is add your address and put it in the mail. When you send your letter, please let us know at walterscomplaint@colorofchange.org. If lots of you send letters, we'll use those numbers to get the media to cover the story, adding more pressure on the Disciplinary Board to act.

Justice should be blind, but unfortunately, prosecutors are not. They see color and it can impact how they exercise their prosecutorial discretion. This is the case for the Jena 6. Reed Walters' attacks have already damaged the lives of these 6 teenagers. He shouldn't be given the opportunity to keep at it a minute longer. Please send your letter of complaint requesting a thorough investigation into Reed Walters' conduct today.

http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/walters/?id=1671-156865

Gitmo: America's black hole

2007-10-08T07:34:00.001-07:00

A lawyer for prison detainees is struck by how the immoral mistreatment of inmates has become so mundane.

By Clive Stafford Smith
October 5, 2007

GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA -- Iam writing from the Combined Bachelors' Quarters on the leeward side of Guantanamo Bay. Particularly in the age of "don't ask, don't tell," it is a strange name for a military barracks. Yet the irony of this place runs deep, as does the tragedy. The base motto is "Honor Bound to Defend Freedom," even though my clients, who are prisoners in the detention center, have none.

I've been here meeting with them this week, but I can't tell you what anyone has told me, as it must all go through the censors. It does not matter that the topic may be as innocuous as Speedo swimwear, for each word is considered a potential threat to national security. (Why would a lawyer talk about Speedos? Because, a few weeks ago, a commander alleged that I smuggled in Speedos and Under Armour underwear to one client, apparently so he could paddle around in the only pool available to him, his privy.)

Most of the secrecy in Guantanamo involves suppressing bad news about the base rather than anything that should really be classified. But I obey the rules or I go to jail, so until I get permission, I can only write about what I see, not what is said.

I had a morning meeting scheduled with Sami Haj, the Al Jazeera journalist, no more a terrorist than my grandmother. Sami's original arrest in Pakistan in late 2001 was perhaps understandable because the U.S. military thought he had filmed an interview with Osama bin Laden. To track down the criminal behind 9/11, many people would accept a little trampled due process. Unfortunately, as has often been the case, the intelligence turned out to be wrong. Yet Sami remained in custody. On the fifth anniversary of his detention without trial, his patience wore thin and he went on a hunger strike, the age-old peaceful protest against injustice.

After crossing the bay on the 8 a.m. ferry, an escort drove me down Recreation Road, past the golf course. I noticed a yellow sign. The soldiers were admonished that their value of the week should be "Compassion."

Sami's strike began 271 days ago. Medical ethics tell us that you cannot force-feed a mentally competent hunger striker, as he has the right to complain about his mistreatment, even unto death. But the Pentagon knows that a prisoner starving himself to death would be abysmal PR, so they force-feed Sami. As if that were not enough, when Gen. Bantz J. Craddock headed up the U.S. Southern Command, he announced that soldiers had started making hunger strikes less "convenient." Rather than leave a feeding tube in place, they insert and remove it twice a day. Have you ever pushed a 43-inch tube up your nostril and down into your throat? Tonight, Sami will suffer that for the 479th time.

It is sometimes a minor rule change, imposed from far above, that inflames me. I always carry lozenges, and some months back, a hunger-striking client agreed to take one to soothe his sore throat. By my next visit, the list of "contraband" had expanded to bar this insignificant salve.

Sami looked very thin. His memory is disintegrating, and I worry that he won't survive if he keeps this up. He already wrote a message for his 7-year-old son, Mohammed, in case he dies here.

As I left his cell at Camp Iguana, I pondered why American reporters have remained so silent about his imprisonment. Here is a fellow journalist locked up for almost six years, with no proof offered of any crime.

In the afternoon, I met with Hisham Sliti. He's Tunisian, and we get by in French, with a smattering of Italian (mainly gesticulating and swearing). It'd been a long time since I sat in a French class, but a translator can cost over $1,000 a day, and the charity I work with can't shell that out often. Hisham laughs when I tell jokes, but it could well be my accent he finds so amusing.

Tonight, I must plan tomorrow's visit with Shaker Aamer. Shaker has never met his youngest son, Faris, who was born after his imprisonment and who waits in London, hoping to meet his father. I'd love to ask Shaker about the Speedos I supposedly gave him, but he was floridly psychotic the last time I saw him. He's been on a hunger strike even longer than Sami -- almost 300 days -- and an interrogator told him I was Jewish to sow discord between us. He is fairly certain that I work with the CIA.

Meanwhile, most of the soldiers are unwaveringly polite to me -- decent people trying to do a terrible job. I sympathize with these Navy recruits who signed up to sail the high seas but live like Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day": A year passes with no change more exciting than a sudden swerve to avoid a lizard. In this legal black hole where a human being has no rights, there is a stiff fine for harming an iguana.

Would that the guards were always so pleasant to the prisoners. In more than 20 years trying death-penalty cases, I have visited all the worst prisons in the Deep South, yet none compares to Camp Six here. To the military, this tribute to Halliburton's profiteering is state-of-the-art; to the human being, it is simply inhumane. The prisoners have an average of 23 hours a day in isolation, six hours of direct sunlight a month, perhaps one fishing magazine a week to read, and never, ever the chance to see a loved one. The immoral has become so mundane.

Clive Stafford Smith is the legal director of Reprieve, a British charity that provides legal representation to prisoners around the world. He is also the author of "Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side: Seeking Justice in Guantanamo Bay."

Congresswoman Susan Davis,

2007-08-29T17:07:00.002-07:00

I observed a little graphic on your web page showing 15 icons of "issues". They are no doubt there to describe what is "on the table".

I would like my congressional delegation to recognize its paramount duty, and therefore its most tragic shortcoming: Supporting and defending the constitution of the U.S. The HIGHEST of crimes have been committed by this administration. Yet my congressional delegation rationalizes in the weakest of terms its resistance to address the issue. Moreover, it collaborates by passing enabling legislation to aid and abet the crimes.

The electorate sent a message in the most recent election that there needs to be a correction to this dramatic descent into the abyss of fascism. But my congressional delegation fails to recognize it, choosing instead to accomodate its corporate benefactors. I am distressed beyond words. My congressional delegation MUST change its behavior if it hopes to enjoy my support in the future.

Stand Up, Susan!

2007-07-25T15:46:00.000-07:00

The MAJORITY of American people want IMPEACHMENT!*
What is the REAL reason for the resitance to impeachment? How many executive orders like Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq (see post below) will our democracy endure?

Why are the Dems resisting any real action?

Cowardice?
Clever political strategEry?
Complicity (latent or covert) ?

I-M-P-E-A-C-H!

* New Zogby Poll Shows Majority of Americans Support Impeaching Bush for Wiretapping
MSNBC Online Poll: 86% Favor Impeachment
A Newsweek poll found that 52 percent of respondents believed that impeachment should be a high priority

Is there a Cindy Sheehan for the 53rd Congressional District?

2007-07-11T08:10:00.000-07:00

Dear Congresswoman Davis,

I commend to you the excellent essay by Stephen Fleischman describing a possible solution to today's political climate: Third Party Gambit.

I'm convinced that the Republicans led by the NeoCons and the Democrats led by the DLC are squarely in the corner of corporate interests, and the Democrats in particular have abandoned their natural constituencies of LABOR, CIVIL RIGHTS and the ENVIRONMENT.

I'm so disappointed in your position on Impeachment. Your PRIMARY responsibility is to uphold and defend the constitution of the U.S. By rationalizing away your reluctance to take a leadership position on this issues, you cause me to question my previous support for you.

I'm also very obviously devastated by your support for the "benchmark" of so-called "production sharing", which compels IRAQ to open their oil resources to our OIL COMPANIES, under the cover of "supporting our troops".

I'm frankly sorry there is no Cindy Sheehan for the 53rd Congressional District.

We used to be the good guys.

2007-07-05T09:37:00.000-07:00

Oct. 5, 2006

Senator Feinstein,

Quoting from your email,

" I firmly believe that detaining and interrogating enemy combatants is a justified and necessary part of war. How we find a proper balance is not an easy question to answer. "

It IS an easy answer!

This is not unlike the equivocating NON answer I received from you with respect to America's election crisis, where you thought the Help America Vote Act was something you could proudly point to as a solution.

We treat PRISONERS OF WAR in accordance with the Geneva Convention as we have always done. We do NOT torture. We SET the example! Your lack of leadership in defense of this issue and many other issues that define and distinguish our nation in the world has caused me to regret my previous support of you as our senior Senator.

You'll never again enjoy my support or my vote.

Regards,

Michael Guttormson
San Diego, CA

It looks like the Fascists won

2007-07-04T08:09:00.000-07:00

As you know, because I'm sure the FIRST place you look for your daily news is QUADKITE.COM , I feature a feed from BUZZFLASH.COM, an indispensable resource. So when I want to buy a book such as Al Gore's "The Assault on Reason" (Hardcover) By Al Gore -- Now Shipping , I am happy to pay a few dollars extra and buy it there!
The issues raised in this book, however, only add to my pessimism. Based on the performance of the Democratic Leadership in Congress, I have no doubt that Fascism has itself firmly established in this Country, and that the trappings of constitutional government will remain present only so long as it doesn't impede the corporatist's agenda. I dispute those who argue the Democrats lack the courage of their convictions. The Democratic Leadership (Howard Dean notwithstanding) is every bit as interested in Government of, by and for the corporations as the Republicans are. Witness the proposed immigration law. Witness insourcing and outsourcing of American jobs, Witness the SECRET "FREE" TRADE DEAL. Witness the utter capitulation on Iraq Funding. Witness the lack of consumer protection against Gas Price Gouging. Witness the revamped bankruptcy bill which force wounded Iraq vets to pay off massive debts while letting the rich protect their assets off shore.

I don't know. I'm exhausted. The Democrats are in lock step with their corporate benefactors. This nation is beyond redemption. We are the Wicked Fascist Empire. We are the bad guys. There is no issue on which the U.S. takes the right side anymore. None. Susan Davis, Dianne Feinstein, Hillary Clinton, Barrack Obama, Joe "Real Deal" Biden, are corporate lackeys, willing to sell out Labor and the environment and our troops to the whims of the Corporate Emperors.

So I will continue to publish my little webpage, but I have no doubt I'm pissing in the wind, and by and by I'll take it down and retire to my despair.

FREE The Jena Six

2007-07-03T12:27:00.000-07:00

#9 Dream, performed by R.E.M.

2007-07-02T12:51:00.000-07:00

IMPEACH CHENEY!

2007-07-01T07:52:00.000-07:00

#1 YouTube question to Democratic Candidates

2007-06-25T12:27:00.000-07:00

BUZZFLASH Headline: 'CNN is congratulating itself profusely for its YouTube debate, and they showed a lot of excellent questions. But they refused to show the #1 video as voted on by visitors to CommunityCounts. The hands-down winning question was on impeachment.'

New Power Bush/Cheney Gave Themselves

2007-06-24T18:29:00.000-07:00

Bush is rapidly assuming dictatorial powers! How can we continue to endure his assault on our Nation?!!?

Message to the Congress of the United States Regarding International Emergency Economic Powers Act

I've modified this original post to include excellent analysis by Stephen Pizzo:

White House News

On July 17th President Bush signed another executive order. It should have made the front page and been the lead story on every newscast, but wasn't. In fact, unless you read the so-called “alternative” press, you probably still don't know a thing about it. Yet it could land your ass in jail and/or get your financial assets frozen or seized.

President Bush's latest order builds atop earlier “national security” executive orders Bush signed in the wake of 9/11. Here's the new order – with my annotations.

Executive Order:
Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq
I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, find that, due to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by acts of violence threatening the peace and stability of Iraq and undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq and to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people, it is in the interests of the United States to take additional steps with respect to the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 of May 22, 2003, and expanded in Executive Order 13315 of August 28, 2003, and relied upon for additional steps taken in Executive Order 13350 of July 29, 2004, and Executive Order 13364 of November 29, 2004.

(This is what I call the “boiling the frog” method of de-constitutionalizing the US government. Put a frog in a pot of room-temperature water and turn the burner on low. As the water slowly heats the frog doesn't notice it's being boiled to death -- until it's too late. Each of Bush's national security executive orders turned up the heat provided by earlier orders. One hardly feels their liberties slip, sliding away. But read on... )

I hereby order: Section 1. (a) Except to the extent provided in section 203(b)(1), (3), and (4) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(1), (3), and (4)), or in regulations, orders, directives, or licenses that may be issued pursuant to this order, and notwithstanding any contract entered into or any license or permit granted prior to the date of this order,

(Hello? What's all that about? Well, among other things I figure it exempts anyone or company the US has “licensed” to do things in regard to Iraq, that have subsequently proven to have done more harm than good to the administration's stated goals in Iraq. Oh come on, you know, like Halliburton and Blackwater, et al.)

that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons, are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in: any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense,

(Hey look, there's two new federal deputies in town. Sheriff Bush just deputized the Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of Defense. Bet you didn't know the Secretary of Defense could snatch the domestic assets of American citizens without a court order. Not only that but these two deputies don't even need to check with the Dept of Justice if they think you're up to no good, vis a vie Iraq. All the Secretary of the Treasury and the Sec. of Defense need to do is “consult,” before they freeze your ass-ets. I wish the Sec. of Treasury had that kind of power on Wall Street over sub-prime MBS and hedge funds. Oh wait.. he does. He just hasn't used it.)

Okay, let's delve into the guts of the new order. (Please keep hands and arms inside the column and try not to look suspicious.) The new order covers any person or entity deemed:

(i) to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of:

(A) threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq;

(Let's see. Over the last five years who might have done the most to “threaten the peace or stability of the Government of Iraq?” Oh, yeah... the Bush administration. Maybe the Sec's. of Treasury and Defense need to “consult” about that first.)

(B) undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people;

(Ah, that explains why Halliburton is relocating it's corporate headquarters to Dubia. Getting out of Dodge while the gettin' is good.)

(ii) to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, logistical, or technical support for, or goods or services in support of, such an act or acts of violence or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order;

(Would that include US forces arming Sunni militias? Because any fool knows that, sooner or later, all that US ordinance is going to end being used to destabilize the Shiite-controlled central government.)

(iii)to be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.

(Guess you better start checking on what your friends and business associates are up to. Because if one of them is up to no good, vis a vie Iraq – and upon “consultation” they are deemed to in violation of this new order -- your ass-ets and your friend's ass-ets could be playing drop the soap together in some federal lockup.)

(b) The prohibitions in subsection (a) of this section include, but are not limited to, (i) the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order, and (ii) the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person.

(Do you really know what Goodwill and the St. Vincent de Paul do with the stuff you donate? Huh? Well, under this order, you just better hope that old computer desk you donated to Goodwill doesn't somehow end up in an al Qaeda safe house in Crazistan.)

Sec. 2. (a) Any transaction by a United States person or within the United States that evades or avoids, has the purpose of evading or avoiding, or attempts to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited.

(Got it? If you're against what the administration is doing in Iraq, keep it to yourself. Don't even think about it. And, while not thinking about it, you better not appear to trying to “evade or avoid” thinking about it either. )

b) Any conspiracy formed to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in this order is( prohibited.

(Got friends?)

Sec. 3. For purposes of this order:
(a) the term "person" means an individual or entity;

(Point of clarification: The term “entity” in this order does not refer to Dick Cheney.)
(b) the term "entity" means a partnership, association, trust, joint venture, corporation, group, subgroup, or other organization; and

(c) the term "United States person" means any United States citizen, permanent resident alien, entity organized under the laws of the United States or any jurisdiction within the United States (including foreign branches), or any person in the United States.

(Yes, that would mean you.)

Sec. 4. I hereby determine that the making of donations of the type specified in section 203(b)(2) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(2)) by, to, or for the benefit of, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order would seriously impair my ability to deal with the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 and expanded in Executive Order 13315, and I hereby prohibit such donations as provided by section 1 of this order.

(Let's see... could that include a donation to, oh say, Cindy Sheehan? Or MoveOn.org? Or a pro-impeachment organization?.... Nah.... Couldn't happen. Although there seems little to prevent it, since the order does say that Bush is “the decider” in such matters: “I hereby determine that the making of donations of the type specified...”)

Sec. 5. For those persons whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order who might have a constitutional presence in the United States, I find that, because of the ability to transfer funds or other assets instantaneously, prior notice to such persons of measures to be taken pursuant to this order would render these measures ineffectual. I therefore determine that for these measures to be effective in addressing the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 and expanded in Executive Order 13315, there need be no prior notice of a listing or determination made pursuant to section 1(a) of this order.

(Whoa! If you're a vocal opponent to the war in Iraq, you might want to consider putting your money under a mattress. Because this order gives the feds the power to snatch your ass-ets without even so much as a hoody-do. You could wake up the morning after attending a big anti-war march and discover none of your debit cards work, all your checks bounce and the ATM refuses to dish out any of your (former) dough. It's kinda like discovering your car, which had been parked in your garage, was towed – to Washington, DC.)

Sec. 6. The Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, is hereby authorized to take such actions, including the promulgation of rules and regulations, and to employ all powers granted to the President by IEEPA as may be necessary to carry out the purposes of this order. The Secretary of the Treasury may redelegate any of these functions to other officers and agencies of the United States Government, consistent with applicable law. All agencies of the United States Government are hereby directed to take all appropriate measures within their authority to carry out the provisions of this order and, where appropriate, to advise the Secretary of the Treasury in a timely manner of the measures taken.

(In otherwords those two new deputies, the Sec's of State and Defense, have been given the power to name their own assistant deputies. Hell, they can deputize entire federal agencies to keep an eye on your ass-ets. Remember that the next time you deduct a charitable contribution on your taxes. Because that posse of green-eyeshaded al Qaeda hunting IRS deputies might just decide that not all 501 (3) c's are created equal -- in particular, the one(s) you contribute to.)

Sec. 7. Nothing in this order is intended to affect the continued effectiveness of any rules, regulations, orders, licenses, or other forms of administrative action issued, taken, or continued in effect heretofore or hereafter under 31 C.F.R. chapter V, except as expressly terminated, modified, or suspended by or pursuant to this order.

(Okay, it's safe to laugh at that one. After all, what “rules, orders or other forms of adminstrative actions” of this administration have been in any way, “effective?” Hell, these people can't even issue passports to their own citizens or get aid to flood victims in their own country. But they can seem to get farm subsidy checks to long-dead farmers.)

Sec. 8. This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right, benefit, or privilege, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, instrumentalities, or entities, its officers or employees, or any other person.

(In otherwords, if the deputies “consult,” and decide to grab your ass-ets, and turn out to be wrong, you can't sue them. Being in the Bush administration means never having to say you're sorry.)

GEORGE W. BUSH, THE WHITE HOUSE,

July 17, 2007.

I don't know about you, but I think we're in deep water here ... deep and disconcertingly hot.

White House: 3.5 percent pay hike unnecessary

2007-06-20T15:15:00.000-07:00

The Administration strongly opposes sections 601 and 606. The additional 0.5 percent increase above the President’s proposed 3.0 percent across-the-board pay increase is unnecessary.
The "SUPPORT THE TROOPS" tyrant, thinks a few hundred dollars a year raise for privates paid a mere $17K is too much!

Scaife-Owned Newspaper Questions Bush's 'Mental Stability'

2007-06-01T08:00:00.000-07:00

The editorial in the Tribune-Review, owned by conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife noted, "Quite frankly, during last Thursday's news conference, when George Bush started blathering about 'sometimes the decisions you make and the consequences don't enable you to be loved,' we had to question his mental stability." It continued: "President Bush warns that U.S. withdrawal would risk 'mass killings on a horrific scale.' What do we have today, sir?

Frankly, it surprises me the NeoCons and Royalists and Fascists are only now noticing that their emperor is a buffoon. Only because the rest of the country is fed up enough not to tolerate this crap anymore are the Scaifes of the country trying to disassociate themselves from the Bush/Cheney Crime Cartel.

Reporter Arrested on Orders of Giuliani Press Secretary

2007-05-17T13:06:00.000-07:00

Stop the Clash of Civilizations

2007-05-16T11:43:00.000-07:00

Olbermann: We have been betrayed

2007-05-15T06:21:00.000-07:00

What Americans Would Like to Tell Bush

2007-05-14T08:03:00.000-07:00

If you had 15 minutes with President Bush in the Oval Office what would you tell him to do about Iraq?

A majority of Americans said they would urgently urge him to focus on getting out of Iraq, with the highest number agreeing with the wish to simply "pull the troops out/end it" and others backing other exit ideas. Another 6% would tell him to admit his mistakes in Iraq and apologize. Only one in four would tell the president to stay the course or be more aggressive in Iraq.

Celebrate the true meaning of Mother's Day.

2007-05-13T10:28:00.000-07:00

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have breasts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

- Julia Ward Howe

Justice in Amerika

2007-05-10T08:39:00.001-07:00

Bill Maher: New Rules For Bush and Cheney

2007-03-26T08:31:00.000-07:00

Dems Lay Down for Bush's Next War:

2007-03-15T08:37:00.000-07:00

Dear Congresswoman Davis,

I've called your office. I've emailed you. I left my name and number with your aid hoping I may someday be able to express myself directly to you. I've posted on SD County Democrats Yahoo group. I've blogged.

You are my representitive. I'm looking to you to stand up now on my behalf, to the leadership of Congress and your party, to the illegitimate residents of the white house and to the Corporate Military Industrial Monster that has all but devoured our democracy and say NO MORE OF THIS MADNESS! NO MORE MONEY FOR THIS DISPICABLE ACT OF AGRESSION! NO MORE WAR!

I can't adequately express my profound disappointment in the behavior and results produced by this congress. THERE IS NOTHING TO FEAR! THERE IS NO POLITICAL RISK. THE PEOPLE WANT YOU TO END THIS WAR.

From Sunsara Taylor, 3/14/07 of World Can't Wait:

The People Must Go "From Protest to Resistance"

Officials said Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of the leadership had decided to strip from a major military spending bill a requirement for Bush to gain approval from Congress before moving against Iran...The measure provides nearly $100 billion to pay for fighting in two wars, and includes more money than the president requested for operations in Afghanistan and what Democrats called training and equipment shortages. -AP, March 13, 2007

For all the criticism on the left, Democratic strategists say they are counting on most of the antiwar lawmakers to realize that this current spending bill is the best they can get . N Y Times, March 14

You could close your eyes and pretend it isn’t happening.

Pretend that the new Democratic Congress -- after four years of torture, mass murder and war crimes against the people of Iraq -- didn’t just promise the War-Criminal-In-Chief that they would do nothing to stop a new and even more dangerous war against Iran.

Pretend that these same Democrats -- who have sold you out so many times and at the cost of so many lives -- didn’t just promise to give the president more money than he even asked for to fight his current wars!

Pretend that somehow history -- and the people of the Middle East -- will forgive you.

Read MORE...

Still no spine

2007-03-13T12:53:00.000-07:00

I'm again considering changing my registration and leaving the
Democratic Party. I've had my fill of "triangulation, calculation and
equivocation". I'm frankly disgusted by the behavior of the DEMOCRATS
in congress.

Yesterday Democratic leaders stripped from a military spending bill
for the war in Iraq a requirement that President Bush gain approval
from Congress before moving against Iran.

I'm discouraged by the Senate's inability to even DEBATE a Ineffectual
emasculated NON BINDING RESOLUTION critical of the Iraq war. It's
disgraceful.

I'm frustrated so many "Democrats" supported CAFTA, NAFTA and the WTO.

The Bankruptcy Bill.

Failed to prevent the appointments of Roberts. Alito. "The REAL DEAL"
Gonzales.

Impeachment is off the table.

I've come to agree with Ralph Nader's declaration that "There's not a
dime's worth of difference" between the Democrats and Republicans.
Until the Democratic Party returns to the value, convictions and vigor
of the Party of FDR, I will be lending my support to other candidates.

RE: FOX ATTACKS OBAMA

2007-03-12T12:43:00.000-07:00

A very fair and balanced woman's observation:

Samuel Adams

2007-02-22T15:41:00.000-08:00

"If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin."

"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." --Speech delivered at the State House in Philadelphia, “to a very numerous audience,” on August 1, 1776.

Patriotism Requires Economic Nationalism

2007-02-21T09:17:00.000-08:00

The inevitability of uncontrolled globalization is deliberate disinformation promoted by the largest international corporations and their academic, media, and political lackeys. The policy changes have been pushed by large international corporations seeking to maximize their profits regardless of the cost to the American economy or the American people.

Corporations who move good jobs abroad or import people from nations with less opportunity to reduce the value of AMERICAN workers should be punished by finding their access to the American market severely restricted. They should pay much larger taxes. Their ability to send money abroad should be restricted.

Things you should'a' said

2007-02-13T13:13:00.000-08:00

Dr. Rachel Maddow, one of this nation's most astute radio columnists, and a frequent panelist and guest on cable news shows, is angry because she feels she wasn't courageous enough or quick enough to say what she really felt in response to an extended discussion of yet another non-issue that occupies so much of the Corporate Controlled News programs broadcast for our entertainment.

Last week a woman known all around the world died. What was the response from the American Corporate press? I doubt if more than a handful of Americans knew of the life, let alone the tragic loss of Angela E. V. King, who for 38 years led efforts to end discrimination against women and promote gender equality at the United Nations. I'm not aware of even a moment's notice of her passing. But we had nonstop coverage of a Playboy Pinup's demise and sordid, soap-opera existence.

Additionally, Buzzflash pointed out that
• The Pentagon issuing a report admitting that they had a department set up that helped create lies to convince America to go to war with Iraq.
• The Libby trial further revealing that Cheney orchestrated a campaign, with the approval of Bush, that included outing a CIA operative who specialized in tracking the illicit sale and possession of WMD’s, the very reason Cheney and Bush claimed that we went to war with Iraq over, but lied about.
• Congressional hearings unearthed multiple Bush Administration betrayals and deceptions including that the Iranians had offered awhile back to have comprehensive negotiations with the U.S. to help stabilize Iraq and even potentially recognize Israel. The Bush Administration ignored their offer.
• Among the many other Congressional hearing bombshells, we learned that the Bush "Viceroy" for Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, allowed the distribution of $12 billion in cash without requiring any record keeping.
• The Bush Administration continued putting naval and military resources in place to launch a nuclear airstrike on Iran.

None of this rated highly enough for the Conservative Corporate News industry. It took the unexpected death of a Hollywood Harlett to shake our attention from the pathetic breakdown of an a woman and her attempt to confront her rival, complete with morbid and nearly baseless speculation about her intent.

And now the American Corporate Propaganda industry is repeating the crimes it committed in the lead up to the Iraq war in an attempt to create a pretext for an attack on Iran. As Joseph Pulitzer said, "Our Republic and Our Press will rise or fall together."

So Rachel, please don't beat yourself up for this. You are one of the brave journalists upon whose capable shoulders rest the future of our nation. We all support and admire you. You once again, in your essay, said EXACTLY what I've been trying to argue for the last 5 days. Don't we all, after the pressure's off, know the feeling of "what I should have said?" I know I've felt that way after far less stressful occassions than expressing myself in front of an audience of millions.

I love you Rachel. YOU say for me what I can't even think of saying.

On another point
Because of the relentless droning of the corporate propaganda media, far too many of us have bought into this fantasy that we are subject to some sort of unusual securtiy concerns. SUCH UTTER NONSENSE!

Until the ramming through of the "Patriot Act", I never really understoond what FDR was warning us of when he told us there is nothing to fear but fear itself. What we have been seeing since then makes that warning perfectly clear. How eager we are to shed ourselves of the insecurity of FREEDOM, to rush into the warm, protective embrace of an authoritarian police state.

Peace

Thank You Lt. Watada

2007-02-06T12:25:00.000-08:00

"The time to stand up and be counted is today."

The Torture Guy Gonzales Grilled

2007-02-05T15:40:00.000-08:00

A little less light in the world today...

2007-02-01T08:24:00.000-08:00

In the Jan. 11 column, which opposed the troop escalation, Ivins wrote “We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war....If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on Jan. 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, 'Stop it, now!'"

Our country was blessed and made richer with Molly's wit and wisdom. I hope the echoes of her words continue to guide us to be the nation we can and should be.

I'll miss you, Ms. Ivins.

Godspeed, Al!

2007-01-31T11:56:00.000-08:00

Feb. 1, 2007

On his final program, Al Franken announced what we've all been hoping to hear...

He will run for the U.S. Senate from Minnesota! He pledges to continue in his drive to

"Changing the nature of our government, and the course of its future."

We look forward to his wit, wisdom and leadership in Washington!

Oceania has always been at war with East Asia.

2007-01-12T12:25:00.000-08:00

Before Mr. Bush was elected, he said nation-building was wrong for America.
Now he says it is vital.
He said he would never put U.S. troops under foreign control.
Last night he promised to embed them in Iraqi units.
He told us about WMD.
Mobile labs.
Secret sources.
Aluminum tubes.
Yellow-cake.
He has told us the war is necessary:
Because Saddam was a material threat.
Because of 9/11.
Because of Osama Bin Laden. Al-Qaida. Terrorism in general.
To liberate Iraq. To spread freedom. To spread Democracy. To prevent terrorism by gas price increases.
Because this was a guy who tried to kill his dad.
Because — 439 words in to the speech last night — he trotted out 9/11 again.
In advocating and prosecuting this war he passed on a chance to get Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi.
To get Muqtada Al-Sadr. To get Bin Laden.
He sent in fewer troops than the generals told him to. He ordered the Iraqi army disbanded and the Iraqi government “de-Baathified.”
He short-changed Iraqi training. He neglected to plan for widespread looting. He did not anticipate sectarian violence.
He sent in troops without life-saving equipment. He gave jobs to foreign contractors, and not Iraqis. He staffed U.S. positions there, based on partisanship, not professionalism.
He and his government told us: America had prevailed, mission accomplished, the resistance was in its last throes.
He has insisted more troops were not necessary. He has now insisted more troops are necessary.
He has insisted it’s up to the generals, and then removed some of the generals who said more troops would not be necessary.
He has trumpeted the turning points:
The fall of Baghdad, the death of Uday and Qusay, the capture of Saddam. A provisional government, a charter, a constitution, the trial of Saddam. Elections, purple fingers, another government, the death of Saddam.
He has assured us: We would be greeted as liberators — with flowers;
As they stood up, we would stand down. We would stay the course; we were never about “stay the course.”
We would never have to go door-to-door in Baghdad. And, last night, that to gain Iraqis’ trust, we would go door-to-door in Baghdad.
He told us the enemy was al-Qaida, foreign fighters, terrorists, Baathists, and now Iran and Syria.
He told us the war would pay for itself. It would cost $1.7 billion. $100 billion. $400 billion. Half a trillion. Last night’s speech alone cost another $6 billion.
And after all of that, now it is his credibility versus that of generals, diplomats, allies, Democrats, Republicans, the Iraq Study Group, past presidents, voters last November and the majority of the American people.

There is Something Seriously Wrong With This

2007-01-09T13:34:00.000-08:00

From the Booman Tribune:

Who elected the American Enterprise Institute anyway?”

because, in essence – it is these warmongering fearmongering lunatics, many of whom never served in the military who are not only dictating our disastrous foreign policy, but are making the decisions against the advice of our own military generals to send our own citizens off to kill and die. I'll say it a little differently:

A tax-exempt organization (which by proxy since it pays no tax is supported by us taxpayers), very few, if any of whose members have military service is behind the decision to send more troops into harm’s way, despite the fact that they were not elected, are not part of the administration or the military structure, are doing so against the advice and will of the electorate and our military.

Clearly this is not any part of a government “of the people, by the people and for the people”. We know that the primary author of this horrific idea is Frederick Kagan who has most certainly NOT served in the military, and (while it may be so), I have been unable to even find any reference of his even visiting Iraq or talking to the Joint Chiefs of Staff about the true situation on the ground.

What is truly amazing is that this man was the author of a document that was so overly simplistic and unfounded in reality that there isn’t an overwhelming cry of “Bullshit!!!”

Der Führer

2007-01-09T08:59:00.000-08:00

Signing Statements.
Warrentless Wiretapping
Opening mail.

Tony Snow says, "The president has the ability to exercise his own authority if he thinks Congress has voted the wrong way."

Way past time to Impeach The MF Already.

Keith Olbermann on Fire:

2007-01-03T09:48:00.000-08:00

"If in your presence an individual tried to sacrifice an American serviceman or woman, would you intervene? Would you at least protest? What if he had already sacrificed 3,003 of them? What if he had already sacrificed 3,003 of them and was then to announce his intention to sacrifice hundreds, maybe thousands, more?" Bush is Supposed to Announce American Enterprise Institute War Escalation Plan Shortly Based on -- Get This -- the PR Theme of "Sacrifice."

A Story We Should All Know

2006-12-29T14:02:00.000-08:00

Khaled El-Masri with two of his children.

“I have come to America seeking three things. An acknowledgement that the United States government is responsible for kidnapping, abusing and detaining me; an explanation as to why I was singled out for this treatment; and an apology because I am an innocent man who has never been charged with any crime.”--

Khaled El-Masri, a victim of extraordinary rendition

Dear Friend,

The case of our client Khaled El-Masri is one we should all be watching carefully. Yesterday, he stood up in a courtroom to challenge the Bush administration's use of "extraordinary rendition," abduction, detention and interrogation in secret overseas prisons.
While it is a credit to our system of justice that Mr. El-Masri can now demand accountability from his CIA kidnappers, all of us must ask, how have we let our country stray so far from its ideals?
Mr. El-Masri's story is a frightening catalogue of abuses. A father of six, he was forcibly abducted in Macedonia while on vacation, handed over to the CIA and flown to a secret interrogation center in Afghanistan where he was beaten, drugged and repeatedly denied legal counsel. After two months, CIA operatives informed director George Tenet that they were holding an innocent man. But it still took two more months before he was released -- flown in secret to Albania and left alone on a hillside in the middle of the night.
People need to hear his story, and the agencies and private companies responsible must face real justice for their violations of U.S. laws as well as universal human rights laws.
In a legal maneuver that is now familiar, the government is trying to use the veil of secrecy to avoid accountability for its actions. But yesterday, we argued that the government's official recognition of the program and information already available about this case show that the lawsuit does not jeopardize national security and must be allowed to continue.
Our government would rather you didn’t hear his story. The last time Mr. El-Masri tried to come to the U.S. -- to hear his own court case -- he was denied entry because he did not have a visa, even though German citizens don’t actually need visas to enter the U.S. This week, Mr. El-Masri witnessed his court proceedings and will also be meeting in person with members of Congress to share his story. As he told the Washington Post today, “I never thought badly of the United States. I do think badly of the foreign policy aspects and the sitting government.”
You can help.

Learn more about El-Masri v. Tenet.

Watch Mr. El-Masri and his attorneys tell the story in their own words.

And tell others about the case, and the unthinkable acts perpetrated in our name - and now being deliberately covered over through an abuse of the "state secrets" privilege.

The ACLU is appalled that our government sanctioned and carried out these atrocious actions -- and that it continues to shirk responsibility by hiding behind state secrets. These are not the actions of a proud nation, instead they diminish us as a people.

We will continue the fight both to seek justice for Khaled El-Masri and to end the practice of extraordinary rendition. Thank you for making those efforts possible.

Sincerely,

Anthony D. Romero
Executive Director
ACLU

Impeach Bush, Butcher of Bagdad, WAR CRIMINAL!

2006-12-21T07:55:00.000-08:00

World Can't Wait!

How do you sleep?

2006-12-21T06:35:00.000-08:00

PINK

(Apolgies (and thanks) to Arlo)

2006-11-20T09:43:00.000-08:00

Congressman Charles Rangel today announced the reintroduction of his legislation to reinstate the military draft.

"I oppose the war in Iraq, but I support the military and the men and women who serve in it," Congressman Rangel said. "What is happening now indicates to me that the entire volunteer system is in danger of collapse under the weight of the burden being placed on those who are serving."

The DRAFT is an awful idea, politcally and as a matter of policy. Don't think for a minute that any draft law will effectively include the priviledged. That's utter nonsense. The draft will disproportionately affect the poor and middle class.

Nor will it prevent use of troops in an irresponsible fashion. Vietnam is an example of that. Moreover, there was MORE opposition to the Iraq action from the beginning than any resistance to the vietnam conflict. The consent to go to war was manufactured, as were the pretexts. A draft wouldn't have mitigated anything.

Please email or call Rep. Charles Rangel. Say (or sing), "Congrssman, You can get anything you want, at Alice's restaurant.". And hang up. You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they won't draft him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both gay and they won't take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people call or email and sing a bar of Alice's Restaurant and hang up, they may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said fifty people a day calling up singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and hanging up? And friends they may thinks it's a movement...

US Official Says Pre-emption is Inevitable Against Iran and North Korea

2006-10-24T13:14:00.000-07:00

by Cenk Uygur

A senior US official said this week that pre-emptive strikes were inevitable against our enemies, Iran and North Korea. You think we got rid of these neo-clowns? They're not gone. They're still in the government trying to provoke more wars. We can't get rid of these idiots. The press naively keeps reporting they have gone away and they keep popping back up.

Who in their right mind can still be arguing for pre-emptive strikes in another Muslim country? Apparently a "senior U.S. government official." Get a load of these two quotes:

"We, the United States, and others who might be threatened by these developments will have to look at how to respond and inevitably I think people will have to look at the question of pre-emption."

"I think it's inevitable that any American administration, not just this administration but future administrations, will have to look at pre-emptive strategies."

He says pre-emption is "inevitable" -- not once, but twice. He says this after what happened in Iraq. This is a senior member of the United States government! God help us all.

The neo-conservatives are the dumbest people in America. I can find ten people off the street that would have a more logical foreign policy plan for the United States. They are so thoroughly discredited that any legitimate news organization should be embarrassed to have them on their air or print the ridiculous ideas they're still trying to shove down our throats.

Another neo-clown, Rupert Murdoch, doesn't believe Iraq is that big a deal, so I guess that's why he still features these guys on his Fox network, along with OJ Simpson. Murdoch said the US casualties in Iraq were "minute." All those dead Americans didn't concern him much. Let alone the Iraqis, who he thinks are not really worth mentioning.

If thousands of US and Iraqi deaths don't weigh on Murdoch's mind, then why would we be surprised to find out he doesn't care at all about OJ's victims? They must be beyond minute.

Normally, it's one thing to disagree on a topic; it's another to say your opponent lacks intelligence or the ability for cognitive thought. So, I don't do it lightly when it comes to these neo-conservatives. I do it because it is well earned.

Who thought that Muslims in Iraq would throw roses at our feet?

Who thought that centuries of ill will between the Shiites and the Sunnis would magically melt away under the benevolent occupation of the United States?

Who thought that bringing in a majority Shiite government to Iraq wouldn't lead to empowering Shiite Iran?

Who thought it was a great idea to attack a country that didn't attack us?

Who thought it was a great idea to make up intelligence to pretend Iraq was a real and gathering threat to the United States?

Who thought that in a power vacuum in the Middle East that Muslim fundamentalist wouldn't fill the void?

Who thought dismissing all the Arab experts in the government as "Arabist apologists" was a good idea before going to occupy an Arab country?

Who thought that we could dictate the government of Iraq to a Muslim population that already deeply mistrusted us and we wouldn't encounter any type of resistance?

Who would be so profoundly arrogant and misguided? The pseudo-intellectuals who wrote the Project for a New American Century. The blowhards who burrow themselves in to an intellectually bankrupt bunker called the American Enterprise Institute. The neo-clowns who today advocate that we implement the same disastrous plan that sunk us in Iraq in another Muslim country in the Middle East -- Iran.

The proof is on the ground, the bloody, horrific ground of Fallujah, Ramadi, the Sunni Triangle, the Triangle of Death - yes, there is such a place in Iraq - and Baghdad, let alone Mosul, Kirkuk and just about every other major city in the country. Decapitated bodies show up with drill holes in them nearly every day in the streets of Iraq. Next time you read about one of them, think of the smug neo-clown who walked into the Oval Office and convinced the President that the Iraq War would be easy.

Bill Kristol, Michael Ledeen, Richard Perle, Charles Krauthammer, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and the others should be run out of town. They should be openly derided and mocked as the grotesque failures they are.

Yet I see them daily on Fox News Channel telling us how easy attacking Iran will be. How it will not require ground troops. How the population of Iran is looking forward to having us attack their leaders and their country. How Iran is a real and gathering threat. I've seen this movie before. And it sucked.

The grandiose, theoretical ideas of the neo-clowns have gotten over 2,800 Americans killed, over 20,000 Americans injured and anywhere between 150,000-650,000 Iraqi citizens killed. There is value in mocking them for their colossal failure. Hopefully, it will stop any reasonable person from listening to them when they have the next idea that is going to get hundreds of thousands of people killed.

There should be a price to pay for an error of this magnitude. The least we can ask is that no one takes them seriously anymore. They have exhibited overwhelming proof of their incompetence. If we listen to them again, you have to question our competence.

The 9/11 Commission report said that Douglas Feith authored a memo which suggested we should attack Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil after 9/11. The reason - they'll never see it coming!

I'm not kidding, though I wish I was. There is a reason why General Tommy Franks called him "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth." And that's the guy the neoconservatives trusted to lead the Office of Special Plans at the Pentagon to cook up evidence against Iraq. You wonder why we had faulty intelligence. Because we listened to a bunch of guys who had none.

The Young Turks

Mike's Back!

2006-10-23T11:47:00.000-07:00

Mike Malloy will return to the airwaves Monday October 30th at 9PM ET, just in time for the November elections. It's a relief that this important voice will be heard again!
You may recall he was dropped from Air America's line-up in September during the most recent shakeup. I was really angry and cancelled my Premium Membership. Well, there's a NEW NETWORK, the new Nova M Radio Network, which will pick Mike up. (I've posted links in the left column of my website for live streams of the new network. Please remember to view my blog in its frame on Quadkite.com) Visit their site and see how you can help get an affiliate on the air in your town!

How much longer can this website last?

2006-10-20T00:24:00.000-07:00

"When Richard Nixon put himself above the law in his grab for extraordinary power, he was done in by a free press and an independent judiciary. The regressive right, taking careful note of this, has consolidated and muffled the mainstream media (with a few honorable and courageous exceptions), and the GOP presidents since Nixon have packed the courts with like-minded judges. Now, all that is left of a free and unconstrained media is the internet – for the moment, at least. Don’t count on its survival."

"The world needs America. The world needs America to be America. The world needs America to be the light and the flame and the torch. Yet today because you have lost sight about what America means at home, you have inflicted great harm and shed great blood on yourselves, and the world.
I do not need to make dire predictions about the future, the ugly truth is told by the shame of the present.

When your Leader said he could take away your Bill of Rights on his own personal whim, you did nothing.
When your Leader said he could violate law based on some claimed power he has, you stayed silent.
When your Leader claimed he could inflict horrid acts of torture that break international laws honored by every democracy on earth, you surrendered.
When your Leader claimed the power to jail people without hearings and imprison people without justice, you gave in.
When your Leader claimed the power to detain people without charges, and inflict punishment and pain on unknown people without lawyers or law, you submitted.
When your Leader seized the power to invade your home without a warrant and take your body without a writ, you did nothing.
When your Leader claimed the power to take your privacy without a court and take your rights without a hearing, you gave in.
When your Leader said the Congress has no right to be involved in the policy of making war, you gave up.
When your Leader said your Courts have no responsiblity for upholding your Constitution without his permission, you stood down.

Every one of these abridgments of basic freedom was done before your eyes and in plain view, with the support of many, with the submissiveness of some, and with the ignorant acquiesence of others who had better things to do than value the freedom that braver men and women than you, died to leave to you, in trust."

This nation is nearly dead. Fuck you republicans. Bar none. All of you.

The mess in Iraq

2006-10-18T00:58:00.000-07:00

Maj. General John Batiste’s testimony before Sen. Democratic Policy Committee

2006-09-28T06:46:00.000-07:00

Army Major General John R.S. Batiste (retired)
September 25, 2006
My name is John Batiste. I left the military on principle on November 1, 2005, after more than 31 years of service. I walked away from promotion and a promising future serving our country. I hung up my uniform because I came to the gut-wrenching realization that I could do more good for my soldiers and their families out of uniform. I am a West Point graduate, the son and son-in-law of veteran career soldiers, a two-time combat veteran with extensive service in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Iraq, and a life-long Republican. Bottom line, our nation is in peril, our Department of Defense’s leadership is extraordinarily bad, and our Congress is only today, more than five years into this war, beginning to exercise its oversight responsibilities. This is all about accountability and setting our nation on the path to victory. There is no substitute for victory and I believe we must complete what we started in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Donald Rumsfeld is not a competent wartime leader. He knows everything, except "how to win." He surrounds himself with like-minded and compliant subordinates who do not grasp the importance of the principles of war, the complexities of Iraq, or the human dimension of warfare. Secretary Rumsfeld ignored 12 years of U.S. Central Command deliberate planning and strategy, dismissed honest dissent, and browbeat subordinates to build "his plan," which did not address the hard work to crush the insurgency, secure a post-Saddam Iraq, build the peace, and set Iraq up for self-reliance. He refused to acknowledge and even ignored the potential for the insurgency, which was an absolute certainty. Bottom line, his plan allowed the insurgency to take root and metastasize to where it is today.
Our great military lost a critical window of opportunity to secure Iraq because of inadequate troop levels and capability required to impose security, crush a budding insurgency, and set the conditions for the rule of law in Iraq. We were undermanned from the beginning, lost an early opportunity to secure the country, and have yet to regain the initiative. To compensate for the shortage of troops, commanders are routinely forced to manage shortages and shift coalition and Iraqi security forces from one contentious area to another in places like Baghdad, An Najaf, Tal Afar, Samarra, Ramadi, Fallujah, and many others.
This shifting of forces is generally successful in the short term, but the minute a mission is complete and troops are redeployed back to the region where they came from, insurgents reoccupy the vacuum and the cycle repeats itself. Troops returning to familiar territory find themselves fighting to reoccupy ground which was once secure. We are all witnessing this in Baghdad and the Al Anbar Province today. I am reminded of the myth of Sisyphus. This is no way to fight a counter-insurgency. Secretary Rumsfeld’s plan did not set our military up for success.
Secretary Rumsfeld’s dismal strategic decisions resulted in the unnecessary deaths of American servicemen and women, our allies, and the good people of Iraq. He was responsible for America and her allies going to war with the wrong plan and a strategy that did not address the realities of fighting an insurgency. He violated fundamental principles of war, dismissed deliberate military planning, ignored the hard work to build the peace after the fall of Saddam Hussein, set the conditions for Abu Ghraib and other atrocities that further ignited the insurgency, disbanded Iraqi security force institutions when we needed them most, constrained our commanders with an overly restrictive de-Ba’athification policy, and failed to seriously resource the training and equipping of the Iraqi security forces as our main effort. He does not comprehend the human dimension of warfare.
The mission in Iraq is all about breaking the cycle of violence and the hard work to change attitudes and give the Iraqi people alternatives to the insurgency. You cannot do this with precision bombs from 30,000 feet. This is tough, dangerous, and very personal work. Numbers of boots on the ground and hard-won relationships matter. What should have been a deliberate victory is now an uncertain and protracted challenge.
Secretary Rumsfeld built his team by systematically removing dissension.
America went to war with "his plan" and to say that he listens to his generals is disingenuous. We are fighting with his strategy. He reduced force levels to unacceptable levels, micromanaged the war, and caused delays in the approval of troop requirements and the deployment process, which tied the hands of commanders while our troops were in contact with the enemy. At critical junctures, commanders were forced to focus on managing shortages rather than leading, planning, and anticipating opportunity. Through all of this, our Congressional oversight committees were all but silent and not asking the tough questions, as was done routinely during both World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam. Our Congress shares responsibility for what is and is not happening in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Our nation’s treasure in blood and dollars continues to be squandered under Secretary Rumsfeld’s leadership. Losing one American life due to incompetent war planning and preparation is absolutely unacceptable. The work to remove Saddam Hussein and his regime was a challenge, but it pales in comparison to the hard work required to build the peace. The detailed deliberate planning to finish the job in Iraq was not considered as Secretary Rumsfeld forbade military planners from developing plans for securing a post-war Iraq. At one point, he threatened to fire the next person who talked about the need for a post-war plan. Our country and incredible military were not set up for success.
Our country has yet to mobilize for a protracted, long war. I believe that Secretary Rumsfeld and others in the Administration did not tell the American people the truth for fear of losing support for the war in Iraq. Secretary Rumsfeld failed to address the full range of requirements for this effort, and the result is one percent of the population shouldering the burdens, continued hemorrhaging of our national treasure in terms of blood and dollars, an Army and Marine Corps that will require tens of billions of dollars to reset after we withdraw from Iraq, the majority of our National Guard brigades no longer combat-ready, a Veterans Administration which is underfunded by over $3 billion, and America arguably less safe now than it was on September 11, 2001. If we had seriously laid out and considered the full range of requirements for the war in Iraq, we would likely have taken a different course of action that would have maintained a clear focus on our main effort in Afghanistan, not fueled Islamic fundamentalism across the globe, and not created more enemies than there were insurgents.
What do we do now? We are where we are, plagued by the mistakes of the past. Thankfully, we are Americans and with the right leadership, we can do anything. First, the American people need to take charge through their elected officials. Secretary Rumsfeld and the Administration are fighting a war in secret that threatens our democratic values. This needs to stop right now, today. Second, we must replace Secretary Rumsfeld and his entire inner circle. We deserve leaders whose judgment and instinct we can all trust. Third, we must mobilize our country for a protracted challenge, which must include conveying the "what, why, and how long" to every American, rationing to finance the totality of what we are doing, and gearing up our industrial base in a serious manner.
Mortgaging our future at the rate of $1.5 billion a week and financing our great Army and Marine Corps with supplemental legislation must stop. Americans will rally behind this important cause when the rationale is properly laid out. Fourth, we must rethink our Iraq strategy. "More of the same" is not a strategy, nor is it working. This new strategy must include serious consideration of federalizing the country, other forms of Iraqi national conscription and incentives to modify behavior, and a clear focus on training and equipping the Iraqi security forces as "America’s main effort." Fifth, we must fix our inter-agency process to completely engage and synchronize all elements of America’s national power. Unity of effort is fundamental and we need one person in charge in Iraq who pulls the levers with all U.S. Government agencies responding with 110 percent effort. Finally, we need to get serious about mending our relationships with allies and getting closer to our friends and enemies. America can not go this alone. All of this is possible, but we need leadership and responsible Congressional oversight to pull this off.
I challenge the American people to get informed and speak out. Remember that the Congress represents and works for the people. Congressional oversight committees have been strangely silent for too long, and our elected officials must step up to their responsibilities or be replaced. This is not about partisan politics, but rather what is good for our country. Our November elections are crucial. Every American needs to understand the issues and cast his or her vote. I believe that one needs to vote for the candidate who understands the issues and who has the moral courage to do the harder right rather than the easier wrong. I for one will continue to speak out until there is accountability, until the American people establish momentum, and until our Congressional oversight committees kick into action. Victory in Iraq is fundamental and we cannot move forward until accountability is achieved.
Thank you.

Dear Air America Radio,

2006-09-06T08:57:00.000-07:00

There will be no Mike Malloy program on Air America Radio as we have been terminated as of 8/30/06.

I'm once again disappointed in the poor decision you've made. I've never really gotten over what you did to my FAVORITE show, Unfiltered, Starring Liz W., Chuck D. and Dr. Rachel Maddow, replacing it with Jerry S. He's really bad and UNFILTERED was awesome.

And NOW you've fired Mike Malloy. A man who gave voice to our outrage. We're compelled to show good manners in our objection but I really wish I could emulate him with a well-deserved harangue on you! Shame on you! Are you guys members of the DLC? You only want tepid milquetoasts ala some previously referenced whore-monger?

I'm a premium subscriber and I listen on KLSD affiliate here in San Diego. Like the Democratic party, you have my support by default, but I still feel cheated. Shame on you.

Regards,

Homeland Security and Pentagon Spying on our Children!

2006-07-19T14:45:00.000-07:00

Incident Type: Specified Threats.
Subject: Protest Against Military Recruiters at (USC) on 5 Apr. 05.
Source: A special agent of the Federal Protective Service, U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Source is reliable."
Coordinating Agencies: 902d Military Intelligence Group, FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force

Source received an e-mail dated 1 April 2005 (PST), subject: Action Tuesday to Kick Military Recruiters Out of USC!" This e-mail tells demonstrators "to have fun and bring 5 friends," It also says, "Sign the petition to ban recruiters from USC."
The text of the e-mail does not state if civil disobedience is planned to occur at this protest.

"Homeland Security was created to protect the American people from terrorist activities, not monitor political dissent on college campuses," said Mark Schlosberg of the ACLU of Northern California. "These documents raise significant questions about the extent to which the Department of Homeland Security is monitoring anti-war activities."

-Matthew Rothschild

The End of Cowboy Diplomacy

2006-07-17T10:56:00.001-07:00

The core values of this White House are marketing and political expediency, not principle and substance

It is the forces of democracy versus the forces of fascism.

2006-06-30T09:00:00.000-07:00

excerpts from:
Darkness at Noon for Democracy

You are a tyrannical thug whether you are Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, or Francisco Franco.
And Cheney and his Puppet Bush are thugs in that infamous tradition.

This is a about the raw, ruthless seizure of power and the machineries of state by one radical faction within a democracy. And that radical faction has as one of its major goals the elimination of democracy.

Whenever their failures are exposed, they use scare and fear tactics to subdue the public. They launch highly coordinated and disciplined dishonest diversionary tactics -- such as the bogus attack on The New York Times for printing a story on tracing banking transactions that everyone pretty much knew about anyway, especially the terrorists -- for the sole purpose of turning the already lapdog American press into a complete rebirth of the Soviet brand of Pravda.

Make no mistake about it, they are seeking laws and prosecution that will make dissent from the party line a crime.

The democratic government following the collapse of the Tsarist regime fell to the Soviets because the Soviets were more disciplined, remorseless, and cunning. The same fate befell the Weimar Republic as Hitler manipulated his ascent through a campaign of fear, ringing emotional appeals to "patriotism," scapegoating, and the manipulation of the legal process to make his takeover of the government sanctioned by the Reichstag.

If you think that is not happening here, then you are not really thinking at all. You are just a member of the masses who has succumbed to the demagoguery of the barbarians now inside the gates of the White House.

It is the forces of democracy versus the forces of fascism. Don't cringe when you hear the "F" word, as if it is some radical, over the top proclamation. The radicals aren't writing the editorials for BuzzFlash. We are pro-Constitution, pro-democracy and pro-balance of powers. We are patriots.

The radicals who would undo the American Revolution are in the White House. They are brilliant at incrementally seizing uncontested power. It is the only thing they do well.

The same could have been said of Stalin, Mussolini, Franco and Hitler.

Just look around and see what is happening.

If you don't see it soon, it will be too late.

Cheney Starts New Cold War Over Oil

2006-06-06T08:45:00.000-07:00

Mark Ames' essay is a lucid overview of what the Bush administration has been up to in Central Asia and former Soviet republics since 9/11. No, not fighting "terror" -- they've been working on a long-term oil grab by supporting dictators and gaming democratic elections in their favor, all while publicly bemoaning Russia's "slide" back to a dictatorship. Ames' lively writing style turns a heavy story into one of the best articles you'll read this month.

More from Colbert

2006-06-06T08:33:00.000-07:00

Stephen Colbert's 2006 Commencement Address at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois
Now will saying “yes” get you in trouble at times? Will saying “yes” lead you to doing some foolish things? Yes it will. But don’t be afraid to be a fool. Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying “yes” begins things. Saying “yes” is how things grow. Saying “yes” leads to knowledge. “Yes” is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say “yes.”

2006-06-05T13:49:00.000-07:00

Watch this video at:
Two-Legged Cat Productions - Videos by Chris Chandler & Karen Kilroy

"Something's In the Air/But It's Not on the Airwaves"
Produced by Karen Kilroy & Chris Chandler

Quicktime | Windows Media

This is an 8-minute political music video about the media blackout on the peace & justice movement. During the taping, cast member Sarah Rolan, playing the part of a widowed war bride, received news that her long-time friend, U.S. Marine reservist Lance Corporal Daniel "Nate" Deyarmin of Tallmadge, Ohio, had been killed during active duty in Iraq. This took place on Monday, August 4, 2005, and 13 other Ohio servicemen also died. The song was composed and performed by Chris Chandler with David Roe and is dedicated to Nate Deyarmin.
In addition to being viewed online more than 50,000 times, this video has been shown at various film fests and on cable access TV across the country. 8 mins.

Still not spooked?

2006-06-01T11:10:00.000-07:00

FEMA's 600 Prison Concentration Camps: Who Are They For?
"The truth is yes--—you do have these standby provisions, and the plans are here...whereby you could, in the name of stopping terrorism, evoke the military and arrest Americans and put them in detention camps."

He belongs in the "big house", not the White House!

2006-05-30T10:46:00.000-07:00

Watch the video!
Impeach him!

by Steve Soto

On a day when other events blew this off the stage, Bush and Blair put on a dog and pony show press conference late today, noteworthy because Bush seemingly finally admitted he made some mistakes in Iraq.

Bullshit. The whole act Thursday night was staged, from the way he talked about it, the way he looked up and to the side when admitting he screwed up with “bring it on” and “Mr. ‘Dead or Alive’” or allowing Abu Ghraib, and the way he winked and smiled at the reporters in the front row after his confessional.

Bush's Imperial Presidency

2006-05-30T10:35:00.000-07:00

"Back in the late sixties I was a military "special agent" of the type to which Mr. Hightower refers. I did this work, in plainclothes. Our target was the anti-Vietnam protest movement--For one thing, I learned how these people think and how they operate -- and the spying technology now is 40 years beyond anything we could have dreamed up.
It is more insidious even than the NSA eavesdropping. It's the operational side of counterintelligence. (The very term "counterintelligence" now has a sinister meaning; when I got into it, it was about detecting and catching Soviet spies, a perfectly honorable undertaking. Now it has come to mean dirty tricks aimed at political enemies. Watergate was a counterintelligence operation.)"

"Three years ago, the Pentagon set up a new, ultrasecret agency called CIFA, for Counterintelligence Field Activity. Its initial task was to detect terrorist plots against military installations in the United States, but two years ago, a directive from the Pentagon's top ranks ordered CIFA to broaden its scope by creating and maintaining "a domestic law enforcement database." The agency's motto became "Counterintelligence to the Edge."...read on"

Noam Chomsky: Why it's over for America

2006-05-30T10:16:00.000-07:00

An inability to protect its citizens. The belief that it is above the law. A lack of democracy. Three defining characteristics of the 'failed state'. And that, says Noam Chomsky, is exactly what the US is becoming. In an exclusive extract from his devastating new book, America's leading thinker explains how his country lost its way.

Rozius: Paul Krugman: Swift Boating the Planet

2006-05-29T18:57:00.000-07:00

Rozius: Paul Krugman: Swift Boating the Planet

THE WORST PRESIDENT EVER...

2006-05-23T16:25:00.000-07:00

The president has long passed the point of simply being untrustworthy; he has made a mockery of the office. That Bush will be remembered by history as a failure is now conventional wisdom among scholars of the presidency.
Bush will likely be remembered much as is Warren Harding, who brought a group of corrupt cronies to the White House and stumbled through one mishap after the other. He is remembered as a puppet for corporate interests, and for setting the nation on a course to the Great Depression.
When history renders its cold assessment of George W. Bush, I believe he will find himself alongside Harding as one of the worst presidents in American history.Bush's legacy will likely be that of death, deficits and deceit, and it could well take this nation a decade or more to recover from his presidency.

2006-05-01T10:06:00.000-07:00

As Reported n the Empire Burleque Blog, Stephen Colbert smacked Bush down hard - right to his face in a “tribute” to President Bush at the White House Correspondent Dinner.

Although he was being funny - Colbert wasn't being a comic... He stood up and told the Emperor and his minions that they simply have no clothes.

This video is truly was a "must watch".