the [alternate] patriot

'Machinery of mendacity'

2010-02-20T12:07:00.000-05:00

Lest we forget, this country has mostly escaped from an administration that lied continuously, not simply to hide their mistakes, but to deliberately fool the public so they could proceed with actions the public would not have approved.

Although Bush is out of office now, his Vice President continues an aggressive program of lying in hopes of undercutting the honorable man now holding the office

"Better to marry..." (St. Paul)

2010-02-20T09:35:00.001-05:00

A judge ruled that gender and sexual orientation cannot determine who may marry in D.C. Opponents want to file an appeal as soon as possible to prevent gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people from marrying.
Their argument:

"The people have a right to have the final say...The D.C. Charter makes that right clear, and officials should not be ignoring the right of the people to vote for or against the new definition of marriage fabricated by the council," Nimocks said. "We are appealing because the District's marriage redefinition law shouldn't go into effect until voters have the opportunity to vote on a critical matter that affects everyone in the District." (Washington Post 2-20-10)

I don't know what the DC charter specifically says on the subject, but in general people have, or should have, a right to vote on things that affect them. It's hard to see, however, how Couple A marrying will have any impact on narrow minded Individual B except that it may force him to rethink some of his prejudices.Perhaps it will broaden his view of humanity, to think of more of his fellows as human beings like him who deserve, as he does, their chance at happiness. Let us hope it helps him to increase his capacity for compassion.

Medical care increasing portion of the national dollar

2010-02-05T05:33:00.000-05:00

The articles I've read about this suggest a- it's a problem and b- federal spending should be reduced.

There's nothing wrong with increased medical spending IF it is making us all healthier, happier, and more productive.

Alas, it is not. Vast sums are spent on terminally ill rich people (rich defined here as having inexhaustible health care funding)and in some cases - perhaps many - contrary to the wishes of the patient. Meanwhile, many people with inadequate or no health insurance suffer financially and physically and often become needlessly less productive in cases where easy fixes exist.

Put the following on the national agenda:

Develop a list of research priorities and fund based on degree of present harm and potential for fixing. Presently some research is funded by organizations that depend on donations. Selling pink ribbons has got to be about the least effective way possible to pay for cancer research.
Develop and fund medical priorities - what medical specialties are most urgently needed? Where are medical facilities most urgently needed? What specific tasks could be done or services offered that would make the most difference in general health?
Federally funded drug research based on need rather than profit potential would drastically lower the cost of drugs; and the people's representatives rather than a few corporate managers would decide what we need. Far less would be spent on television advertising.
Public funding or loan forgiveness for medical education in those areas that are most needed.
Regionalize placement of and funding for exotic high-priced hospital equipment.

Obama's call to responsibility - State of the Union address

2010-01-28T07:04:00.000-05:00

President Obama called Republican members of congress (and Sen. Lieberman, I-CT) to cease the politics of obstruction and start engaging in the business of governing the nation. He was gentle, he was firm, and he was funny. ["I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change...."]
I give him very high marks for content. Also high marks for delivery, except for two tics that bugged me. a- Many sentences that, in the text begin with "Now,...(comma)" in his delivery begin with "Now. ...(full stop)" b- the little left hand gesture that resembles a hand holding a tv remote and changing the channel.
Come to think of it, though, it could warrant a review to see if he just does the remote click when he's changing the subject, or looking for new thinking on an old subject.
Text of the full speech is at whitehouse.gov

Corporations to get bigger voice

2010-01-23T11:02:00.000-05:00

The US Supreme Court handed down a decision the other day that will unregulate corporate donations to political activities. Now they will be able to donate as much as they like to any campaign.
Say goodbye to your vote, unless you, too (in addition to the Supreme Court) are in the corporate pocket.

NYU administration gets tough!

2009-02-21T19:52:00.003-05:00

Wow, the folks running New York University are threatening to expel students for conducting a cafeteria sit-in in protest of university policies.

Here's a video showing some of it, with news voice-over:

The students call themselves "Take Back NYU."

There is a Facebook group called Support the NYU Occupation! (may require registration on Facebook)

Here's a report form NYU:

The NYU student occupation has ended - due to the disgusting NYU administration, who sent in security guards today to remove all of students occupying the Kimmel Center cafeteria. The administration never negotiatied with the students and when they said they would do so, they simply detained and suspended the four student negotiators who came out in good faith. (See below). Students were driven to their dorms and told to remove their belongings and were removed from their campus housing immediately and placed in 'temporary' housing. The students who were removed today are all facing suspension! Mass support is necessary to demand that these students be granted amnesty. Please get as many people to email NYU as possible and show that we will stand together with the students and not be turned back.

Email & Call NYU Administrators. Sample Email pasted below. Demand amnesty and no suspensions:

NYU President John Sexton: john.sexton@nyu.edu & CALL 212-998-2345
John Beckman, NYU Spokesperson: jhb5@nyu.edu
Office of the Provost: provost@nyu.edu
Office of the Vice President: evp@nyu.edu

Today New York University has shown its true face more than ever. Claiming to be a "private university in the public service," it is clearly not even in the service of those students whose tuitions allow it to exist.

Earlier today, NYU cut power to all outlets in the occupied space and turned off the wireless internet. Obviously this was an attempt to silence and intimidate the occupiers who have broad-based support.

Then, NYU said it would negotiate and instead detained and suspended the student negotiators when they showed up. Security has now broken through the barricade and people are being detained and suspended.

Instead of dialog and negotiation, the NYU administration has shown they prefer the authoritarian, dissent-quashing, dictator route. It is a true reflection of how they run their university. Nothing but thugs with suits on, interested in getting rich under the guise of "education."

Be prepared to defend any individual or group that is targeted academically or legally for their role in the occupation. Widespread support for the occupation and its demands will not be extinguished by NYU's hypocritical, tyrannical behavior.

A terrible mess

2009-02-08T15:18:00.004-05:00

Pres. Obama said in a recorded address to his supporters convening at house meetings around the country today:

We've inherited a terrible mess, but I know we have the capacity to rise to this moment, and keep the promise of America alive in our time -- IF the American people demand that we do.

It's going to get worse before it gets better, folks.

The big banks and mortgage hawkers are partly to blame for the mess this Administration has inherited, but so is the previous administration. It was they who thought they could finance two wars and fund the for-profit enterprises that have been in many ways substituted for the regular army - and put the bills all on the nation's credit card. It looks as though these private provisioners have been in place at least since the all-volunteer army started.

It's an interesting subject that I'd like to learn more about. KBR (aka Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of the former Veep's company Halliburton) has had government contracts stretching back at least to WWII. I get the feeling, though, that at some point a line was crossed to where we now have a mercenary army instead of a citizen force.

My Barack Obama

2009-02-07T22:47:00.002-05:00

Now you can set up your own page at the mybarackobama.com website, isn't that cool?

Plea for the bailout

2009-02-05T06:24:00.002-05:00

The President's bailout plan seems quite good to me. Putting money into the pockets would do little for the long-term health of the economy, as we have seen from the past eight years. His plan will put it to the short term benefit of the suffering and the long term benefit of us all.

Here's a video from Pres. Obama explaining some of his goals:

Some goofs, some good

2009-02-05T06:06:00.002-05:00

I was quite sad when Sen. Daschle's nomination fell by the wayside.

Well, actually I was quite disappointed on learning he failed to pay taxes on stuff he should have paid on and didn't realize it.

I propose a few rules for public servants:

Do not try to enrich yourself from public service.

After serving in any legislative body, never work as a lobbyist -- it destroys your credibility and thus your chance to be helpful.

While serving in any public position take no free stuff or services from anybody including friends; that way, there will never be any question as to the intent of the giver. You don't need free stuff. If someone wants to show his appreciation, let him say "Thank you." (And you say, "We're glad to help- that's what we're here for.")

Nevertheless, I still admire Daschle, and hope he finds a spot in public service where the public can benefit from his ability and sentiments. I respect him for the very sincere apology he offered -- it's been a while since we heard a sincere and regretful, not weaseling and resentful, apology.

-O-

2009-01-20T15:57:00.003-05:00

What a beautiful day! President Obama!
Here's the inaugural address:

The way to a Green economy

2008-12-13T21:28:00.013-05:00

Listen to activist Van Jones, who's bringing together two of our biggest problems—urban poverty and environmental peril-- to create one solution: “green jobs instead of jails

Obama: 'Yes, WE Can! (N.H. 1/8/08)

2008-11-22T21:50:00.003-05:00

More videos are available at barackobama.com

Available Assets

Biden VP announcement

Orlando, Fla VFW Address

Yes We Can, Nashua NH

Iowa's Jefferson-Jackson Dinner

New Hampshire Primary Speech: Yes We Can

South Carolina Victory Speech

A More Perfect Union

Forging a New Future for America

Democratic National Convention 2004 Keynote

James Taylor

Barack in the Virginia Rain

2008-11-22T21:04:00.003-05:00

What an awesome speech! This is what won the election (about half an hour)

Help

2008-11-22T12:41:00.006-05:00

I listened to today's radio address by President-Elect Obama, and afterward left some opinions at the Change.gov website. The Obama transition team wants your views.

When's that last time a president told you we had very very tough times ahead? No matter how bad it gets,isn't it good to hear what's really happening, instead of pretending all is well?

Bush's 'dark legacy'

2008-11-17T15:59:00.001-05:00

This excerpt from Harper's Magazine...

the American press has been filled with drip after drip from smug, generally anonymous Bush Administration clones who promise that when Barack Obama is saddled with the responsibilities of government he will “get real” about the threats presented by terrorists at Guantánamo and will tack away from his promise to shut the infamous prison camp down

quotes President-elect Obama's response, in a 60 Minutes interview 11/16/08:

I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo, and I will follow through on that. I have said repeatedly that America doesn’t torture, and I’m going to make sure that we don’t torture. Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America’s moral stature in the world.

That's the kind of change I hope for - a new administration that is more rational and more humane -- and a lot more honest.

Unclogging the brain drain

2008-11-17T13:19:00.002-05:00

After one of (Democratic Presidential candidate Adlai) Stevenson’s high-brow speeches, an admirer yelled out something like, "You’ll have the vote of every thinking American!" Stevenson is said to have shouted back: "That’s not enough. I need a majority! [Nicholas Kristoff, NY Times]

Hm.... it is my recollection that the way it went was this: Stevenson ended a speech to a group of Democrats with the plea "...and I expect to get the vote of every thinking American" -- to which a party stalwart hollered, "That's not enough! We need a majority!"

Who said it?

2008-11-16T07:46:00.002-05:00

I hate it when journalists identify potential opinions of generalized groups of people.

All the more striking was his decision last week to sound out Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton herself as a possible secretary of state. The Clinton faction is pleased, but those who saw Mr. Obama as a clean break may wonder what it means.

One of many good things..

2008-11-15T11:56:00.003-05:00

..we can expect from the new administration. Rational foreign policy.

Obama will lift a freeze on funding for global family planning programs imposed by the outgoing administration, a US lawmaker said Wednesday. -Yahoo news

Obama is well educated and appears to understand how science works and seems to widh to incorporate it into his policies. The Bush administration seems to reject science in favor of dogma.

Looking at pictures

2008-11-15T11:50:00.002-05:00

I've been going through an election photo album at Yahoo News and saw this picture of Obama running with the secret service squad attached to him. The caption says:

In this Oct. 30, 2008 file photo, then-Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. runs with U.S. Secret Service agents as he enters a rally at Ed Smith Stadium in Sarasota, Fla. President-elect Barack Obama — aka Renegade — had a say in choosing the code name that his protectors use when they're whispering into those microphones in their sleeves. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

So, now they'll have to change the code name, right?

Lieberman's hubris

2008-11-10T18:20:00.002-05:00

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com

President-elect Barack Obama has informed party officials that he wants Joe Lieberman to continue caucusing with the Democrats in the 111th Congress, Senate aides tell the Huffington Post.

Obama's decision could tie the hands of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has been negotiating to remove Lieberman as chair of the Homeland Security and Government Reform committee while keeping him within the caucus. Lieberman has insisted that he will split from the Democrats if his homeland security position is stripped.

It's really laughable that Lieberman is dictating to the Senate Majority Leader. Sure he's been in office quite a while. But he has withdrawn himself from the party.
In my experience you argue as hard as you like within the party for the candidate of your choice; but once the party decides, you either work for that candidate, work for some other candidate of your party, or -- if you really can't stomach the nominee -- you sit on your hands during the campaign.

If you are so principled as to oppose the candidate of your party, you should be principled enough to depart.

I agree with President-elect Obama, however, that he should be invited to remain in the Democratic caucus; but probably should not be rewarded with a chairmanship. The committee chairs are supposed to promote party goals, and it's not clear Lieberman can do that. (They could give him the chairmanship of a committee in charge of issues where he is not at odds with the party.)

And if he were to grumblingly leave and presumably join the Republicans (if they will have him) will he then begin to vote 90% of the time with them? Actually, it's hard to imagine. I think he's bluffing. And mad... I expect he anticipated a McCain win followed by, perhaps, an ambassadorship to Israel.

Come to think of it, that might not be a bad thing for him in any case.

Meet the Press: The transition

2008-11-09T20:01:00.006-05:00

Tom Brokaw interviewed several folks about the presidential transition team and Obama's agenda.
presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, Chicago columnist Mary Mitchell, and Newsweek editor and Andrew Jackson biographer Jon Meacham

Quote of the day:
George McGovern asked Walter Mondale, "When does it stop hurting?"
Mondale: "I'll tell you when it stops."

- O -

2008-11-05T15:56:00.004-05:00

I am nearly speechless with amazement and joy at the election of Barack Obama. Last night I wept again and again as I read the returns online (don't have a tv)
This whole decade has seemed emotionally barren and cold. Bush turned his back on America's allies around the world and on the American people as well.

Reading a N.Y.Times article today about the outpouring of joy and happiness and hope around the world started me weeping again.

PARIS – Barack Obama's election as America's first black president unleashed a renewed love for the United States after years of dwindling goodwill, and many said Wednesday that U.S. voters had blazed a trail that minorities elsewhere could follow...

In Indonesia, where Obama lived as child, hundreds of students at his former elementary school erupted in cheers when he was declared winner and poured into the courtyard where they hugged each other, danced in the rain and chanted "Obama! Obama!"...

'This is the fall of the Berlin Wall times ten,' Rama Yade, France's black junior minister for human rights, told French radio. 'America is re-becoming a New World.'...

...'At a time when we have to confront immense challenges together, your election raises great hopes in France, in Europe and in the rest of the world,' French President Nicolas Sarkozy said in a congratulations letter to Obama....

Poland's Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski spoke of 'a new America with a new credit of trust in the world.'

-- NY Times, By JOHN LEICESTER, Associated Press Writer, "Obama victory sparks cheers around the world"

Bush seems to have put a lot of effort into alienating most of the world from us. There was a time when I hoped others- the French or the British, perhaps - would rescue us from him. It's quite clear now that we had to rescue ourselves -- and we have done it! Thank you America, and thank you President Obama!

'racial undertones' ?

2008-09-25T06:37:00.005-04:00

Something's rotten in the AP world. An AP story carried yesterday in many papers related discovery of an Obama effigy hung in a tree on a college campus in Oregon.

Officials of a small Christian university in Newberg, Ore., say a life-size cardboard reproduction of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was hung from a tree on the campus, an act with racial undertones that outraged students and school leaders alike. George Fox University president Robin Baker said a custodian discovered the effigy early Tuesday and removed it. University spokesman Rob Felton said yesterday that the commercially produced reproduction had been suspended from the branch of a tree with fishing line around the neck. [The italicized language went out in an AP story I first read in my local newspaper. the above quote is from Newsday]

When I saw the headline in my paper, it was like a kick in the stomach, and I am a Euro-American. I can only imagine how African-Americans would feel.

But the latest response to anyone suggesting that someone or something is "racist" is to call that person 'racist.' I've seen that in my own town. To talk about racism is not 'racist,' which may be defined as follows:

a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others. [dictionary.reference.com]

ABC News: EXCLUSIVE: Barbara Walters Interviews Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez

2007-03-17T14:53:00.000-04:00

In response to the previous Chavez post, here is a clip from the Barbara Walters-
Chavez interview that aired on ABC news this week:

ABC News: EXCLUSIVE: Barbara Walters Interviews Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez: "When Walters asks Chavez about the name-calling, he explains it by saying that he wanted his strong words to bring attention to the facts. 'Yes, I call him a devil in the United Nations,' says Chavez. 'That's true. Another time, I said that he was a donkey just because I think that he is very ignorant … about the things that are actually happening in Latin America and the world. If that is an excess on my side, I accept. And I might apologize. But who is causing more harm? He burns people, villages and he … invades nations.'"

Hugo Chavez: Bush Should Get the Gold Medal for Hypocrisy

2007-03-17T09:51:00.000-04:00

Why do some in the US consider Venzuelan President Hugo Chavez Bush's archenemy? Because Chavez favors using the country's wealth to aid the country's people. He toppled an oligarchy or a plutocracy similar to what Bush has been trying mightily to create here in the U.S.

The following is an excerpt from a piece posted on Dissident Voice Thursday

...Bush’s trip to Latin America has turned into another public relations disaster. Every time Air Force 1 touches down in a southern capital, the streets turn into a battleground between incensed protestors and fully-armored, truncheon-wielding Robo-cops. ...

'We care about our neighborhood a lot,' Bush purred in Brazil.
Nonsense.

Latin America has withstood two decades of neoliberal policies and they’ve had enough. The continents are drifting further and further apart and it’ll take more than Bush’s bland assurances to bring them back together....

Does Bush think these people are complete fools? They’ve lived under America’s boot-heel and they know exactly what to expect -- death squads, coup d’etats, fixed elections, and corrupt government officials -- all made in Washington. They also know that Bush’s promises are just more hot air. After all, they’ve seen the footage of the poor, black people being shunted off to the Superdome without food or water following Hurricane Katrina.

Author Mike Whitney contrasts the two heads of state- Bush advanced by virtue of a silver spoon in his mouth and a ready family wallet to get him out of trouble, while Chavez was born in a one-room mud-floored shack.

The two men are polar opposites. While the Bush persona depends on a talented public relations team that casts him a one-part Bible-beating preacher and one-part plain-talking cowpoke; Chavez is unaffected and straightforward. His warm and gregarious manner has earned him friends around the world and strengthened support for his redistributive programs....

Chavez has taken on the most powerful institutions in Venezuela including the oil giants, the telecommunications industry, and the deeply entrenched oligarchy. He’s set up free health care clinics and subsidized food programs for the poor, and created greater opportunities for education and upward mobility. More importantly, he’s reasserted the state control over vital national assets, particularly oil.

Read the rest of it.

The Huffington Post blog has some background information on what led up to Venezuela reaching out to needy Americans with oil this winter.

DoomBook 2007 March

2007-03-11T10:29:00.000-04:00

Commentary on the reporting of politics - if Chris Bergeron's experience with watered down political interviews was anything like mine with an overly-watered down "Americano" (espresso and hot water), then he makes a great point! Where's the muster? --Kate

DoomBook 2007 March: "Every morning I end up listening to as much as I can stomach of a news show where they interview local politicians. Instead of any questions that come to my mind, the commentator inevitably asks a bevy of kindergarten style “and what is your job, senator.. what do you do on that hill..” inquiries. Occasionally a caller comes up with something a bit more pressing which is promptly answered with a “I haven’t looked into that yet” and let slide."

ABC News: Campaign Trail '08: Who Is Barack Obama?

2007-02-11T10:18:00.000-05:00

ABC News: Campaign Trail '08: Who Is Barack Obama?

"Strength is defined not simply by the capacity to wage war, but by the determination to forge peace," Obama told the crowd of activists and politicians.

But friends and colleagues close to him say that Obama has a lesser known quality that you don't normally associate with politicians — he actually hears people.

"Unlike some people who make a show of listening and then announce their own opinion, he always struck me as a person who really was trying to listen — and not just listen but understand," said Brad Berenson, a classmate of Obama's from law school.

What do these people have in common?

2007-01-31T18:53:00.000-05:00

Read the answer and see some other surprises on this list

Welcome to the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

2007-01-04T11:24:00.000-05:00

I am curious how many of yourselves found yourselves thinking about how you felt about this recent event. I heard a 16 year old girl cheering, claiming she now doesn't have to worry about her personal safety. This surprised me a bit frankly, despite this somewhat popular view. Recently I had been meeting 20-somethings who voice peace and act against violence, even if it means the end of one quationable life.

Welcome to the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation: "Given the harsh brutality of Saddam Hussein’s political career I would never have anticipated a certain measure of sympathy for the man at the end of his life."

Your thoughts and considerations are welcome.

Kate

Attorney General: Attorney General Announces $20 Million Settlement With The Hartford Involving Secret Kickback Allegations

2006-12-28T13:19:00.000-05:00

Politics in the Business World: Coming Clean

Attorney General: Attorney General Announces $20 Million Settlement With The Hartford Involving Secret Kickback Allegations: "Press Release

Attorney General Announces $20 Million Settlement With The Hartford Involving Secret Kickback Allegations

May 10, 2006

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal today announced that The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc. (The Hartford) will pay $20 million under an agreement with Connecticut and New York to settle allegations that it paid brokers millions of dollars in secret kickbacks in exchange for steering lucrative pension plan investment business to The Hartford.

The Hartford is one of the oldest and largest investment and insurance companies in the country, with millions of customers worldwide. The settlement will provide $16.1 million directly to the pension plans harmed by the scheme and $1.95 million in penalties each to Connecticut and New York.

From 1998 through 2004, The Hartford entered into concealed financial agreements with brokers, including Dietrich & Associates, Inc. (Dietrich), Brentwood Asset Advisors (Brentwood), Glastonbury-based USI Consulting Group, and BCG Terminal Funding.

Under these agreements, The Hartford secretly paid brokers millions of dollars in exchange for brokers steering pension plan purchases of annuities, and providing inside information on competitive bidding.

'The Hartford was at the hub of a series of secret conspiracies that enriched both the brokers and The Hartford at the expense of their customers,' Blumenthal said. 'Our evidence shows a shocking systematic scheme that betrayed their moral and legal duties.'"

and

"The Hartford paid secret kickbacks to brokers who steered pension plan business and undercut the competitive bidding process - raising the pension plan's costs," Blumenthal said. "The Hartford and its co-conspirators elaborately concealed kickbacks as so-called expense reimbursement agreements - really just false fronts for the scheme. The scheme exploited pension plans - taking funds from retirement vehicles that are the bedrock of our nation's workers' livelihoods.

"There is no pleasure in uncovering wrongdoing by one of Connecticut's best respected corporate citizens. Our continuing investigation of The Hartford and others must be pursued wherever the evidence leads. The Hartford has cooperated - taking the high road - and we hope others will as well. The message is that no one in this industry - insurers or brokers, big or small - can break the law and betray their trust.

"Our reforms - stopping contingent commission agreements - will help prevent future insurance abuses. This investigation was spurred by a whistleblower and we hope others with knowledge will come forward."

Blumenthal said this settlement culminates a year-long investigation conducted jointly with the New York Attorney General's office. Blumenthal said The Hartford cooperated with the investigation.

Similar articles came about in regards to Travelers. Travelers now requests each applicant to sign forms in regards to previous broker or broker related work activities.

Peaceful Warrior

2006-12-25T16:47:00.000-05:00

Peaceful Warrior: "Question: When will the DVD be out so I can see the movie?

Answer: The more successful the film, the later it will come to DVD. At the moment we are expecting a December release but that could change. While we love to sell DVDs, our major focus is the theatrical release, at present -- because unlike some other films, seeing this film with other people in a theater -- sharing these insights and understandings, laughing with one another, is a communal experience not to be missed."

Bloggers Write On Despite Will's Snub (letter to editor)

2006-12-23T13:06:00.000-05:00

In his column on bloggers [Other Opinion, Dec. 21, 'Tom Paine Was No Blogger'], George F. Will wears his elitism like a winter coat. I hope it keeps him warm this winter.

I prefer the sweaty tumble of the blogosphere, where writers good and bad commingle and float words and thoughts on a daily basis.

Will fails to notice that the ease of writing a blog has led thousands of people to do what teachers were previously unable to do: get people to write.

Writers improve by the steady exercise of writing. If Will ever gave advice to a new writer, I'd expect it to be a sneering "Shut up. You don't know what you're doing!" But from others, the common advice for new writers is to write about things they know (frequently their own lives) and to write often. That's exactly what a great many bloggers are doing.

I believe that writing helps us think and that in practicing writing and thinking, we will improve at both - if not to the impeccable standards of George Will, at least to a higher level than we previously achieved.

Why complain about that?

Pamela Shorey
Willimantic

Courant letters to editor

War on liberals raises big bucks

2006-12-23T06:52:00.000-05:00

I read in the Hartford Courant today that the Liberty Counsel, a Right-thinking law firm, took in a third of a million this year on the sale of "Help Save Christmas Action Packs."

Likewise, the American Family Association has raised over half a million dollars in the bogus "response" to an alleged liberal plot to stamp out Christmas. I say bogus because the last Americans who actually tried to stamp out Christmas were 17th Century colonial Puritans, and they didn't approve of all the carousing that Christmas entailed in Royalist England.

Apparently some of the sympathizers are boycotting stores whose clerks wish them a happy holiday instead of forthrightly saying "Merry Christmas." They seem to feel that a clerk's or a store's effort to be inclusive somehow dilutes or even negates their ability to celebrate Christmas as they wish.

I wonder that it has not occurred to them to fight against the real war on Christmas, the War machine. The anti-Christmas message I've been hearing is Buy More Stuff; and the subsidiary message, to send some of it to Iraq to "support our troops." Supporting our troops is a message the Administration likes since most people can't distinguish that from supporting our war; and because the feds are too busy supporting their business friends with war contracts to spend very much in support of the troops-- especially after they finally come home.

Let's face it: Everything about Christmas these days, other than what many people carry in their hearts, is about making money -- by the retailers, the warmongers, and the 'Liberal Plot' mongers.

Buchanan Gets Ugly -- Again

2006-12-18T05:54:00.000-05:00

This brief excerpt is from New America Media (a national collaboration of ethnic news organizations) Buchanan Gets Ugly -- Again : (Article posted May, 2006)

...But it still shocks me when the discourse take the form of unabashed bigotry and hatred, and I'm especially dismayed that so much of this ugliness is relayed on our airwaves, framed as legitimate debate.

Look at Pat Buchanan's most recent book, 'State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America,' for example. It's nothing new; he wrote a book just like it 10 years ago, as he was preparing his failed run for the presidency. His relentless focus on race and ethnicity makes the book less a treatise on immigration than a disturbing call to arms to white Americans in what he believes is an ongoing culture war with everyone else in this country.

Buchanan starts with immigrants, but it quickly becomes clear that his argument is a white nationalist one, a pessimistic view of an America unable to cope with diversity. The country he describes is one I don't recognize. It bears no resemblance to the rich, diverse and vibrant community that we are, a people capable of sharing values despite differences in skin color and heritage ... read more

We'll know the right wing is interested solely in enforcing the law when they start going after the white Americans who hire all these undocumented workers, who supposedly are 'doing work no American citizen would do.' The latter is a lie, folks.
American citizens have done and will do pretty much anything is the pay is right. What these immigrant workers are doing is accepting working conditions and pay that Americans won't. The working conditions are often illegal, but undocumented workers are in no position to complain.

Stop War

2006-12-14T06:53:00.000-05:00

Stop war:

On March 17, 2007, the 4th anniversary of the start of the criminal invasion of Iraq, tens of thousands of people from around the country will descend on the Pentagon in a mass demonstration to demand: U.S. Out of Iraq Now! 2007 is the 40th anniversary of the historic 1967 anti-war march to the Pentagon during the Vietnam War. The message of the 1967 march was 'From Protest to Resistance,' and marked a turning point in the development of a countrywide mass movement.

FOXNews.com - Senate Republicans Seek Taxpayer Rebate Checks for Gas Price Relief - Politics | Republican Party | Democratic Party | Political Spectru

2006-12-03T10:16:00.000-05:00

Earlier this year, Republicans expressed a desire to reduce dependence on foreign oils:

FOXNews.com - Senate Republicans Seek Taxpayer Rebate Checks for Gas Price Relief - Politics | Republican Party | Democratic Party | Political Spectrum: "Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., introduced his 10-point proposal as an amendment to the Iraq war emergency supplemental spending bill currently being debated in the Senate. If passed, and signed into law, it would go into effect immediately.

“We must reduce our dependence on foreign oil by increasing domestic exploration, improving our energy infrastructure and continuing to encourage conservation,' Frist said in a statement."

Has anyone done the research to see what became of that since the election in November?

The article continued:

The fate of the amendment, however, is uncertain because Frist has included in his plan a provision on opening drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Drilling in ANWR has frequently been a poison pill for Democrats, and Republicans told FOX News they fully expect "Democrat shenanigans, " possibly in the form of a filibuster, on this amendment.

(Tsk.)
Well, OPEC cuts delivery, prices rise again, and we see the same history repeat itself. Internet giants like Google have the right idea, as mentioned in October:

"SAN FRANCISCO — Google Inc. (GOOG) is converting its renowned headquarters to run partly on solar power, hoping to set an example for corporate America.

"The Internet search leader announced what is believed to be the largest solar project undertaken by a U.S. company during a solar energy conference in Silicon Valley on Monday.

"Google believes the sun eventually can deliver as much as 30 percent of the power at its 1-million-square-foot campus in Mountain View — a suburb about 35 miles south of San Francisco."--Kate

Others are doing well; in May we learned that in America's capitalistic motivational way, "House Passes Bill to Offer $10 Million Prize for Hydrogen Fuel Technology

WASHINGTON — Scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs will be able to vie for a grand prize of $10 million, and smaller prizes reaching millions of dollars, under House-passed legislation to encourage research into hydrogen as an alternative fuel.

Legislation creating the "H-Prize," modeled after the privately funded Ansari X Prize that resulted last year in the first privately developed manned rocket to reach space twice, passed the House Wednesday on a 416-6 vote. A companion bill is to be introduced in the Senate this week.

"This is an opportunity for a triple play," said bill sponsor Rep. Bob Inglis, R-S.C., citing benefits to national security from reduced dependence on foreign oil, cleaner air from burning pollution-free hydrogen and new jobs. "If we can reinvent the car, imagine the jobs we can create.""

But still, have we made any progress?

Well, Lady Liberty is double-mint green now; this should please all types of patriots:

MILL RUN, Pa. — Her oxidized copper exterior is not the only thing green about Lady Liberty anymore.

An energy company celebrated the Statue of Liberty's 120th anniversary on Saturday by announcing that the statue's torch is now lit with "green" or environmentally friendly power generated by Pennsylvania windmills.

US Army Recruiters Still Lying Get Students to Enlist

2006-11-16T05:47:00.001-05:00

The Largest Minority » Blog Archive

ABC News armed students with hidden cameras and microphones in order to expose the deceitful tactics of army recruiters. One student asked a recruiter, “Nobody is going over to Iraq anymore?” To which the recruiter responded, “No, we’re bringing people back.” When asked the same question, another recruiter said, “We’re not at war. War ended a long time ago.”

story.bush.jpg (JPEG Image, 220x168 pixels)

2006-11-13T07:12:00.000-05:00

story.bush.jpg (JPEG Image, 220x168 pixels)
Bush in 2001, remarking on Sen. James Jeffords, VT, leaving the GOP and allying with Democrats in the US Senate.
Bush's hair is now grayer and shorter and - do my eyes deceive me? -- his hairline is less receding

TIME.com: Should Rumsfeld Be the Scapegoat? -- Page 1

2006-11-10T20:50:00.000-05:00

TIME.com: Should Rumsfeld Be the Scapegoat? -- Page 1: "The news that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is to be the Bush Administration's ritual sacrifice to atone for Iraq comes as no surprise. It had been obvious for months now that the debacle would be blamed on Rumsfeld. And the blame-Rumsfeld narrative has a singular attraction for all those who supported the Iraq war and now wish to evade their own culpability in the catastrophe it inevitably became."

CNN.com - Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News

2006-11-08T14:33:00.000-05:00

Huge news on CNN after yesterday's shift to a democratic house and 4 wins in the senate:
CNN.com - Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News:

Rumsfeld stepping down

President Bush announced today that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, architect of an unpopular war in Iraq, is stepping down. Bush said he is nominating former CIA chief Robert Gates, who headed that agency from 1991 until 1993, to become the next secretary of defense."

Don't be afraid to make your voice heard!

What does the Left Want?

2006-11-04T09:55:00.000-05:00

Read whatStarhawk says: "# We want enterprises to be rooted in communities and responsible to communities and to future generations.
# We want producers to be accountable for the true social and ecological costs of what they produce.
# We say there is a commons that needs to be protected, that there are resources that are too vital to life, too precious or sacred to be exploited for the profit of the few"
[This was posted the first Saturday in November, 2001. Still true.]

Around the Water Cooler

2006-11-01T10:04:00.000-05:00

...politics? ;-)

The Foley thing

2006-10-07T07:51:00.000-04:00

Looks like the Republicans aim to push the discussion from why didn't they do something about the renegade congressman sooner to -- "Gee the Dems knew about this some time ago, why did they save it for just before the election?"

If so, maybe one reason is that election time has been, lately, the only time the press offers the alternative views of the out party, feeling a sudden need for balance.

But is it so? A progressive good government group, CREW, was sent those emails back in the summer and forwarded them to the FBI, requesting an inquiry. Nothing happened.

The CREW site has the emails and some IMs on file there, so you can judge for yourself if Foley was culpable. The kid came across to me in an IM exchange (as far as I read) as an affable dope; Foley like Socartes "corrupting the morals of youth" but with no apparent philsophical purpose, just self gratification. He used that kid like a porn magazine.

Bush cares.... (?)

2006-09-02T09:28:00.000-04:00

The one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans was
marked by President Bush with a moment of silence. A little different
than a year ago, when President Bush marked the occasion by a week
and a half of silence. (Jay Leno)

ABA review of Bush very welcome

2006-06-04T21:37:00.000-04:00

Bar group will review Bush's legal challenges

By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff

WASHINGTON -- The board of governors of the American Bar Association voted unanimously yesterday to investigate whether President Bush has exceeded his constitutional authority in reserving the right to ignore more than 750 laws that have been enacted since he took office.

Meeting in New Orleans, the board of governors for the world's largest association of legal professionals approved the creation of an all-star legal panel with a number of members from both political parties.

They include a former federal appeals court chief judge, a former FBI director, and several prominent scholars -- to evaluate Bush's assertions that he has the power to ignore laws that conflict with his interpretation of the Constitution.

Bush has appended statements to new laws when he signs them, noting which provisions he believes interfere with his powers.

Among the laws Bush has challenged are the ban on torturing detainees, oversight provisions in the USA Patriot Act, and ``whistle-blower" protections for federal employees.

The challenges also have included safeguards against political interference in taxpayer-funded research.

Bush has challenged more laws than all previous presidents combined.

The ABA's president, Michael Greco, said in an interview that he proposed the task force because he believes the scope and aggressiveness of Bush's signing statements may raise serious constitutional concerns. He said the ABA, which has more than 400,000 members, has a duty to speak out about such legal issues to the public, the courts, and Congress.

'The American Bar Association feels a very serious obligation to ensure that when there are legal issues that affect the American people, the ABA adopts a policy regarding such issues and then speaks out about it,' Greco said. 'In this instance, the president's practice of attaching signing statements to laws squarely presents a constitutional issue about the separation of powers among the three branches.'

Letter to democrats.org

2006-06-03T07:38:00.000-04:00

Today I received a letter frmo the democratic party asking me to sign a petition for gay rights, which I support. I never went to their website to sign it, becaue I got so taken up in their email, which typically asks for my opinion and then offers me a few narrow choices within which to express myself. The paper surveys I've received over the years don't have even a few spaces for other comment at the end.

Today's email was titled:

If you were setting the agenda

The body says in part (edited for brevity):

Imagine that you're Republican Bill Frist, the Senate Majority Leader, and you control what issues the Senate considers and when it considers them, would your top priority be to:

Force the administration to change its failed strategy in Iraq

Help consumers walloped by $3.00 a gallon gas and take steps to reduce our oil addiction
Pass the first minimum wage increase in 10 years and develop plans to create good jobs in America
Expand educational opportunities for college by providing relief from skyrocketing college tuition
Ensure access to health care for every American
Amend the Constitution to deprive gay people of equal rights under the law

Then it gives the link for signing a petition to Sen. Frist to get on with the nation's real business.

Instead of following instructions, I replied to the email as follows:

If you were setting the agenda... Gee, for a minute there, I was suckered into thinking you actually wanted to know what I think. Well, fooled again.

Please know that what I think is not chunked into four 1-sentence choices. (The fifth, of course, is not a reasonable choice-- I agree with you there.) I agree Frist is a jerk as are 90 percent of the Republicans. Trouble is, about half or more of the Democrats have problems, too.

I do not understand why Washington is working so hard to pander to the right and ignoring a great deal of the left. Oh, wait; you feel the left is already in your pocket and the votes up for grabs are right of center somewhere, correct?

I wish you would show some leadership on the important issues, instead of framing them all in terms of what might be acceptable to the right-of-center folks whose views have already been seriously warped by 25 years of unrelenting and often subtle rightwing propaganda.

Be warned you may lose more and more of the leftward side of your party. I'm not all that far left, either (except on Reagan's skewed political topography) .

If the Democratic party wants to stay in Iraq, you'd better start explaining why it's a good idea to have been there in the first place -- and if it wasn't, come home right away. Would a Democratic president be able to say to the world: "We were wrong; we apologize; and we'll try to make it right to the Iraq people, at least by means of some financial aid for rebuilding what we tore down."

My choices for a presidential candidate would be anyone who :
- is honest with the public -- ie announces their true goals and then works for them, not the opposite AND
-will protect the constitution
-will preotect and improve the environment, now dangerously eroded, and work for new clean, renewable energy sources (understanding at least in general how science works would help)
- will restore the civil service, removing all the ideological appointees of the past 20 odd years who were put in place to undermine agency missions
- wants to stop that ethical, legal and financial disaster in Iraq;
-considers that 'what's good for America' means what's good for its people, or the vast majority of them not just select business cronies;
- is not beholden to either international corporations or the NRA
- is willing to ban very severly restrict the use of handguns and assault rifles, Shooting is the only sport protected by the constitution; isn't that curious?
- change the law that makes a corporation a "person."

Thanks for the Memories....

2006-05-29T17:14:00.000-04:00

Memorial Day, 2006

Today we are marking Memorial Day, when we glorify our war heroes, ie those who willy-nilly died in battle. I did not attend any ceremonies.

I don't wish particularly to dishonor the dead nor worry their grievers, but I am troubled by the glorification of war that always attends these things. And the frequent statement that they were "defending our freedom." That may be occasionally true, though I can't see that it has been so lately. Unless one means the "freedom" of large corporations to operate when and how they please around the world regardless of any harm they may cause to the earth or its people.

The page above that I linked to states numerous times that the ward dead "gave the ultimate sacrifice." I would guess something like five percent gave their lives. Rather their lives were taken by a government that pretends to care about them, but whose actions belie the pretense.

Many of our wars have been embarked upon because we wanted other countries to bend to our will in areas that we had no business dictating to them, such as when they enacted controls against foreign businesses operating in their territory. Central and South America, the Middle East, the far East. The government usually cites some other reason. "Freedom," "democracy," etc.

And then when it's all over, they cheer the veterans and put them out to pasture. The way Vietnam veterans were dealt with was shameful. The government denied any connection between their ailments and the herbicide "Agent Orange" and thus avoided providing health benefits. It is likewise denying health claims of veterans of the Kuwait "freedom" war of Bush Sr.

In this war, they are forcing National Guardsmen to stay on in Iraq for several tours of duty, beyond their enlistment time in many cases. Why? so the sons of the wealthy will not have to "give the ultimate sacrifice." The rich do not sacrifice anything.

Heck-of-a--job Rove steps without looking

2006-05-16T06:06:00.000-04:00

Karl Rove, Bullish on the Budget and the Border: "It's a heck of a curse.

Presidential adviser Karl Rove had almost finished his appearance yesterday at the American Enterprise Institute when it happened. Discussing the Bush administration's record on illegal immigration, he blurted out, 'We're doing a heck of a job.'"

Things about US history my textbooks never told me

2006-05-13T20:51:00.000-04:00

Lies My Teacher Told Me

Native American ideas may be partly responsible for our democratic institutions. We have seen how Native ideas of liberty, fraternity, and equality found their way to Europe to influence social philosophers such as Thomas More, Locke, Montaigne, Montesquieu, and Rousseau... Through 150 years of colonial contact, the Iroquois League stood before the colonies as an object lesson in how to govern a large domain democratically' (111).

'Both the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention referred openly to Iroquois ideas and imagery... As a symbol of the new United States, Americans chose the eagle clutching a bundle of arrows. They knew that both the eagle and the arrows were symbols of the Iroquois League... John Mohawk has argued that American Indians are directly or indirectly responsible for the public-meeting tradition, free speech, democracy, and 'all those things which got attached to the Bill of Rights.' Without the Native example, 'do you really believe that all those ideas would have found birth among a people who had spent a millennium butchering other people because of intolerance of questions of religion?'' (111-112).

'For a hundred years after our Revolution, Americans credited Native Americans as a source of their democratic institutions... When colonists took action to oppose unjust authority, as in the Boston Tea Party.. they chose to dress as Indians, not to blame Indians for the demonstrations but to appropriate a symbol identified with liberty' (112).

So, the founding father were not exactly geniuses, as books have said (for coming up with democratic ideas). They merely saw how the native Americans governed themselves and borrowed heavily.

Alas, eventually the European way of murder, theft and dominance took over.

Bush Weighs Deploying Guard to U.S. Border - Yahoo! News

2006-05-13T13:16:00.000-04:00

By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer Fri May 12, 7:52 PM ET (Yahoo! News):

WASHINGTON -
President Bush, trying to build momentum for an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws, is considering plans to shore up the Mexican border with National Guard troops paid for by the federal government, according to senior administration officials.

This is the president who promised to unite us, driving yet another wedge in the midst of us, preying on fears and prejudices in hopes of advancing his own narrowly self-interested agenda.

For more on the bad deeds of this president, see the AmericaBlog.

Technology Review: Emerging Technologies and their Impact

2006-05-12T11:38:00.000-04:00

"Politechs"

Technology Review: Emerging Technologies and their Impact: Thursday, May 11, 2006
PA, CA, and IA Require More E-Voting Security

The three states have mandated redundant security procedures for Diebold e-voting machines.

By Associated Press

May 1 rallies

2006-05-06T19:55:00.000-04:00

I was at the May 1 rally of immigrants in my town here in eastern Connecticut and it was a joyous occasion.
It wasn't all immigrants -- German, Ukranian, Polish, French and Irish immigrants, or their children, who are a significant part of our local population were missing-- but rather (mostly) people from central and South America -- and to a great extent, Puerto Ricans who are of course, American citizens and not immigrants -- but who are often treated with the same scorn as undocumented workers from Spanish-speaking countries by white people.

Father Paul from Iglesia Sagrado Corazón de Jesús spoke and prayed; Juan, a former member of the Board of Selectmen spoke and exhorted; and Yolanda, also a former selectman, spoke briefly and introduced a Democratic congressional candidate running against the Republican incumbent, who also spoke sympathetically a few minutes.

All the Spanish speakers kindly gave an English version of their remarks as well as the Spanish one.

[I have to interupt this writing for a bit, but on my return hope to expound a little on my views on the 'immigration question.']

Thank You Stephen Colbert. » Blog Archive » Thank You.

2006-05-04T22:46:00.000-04:00

Thank You Stephen Colbert About two-thirds of America -- and probably a bigger percentage of the world -- is glad he spoke up. It's the classic role of the court jester

Stephen Colbert's Blistering Performance Mocks Bush and the Press ...

2006-05-04T22:34:00.000-04:00

...and is ignored by the mainline media

Stephen Colbert (excerpt):

I believe in this president. Now, I know there are some polls out there saying that this man has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in 'reality.' And reality has a well-known liberal bias.

Read the whole transcript at Democracy Now!
See my comment on Thank You page 46646

Galbraith dies... perhaps of a broken heart?

2006-04-30T11:38:00.000-04:00

In the 1950s, economist John Kenneth Galbrath tutored then presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson in Keynesian economics :

Keynesian economics... is an economic theory based on the ideas of an English economist, John Maynard Keynes, as put forward in his book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, published in 1936 in response to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Keynesian economics promotes a mixed economy, where both the state and the private sector play an important role. The rise of Keynesianism marked the end of laissez-faire economics (economic theory based on the belief that markets and the private sector could operate well on their own, without state intervention).

The idea that government could and should through its policies adjust the economy to better serve the public interest was promoted by a series of Democratic presidents and congresses, including Lyndon Johnson whose 'Great Society' lifted many out of poverty and greatly increased the middle class in proportion to the upper and lower classes.

Under Ronald Reagan, the government began to retrench, cutting taxes on the richest members of society and attempting to shave programs for the poor. Reagan was at loggerheads with a Democratic Congress, who let him cut taxes but refused to abolish all the welfare programs.

Not until the second Bush with a Republican congress have we seen a complete abandonment of the idea that government can work for the public good. Now it works for big business. Although some people have done very well under the Republicans,the middle class has shrunk as many lost their jobs and homes and dropped into poverty.

I wonder if Galbrath died of a broken heart.

Have you been brainwashed by tv?

2006-04-20T15:27:00.000-04:00

The list below provides conclusions I, too, had reached:

You May be Brainwashed by Corporate Media if You:

... believe the 5 corporations who own almost all of the media in the U.S. are liberal.

... believe $300 billion of U.S. tax money, allocated for the war and reconstruction in Iraq is actually going to Iraq .

... are unaware Iraq had 650 million barrels of oil in reserve just before the war in Iraq .

... are unaware at least $8.8 billion is known to be missing in Iraqi oil revenue from the period the U.S. was in control of Iraq .

... are unaware 198 million in Iraqi dollars is missing from the Iraq treasury from the period the U.S. was in control of Iraq .

... are unaware that war is exceptionally profitable for a small number of investors.

... believe Halliburton's no-bid contracts have nothing to do with former CEO, now Vice President Dick Cheney.

... are unaware that the Iraq war is the biggest case of war profiteering in human history.

... believe Saddam Hussein or Iraq had anything to do with 9/11, Al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden.

... are unaware the U.S. has killed more than 10,000 innocent women and children in Iraq with cluster bombs and depleted uranium munitions.

... believe depleted uranium weapons are not radioactive or deadly weapons of mass destruction (they are 12% less radioactive than nuclear weapons grade uranium and very deadly).

... believe wealthy, warmongers can also be true Christians.

... are unaware stem cell research threatens the pharmaceutical industry by curing and preventing diseases which drug companies profit from by treating with drugs.

... are unaware the pharmaceutical industry is based entirely on treatment and is threatened by cures and prevention.

... are unaware the Food and Drug Administration does NO testing of food or drugs. They only set guidelines and review the testing corporations do of their own products.

... are unaware the Medicare Prescription Drug and Modernization Act has been 're- estimated' to cost U.S. taxpayers $1.3 Trillion (not the original $243 billion or the 'adjusted' $400 billion), and only pharmaceutical corporations and HMOs benefit from the increase.

... are unaware the Boston Tea party was a protest against corporate corruption (East India Company).

... are unaware our founding fathers intentionally made sure that corporations had no power over people or our government.

... are unaware corporations have fought aggressively and systematically over the past 200 years to increase their power and influence over our government.

... are unaware U.S. corporations are now protected under the 14th amendment as a legal 'person.'

... are unaware the definition of fascism is: 'The marriage of corporation and state' -- Benito Mussolini.

... are unaware well known U.S. corporate interests attempted a military coup against Franklin Roosevelt in 1933.

... are unaware most corrupt and wasteful government projects are run primarily by corporate contractors.

... are unaware 'less government' means paying corporate contractors three times what we pay government workers to do the same work.

... are unaware American corporations behave very differently in other countries.
... are unaware Enron and others were NOT investigated until they collapsed under the weight of their own greed.

... are unaware Bush's massive tax cuts were invested overseas to build sweat shops, factories and other facilities, where our jobs have been outsourced.
... are unaware outsourcing American jobs weakens labor unions and keeps wages low and corporate profits high .

... are unaware weak enforcement of immigration laws lowers wages in the U.S. and increases corporate profits.

... are unaware 'Free Trade' means 'Slave Wages' to poor people in Honduras, Bangladesh, China, Malaysia, Burma, Cambodia, Dominican Republic, Colombia, Philippines, Thailand, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Nepal, El Salvador, Guatemala, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and others.

... believe America is hated all over the world because of our freedom.

... believe the massive U.S. national debt (now $7,786,000,000,000) created by Republican presidents Reagan, Bush and Bush does not seriously threaten the future of our children and grandchildren.

... are unaware massive national debt ensures the expansion of poverty, which keeps wages low, which increases corporate profits.

... are unaware widespread poverty keeps wages low and corporate profits high.
... are unaware weak gun control laws perpetuate violence in poor neighborhoods which expands poverty, reduces wages and increases corporate profits.

... are unaware abortions go down only when we reduce poverty, expand healthcare and improve education.

... are unaware that making abortion illegal expands poverty which reduces wages and increases corporate profits.

... believe the Michael Jackson trial deserved more news coverage than the genocide of 400,000 people in Darfur , Sudan.

... believe Social Security is the biggest priority in America .

... are unaware privatizing Social Security would be a massive give away to experienced Wall Street investors that would also destabilize Social Security.

... are unaware that NOT funding 'No Child Left Behind' is dismantling funding for schools in poor neighborhoods, which expands poverty, lowers wages and increases corporate profits.

... are unaware the Healthy Forests Initiative has led to massive clear cutting of prime lumber and almost none of the forest fire prevention that it was sold on.

... are unaware the Clear Skies Initiative has increased pollution.

... are unaware Tort Reform will absolve corporations of massive negligent liabilities for things like asbestos exposure, pollution, mercury poisoning, hazardous waste, mad cow disease and all sorts of dangerous products and practices.

... are unaware mercury pollution (mostly from coal fired power plants and medical vaccines) has caused an epidemic of Autism, ADD and ADHD in the U.S.

... are unaware the Bush administration is dismantling three decades of US environmental protection.

... believe global warming is a rumor or conspiracy.

... are unaware 'Global Warming' is causing colder weather because the melting ice caps are cooling the gulf stream.

... believe the science of evolution is less valid than literal fundamentalist interpretation of creationism.

... believe the UN scandals could have taken place without the largest, most influential member and host nation being involved.

... believe making a war monger ambassador to the UN will help prevent more wars.

... are unaware that expanding equal rights to any segment of the population (including gay people) also expands economic opportunity and puts pressure on wages, which would reduce corporate profits.

If you believe Fox News is fair and balanced, you have been brainwashed by corporate owned media.

Turn off your TV and read a good book, instead. Or go for a walk.

Foot dragging still

2006-04-19T21:45:00.000-04:00

C'mon white people, shape up!

...It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

For the rest of Dr. King's famous "I have a dream" speech go to AmericanRhetoric.com

We have actually made some progress. It's easy to forget, amid DWB police stops, ongoing prejudice, and periodic personal violence that for many African Americans life is a great deal better, more sane, more "normal," that it was for their forebears at the time of Dr. King's speech in Washington, DC.

To get a better feel for how it was, read Richard Wright's 1940 novel, Native Son.

ImpeachBush / VoteToImpeach:

2006-04-07T12:15:00.000-04:00

Found this today: ImpeachBush / VoteToImpeach:

The ImpeachBush Referendum

I want my representative in the U.S. House of Representatives to vote to impeach President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for high crimes and misdemeanors, and to have the case prosecuted and tried in the U.S. Senate.

Today...

2006-04-01T09:00:00.000-05:00

See my writing and arts blog, "Writing Around Someone"

The 'Immigration Problem'

2006-03-28T06:13:00.000-05:00

Two sides to the 'immigration problem' are being debated in Washington, according to recent news articles. On the one hand, we have conservatives who want not only border patrols along our southern border and to make illegal entry a felony and helping an illegal entrant a felony as well.

On the other hand are the moderate conservatives who want to create a guest worker program under which people could come here with a work permit to do jobs the employer can find no American citizen to take, and those currently here would be granted amnesty if they applied for the permit.

IT seems to me that this argument is between those who don't want to ever see another brown face newly arrived from Mexico or any other Central or South American country -- and those who sympathize with them, but really need low paid hired help.

Let it be noted that there are various ways for a country to deal with the problem of cyclical shortages and oversupplies of workers. Slavery works well for those who have a continuous need for many workers, as it was in the American South. It works less well if there are fallow times (such as farming in the North) when the workers still have to be fed.

Hiring workers as needed and releasing them to fend for themselves worked well in the North for ome time, until the mass of workers began to demand various benefits and assistance to keep them through the jobless periods.

Guest workers who are brought into the country when needed and sent away again when the work ceases is one of the solutions Bush is proposing, one used by some European countries. Superficially, this looks like a good solution. But it can lead to a country made up of two classes, those who belong and those who don't. In the extreme you have a state like Kuwait, where all the citizens are well off and living comfortably, but the vast majority of people in the country are not citizens, and are wretched.

Guest workers (like illegal immigrants, let it be noted) have no right to complain. They can't write to their congressman demanding better working conditions or higher wages. They cannot demonstrate or strike, lest they be shipped home. Thus, they make ideal employees, by some lights.

Another way of dealing with the cyclical need for labor is to hire people and pay them well, and when they are laid off during fallow times, provide them with unemployment benefits to tide them over til next time they are needed.

The real problem

Conservatives and especially conservative employers see this in a different way than the majority of Americans who are neither emplyers nor coservative and would like everyone to be decently clothed and fed, with if not a new SUV in every driveway, at least a 9-year-old economy Dodge.

The liberal view is that all workers should, at a minimum, be treated with respect and paid a living wage. I worry when I hear talk of brining in guest workers to do jobs 'that no American would do.'

But what kind of job would that be?? I think Americans will do any job if the pay and conditions are right. They are willing to go to war, apparently as well-paid mercenaries hired by private companies with no-bid contracts like Brown & Root, even though they might balk at a new military draft. They are willing to work in hazardous nuclear plants, haul garbage, even run for political office when the rewards are right.

I conclude they mean work for people who will not respect them and want in fact to treat them like slaves. In other words, it is working conditions no American would accept, rather than the work itself. I dont think we want to encourage this sort of employer.

I further suspect strongly that this latest discussion on illegal immigrants is fueled not by a resurgence of the imigration problem, but rather by Bush's faltering public approval rating.

Recall that when he initially campaigned for the presidency, his one brag was that he would bring people together. That, like so much else, has proved to be a lie. He has drivenwege after wedge into the heart of the body politic, refused any compromise, insisted on getting his own way in all things. Until recently, his party -- astonished at suddenly haveing control of the federal government after so many years of Democratic dominance - fell into step with him as is the habit of minority parties.

Furthermore, wedge politics has worked really well for Bush. Moral issues that most peple are not concerned about have reliably brought conservative Christians to vote and politic on his side.

There is more to say on this, but its time to go to work. Will edit this afternoon ;-)

'Walkin' to New Orleans'

2006-03-20T06:43:00.000-05:00

Among the many protest rallies on the third anniversary of Bush's Middle East War was a walk to New Orleans.

Veterans, Military Families, and Katrina survivors organized a five-day march from Mobile to New Orleans under the slogan, "From the Gulf Coast to the Persian Gulf. Every bomb dropped on Iraq explodes in New Orleans." The call to action for the event, 'Walkin to New Orleans,' said, "Military families and veterans of Iraq, Vietnam and other military adventures, together with hurricane survivors, intend to make that connection crystal clear on an epic march down Gulf Coast Highway 90, heading into the heart of New Orleans on the third anniversary of the war. The ongoing crisis on the Gulf Coast and the connection that Dr. King made between the 'giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation' will be impossible to ignore."

How the US helps to restore peace in Iraq...

2006-03-19T22:45:00.000-05:00

An account from the award-winning blog, Bagdad Burning This is what happened on the night of Cousin J's 16th birthday party:

... We waited. And waited… I began nodding off and my dreams were interspersed with troops and cars and hooded men. I woke to the sound of T. saying, “They’re almost here…” And lifted my head, groggy with what I thought was at least three hours of sleep. I squinted down at my watch and noted it was not yet 5 am. “Haven’t they gotten to us yet?” I asked.

Ammoo S. was pacing in the kitchen. I could hear him coming and going in his slippers, pausing every now and then in front of the window. My aunt was still on the couch- she sat with B. in her arms, rocking him gently and murmuring prayers. J. was doing a last-minute check, hiding valuables and gathering our handbags into the living room, “They took baba’s mobile phone during the last raid- make sure your mobile phones are with you.”

I could feel my heart pounding in my ears and I got closer to the kerosene heater in an attempt to dispel the cold that seemed to have permanently taken over my fingers and toes. T. was trembling, wrapped in her blanket. I waved her over to the heater but she shook her head and answered, “I.... mmmm… n-n-not… c-c-cold…”

It came ten minutes later. A big clanging sound on the garden gate and voices yelling “Ifta7u [OPEN UP]”. I heard my uncle outside, calling out, “We’re opening the gate, we’re opening…” It was moments and they were inside the house. Suddenly, the house was filled with strange men, yelling out orders and stomping into rooms. It was chaotic. We could see flashing lights in the garden and lights coming from the hallways. I could hear Ammoo S. talking loudly outside, telling them his wife and the ‘children’ were the only ones in the house. What were they looking for? Was there something wrong? He asked.

Suddenly, two of them were in the living room. We were all sitting on the sofa, near my aunt. My cousin B. was by then awake, eyes wide with fear. They were holding large lights or ‘torches’ and one of them pointed a Klashnikov at us. “Is there anyone here but you and them?” One of them barked at my aunt. “No- it’s only us and my husband outside with you- you can check the house.” T.’s hands went up to block the glaring light of the torch and one of the men yelled at her to put her hands down, they fell limply in her lap. I squinted in the strong light and as my sight adjusted, I noticed they were wearing masks, only their eyes and mouths showing. I glanced at my cousins and noted that T. was barely breathing. J. was sitting perfectly still, eyes focused on nothing in particular, I vaguely noted that her sweater was on backwards.

One of them stood with the Klashnikov pointed at us, and the other one began opening cabinets and checking behind doors. We were silent. The only sounds came from my aunt, who was praying in a tremulous whisper and little B., who was sucking away at his thumb, eyes wide with fear. I could hear the rest of the troops walking around the house, opening closets, doors and cabinets.

I listened for Ammoo S., hoping to hear him outside but I could only distinguish the harsh voices of the troops. The minutes we sat in the living room seemed to last forever. I didn’t know where to look exactly. My eyes kept wandering to the man with the weapon and yet I knew staring at him wasn’t a good idea. I stared down at a newspaper at my feet and tried to read the upside-down headlines. I glanced at J. again- her heart was beating so hard, the small silver pendant that my mother had given her just that day was throbbing on her chest in time to her heartbeat.

Suddenly, someone called out something from outside and it was over. They began rushing to leave the house, almost as fast as they’d invaded it. Doors slamming, lights dimming. We were left in the dark once more, not daring to move from the sofa we were sitting on, listening as the men disappeared, leaving only a couple to stand at our gate....

Read the entire account.

The Kiss

2006-03-19T20:29:00.000-05:00

Pres. George W. Bush embraces Heckuvajob Brown shortly before canning him.

Heck-of-a-job: It's worse than you thought

2006-03-19T15:48:00.000-05:00

Investigative journalist Russ Baker has unearthed the answers to a lot of the questions about how Michael Brown, a virtual nobody with no personal connection to the Bush administration, got into a position to make the Federal Emergency Management Agency a horrible failure.

Below is an excerpt from The Real News Project's Unholy Trinity: Katrina, Allbaugh and Brown

Michael Brown will forever remain the poster child for federal incompetence. And the central question has yet to be answered: who was Michael Brown, and how did he end up at the helm of the Federal Emergency Management Agency? Indeed, how did he and his predecessor and mentor, Bush political operative Joe Allbaugh, manage to turn FEMA, a once proud and effective agency, into a national laughingstock?

On any level, it makes absolutely no sense that Michael Brown should have been holding any major government post. Prior to joining FEMA, his professional pinnacle had been to serve as an inspector of Arabian Horse judges; his highest governmental job had been an assistant to a city manager in a small Oklahoma city decades ago.

"Brownie" had done no known political work for George W. Bush. He was not an industry figure. He was not even among the many longtime allies of the Bush family. The only answer the public has ever gotten in the aftermath of Katrina as to why Michael Brown headed the Federal Emergency Management Agency was a peculiar and highly dissatisfying one: Joe Allbaugh wanted him there.

Why Allbaugh wanted him and how he got him there is detailed through seven pages describing avaricious, lazy coniving people destroying the Government and the country in order to enrich themselves.
This government is so rotten that it's amazing the Administrtaion has any admirers left. You'd think that evenamong the corporation becoming fabulously wealthy at others' expense would begin to have second thoughts. If I spot any evidence of it, I will report it here. Alas, it's very hard to read the news these days.

Maryland Primary Diebold Voting Machines Open to Hacking

2006-02-25T21:05:00.000-05:00

Voting Booth Security: Revisited

Watching Freedom Downtime about hacker Kevin Mitnik in prison without a trial, I began surfing around and came across this article on voting booth hack-ability.

What's the latest on where America will be for the next elections?

Read on:

Maryland Primary Diebold Voting Machines Open to Hacking: "omputer security experts hired to hack electronic voting machines manufactured by Diebold Election Systems found that flaws in the machines could result in malicious insiders or outsiders stealing an election.

The findings, released in a report late Thursday afternoon, culminated a weeklong test undertaken by security experts at Raba Technologies, a firm hired by Maryland's legislative services department to hack the voting machines. The report (PDF) stated that the Diebold machines did accurately count the votes but could be compromised.

The authors concluded that Diebold's software would need to be rewritten to satisfy security standards but could be made sufficiently secure in time for Maryland's March primary election. "

Be prepared,
Kate

France: 'deadbeat of Europe'

2005-11-28T16:40:00.000-05:00

I have always thought kindly of the French.

A friend, however, who observes the European scene, has a rather low opinion of employees who work little and gain much -- railroad workers, for instance, or even more, members of the French bureaucracy. As he tells it, they are drawing large benefits from the public treasury without really earning it.

But let him provide his own views.

I see the French 'lay-abouts' caved in to the rail strike people real quick : 2 days.

It is true, an extended rail strike, coming on top of the "riots" would have been a embarrassment to the prestige of the French "Social Model". The rail folk timed it right.

A Train-driver, in France, makes between 4000 and 5000 Euros per month. He/She has a standard working week of 25 hours. 100% free health cover. (Possibly also for the family). Retirement at age 50. The entire rail-man's family travel entirely gratis on the railroads. I may have forgotten a few perks.

Similarly, in fwance, if you have ever been a Minister - even if only for 10 minutes - you are paid a Minister's salary for the rest of your Life. Say, Euros 20 000, 25 000 per month. I do not know what the situation is if you have had several Ministerships : Culture, Nuclear Energy, Agriculture - even if only for ten minutes - Perhaps you get Euros 75 000 per month. Ex-Ministers are to be seen in all the gourmet restaurants - a 300 Euro Lunch, per person. Common sight.

The leaden deadbeats of Fwance are full of stuff like this. It is all over the place. At every level. They like the pay check ; but work : No.

Angie Merkel would do well to consider fwance as a dead-weight : a basket case. They are crippled, of their own making, and cannot get out of it, certainly not in the next decade. The political system is so closed, that at very minimum, it will take ten years to open it. If that is the case. The political class in Fwance is a private club.

France is, really, the major dead-beat of Continental Europe. Every country on the Continent 'pays' for these layabouts. Frankly, it is bad practice, and gives the entire Continent a bad name. Something which never seems to occur to the fwench.
--Big M. [used with permission>]

George Bush would love this guy, going after France the way he does. You can imagine 'Big M' consumes "Freedom fries" by the dozen and were he in the US, would thoughtlessly, automatically, vote Republican.

And yet,he opposes what the Republicans here oppose (they say): living off the taxpayer's dollar, entrenched incumbents.

But the Republican administration is moving toward an entrenched government as fast, as recklessly as possible. They and their friends are making big bucks off the GOP wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Politics is strange.

Rightwing tactics to retrench gay and lesbian rights

2005-11-10T17:24:00.000-05:00

The following article is reprinted with permission¹ from TomPaine.com

The Family Values Sideshow
E. J. Graff
November 04, 2005

E.J. Graff, a Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center resident scholar, most recently collaborated on Evelyn Murphy’s book Getting Even: Why Women Still Don't Get Paid Like Men--And What To Do About It.

When did lying become a family value? Maybe it’s naïve of me to be shocked, but honestly: The family values folks lie. And you should pay attention to exactly how they lie, because any minute now they’ll be bringing their campaigns to your state.

Here’s what they’ll tell you when they’re trying to persuade voters to pass a one-man-one-woman marriage amendment: The amendment will merely put velvet ropes around the word “marriage.” It won’t be mean; it won’t deprive lesbian and gay couples of job benefits; it won’t close the door to other protections for same-sex couples and their families. But once the amendment passes, those same proponents will shout that any recognition whatsoever of a same-sex couple is an incursion into that sacred territory, marriage.

For instance, consider the before and after language used about just a handful of the anti-marriage amendments passed last November. The director of the Oregon Family Council, Tim Nashif, was quoted by the Oregon Bend Bulletin in 2004 as arguing in favor of his amendment: “Same-sex couples should seek marriage-like rights through another avenue, such as civil unions.” That same summer in Michigan, the pamphlet distributed by Michigan’s family values forces explained that their proposed amendment is:

Only about marriage. Marriage is a union between husband and wife. Proposal 2 will keep it that way. This is not about rights or benefits or how people choose to live their lives. This has to do with family, children, and the way people are. It merely settles the question once and for all what marriage is—for families today and future generations.

And Utah’s 2004 amendment, according to the description printed by state representative LaVar Christensen in the Utah Voter Guide,"does not deny any existing rights under Utah law.… [C]oncerns can be separately addressed without sanctioning and giving blanket marriage status to same-sex couples."

Such modest rhetoric won over many a cautious voter, according to polling before and after those amendments passed. Voters might not have been ready to alter an institution central to their lives, but neither did they want to be gratuitously nasty to lesbian or gay family, friends and colleagues. That’s why, in pale blue or lavender states, the amendments are written as some variation on this misleading phrase, from Michigan’s 2004 constitutional amendment: “Marriage is inherently a unique relationship between a man and a woman.” In redder states, the phrase might be more explicit, as in this one from Mississippi’s 2004 amendment: “Any marriage between persons of the same gender is prohibited and null and void from the beginning.” As I’ve written elsewhere, for those voters who haven’t thought long and hard about the issue, such wording often comes across as a mere dictionary definition, a vote in favor of Webster’s.

But once those amendments are in place, the family values folks race, pitchforks in hand, into their local city councils, courts, public universities and legislatures. Arguing vehemently that voters had clearly declared that marriage was between a man and a woman, they insist that partnership recognition under any other name is “marriage in disguise.” Civil unions? A naked invasion of that sacred, unique, time-honored territory called marriage. Domestic partnership benefits? Marriage! Shared health insurance? Marriage, all marriage, all forever off the table.

Think I’m exaggerating? After Oregon’s one-man-one-woman amendment passed, its state senate tried to pass a civil unions bill. Tim Nashif—same guy who said that Oregon’s amendment was only about marriage, and that homos could have civil unions if they wanted—told the Oregon Statesman Journal , “SB 1000 takes everything that marriage is and calls it civil unions ." His communications director Nick Graham wrote to Oregon Family Council supporters, “Please understand there is no greater threat to marriage right now than civil unions .” (Emphasis mine in both quotes.)

The same playbook was used in Michigan. Once that state’s marriage amendment passed, Republican Attorney General Mike Cox insisted that the city of Kalamazoo (and by implication other public entities, like state universities) had to stop paying health insurance premiums for its employees’ domestic partners—because offering such benefits meant treating those couples as married . The Michigan ACLU and local unions took the case to trial, where the judge ruled that voters hadn’t banned domestic partnership benefits. Before the case could even be appealed, Republicans in the Michigan senate passed a resolution asking the state supreme court to halt those benefits until the issue was finally decided. This week, that’s exactly what an appeals court did—protecting Michigan from whatever locusts might descend if state employees’ same-sex partners could fill their prescriptions.

And yes, the same bait and switch happened in Utah. After its 2004 marriage amendment passed, Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson challenged the “family values” folks to live up to their rhetoric by issuing an executive order granting medical benefits to unmarried city employees’ domestic partners. In an August poll of Utah voters, according to Detroit News columnist Deb Price , only 33 percent who supported that state’s amendment believed they would be voting to deny partner benefits to same-sex couples. They were wrong. State representative LaVar Christensen—same dude who wrote that same-sex couples should care for each other in some other way than marriage—wrote that the mayor was "trying to create his own marriage and divorce laws within the city limits." So there!

In Ohio, where family values forces had assured voters that their one-man-one-woman amendment would touch nothing but the word marriage itself, a Cuyahoga county trial court judge has declared that, because of the amendment, the state’s domestic violence statute can no longer protect partners (whether different-sex or same-sex) who aren’t married. And family values groups challenged Cleveland Heights’ domestic partnership registry as an incursion into marriage. Although they lost in court, here’s how the national group Focus on the Family described all this in its web newsletter : “In Michigan and Ohio gay activists are chipping away at the amendments by asking the courts to say they don't prohibit domestic partner benefits…. [T]he stage is being set for a national push to create marriage by another name, one state at a time.”

Here’s why I should know better than to be surprised: because anti-gay groups have been playing this same trick, over and over again, since the 1980s. Evan Wolfson, founder and executive director of the national group Freedom to Marry, told me years ago that he first caught onto this tactic during the 1980s AIDS crisis, when he was a lawyer at Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. Whenever he tried to help New York City recognize gay partners—with domestic partnership benefits, or by helping a man keep a rent-controlled apartment whose lease had been in his dead partner’s name—opposition forces hollered that these were incursions into the sacred, unique, time-honored (etc., etc.) institution of marriage. If everything is marriage, if the flak you take will be the same no matter how small your request, Wolfson reasoned, why not go for marriage itself?

Pay attention to all these lies, because the “family values” sideshow is coming soon to your state. As I write this, according to the National Lesbian and Gay Task Force, 16 states have anti-marriage constitutional amendments; most of those are passed on top of the simpler “defense of marriage” statutes already in place in 39 states and the federal government. This November 8, just two years after passing a one-man-one-woman statute, Texas will vote on a constitutional amendment as well (and if it passes by less than 70/30, count that as a qualified victory for gay rights groups). Within the next year, such amendments are definitely coming to Alabama, South Carolina, South Dakota and Tennessee; they’re likely to qualify for the ballot also in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida and Wisconsin. If your state isn’t on that list, it will be soon.

And so, when they come to your state and start lying, say so. Write to your local newspaper about family values groups’ well-documented habit of lying about these amendments. Explain to your neighbors that the family values groups believe that any compromise—civil unions, domestic partnership, even the ability to hold hands in public without getting beaten up—counts as the protected territory of marriage anyway. Argue in favor of full marriage rights for same-sex couples and their families. Remind people that anti-gay forces want to erase lesbians and gay men and our families from the nation’s legal code and social world entirely. If groups like Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, the American Family Association and their kin could, they would roll our nation back to the good old 1950s, when police raided lesbian and gay bars, newspapers printed the names of those arrested and exposed homos were tossed out of their jobs—the way gay folks live today in, say, Saudi Arabia, Iran or Egypt.

And if the family values folks have to lie to free the United States from the cursed sight of contentedly coupled lesbians and gay men, people who believe that the Declaration of Independence guaranteed life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness even to us—well then, lying is what the family values people will do. Stand up and ask them: At long last, have they no shame?

_____________

1. permission granted by Assistant Editor, Laura Donnelly

Roots of Paris riots should be addressed

2005-11-07T20:09:00.000-05:00

The China Daily says that the roots of Paris riots should be addressed:

The unrest was concentrated in areas that are home to Paris's most neglected minorities - citizens of black and North African heritage....

The resentment over government neglect, high unemployment and relegation to shabby suburbs provided dry tinder for the flare-up of violence in the African immigrant community.

France's assimilation policy has failed to absorb the North African immigrants that arrived to work in the 1950s. Some 5 or 6 million French citizens are immigrants from North Africa, most of them Muslims.

Many of the immigrants' suburbs are cut off from the rest of French society by barriers of poverty and cultural alienation. In the suburbs for immigrants and their offspring, there are mostly substandard houses. Unemployment stands at 19.6 per cent - double the national average - and at more than 30 per cent among 21 to 29-year-olds, according to official figures. Incomes are 75 per cent below the average.

A European friend of ours agrees. The other day, he sent the following:

The true Facts are as follows :
The current running, and flaming riots in France are a direct consequence of a policy of oppression towards ex-French colonial citizens, operative for 50 years.

These Kids have seen their Grandparents, Parents, and Themselves ground to, and treated like Dirt. People broken and excluded - although, often enough, life-long Okay people. Folk who have tried, and given of their best - in the worst of jobs.

The hardest : Cleaners and Garbage Collectors. The French have not touched their own Garbage for 30 years, or more. God knows they produce enough of it. Where do the immigrant sons and daughters go ? The same. Or worse.

"France is for the French," as the far-right French Jean-Marie Le Pen political leader said. Adding, "I say what people think." He could not have been more right.

There is not a Soul on Earth that the French like, apart from themselves. Nobody. Are You really surprised that Youth wishes to put a torch to the whole thing ? I am not. Rotten, dead wood has to be gotten rid of somehow. It stinks, and is braying clutter. It is of no assistance. Quite the contrary.

The above was from a few days ago. Now, today, I have received another email from the same writer:

Bloggers take heart ! France has just jailed some bloggers, and, of course gotten shut down the blogs of some pro-protest rioters. Always in the vanguard of driving backwards, it has been some time since the Gauls abandoned Free Speech. Lying is Okay, though. One could even say, it is daily fare. Not a peep from the blog host server, Sky-something-or-other, except to say they are afraid and "don't mention my name."

Some of You may be aware of the famous dictatorships of Romania, Germany, China, Russia, etc. The Germans are also suppressing Free Speech, but there again, Lying is Okay. Lying is mostly executed to order by the paid MainStream media, who so despise Blog People, but who are themselves aware that they are paid Liars. Uncomfortable position. But, of course, they will continue under any Master.

Germany has never been poorer than the immediate post World War II years. France has a more or less hopeless problem of foreign integration - 50 years old from its ex-Muslim colonies. Chronic, and 25-year, 10% unemployment. Half the active work-force works directly and indirectly for the State. 30%-40% unemployment among the Third Generation immigrants ? The French solution : Jail the Bloggers, and impose curfew.

Remarkably, extra Magistates are drafted in to deal with, and sentence, teenage rioters and bloggers within Two Days. Political / Financial corruption matters take roughly Ten Years. IF there is conviction, rare, there is a suspended sentence and a light fine. And one wonders why the No Future Kids are rioting ? You have to be kidding !

Bush hurts self during macho display

2005-11-07T18:33:00.000-05:00

First Draft - Throws Right, Whines Right

This is hilarious, photos of Bush throwing the pitch, and the comments that follow, on the blog "First Draft." Go look!

Even the phrase 'family values' is a lie

2005-11-04T14:24:00.000-05:00

Okay, kiddies, watch out when the so-called Family Values folks come knocking on your state legislature's door.

E.J. Graff, writing for TomPaine.com ["The Family Values Sideshow"], provides evidence of a bait-and-switch tactic to undermine even the meager rights now held by gay and lesbian couples.

...Here’s what they’ll tell you when they’re trying to persuade voters to pass a one-man-one-woman marriage amendment: The amendment will merely put velvet ropes around the word “marriage.” It won’t be mean; it won’t deprive lesbian and gay couples of job benefits; it won’t close the door to other protections for same-sex couples and their families. But once the amendment passes, those same proponents will shout that any recognition whatsoever of a same-sex couple is an incursion into that sacred territory, marriage.

For instance, consider the before and after language used about just a handful of the anti-marriage amendments passed last November....

According to me (as a friend of mine used to say), "family values" is about love and caring and sharing; about tolerance, forgiveness, and brotherhood; about pulling for the less fortunate. Most of us have little trouble understanding that, even if our particular family falls a little short of that.

But if you're going to apply the notion of family values to the community, then those of us with more advantages ought to be looking out for those with less good fortune. We should accept the differences among us and enjoy our commonalities.

Bush and vodka

2005-10-30T13:48:00.000-05:00

President Bush has claimed to have stopped drinking years ago and yet a piece in the New York Times Magazine (link forwarded to me by a reader) on an interview with his chef includes the following bit:

...(D)id you ever worry that he would be poisoned?

No. Our guys will be in the kitchen, watching the preparation. It's our guys who pick up the plate and serve the food to the president without anyone else touching it.

What about his drinks?

When he asks for a vodka on the rocks, it's our guys who mix it from our own supply that we have to bring all the way around the world with us. Nobody knows that.

Well, now we know.

Um, no we don't. this is actually about the senior Bush. The one who didn't take after Barbara .

A New Moment of Truth For a White House in Crisis

2005-10-29T12:04:00.000-04:00

A Washington Post analysis of the Libby indictment cited a statement by David C. King of Harvard that the president ought to make a public admission of mistakes on his watch.

A New Moment of Truth For a White House in Crisis:

'He can at least give the appearance of being open to criticism and being willing to change,' especially in light of the fact that
'there is a larger question in this administration of whether there is willingness to hear dissent,' said King, associate director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University.

A question of whether there is willingness to hear dissent?

Excuse me, did anyone, since this president was innaugurated in 2001, see anything like willingness hearing dissent? There's no question in my mind!

Dissent was noticied and punished, true, starting notably with the public face slap of Vermont then-Republican Senator James Jeffords, who failed to toe the Administration line. Jeffords, not surprisingly, took umbrage -- and revenge -- by changing his party affiliation and for a while at least, depriving the GOP of its Senate majority.

But this president and his shotgun, Karl Rove, seem to have a more punitive attitude than any president in recent memory. And less --far less -- willingness to listen to other viewpoints.

Some Republifans may say Democrats like Bill Clinton were unwilling to hear the needs of the right. Yet the fact that they also accused him of 'stealing' their platform makes that seem improbable.

And Bush has had no mandate- his elections were exceptionally close and gained by chicanery, as far as I can tell.

And that may account for it. Chicanery wins, that's their experience and their standard. Win at all costs, opponents be damned.

George Bush Funny Jokes

2005-10-28T16:07:00.000-04:00

It appears that the vaunted Bush popularity has finally begun to erode. At long last, folks in the red states are noticing that their hero has a few character flaws. A slew of political jokes may reflect this slide in the polls.

Here's one of my favorites:

The Bush Stamp :

The Postal Service created a stamp with a picture of President Bush. The stamp was not sticking to envelopes. This enraged the President, who demanded a full investigation.

After a month of testing, a special Presidential commission presented the following findings:

1) The stamp is in perfect order.
2) There is nothing wrong with the applied adhesive.
3) People are spitting on the wrong side

Here's another that tickled me:

Bush the Post Turtle

A 70-year-old Texas Rancher got his hand caught in a gate while working cattle. He wrapped the hand in his bandana and drove his pickup to the doctor. While suturing the laceration, the doctor asked the old man about George W. Bush being in the White House.

The old Texan said, "Well, ya know, Bush is a 'Post Turtle.'"

Not knowing what the old man meant, the doctor asked what a Post Turtle was.

The old man looked at him and drawled, "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a Post Turtle."

The old man saw a puzzled look on the doctor's face, so he continued to explain:

"You know he didn't get there by himself, he doesn't belong there, he can't get anything done while he's up there, and you just want to help the poor dumb bastard get down."

Bird flu: what's the risk, what should we do about it?

2005-10-24T06:35:00.000-04:00

The U.S. Center for Disease Control states this summary of bird flu:

As of Sept. 22, 2005, 115 human cases of avian influenza A (H5N1) have been reported since January 2004: 91 in Vietnam, 17 in Thailand, 4 in Cambodia, and 3 in Indonesia, resulting in 59 deaths

Reading about avian flu in the newspaper and, especially, watching most TV news stories is close to useless, in my opinion, since they mostly hype the risk -- "Code Red! Code Red!!" -- without offering any sense of where lies the real risk and what to do to ameliorate it. Should we stop eating eggs? should we kill our pet budgies? Is turkey off the menu for Thanksgiving dinner? Is it a bad idea to take that trip to China or Vietnam?

Several websites offer answers to these and other questions, despite the fact that several important things are still unknown. Unknown but not unknowable, please note.

I did a google search on the phrase bird flu protection, and among the best things I turned up is the website of National Public Radio, which carries a number of interesting and useful articles.

One of their articles is Q&A: What is Bird Flu and Who's At Risk? which carries useful and reassuring information.Reassuring because it provides some answers about decreasing risks.

The virus on feathers and down is usually from fecal contamination and we know that the virus remains infectious in contaminated feces for almost a week at room temperature and up to three weeks in the cold.
There are a number of ways to kill the virus -- heat is a good way. But just simple soap and water are excellent. Also many disinfectants and commercial cleaners will work.

The CDC website has a list of precautions to take to minimize one's risk -- practices that for the most part one would follow anyway, such as caution in preparing meat or poultry and frequent hand-washing with soap and hot water, and what information to give your doctor is you suspect you may be infected.

About that pet budgie: if he has lived in your house his whole life,he is not likely to be an infection source. But now may not be a good time to buy a new bird!

Not promising in Europe

2005-10-22T17:38:00.000-04:00

A travelling friend sends the following note:

The flower of Old Europe's spin-doctors and political strategists are now working on the fallout of a pandemic. Chicken-flu, as it happens, this time around.

The guiding principal is that the Ruling Classes must survive. They will. You may have heard of various vaccinations, treatment, medications, and care. Well, there is not enough to go round.

Some people in feudal Europe think that it is ripe for yet another war. A pandemic is much less costly, and a pandemic can be pinned on God. Never mind that it was foreseeable. The unpreparedness can be blamed on the Americans and globalisation - Old Europe always blames you know who. At the very least, Somebody Else. A pandemic would be the answer to an unspoken prayer.

The advantages of a plague in Europe are manifold. All the pension debts get wiped out. Chronic unemployment is solved. Health services will see their load, and costs, alleviated : the dead do not require medication of any sort. Schools, hi-ways, and public transport will no longer be over-crowded. No worries for Telecoms and such : they will adjust their prices.

Should there be risk of public disorder, the police and military will be held in check by being guaranteed inoculation and health care for them and their families. That should ensure they obey any orders.

On the whole, you can be sure that protection and care will be extended to United Nations personnel : Koffi Annan and his extended family, relations and acquaintances. Similarly, European Union Commissioners, EU Deputies, their families and such will be afforded protection. And such-like institutions, government, and industry people. Well, that about uses up all the serious capacities. You might get issued with a paper mask, if you are lucky. Good Luck to You, Friend.

-Big M.

P.S. Next time you get your obligatory Health Care charges, if you are still there, you might query where the money goes. The response. if there is one, is sure to be extraordinary.

The Value of Education

2005-10-19T23:36:00.000-04:00

A perspective for politics?

Nasreddin had a leaky ferry-boat, and used it to row people across the river. One day his passenger was a fussy schoolteacher, and on the way across he decided to give Nasreddin a test and see how much he knew.

'Tell me, Nasreddin, what are eight sixes?'

'I've no idea.'

'How do you spell magnificence?'

'I don't.'

'Didn't you study anything at school?'

'No.'

'In that case, half your life is lost.'

Just then a fierce storm blew up, and the boat began to sink.

'Tell me, schoolteacher,' said Nasreddin. 'Did you ever learn to swim?'

'No.'

'In that case, your whole life is lost.'"

Thanks to The Value of Education

Note: Education comes in many forms. He who reads the directions, makes a better boat.

The conservative crack up

2005-10-16T16:54:00.000-04:00

Howard Fineman on MSNBC.com:

President George W. Bush may have no military exit strategy for Iraq, but the “neocons” who convinced him to go to war there have developed one of their own — a political one: Blame the Administration.

Their neo-Wilsonian theory is correct, they insist, but the execution was botched by a Bush team that has turned out to be incompetent, crony-filled, corrupt, unimaginative and weak over a wide range of issues.

The flight of the neocons — just read a recent Weekly Standard to see what I am talking about — is one of only many indications that the long-predicted “conservative crackup” is at hand.

Read the rest for an excellent listing of the various wings of the conservative side of American politics and why they are disaffected.

Bush Prison Survival Guide

2005-10-16T08:53:00.000-04:00

The spoof WHITEHOUSE.ORG website has satire and also info about the arrests of members of the next generation of Bushes, including those to whom George H.W. Bush (the first Pres. Bush) once referred as "my little brown grandchildren."

Boys and Girls! Scared of what might happen if you get in trouble with the police? Well don't be! Because ignoring boring laws written to control poor people is not only a harmless rite of passage, it's a sacred Bush family tradition. And just like the President himself, the next generation of Bushes is already hard at work laying the foundation for their meteoric rise to political superstardom! Here are some of their awesome tips and ideas that you can try yourself!

Victoria Plays Hardball

2005-10-16T07:34:00.000-04:00

MSNBC carried a discussion of the Karl Rove, Valerie Plame CIA leak controversy recently.

The Tao of Politics, reviewing the show, notes that Victoria Toensing, an expert on terrorism, national security and intelligence matters and a frequent legal analyst on national television programs on those topics,

... trashed Plame’s husband Joe Wilson, calling him an idiot, giving the impression that he had been totally discredited, and that nobody takes him or his job seriously.

But Tao author Ed Bremson says

As far as I can tell from everything else I have seen and heard, Joe Wilson is a respected public servant, bright, articulate, and highly knowledgeable. He answers questions directly, unlike most politicians or some pundits you hear, and discusses the issues openly.

Things are bad all over

2005-10-16T07:21:00.000-04:00

We have a letter from our sardonic correspondent in the second-smallest independent state in the world. He indicates that the U.S., on its downward slide from civilization, is not alone:

Over here we have the delighfully lethal chicken-flu encroaching. As the Gubment says, Dont' Worry, Be Happy, You may not have Your vaccines, but we have ours. So all is well. :-)

Let's do a few more Old Europe prestige projects, shall we ? Probably - certainly - even Ghengis Kahn was an amateur compared to our modern leaders, whose very breath sows destruction across Continents. Burning incalculable numbers of orchards, homes, and vegetable gardens, and households. To replace them, if these people work hard and produce income, they can then sign up for internet, mobile phones, and satellite tv.

Well ! Isn't that marvellous. Instead of tending fruit trees and flowers, they can spend their time gazing admiringly at grey-suited Central Bankers. A charming sight ! Guys who have no idea what is really going to happen either, but they are sure they will pocket very large emoluments in any case.

MOD (used with permission)

Funny Miers

2005-10-14T07:04:00.000-04:00

Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers told the New York Times that George Bush was the most brilliant man she ever met, which is kind of scary. She only has one known opinion, and that's it. (Jay Leno)

Harriet Miers, it was learned Monday, was born Catholic and raised Presbyterian, then educated Methodist. She goes to an evangelical church in Dallas as well as St. John's Episcopal in Washington. President Bush said he nominated her because she will never change. (Argus Hamilton)

Newsweek reports that President Bush likes Harriet Miers because she didn't go to an Ivy League school, she worked hard, and she achieved everything on her own without family help. See, opposites attract (Jay Leno)

Harriet Miers told the New York Times that President Bush is the smartest man she's ever met, and Dick Cheney's the best athlete she's ever seen. (Jay Leno)

We don't know a lot about this Harriet Miers, but she said George Bush was the most brilliant man she ever met. You know, this chick has got to meet more guys. (Jay Leno)

Harriet Miers wrote gushing personal notes to Governor George Bush that were released by the Texas state archives Monday. She wasn't very careful. The only paper trail Monica Lewinsky ever left was stuck to her heel when she walked out of the bathroom. (Argus Hamilton)

This Harriet Miers pick for the Supreme Court is turning out to be the most ontroversial pick involving the Supreme Court since...George Bush. (David Letterman)

Analyze This - Editorial - CIO

2005-10-11T17:52:00.000-04:00

By Tom Davenport for CIO.com:

Analyze This - Editorial - CIO: "In Boston, we're more excited about the Red Sox and the Patriots, both of which have done pretty well of late. The Red Sox, in case you need reminding, won the World Series last year for the first time in 86 years. They borrowed some ideas from the A's about analytical player selection and on-field decision making, and combined them with a good deal of money."

When loyalty is not a plus

2005-10-11T07:14:00.000-04:00

I'm happy to see the rest of the world catching up to me on the Miers issue. My initial reaction to her appointment was that if her prime qualification was loyalty to Bush, then she is NOT qualfied -- the very closeness disqualiafies her.

Today, theNew York Times has a story about documents released from Texas archives that demonstrate the close ties between Bush and his nominee for the Supreme Court, harriet Miers.

The documents, including many minutes of meetings of the Texas Lottery Commission, which Ms. Miers headed, shed little light on her legal thinking, but underscore her ties to Mr. Bush. Because of their closeness and her lack of a judicial record, some critics have dismissed Ms. Miers as a crony unworthy of nomination to the court but for her confidential service as the president's lawyer.

Others question whether their bond could undermine the separation of powers of the executive and judicial branches.

More... (requires free registration)

Bingo!

It's a grand world (USA style)

2005-10-08T13:31:00.000-04:00

The idea of god creating the world is all well and good, in its place -- but it's not science (it's religion).

The conservative religionists who believe in the creation idea are anxious that nothing their kids hear in school should disagree with what they learn in Sunday school. Toward that end, they tried to get public schools to teach so-called "creation science."

When that got laughed out, they came up with a variation: "intelligent design" which basically holds that the universe hangs together so well that it could not have happened by chance. There must have been Someone arranging it. That idea does not lead inexorably to the idea of a loving god , but the aforementioned christians leapt there in a hurry, because that's where they were headed in the first place (which is exactly why "intelligent design" is not science, no matter how many worthy christians say it is. They started with an answer and looked for ways to get to it; whereas scientists start with questions and potential answers (they call potential answers 'hypotheses') and look for ways to test those potential answers. Many of their answers end up discarded because they don't adequately account for all the (known relevant) facts.

It is my opinion*that much of the universe did not exactly happen by chance; rather, a few things got started -- how is anybody's guess, and a question I reserve judgment on-- and many other things that occurred happened in certain ways and not other ways because of the nature of the things already in existence. To explain that idea further, let me offer an example. Say there are six tomatoes in a basket; you might close your eyes and pick one out randomly. Which one you picked could be by chance -- but it's not exactly "by chance" that you pulled a tomato out rather than an elephant. Reality limited the options. A lot of possibly random combinations have been going on continuously -- are going on today! -- faster than the average christian can imagine, unless he watches his computer racing through files during a virus scan, and then he would have an inkling of how fast something might combine and recombine until something viable happened.

These christians hate the idea of randomness... if it's random, who is running things? (no one?) If no one is running the show, what's the point of praying for preferred outcomes? (no point?)

I maintain thqat even without the notion of a Creator or Designer, one can enjoy the world, one can try to preserve it -- but would have to fight off a passel* of christians to do it.

Let's suppose for a moment that these christians are correct and that Someone created the universe and us. Wouldn't you think they would honor that creation and preserve it? Instead they gleefully pave it over with malls, parking lots and highways, and are content to destroy wildlife in order to drill for oil.

I'd like to know where in the Bible Jesus said God created the world for you to tear through destructively, rip to shreds, and blow up.

Interestingly, although christians seem quite willing to take from the world whatever they want in order to get rich, the natural world - the one "created" by their god -- in some ways seems to terrify them. Gosh, sex! Gosh, homosexual lovers!
But more than that, the world seems to be disposable. Use and toss is the way they like to live. Plow on through like an ill-mannered child.

I hope they will learn to stop and smell the roses... before it's too late and the roses are gone.

* Disclaimer I am not an astrophysicist nor any other sort of scientist. I had a modest high school and undergraduate science course, that's all. However, I claim the right to think about these topics as much as did Aristotle or Plato, neither of whom got a PhD in astrophysics from MIT.

* Passel A large quantity or group, from "parcel" bartleby

The Tao of Politics

2005-10-02T12:20:00.000-04:00

The Tao of Politics: "There are lots of ideas out there. If the Democrats need energy and encouragement, much of that can be found online in the blogs."

Understanding Poverty in America

2005-09-30T15:03:00.000-04:00

TomPaine.com
has an excellent article about poverty in America, written by Dr. Nancy Cauthen, deputy director of the National Center for Children in Poverty . an excerpt:

We need to confront two major challenges.

We need a bold agenda that supports working families so that parents can once again aspire to providing their children with a better future. This means addressing stagnating wages and families’ need for workplace flexibility. It means improving public education—including integrating our schools not just across race and ethnic lines but also across income—and increasing access to higher ed. It means figuring out how to make decent housing, health care and child care affordable for all. It means rebuilding our public institutions and national infrastructure.

A clear lesson from the New Deal and Great Society is that the most successful programs—Social Security, Unemployment Insurance and Medicare—target people across income. In contrast, means-tested programs tend to be meager and stigmatizing. As the saying goes, programs for poor people are poor programs.

The second challenge is to address the needs of the most disadvantaged. Before Katrina, more than half of New Orleans residents did not own their homes; one in five households did not have a car, and eight percent had no phone service. Families trapped by this kind of deep poverty—and living in neighborhoods with high concentrations of poor people—need more than the Band-Aid? approaches that have passed for anti-poverty programs in the past.

Thousands of Americans have been prompted by Katrina to ask what kind of society we want to have. Rising inequality—and the near absence of any meaningful level of social mobility—belie America’s promise of equality, opportunity and justice for all. After 25 years of talk about “personal responsibility,” it’s time to talk also about the obligations of government to its citizens.">TomPaine.com - A Poverty Of Understanding: "We need to confront two major challenges.

We need a bold agenda that supports working families so that parents can once again aspire to providing their children with a better future. This means addressing stagnating wages and families’ need for workplace flexibility. It means improving public education—including integrating our schools not just across race and ethnic lines but also across income—and increasing access to higher ed. It means figuring out how to make decent housing, health care and child care affordable for all. It means rebuilding our public institutions and national infrastructure.

A clear lesson from the New Deal and Great Society is that the most successful programs—Social Security, Unemployment Insurance and Medicare—target people across income. In contrast, means-tested programs tend to be meager and stigmatizing. As the saying goes, programs for poor people are poor programs.

The second challenge is to address the needs of the most disadvantaged. Before Katrina, more than half of New Orleans residents did not own their homes; one in five households did not have a car, and eight percent had no phone service. Families trapped by this kind of deep poverty—and living in neighborhoods with high concentrations of poor people—need more than the Band-Aid? approaches that have passed for anti-poverty programs in the past.

Thousands of Americans have been prompted by Katrina to ask what kind of society we want to have. Rising inequality—and the near absence of any meaningful level of social mobility—belie America’s promise of equality, opportunity and justice for all. After 25 years of talk about “personal responsibility,” it’s time to talk also about the obligations of government to its citizens.

Thomas Jefferson would not like where we are today. He realized that the health of the Republic depended on not too grat a division between the top andthe bottomof society.

Travis County District Attorney

2005-09-29T06:27:00.000-04:00

Write this man a thank you note!
District Attorney: Ronald Earle, Travis County (Texas) District Attorney

Phone: (512) 854-9400
Fax: (512) 854-9695
509 W.11th St
Austin, TX 78701

He nailed House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who appears to have been manipulating the Texas state electoral system to his partty's long term advantage.

Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi of California was quoted in the NY Times as calling Mr. DeLay's activities part of a "culture of corruption" at the expense of the American people.

It's not just politics. DeLay has tried to force a veto-proof majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and his goal is nothing short of permanent power in the United States for his gang of ultra right-wing radicals.

GOP leader has been meddling with the Republic

2005-09-28T20:16:00.000-04:00

U.S. House Majority Leader Tom Delay and a couple of pals have been meddling with the Republic. They've been indicted on felony charges of violating Texas election law and criminal conspiracy to violate election law for their role in the 2002 legislative races.

How does a legislative race in a Texas backwater affect the Republic?

According to a CNN.com report

DeLay first helped Republicans win control of the state Legislature in 2002, then engineered a Republican redistricting plan that gave the state's U.S. House delegation a 21-11 majority in the current Congress.

DeLay was admonished by the House ethics committee on three matters last year, including what the panel said was improperly getting the Federal Aviation Administration to intervene in a state political dispute. The dispute involved tracking down Democratic legislators who fled the state to avoid voting on the redistricting plan.

"Helping" Republicans win control of the state Legislature consisted largely, it appears, of gathering and laundering (masking the source of) illegal campaign contributions from corporations. Corporate donations are barred in elections.

The Republican majority thus illegally elected tried to ram through a Texas redistricting plan nine years before a new one was due (redistricting occurs every ten years) and improperly used a federal agency to corral a group of Democratic legislators who left the state rather than contribute to the quorum needed to vote on the plan.

New Awlins is a feeling not a place

2005-09-26T06:52:00.000-04:00

A man in a creamsicle colored shirt and a soft felt hat of a sort men don;t wear any more --nothing but baseball caps, it seems-- but used all to wear (back in the 1930s and 1940s) is pictured in a New York Times article on repopulating New Orleans.

The man is Kermit Ruffins and he cana't wait to get back to Vaughn's and play his trumpet and cook red beans and rice for his band, the Barbecue Swingers.

Whiskey Bar: Big Spender

2005-09-19T06:55:00.000-04:00

Whiskey Bar: Big Spender:

One of the most surprising things about the metamorphosis of George W. Bush into the son that LBJ never had is how big of a break it marks with the Rovian political play book to date: Not because Bush is proposing to spend a whole fuckload of other people's money (that's been the operative strategy since 9/11) but because he's actually bragging about it, instead of pretending not to notice.

Bush: Deficit? Oh, that deficit.

Even worse, at least from the point of view of your average freeper (or bow-tied conservative pundit) Bush is promising to spend large amounts of federal cash to help those people, instead of pouring into a hole in the desert, or donating it to large corporations, or giving aid and comfort to all those deserving white people out there struggling to keep gas in their SUVs.

Chinese colonialism over Tibet

2005-09-18T21:04:00.000-04:00

The Office of Tibet (government in exile) issued a white paper replying to someof the claims of China about Tibet (that China "owns" the country and has for hundreds of years, that Tibet welcomed their invasion, etc.)

Colonialism is characterised by a number of important elements, all of which are abundantly present in China's rule over Tibet. The most common characteristics of colonialism are:

domination by an alien power;

acquisition of control through military force, unequal treaty; *frequent insistence that the colony is an integral part of the "mother" state;

maintenance of control through instruments of military or administrative and economic power in the hands of the colonial power;

active or passive rejection of alien domination by the colonised people;
suppression, by force if necessary, of persons opposing colonial rule;

chauvinism and discrimination;

the imposition of alien cultural, social and ideological values claimed to be "civilising";

the imposition of economic development programmes and the exploitation of natural resources of the colony, primarily for the benefit of the colonial power;

promotion of population transfer of citizens of the metropolitan state into the colony and other forms of demographic manipulation;

disregard for the natural environment in the colony; and, in most cases

an obsessive desire to hold on to the colony despite the political and economic cost.

Some ways you can make your voice heard to support Tibet

President Says He's Responsible in Storm Lapses - New York Times

2005-09-14T07:06:00.000-04:00

An article in the New York Times has Pres. Bush saying he's responsible for failures of the federal government in theaftermath of hurricane Katrina.
But he's not at all saying it's his fault FEMA screwed up. That's rsponsible in quotes: '' responsible.'' As in ok, I am the president, so in some distant, kind of technical way, I'm responsible -- but I don't personally run FEMA so don't blame me. This is not something I'm gonna be confessing to my priest"

Note in the following excerpt, that Bush does not anwer thequestion, he merely rephrases it. This is an avoidance tactic.
Says the Times:

In response to a reporter who asked if Americans, in the wake of the hurricane, should be concerned about the government's ability to respond to another disaster or a terrorist attack, Mr. Bush said: 'I want to know how to better cooperate with state and local government, to be able to answer that very question that you asked: Are we capable of dealing with a severe attack or another severe storm? And that's a very important question."

In other words, 'Should Americans be concerned? -- good question.'

I say, the answer is yes! Yes, we should be concerned. If it were simply a matter of errors being made, corrections could be made to right things. But this is a failure of will, not ability. A functioning Federal Emergency Management Agency was in place, andunder Bush it was subsumed under the mythical 'homeland security' agency, and then dismantled and unbudgeted. You call that a 'mistake?' I dont. I call that a policy.

Apparently they had no idea the American people would care. So now Bush is back-pedalling, trying to make it seem like a simple mistake that can easily beforgiven and that he will fix.

So stop talking about it, okay??

I fully expect the press slip back into compliant mode and move on now. Most of the immediate emergency is passed, it appears, so why not?

Well, think of what will not be covered adquately or at all if the press moves on:

Is all that emergency money going to help the displaced and ruined (mostly black) people who lived in New Orleans? or going to enrich (mostly white) contractors
and real estate speculators?
What has become of the displaced? Do they all live in Texas now? How are they faring?

There are, no doubt, other questions waiting to be addressed; I hope you readers will suggest them.

Aerial spraying vs. mosquitoes planned

2005-09-12T06:20:00.000-04:00

Progress in New Orleans: The New York Times report on progress in reclaiming New Orleans says officials are planning to spray naled over the city tonight.

Contaminated water remains a health concern. An Air National Guard unit will begin spraying a pesticide over New Orleans on Monday evening, in an attempt to prevent an outbreak of West Nile virus and other mosquito-borne illnesses.

While the chemical agent that will be used, naled, is believed to be harmless to humans, officials acknowledged that it was unusual to spray a pesticide directly over an urban center. Several thousand residents are believed to remain in New Orleans.

The spraying was ordered only with the approval of Dr. Frederick P. Cerise, the Louisiana secretary of health and hospitals, and Dr. Kevin U. Stephens Sr., the director of public health for New Orleans, said the top United States Public Health Service official overseeing disaster response in Louisiana, Rear Adm. W. Craig Vanderwagen.

Sgt. Shawn David McCowan, a spokesman for the 910th Airlift Wing, a unit based in Vienna, Ohio, that will be spraying the pesticide, said people in New Orleans who come into contact with the spray would only notice a harmless blue dye on their clothing or bodies. The dye is sprayed with the pesticide to allow the pilots to see what areas they have covered. The pesticide is commonly used in southern Louisiana.

I have an unhappy feeling this does not bode well for for the remaining residents of this beleagured city.

A chance to practice compassion

2005-09-08T18:03:00.000-04:00

A letter in the Hartford Courant today shocks my sensibilities - a woman writes that the suffering in Louisiana -- New Orleans specifically -- is a punishment from God. (she is apparently not the only one who believes this, and I don't mean to pick on her in particular, but I would like to give those who agree with her some things to consider.)

Lorraine G. Miller of Bristol, Connecticut, writes, in part:

... New Orleans has sunk so low on morals that it is no mystery that it lies like a bowl of putrid water today. In the past, I have watched in disgust as TV reported on the debauchery of Mardi Gras celebrations of drunnkenness, drugs and sex.

This year, 'Southern Decadence' was set for Aug. 31 through Sept 5. It has a history of filling the city with homosexuals who engage in sex acts in putble places. Massive flooding and damage hit just the city days before this event was to begin.

God has stood it long enough, and that city has been judged....

The real mystery is how those religionists know, who like to say various bad things are punishments of god, how do they distinguish between natural disasters and punishments. And how do they determine what is being punished? And how do they explain god's extreme inefficiency in these punishments?

I mean,if a swarm of sinners was about to descend on New Orleans, why not down their planes or wash out their highways, or cause massive pileups as they travel? Why smack the residents who are there all year around, and could be smacked at any time, for instance when they fail to pay their taxes, or go through red lights?

And if it's the New Orleans residents god is really after, why let the rich escape and smack the poor? It wasn't me who said, "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God"

Ms. Miller adds in her letter, "There are many good people and other places suffering the loss, so we should pray for them and help them."

Does she imagine that God will heedlessly strike down the innocent, and only if Ms. Miller prays for them will God raise them up and restore them? What kind of god acts like that?

Actually, that sounds more like a politician.

If she wants to follow the Christian way, she should be praying for and helping the sinners, not judging them.

Report from New Orleans

2005-09-06T06:20:00.000-04:00

On Saturday September 3, award-winning filmmaker Gloria La Riva, internationally-acclaimed photographer Bill Hackwell and A.N.S.W.E.R. Youth & Student Coordinator Caneisha Mills, a senior at Howard University, arrived in New Orleans. Following are some excerpts from their account.(ANSWER is an acronym for "Act Now to Stop War and End Racism")

ANSWER: Eyewitness Report from New Orleans
From Algiers, an old French neighborhood, one of the few on high enough ground that it is not flooded:

"Imagine being in a city, poor, without any money and all of a sudden you are told to leave and you don't even have a bicycle," stated Malik Rahim, a community activist in the Algiers section of New Orleans. "90% of the people don't even have cars."

One woman told us it was not possible for her to evacuate. She said, "I can’t leave. I don't have a car and I have nine children." She and her husband are getting by with the help of several men in the community who are joining resources to provide for their neighbors.

...

The government claims that people can get water, but residents have to travel at least 17 miles to the nearest water and ice distribution center. Only one case of water is available per family. Countless people have no way to drive.

While the government is touting the deployment of personnel to the area, there is a huge military and police presence but none of it to provide services. All of them, north and south of the river, are stationed in front of private buildings and abandoned stores, protecting private property.

The goods that the government personnel are bringing in are for their own forces. They are not distributing provisions to people who desperately need them.

...

Although some of the residents do express fear of burglaries into houses, acts of heroism, sacrifice and solidarity are evident everywhere.
Steve, a white man in his 40s, knocks on Malik's front door. He tells us, "Malik has kept this neighborhood together. We don’t know what we’d do without his help." He has come in because he needs to use the phone. Malik's street is the only one with phones still working.

Malik and three of his friends have been delivering food, water and ice to those in need three times a day, searching everywhere for goods.

...

There is a strong suspicion among the residents that the government has another agenda in the deliberately forced removal of people from Algiers, even though this particular neighborhood is not under water and is intact.

Algiers is full of quaint, historic French-style houses, with a high real estate value, and the residents know that the government and real estate forces would like to lay their hands on their neighborhood to push forward gentrification which is already evident.

"Mr. Bill" ad aimed to raise awareness of plight of Louisiana swamps

2005-09-04T17:22:00.000-04:00

My Ohio pal Harry has drawn my attention to a 2004 ad camapign starring the cartoon character "Mr. Bill" aimed at arousing awareness of the precarious situation of the Lousiana swamplands.

Pres. Bush, who states "no one could have predicted the breach of the levees" around New Orleans, might have known if he didn't go about like a alittle kid with his hands over his ears, shouting "La, la, la! I can't hear you!" It's like poor Emperor Nero, who couldnt hear the crackle of flames above the violin noises.

ESPN Outdoors -- Mr. Bill tapped to help save La. swamps:

Since 1930 more than 1,900 square miles of marsh -- Louisiana's 'trembling prairie' -- no longer exist. That's an area roughly the size of Delaware. And the loss of land continues at about 30 square miles a year.

'Anyone who drives down the road can kind of tell that the land is gone,' Williams said.

The land has disappeared for a multitude of reasons, among them oil and natural gas drilling, sea-level rise and engineering the Mississippi so its waters do not overflow with spring sediment and nutrients into the vast wetlands.

Until recently, the plight of south Louisiana largely has been ignored -- even in Louisiana. But a coalition of interests — from environmentalists to fishermen to oil executives -- have pooled their resources to try to get Congress to pour billions of dollars into what could become one of the largest public works ventures in American history.

A $14 billion, 30-year project to restore the Louisiana coast is under review by the White House and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and could be presented to Congress next summer.

Katrina timeline

2005-09-03T18:02:00.000-04:00

Wednesday, Aug. 24

Nero fiddles

2005-09-02T06:41:00.000-04:00

Good morning America how are you?
Don't you know me I'm your native son,
I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans,
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.
--"City of New Orleans" by Steve Goodman

That's one of the many reasons we can't just say New Orleans, we have to sort of hum it. House of the Rising Sun, Battle of New Orleans and others.
The city is a national treasure, and our president is to some extent responsible for laying waste to it, like so many other national treasures.

I just knew what Bush would say about disaster relief for the City of New Orleans, "It's hard work" - that's his mantra, the one line he has learned to say. It's the line he uses to ward off criticism, blame or responsibility. "It will take a lot of time, it's very hard work."

An op ed piece in today's Hartford Courant on the situation in New Orleans by the former NY Times editor with the curiously apt name, Howell Raines, eloguently states why the loss of this city is a disaster of national significance.

Everybody now knows about the inundation of the famous "bowl" formed by New Orleans' levees. What may need a little reviewing is why the city has been for generations a golden bowl of memories, both sacred and profane.

In Colonial times, it was the one American city where Afro-Caribbean and Creole culture enjoyed at least a measure of tolerance under a succession of masters - Spanish, French, English and American. In 1815, it was the site of the United States' most complete victory over the redcoats. Even the handful of Americans who died at the Battle of New Orleans did so in Mardi Gras style, dancing in front of the barricades.

For millions of Americans who grew up in strait-laced towns, the Big Easy has always been the place to dance - the one Southern place where the Bible Belt came unbuckled.

A hundred years ago, the Storyville section was America's best place for the world's oldest profession and the birthplace of America's best contribution to world music, jazz. Like other young people in the preacher-haunted South, I bought my first legal drink in the French Quarter. And in that world of cobbled streets and hidden gardens, some of us glimpsed the glory and costs of pursuing art or individualism.

This was the place where Thomas Williams of St. Louis became "Tennessee" and where that much-ridiculed postal clerk from Oxford, Miss., made himself into William Faulkner, novelist

-Howell Raines, Courant Sept. 2, 2005

I didn't have the details Raines has provided, but his description captures exactly why most of America considers this city a national treasure. I've never even been there, and now may never get to see it, but I carry that city in my heart.

Today's papers are full of criticism of the federal government in general and Pres. Bush in particular. Bush stands alone among political leaders in this country in seeming to have utterly no heart for his people.

Raines writes:

Louisiana's anguished governor, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, climbed into a helicopter at the first possible moment to survey what may become the worst weather-related disaster in American history. Even Gov. Haley R. Barbour of Mississippi, a tiresome blowhard as chairman of the Republican National Committee, has shown a throat-catching public sorrow and sleepless diligence that put Bush to shame.

This president ... flew away Monday to fund-raisers in the West while the hurricane blew away entire towns in coastal Mississippi

Bush's Crawford Vacation

2005-09-01T15:00:00.000-04:00

Read interesting and humorous item about Bush's Crawford vacation: