Note: I was not able to find this article online (I wonder why?), I didn't look to hard (I'm not that big of a masochist) just on the Washington Post Writers Group's site and The Arizona Republic. Here's a scanned copy, you'll probably have to "zoom" to 100% size to read it, but I'm not making this column up, I wish it was just a dream!
----------------------------------------------------
Admittedly, it must be hard to write content on a regular basis, but the quality required of our Washington's Pres Corps is depressing. Is it possible to be stupider than Mary Sanchez? A Washington Post Writers Group, whose column on Martin Luther King Jr. was syndicated in The Arizona Republic on January 14th. Imagine for a minute that an editor chose to include a column contain this in their major paper:

"If you roll your eyes through the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, and are bracing for the onslaught of Black History Month, I feel you pain."

OMIGOD, BRACE YOURSELF FOR BLACK HISTORY MONTH AND THE ONSLAUGHT OF OCCASIONAL PUBLIC SERVICE COMMERCIALS, NEWS STORIES, AND HISTORY CHANNEL SPECIAL!

To all the people made uncomfortable by the exploration of a century of slavery, another century of segregation, Jim Crow laws, and their lingering affect on our life today: you have a friend in Mary Sanchez and the Washington Post--they "feel your pain." Mary Sanchez is quick to assure us that she "admires" King, of course she can only do so in an incredibly condescending notion that

"Sorry, you have not met the King I admire. I realize this may tick people off. They don't like their MLK radicalized."

Yes, Mary Sanchez, you are the only person on Earth who knows that King was a little more radical than our McDonald's tray-liners might imply. Except if you, um, actually watch those History Channel specials that are apparently incredibly painful to you and your cohorts.

How much does Sanchez "admire" King? Enough to cherry-pick a sentence from his "I have a Dream" speech in order to comfort those afflicted by MLK day.SANCHEZ: If you view a speech about "dreaming of a day when little Black boys and girls are holding hands" as an idea that is long realized, I can see your point".</blockquote>I don't know about you, but I don't search for a sentence out of a lengthy speech of someone I "admire" in an attempt to justify King's apparent irrelevancy to those who roll their eyes on MLK day. Sanchez's column is mind-boggling vacant of insight or context, it's quicker to just quote King then offer an inane sentence or two showing how desperate you are to please those in power (all in the name of "admiring" a "radical").

Sanchez is quick to assure us "that class, not race is the biggest divider in the United States." Well thanks Sanchez, I'm so glad that King's Dream has been realized because you say so! Does she cite statistics or an academic study to support her assertion? Of course not, that might require the effort of a Google search! Well I took the trouble to support my point (it's not that hard) and found that according to a study by a Princeton and University of Washington Professors found on page 7 that from 1995-99 23.7 percent of black men aged 22-64 were categorized as "Nonworkers" and 7.2 percent "Inmates" compared to 13.7 "Nonworkers" and .9 percent "Inmates" for whites. It apparently doesn't occur to Sanchez that a disproportionate amount of blacks might be found among the "at-risk" classes with more frequent employment and legal troubles. She continues her thoughtless assurances that King's message pertaining to racial equality is irrelevant to insist that "talking harmony is the safest way to present King." Thank goodness we have pundits like Sanchez to guide us to the "safest" way to interpret King so that we don't have to be bothered contemplating the lingering effects of segregation and slavery: that might require research a very complex problem and uncomfortable discussions--we wouldn't want to disturb those that "are grateful [Black History Month] February is a short month."

Half of Sanchez's column is simply a laundry list of King's quotes from one chapter of his book Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? Let's dig into this gem:

[Quoting King]"'When scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men.' Think Iran and North Korea."

Again, Sanchez is taking King's once radical words because of who they were directed at, then projects her pandering, non-controversial, interpretations onto them. 'Unradicalizing' King's work is the very thing Sanchez is accusing the MLK holiday of doing when she should look in the mirror. If Sanchez took a minute to think rather then fill up a column with feel-good tripe, maybe she'd think about this: how many guided missiles has North Korea launched at an inhabited area in the past 50 years (knock on wood)? How many has the United States? Does it not dawn on her that the United States involvement in Vietnam is what inspired King's statement (or it's obvious parallel with our current involvement in Iraq)? According to Sanchez it's the celebration of MLK day and not columns like her own that distort King's broad-ranging "radical" social criticisms. King was labeled a "radical" (and probably assassinated) because he was willing to openly question America's own faults: racism and needless foreign aggression...not run from those questions in search of "harmony" and "safety" as Sanchez seems eager to do.

Sanchez "admires" King enough to close with this:

[Quoting King]"'And if we are not diligent in our determination to root out the last vestiges of racism in our dealing with the rest of the world, we may soon see the sins of our fathers visited upon ours and succeeding generations.' That's a message worth repeating more than just one day, each January."

I agree it's a message worth repeating, but I won't hold my breath until Sanchez remembers to write about King's message again because that would mean suffocating until that one day next January.

Think about it: Imagine you're a Junior in high school again and your American History teacher asked you to write a two page opinion paper on Martin Luther King Jr. and you turned in Sanchez's column. Assuming that your teacher wasn't offended by your attempt to pander to those who are "bracing for the onslaught of Black History Month" what do you think your grade would be? An 'A'? No way. A 'B'? Maybe. A 'C' seems most appropriate to me for the following reasons:

• She relies solely on one chapter from one source--despite some very controversial assertions
• Think condescending tone
• And a laundry list of quotes without substantive analysis or context

But apparently the standards of a quality high school history paper are too high for our current paid pundit class and their hapless editors.

Tags: martin luther king jr., mary sanchez, stupid pundits, washington post writers group

-Great Daily Kos diary:

Rusk asserted that "we will not pull out . . . until the war is won," McNamara affirmed that "we have been winning the war," and Lyndon Johnson added, "We should stop playing cops and robbers [and] go about winning the war." That took care of Kattenburg, who was to terminate his government career at the U.S. embassy in Guyana - not far from Devil's Island.

-BREAKING: Bush Made Secret Deal With Bin Laden: No Retaliation for Cole Bombing

-Kinda old, but given Hurricane Katrina is why I began this site, here's a great timeline.

August 29, 2005:

11:13 AM CDT - WHITE HOUSE CIRCULATES INTERNAL MEMO ABOUT LEVEE BREACH: “Flooding is significant throughout the region and a levee in New Orleans has reportedly been breached sending 6-8 feet of water throughout the 9th ward area of the city.” [AP]

MORNING — BROWN WARNS BUSH ABOUT THE POTENTIAL DEVASTATION OF KATRINA: In a briefing, Brown warned Bush, “This is, to put it mildly, the big one, I think.” He also voiced concerns that the government may not have the capacity to “respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe” and that the Superdome was ill-equipped to be a refuge of last resort. [AP]

MORNING — MAYFIELD WARNS BUSH ABOUT THE TOPPING OF THE LEVEES: In the same briefing, Max Mayfield, National Hurricane Center Director, warns, “This is a category 5 hurricane, very similar to Hurricane Andrew in the maximum intensity, but there’s a big big difference. This hurricane is much larger than Andrew ever was. I also want to make absolutely clear to everyone that the greatest potential for large loss of lives is still in the coastal areas from the storm surge. … I don’t think anyone can tell you with any confidence right now whether the levees will be topped or not, but there’s obviously a very very grave concern.” [AP]

MORNING — BUSH CALLS SECRETARY CHERTOFF TO DISCUSS IMMIGRATION: “I spoke to Mike Chertoff today — he’s the head of the Department of Homeland Security. I knew people would want me to discuss this issue [immigration], so we got us an airplane on — a telephone on Air Force One, so I called him. I said, are you working with the governor? He said, you bet we are.” [White House]





MORNING — BUSH SHARES BIRTHDAY CAKE PHOTO-OP WITH SEN. JOHN MCCAIN [White House]

Tags: daily dig, hunterriffic, hurricane katrina, iraq, john mccain, king george iv

Over at Swords Crossed Mike Pridmore
Counters the common wisdom that Bush’s victory in 2004 came from a surge in Evangelical voters:

The biggest reason Kerry lost the election is that he lost votes among white working class women. From John Halpin and Ruy Teixeira (link):

[W]hite working-class voters were responsible for almost all of George W. Bush’s increased margin among whites as a whole in the 2004 election (which went from 12 to 17 points). And Bush’s increased margin among whites was primarily responsible for his re-election.
Almost all of the white working-class movement toward Bush was among women rather than men. Bush won white working-class men by almost identical margins in the two elections (by 29 points in 2000 and by 30 points in 2004). But he substantially widened his margin among white working-class women, going from a 7-point edge in 2000 to an 18-point lead in 2004. That 11-point swing against the Democrats among white working-class women was arguably the most important single fact about the 2004 election.

And why did Kerry lose votes among white working class women?
Two words: National Security. Again, let's go to Teixeira and Halpin:

The basic reasons for this stunningly poor Democratic performance among the white working class can also be easily summarized. Among white working-class voters, 66 percent said they trusted Bush to handle terrorism, compared to just 35 percent who said the same about Kerry.

There is absolutely no evidence for it, yet in 2004 it was accepted as fact. The Houston Chronicle has an excellent summary of Bush’s pre-9/11 strategy for countering terrorism, and to summarize it did not differ from the inherited Clinton/Democratic strategy except to focus on ballistic missile defense:

The new national security team awaited results of a broad policy review toward the al-Qaida network and its Taliban allies, still under way in a working group two and three levels below the president. Bush and his top aides had higher priorities, above all ballistic missile defense…
In his first budget, Bush spent $13.6 billion on counterterrorist programs across 40 departments and agencies. That compares to $12 billion in the previous fiscal year, according to the Office of Management and Budget. There also were somewhat higher gaps this year, however, between what military commanders said they needed to combat terrorists and what they got. When the Senate Armed Services Committee tried to fill those gaps with $600 million diverted from ballistic missile defense, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he would recommend a presidential veto. That threat came Sept. 9.

Bush and the Republicans were still caught up in their fantasy of “Star Wars” instead of holding the Taliban and al-Qaida responsible for the attack on the USS Cole he issued hollow threats:

At least twice, Bush conveyed the message to the Taliban that the United States would hold their regime responsible for an al-Qaida attack. But after concluding that bin Laden's group had carried out the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole -- a conclusion stated without hedge in a Feb. 9 briefing for Vice President Dick Cheney -- the new administration did not choose to order armed forces into action.

Given the opportunity to respond to the USS Cole bombing the DECIDER could have “pre-empted” terror by using guided missiles deployed and developed by Clinton, but instead adopted the same strategy he decided to use for al-Zarqawi:

The Bush administration now had in its hands what one participant called "the holy grail" of a three-year quest by the U.S. government -- a tool that could kill bin Laden within minutes of finding him. The CIA planned and practiced the operation. But for the next three months, before the catastrophe of Sept. 11, President Bush and his advisers held back.
...
At least twice, Bush conveyed the message to the Taliban that the United States would hold their regime responsible for an al-Qaida attack. But after concluding that bin Laden's group had carried out the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole -- a conclusion stated without hedge in a Feb. 9 briefing for Vice President Dick Cheney -- the new administration did not choose to order armed forces into action.
...
Clarke argued that the camps were can't-miss targets, and they mattered. The facilities amounted to conveyor belts for al-Qaida's human capital, with raw recruits arriving and trained fighters departing -- either for front lines against the Northern Alliance, the Afghan rebel coalition, or against American interests somewhere else.

The DECIDER was too busy bravely creating government commissions while spending 42% of his time in office on holiday:

On May 8, Bush announced a new Office of National Preparedness for terrorism at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. At the same time, he proposed to cut FEMA's budget by $200 million. Bush said that day that Cheney would direct a government-wide review on managing the consequences of a domestic attack, and "I will periodically chair a meeting of the National Security Council to review these efforts." Neither Cheney's review nor Bush's took place.

There is no evidence that Bush had shown any initiative or sound judgment in combating terrorism before 9-11, so why is it that after 9-11 so many trust Republicans more than Democrats when it comes to defending our country? Obviously that answer is more complex than any one diary could address, but the definition of terrorism according to the American Heritage Dictionary is:

The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.

Has our society been coerced into believing that Bush is better at securing our country despite no facts to support this belief? Surprisingly it isn't the 9-11 widows who suffer from a Dear Leader complex and aren't afraid to tackle the facts about the sad state of our nation's security:

1. Homeland Security Funding based on risk. Inattention to this area causes police officers, firefighters and other emergency/first responder personnel to be ill equipped in emergencies. Fixing this will save lives on the day of the next attack.
2. Intelligence Community Oversight. Without proper oversight, there exists no one joint, bicameral intelligence panel with power to both authorize and appropriate funding for intelligence activities. Without such funding we are unable to capitalize on all intelligence community resources and abilities to thwart potential terrorist attacks. Fixing this will save lives on the day of the next attack.
3. Transportation Security. There has been no concerted effort to harden mass transportation security. Our planes, buses, subways, and railways remain underprotected and highly vulnerable. These are all identifiable soft targets of potential terrorist attack. The terror attacks in Spain and London attest to this fact. Fixing our transportation systems may save lives on the day of the next attack.
4. Information Sharing among Intelligence Agencies. Information sharing among intelligence agencies has not improved since 9/11. The attacks on 9/11 could have been prevented had information been shared among intelligence agencies. On the day of the next attack, more lives may be saved if our intelligence agencies work together.
5. Loose Nukes. A concerted effort has not been made to secure the thousands of loose nukes scattered around the world -- particularly in the former Soviet Union. Securing these loose nukes could make it less likely for a terrorist group to use this method in an attack, thereby saving lives.
6. Security at Chemical Plants, Nuclear Plants, Ports.. We must, as a nation, secure these known and identifiable soft targets of Terrorism. Doing so will save many lives.
7. Border Security. We continue to have porous borders and INS and Customs systems in shambles. We need a concerted effort to integrate our border security into the larger national security apparatus.
8. Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Given the President's NSA Surveillance Program and the reinstatement of the Patriot Act, this Nation is in dire need of a Civil Liberties Oversight Board to insure that a proper balance is found between national security versus the protection of our constitutional rights.

Why is it, despite no evidence, that Americans in November 2004 trusted the Republicans to defend our country instead of Democrats? There seems to be almost an eagerness for many Americans, whom are otherwise wary and distrustful of the Government, to believe that the Republicans are making them safer.

[Link]

Tags: george w. bush, iraq, security
Current Music: but you can't predict the weather...

I've been a vocal opponent of invading Iraq before it began. I'm not a history major or military tactician but I took the time to inform myself and determined that I felt our resources would have been better spent securing our ports and borders, research and developing alternative fuel sources, finishing the job in Afghanistan, and bringing Al-Qaeda to justice. I may have even supported intervening in Sudan where a brutal civil war is taking place.

Alternative energy sources are not a choice for those of us who hope to remain on the planet another 60 years. Bio energy is not science fiction, and while nothing will replace the efficiency of oil, there really is not much of a choice in the matter because of it is running out. Instead of corn, which our government must subsidize to make profitable for farmers to grow, they could instead be growing Switchgrass and Miscanthus which are greenhouse neutral and capable of supplying our much more of our energy needs. We will not be able to safely deal with problems in the Middle East until we are free of relying on their oil to maintain our lifestyles.

Our borders and ports remain insecure, the job Afghanistan far from over, bin Laden remains at large, and I agree with Rep. Jack Murtha that:

[Link] “The only people who want us in Iraq are Iran and al-Qaida,” Murtha said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” political talk show. “And I talked to a top-level commander the other day and he said China wants us there also. Why? Because we’re depleting our resources ... our troop resources and our fiscal resources.

“The war on terrorism is worldwide. In Iraq, it’s a civil war,” said Murtha.

But what now? Whether I like it our not we're in Iraq and now Iran continues to fund Hamas and anti-Israeli terrorist groups. No amounts of "I told you so" is going to change this, we are a country at war and I remain as frightened as anyone of what terrorists are capable of doing here in the United States and abroad. Well I had one idea after reading this:

[Link] A senior security official said Monday night that stopping the money flow was extremely difficult. Iran, the official said, employed Western Union money transfers, human couriers and bank wire transfers sent to Palestinians' personal bank accounts to get the money to the terror groups, mostly to Islamic Jihad. The funds were sometimes sent, the official said, to seemingly innocent Palestinians who then passed them on to terrorists.

But what is the definition of extremely difficult? For example, "Operation Shock and Awe" used nearly 800 cruise missiles to "wipe out power and water supplies in the capital." Each cruise missile can cost from 1.4 to 2 million dollars, not to mention the reconstruction costs of rebuilding the infrastructure we destroyed in Iraq. While it may be difficult to crack down on compensating terrorists using Western Union, it certainly seems easier (and cheaper) than aerial bombings: not to mention it would be more effective by crippling the financial resources needed by terrorists to fund their operations.

[Link] When you [Jack Murtha] suggest that planning for the war in Iraq was flawed, I think you have a point. American leaders, in the Pentagon and elsewhere, crafted an effective strategy for toppling Saddam Hussein. Once that mission was accomplished, however, they had only a vague idea about how to transform Iraq into a free, independent and self-reliant nation within a short period of time. Maybe that's because no one had ever attempted such a feat before.

Clearly, we should not fail again to plan adequately. So I would ask you about your plans for the aftermath of the defeat you say we must now accept.

For example, it's obvious that if the U.S. military can't stand up to al Qaeda in Iraq, the fledgling post-liberation Iraqi military won't have a prayer. That means we must plan for the possibility that al Qaeda will come to power in part or all of Iraq. What, if anything would you propose to do in response to that?

I believe setting, and sticking to a time-table for removing our presence from Iraq is not surrendering or a sign of defeat: it puts us in control of our troops safety. They have a representative government and Saddam is standing trial. The strife that is tearing apart Iraq was present before the United States invaded (and why someone like Saddam could rise to power in the first place). It was bound to boil over, but how is the United States presence helping? Their hatred for our presence there seems to only be making matters worse. Clifford D. May also accuses the left of questioning the President's patriotism (something I've never done) and I don't know if George W. Bush has lied, but there can be no doubt that he did not entertain honest debate on the subject and only sought and supported information that already supported his conclusions that Saddam was developing Weapons of Mass Destruction. But he's shredded our international credibility when it comes to tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction and it's becoming increasingly evident that Karl Rove undermined our security for political purposes.

Tags: iran, israel, jack murtha

For school I once a presentation (summarized here) on the power of the image as opposed to written word. Wanting to make the presentation as up to date as possible I chose to use an image of soilder shot dead in Iraq and asked:

Why does the government work so hard to suppress certain images? For example, dead soldiers returning home:

-Maybe pictures are too open to interpretation:

Could be seen as victory for enemy.

Exploiting private moment of a family for political purposes.

Or as giving respect by mourning.

Although I didn't give it much thought at the time I've come to realize that I publicaly gave a presentation that many of my peers and potential employers may consider "giving aid to the enemy". After wracking my conscious wondering if I'd committed treason, I came to the conclusion that the best thing I could do was continue exploring my interest in the interpretation of images (part of the reason I began blogging) because I know that aiding the enemy had nothing to do with my intentions.

Tags: iraq, traitors

I came across this interesting article by Fred Hutchison today via PolitX's diary. First to address this:

The presidential primary campaign of Howard Dean had some of the qualities of a religious cult. The fanaticism, surreal illusions, grandeur, and cult paranoia were recognizable among some of the Dean groupies. At times, Dean seemed to be intoxicated by his own juices. Was this a Gnostic cult? Not exactly. It was a hyper-political cult with Gnostic tendencies and messianic illusions.

There's always a fine line between being active determination and fanaticism. I gave 50 dollars to Howard Dean's campaign mostly because I supported his honest criticism of the Iraq war and wanted to feel involved in a true grass roots campaign whose contributions skewed towards small donors and that trend continues to change the Democratic party today:

[Link] Officials esti-mate[sic] that $12 million of the $14 million the Dean regime has collected so far this year has come from those who gave less than $250.

It is my belief that a party (and government) dominated by small donors must be more transparent and responsive to its members because people instinctually want to know what they're paying for. I do find occasionally Howard Dean's shoot-from-the-hip style to be divisive (e.g. that Republicans are the party of white Christians), but you cannot inspire action and involvement by being afraid to offend people by speaking your mind. Now back to Gnosticism: I'm not sure what surreal illusions or grandeur it is he is referring to and since he supplies no examples I'll assume it to be an empty rhetorical dig. There is little evidence to suggest Bush's tactics have made the United States or World safer and in fact, there's evidence to the contrary. And considering the incessant Bush worship coming from Republicans, it seems they have their own illusions of moral superiority to deal with. I'll admit to having developed some paranoia being a social progressive in modern America, but I was not during Howard Dean's campaign: the paranoia only began with reports of spying without judicial review and knowing my beliefs and actions for the last 3 years could be seen as traitorous by right wing pundits and their devoted followers . But I continue to live my life more or less the same as I did before Howard Dean, he only made me a Democrat. I am still young and idealistic enough to hope to live in an America where I can vote for both Democrats and Republicans depending on who I believe will govern best, but with George W. Bush in power that is simply not going to happen in 2006 or 2008.

The beliefs that one has about the human body influence one's political orientation. The ancient Gnostics believed that matter is evil and the physical body is the enemy of the spirit. Some Gnostics were ascetics who despised the body and treated it roughly. Other Gnostics thought that what you do with the body is meaningless.

I certainly do not despise the body or think what we do with it is meaningless: it is through our body that we experience everything. Howard Dean was just in the right place at the right time and being a doctor I doubt he hold any such illusions about the human body. I think it's pure projection of conservatives to search for cultish conspiracy theories among those of us who were inspired to become more involved in the government and community by Howard Dean's willingness to provide a stark policy choices to the American people from the Republicans during a time when no one thought that George W. Bush could be defeated.

[Link]

Tags: howard dean

• teacherken (h/t rserven):

  Marion Brady, who occasionally posts here, argues forcefully that the model of schooling we have is obsolete, derived from a false model (the work of Frederick Taylor), and ignores most of the insights we have develop about learning and about interactions, most especially things like general systems theory. I have become increasingly of the mind that our attempts at school reform resemble little more than doing the same stupidity only with greater energy. While I cannot explore this idea further in this post, I really wonder if we might not do our children and our society a great favor by ceasing all current efforts at school reform and taking a big step back. What if our schools didn't exist? What if we were inventing from scratch how we were going to educate people in our society? What if we did not already have massive capital investment in buildings, large numbers of people on the payroll, and significant number of people whose livelihood at least indirectly depended upon the current structure of education. What would we design to meet the needs of our children and of our society?
  
  What we have now is unhealthy. To fiddle with one part without looking at the overall impact because of interactions both within and without the school may turn out to be counterproductive, as we have found is true of most recent efforts at educational reform. If you doubt that last statement, there is increasingly clear evidence of a pattern of dropping SAT scores as all the various educational reforms - including the reform of the SAT itself - begin to kick in. And while I do not place great weight upon indicators such as SAT scores, because we tend to rely upon such indicators (albeit far too much) in our policy decisions, when they offer us a picture that is contrary to that which we predicted we have an obligation to step back and try to determine why.

  I went to a high school where there was literally not enough seating for everyone during lunch. This created untold amounts of frustration for everyone, of course it was going to create fights which make everyone feel less secure and is an administrative nightmare. Seriously what could be better than creating jobs by building adequate school space here in the United States, but BushCo's base is only interested in building schools in Iraq and Afghanistan...what kind of example are we setting when we don't take care of our own?
  
  
• georgia10:

  Unbelievable:

  
  

  WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush said the September 11 revolt of passengers against their hijackers on board Flight 93 had struck the first blow of "World War III." [...]

  
  But he said he agreed with the description of David Beamer, whose son Todd died in the [United 93] crash, who in a Wall Street Journal commentary last month called it "our first successful counter-attack in our homeland in this new global war -- World War III".

  
  Bush said: "I believe that. I believe that it was the first counter-attack to World War III."

  
  How is it a world war, Mr. President, when almost all of your "Coalition of the Willing", your Allies if you will, have fled from your cause? Al Zarqawi isn't Hitler,   and "Iraqi Liberation Day" won't go down as D-day in the history books.

  
  It was Osama bin Laden (hey, Mr. President, remember him?) who declared that the war in Iraq was "the Third World War".   This President has bought into that terrorist rhetoric. And so he will fumble forward, pursing his futile goal of beating Truman and Roosevelt in the history books.

  It was George W. Bush's reaction to 9/11 that has begun World War III. Had we focused on bringing those responsible for 9/11 to justice there would have been no world war, but Bush decided to make it a world war by invading Iraq. Bring it on said our fearless leader from his padded chair and as I sit upon mine I type:

  
  Dear King George:
  
  As one of the billions who hope to be on the planet far longer than you and Dick Cheney, thanks, really, for bravely choosing to bring on World War III. The terrorists really couldn't have done it without your willingness to rule by fear to further your political agenda. Didn't the royal family of the United Kingdom change their family name to distinguish themselves from the Germans? Given your approval ratings your brother might consider changing his name if he is to have any chance winning in 2008. I suggest 'PATRIOT' (insist on the all caps) or maybe a symbol like the artist formerly known as Prince. I suggest an animated gif of an Eagle morphing into a fighter-jet with FOX NEWS, RNC, and Viagra advertisements on it.
  
  take care,
  
  fiver

  
  
• Can anyone deny that there are some incredible writers at Daily Kos regardless of political belief? I doubt I'll ever achieve the long-winded cohesiveness of Hunter (probably my favorite diarist) or Jerome's idealistic fiction.
  
  
• I read through MSOC's manifesto and while I don't agree with all of it, I definitely agree with this:

  Election Reform
  
  Not only am I FOR it, I hereby declare that if you're a Democrat, Independent, Green, Libertarian, progressive, liberal or just an honest Republican and you don't consider mandating transparency and consistency in all voting procedures nationwide to be the Number One Item on the agenda of the Democratic Party, to say nothing of Democracy itself, then you are either ignorant, deluded or an asshole.

  
  
• Not invading a country isn't isolationism (a common criticism of those who oppose preemptive war):

  [Link]The reformers I have spoken with, including Ata’ollah Mohajerani, one of the top leaders of the reform movement, have made it clear that they are eager to see the end of the theocracy but they are first and foremost Iranian patriots. If the US attacks, they will fight with the government. Moreover, the more they are supported by the US, the more their already weakened influence will be further diminished....
  
  That is because there is very little that the US can actually do to engineer a regime change in Iran. Moreover, the desired changes are already coming about as a result of internal developments, which are likely to unfold more quickly if the US stops trying to rush them along.

  Iran's bloviating rhetoric is only meant to incite an attack and secure the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's power much like 9-11 did for George W. Bush. Democracy must be sought for by its citizens not brought to them with invasion, is it such a contradiction to think that Iran will develop democarcy faster without aerial bombings?
  
  Update: And of course we should take the Ayatollah's rhetoric seriously, which is why we should stop accusing Iran of wanting a nuclear bomb when they're willing to allow inspectors who would track the uranium.

  [Link]"If the issue is returned to the International Atomic Energy Agency, we will be ready to allow intrusive inspections," Mohammed Saeedi, Iran's deputy nuclear chief, told state-run television.
  
  Enriched uranium, depending on the degree of processing, can be used to fuel either civilian power plants or to make nuclear weapons.
  
  While Iran insists it has no plans to make weapons and does not need or want them, the United States, Britain and France suspect the program is aimed at producing nuclear warheads.

  What proof does the US, UK and France have that Iran's intentions are so malicious? Iran has a keen interest (i.e. survival) in not having WMDs tracked back to their sovereign nation because it would invoke retalliation.

Tags: daily dig, let freedom rain

After the death of Buck Owens I Limewired some Merle Haggard at the suggestion of pastordan and actually felt a little embarrassed after hearing the lyrics to Okie of Muskogee:

[Link] We don't burn our draft cards down on Main Street;
We like livin' right, and bein' free.

I'm proud to be an Okie from Muskogee,
A place where even squares can have a ball
We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse,
And white lightnin's still the biggest thrill of all

We don't make a party out of lovin';
We like holdin' hands and pitchin' woo;
We don't let our hair grow long and shaggy,
Like the hippies out in San Francisco do.
We don't burn our draft cards down on Main Street;
We like livin' right, and bein' free.

I'm proud to be an Okie from Muskogee,
A place where even squares can have a ball
We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse,
And white lightnin's still the biggest thrill of all

We don't make a party out of lovin';
We like holdin' hands and pitchin' woo;
We don't let our hair grow long and shaggy,
Like the hippies out in San Francisco do.

But I like hippies! Then I heard that he too disapproves of the President and our Iraq policy. At first I was shocked, has he really joined the ranks of that Canadian in publicly denouncing the President? Well buried below is what I dug up on google:

[Link] "I sing 'Fightin' Side of Me' every night, and I dedicate it to the soldiers fighting all over the world. But I don't dedicate it to Donald Rumsfeld," Haggard said, his deliberate tone taking on an edginess of someone who's fed up. "I don't dedicate it to President G.W., because I don't agree with what he's doing; I don't agree with the way he's doing it."

Whoah, who is this guy, Eddie Vedder?? I wouldn't be surprised if, like me, he voted for Bush in 2000 and just can't take it anymore, in fact he frankly states:

Haggard goes on to blame the oil industry, which he believes is backing Bush, and he acknowledges that even though "I have the microphone, . . . I feel helpless."

Maybe he should blog, but I bet he can't type. He could have someone transcribe for him (pick me, pick me!). What's happening to America when a country legend feels helpless and:

says his wife has warned him to watch what he says publicly. She worries that he could come under attack. When you ask him if he feels threatened, he points to the controversies surrounding Cindy Sheehan, who confronted Bush after her son died in the Iraq war; and filmmaker Michael Moore, who took flak for his anti-Bush "Fahrenheit 9/11." "Look what they did to the Dixie Chicks," he said. "(Lead singer Natalie Maines) is not a little girl. She doesn't like war, and she does not like George Bush, and she simply said she did not like him. And for that, the people in America decided not to buy her records and disc jockeys won't play it. That's almost like Gestapo-ism. It scares me. I find it offensive and worse. I'm disturbed by it. It hurts me to see America that dogmatic."

Wow, sounds like Radical-Kossack-speech to me. I think we all feel powerless right now. Even our Congress can't stop the President and Senate from abiding to the written law of the land, so much so that Rep. John Conyers is clogging up our judicial system with the petty charge of allowing the House to approve legislation. But Haggard hits it on the head with his song :

[Link]Haggard's new song [That's the News] chides the media for focusing on celebrity news and the death of Laci Peterson and her unborn child while fighting continues in Iraq.

Sounds like he'd be applauding Stephen Colbert's brilliant lampoon of the President and Press (C-Span was actually entertaining for a few minutes!). But reporting the news in Iraq is well, treasonous and made more dangerous, perhaps deliberately, by neo-con strategies and a Party who believes they are above the law.

link

Tags: george w. bush, john conyers, merle haggard, music, stephen colbert

Tags: comics, donald rumsfeld, george w. bush

Tags: help support this site

There are many things people are dealing with every day that I fear happening to me.  I don't ever want to know what it's like to have taken a life, even in self-defense.  I don't ever want to drop a bomb or leave one on a train.  I don't ever want to be blown to parts or pierced with a bullet.  I don't ever want to know what must be going through these peoples mind (taken from RubDMC's Daily Witness diaries):

I never hope to witness such a scene.

I never want my sister or anyone to experience this.

I fear the yellow elephants have created a monstrous and expensive war with no end in sight.  Where terror rules the streets and innocent young men are being kidnapped, tortured, and killed to further provoke ethnic strife while crime runs rampant among regular suicide bombs and Bush doesn't even want the winner of his glorified election to take power (and I don't blame him!).  I've fear being on the edge of death and not returning like Sgt. Major Meyers.   I fear the blow-back of George W. Bush's war of choice that has emboldened our enemies in Iran and North Korea and created a training-ground, not fly-trap for terrorists in Iraq.

I fear how our troops and civilians will be treated in the future as a result of chiken-hawk know-nothing cowardly SHITS like Alberto Gonzalez and John Ashscroft shred the Geneva conventions contrary to the advice of experienced Pentagon JAGs, Colin Powell, and John McCain.  I fear what these neo-conservative and federalist academics are teaching future lawyers in our elite law-schools.  What kind of role-model are we setting for the world with extraordinary rendition?  There's unlimited money and resources when it comes to bombing Iraq into a democracy while Republicans deliberately neglect voting standards here in America.  I fear for our privacy when the supposed party of small government creates the Orwellilan Department of Homeland Security that is better at confiscating cheaper prescription drugs coming to America than radioactive material.

I fear a looming energy crisis and peak oil that our leaders continue to ignore because they live in a bubble of affluence and are too busy making money.  I fear fundamental shifts in our environment that will make possible regular Hurricane Katrinas and the Asian Tsunami.  I fear becoming ill in a healthcare system that panders to wealthy pharmaceutical CEOs who promote expensive treatment over cures and prevention.  And while our economy struggles I don't see it getting any better because our education system perpetuates a class system that we're taught doesn't exist and we're led by a leader so clueless as to think Federal testing and underfunding is a solution.  I fear not knowing what to do to make it better.

Tags: cowards
Current Music: Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers: Rebels

It's hard to sleep at night. Your mind is so anxious with burning thoughts of how to survive can only be calmed by substances, preferable a $1.70 40 oz of Ice House. Being poor doesn't justify violence, stealing, or vandalism but it affects every action you take. It weighs on your mind like a burden, it forces a fatalism onto your every thought and spoken word. It means walking your sneakers thin and wearing whatever you raided from Old Navy's clearance rack for years. You cling to all your possessions and your past because its all you have.

Your dreams are haunted with scenarios that you awake from relieved that it's just your weary imagination. But then reality hits and it's little better. You're always on the brink, waiting for the next disaster that if it doesn't kill you, desensitizes you even more. Thankfully, for now, living in poverty in America still provides many comforts, food is plentiful and cheap, the police guard your safety, there are public libraries, and tv or radio to inform and entertain. You probably don't have a car, so you either adventure to work, school, or the store on unreliable, time-consuming public transportation; walk yourself scrawny, or car pool. Car pooling forces you to associate at work with whoever is friendly enough to take you, but most likely your fast-food job has a turn-over rate so high that soon you'll fell like a car-whore. High-turnover jobs force you to become desensitized to the coming and going of the new same-old-face as they come and go.

But maybe instead of working retail of fast-food you're a janitor, which is like being a better paid but less glamorous house-wife: you're only acknowledged when you mess up. If you're paid by the hour but improve your inefficiency you take home less pay, and for some reason it's physically strenuous jobs like Fed-Ex package handling that don't offer health-care.

Human beings are social animals, and that doesn't change when you're poor. We spend to conform in an attempt to feel secure and live comfortably among friends. The poor like everyone make stupid choices in an attempt to fit-in. It's hard having to see the upper-middle class norm in tv shows, magazines, and movies and not become hopelessly envious which clouds our decisions. It's equally hard to watch people drown in New Orleans or come back from Iraq minus a limb and resist the urge to give what little you have to charity when it may mean missing your rent. Our generosity and weaknesses are scientifically exploited by advertisers who prey upon our insecurities and desires. You slap "all natural" or "reinvested directly back" on anything and it's hard for me to resist buying even if it costs an extra dollar that I really shouldn't be paying.

Money is the prime tension between broken families and marriages, and it's not hard to imagine why (except to the Bush dynasty I'm sure). Living with limited resources forces one to adopt a de-facto Social Darwinism philosophy that no matter how hard you try to combat keeps being proved again and again. You calculate a parents love by comparing what they do for you compared to another sibling. It makes men feel impotent and any sexual act becomes an expression of frustration rather than love. All your social relationships are affected. Any friendship will naturally wane when you can't go out to eat or on that even-modest spring-break trip when others can. Soon you feel like a parasite and act out, hyper-defensively, to prove you aren't straining the friendship even more. If you ever do crawl out of poverty you wonder if one of the countless friends that disappeared from your life will one day turn-up on your porch to ask for some ridiculous favor. You fear the sirens are coming for a friend who crossed that precarious line between desperate and criminal. People wonder why you don't talk about yourself and its because you'll just depress them and yourself.

And even though you might be white, strait, and male you too know what it's like to be pre-judged negatively when your credit card bounces at the grocery store or you're flagged and followed at Wal-Mart by "disguised" security guards because of your worn-out clothes. And it makes you fear taking control of your life and planning your future because your past is full of disaster. You lack job-skills because your family didn't have that spare computer to tinker with. Your public school is full of both wonderful teachers and those who couldn't care less about you because they have their own problems, let alone whatever potentially violent adventures you might face walking home or on the playground that day.

And from the comments of Booman Tribune:

Being poor is getting tired of people wanting you to be grateful.

Being poor is knowing you're being judged.

Being poor is a box of crayons and a $1 coloring book from a community center Santa.

Being poor is checking the coin return slot of every soda machine you go by.

Being poor is deciding that it's all right to base a relationship on shelter.

Being poor is knowing you really shouldn't spend that buck on a Lotto ticket.

Being poor is hoping the register lady will spot you the dime.

Being poor is feeling helpless when your child makes the same mistakes you did, and won't listen to you beg them against doing so.

Being poor is a cough that doesn't go away.

Being poor is making sure you don't spill on the couch, just in case you have to give it back before the lease is up.

Being poor is a $200 paycheck advance from a company that takes $250 when the paycheck comes in.

Being poor is four years of night classes for an Associates of Art degree.

Being poor is a lumpy futon bed.

Being poor is knowing where the shelter is.

Being poor is people who have never been poor wondering why you choose to be so.

Being poor is knowing how hard it is to stop being poor.

Being poor is seeing how few options you have.

Being poor is running in place.

Being poor is people wondering why you didn't leave.

Tags: poverty
Current Music: My Morning Jacket: By My Car

Editor: fiver

This site was begun because how are we to hold our government accountable with elections when our one party government works so secretly? How are we to know that George W. Bush is making us safer if they continue to stonewall every investigation, suppress any negative information (whether valid or not), and make House Representatives out of a Secretary of State who was known to have neglected her duties to guarantee one person one vote while our fourth-estate "journalist" elites has become lazy, self-serving, millionaire cohorts leaving the rest of us to figure things out post by post.

Tags: about