Thursday, October 28, 2004

A Shadow Cast

With the audible 32nd click of the old biological clock in my ears, i watched the Earth cast its shadow over a defenseless moon. And as with everything else in recent history, my mind couldn't seem to help but make the political analogy.

The shadow of secrecy, disrespect, and dishonesty cast by the little prince, and the tight knit protective barrier of neo-cons he has surrounded himself with to ward off reality, has darkened Our country ever since our only defense (the general election) was taken from us by junior's brother, Florida's campaign chairwoman/secretary of state, and the "highest" court in all the land in 2000. This shadow has darkened our "Clear Skies". Our image in the world has dimmed from a guiding light, both followed and emulated by nations to that of a isolationism bully that believes that the United States is above international law, "you are either with us or against us", and that under the guise of security no liberty is safe.

Our Country's problems did not begin with the appointment of george w. bush, but it has been exponentially sped up by the extreme "right" wing agenda he and his have pushed on us through misleading, candy coated speech, distraction, and a press that found itself turned into a propaganda machine, for fear of being dubbed "unpatriotic" for questioning the commander in chief (a truly patriotic act). Our problems as a Nation will not cease to exist when and if John Kerry is elected to office of President of the United States of America on November 2nd. This fight will take a long and sustained effort from those that truly care about Our Country and truly believe that this nation "shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Tuesday, November 2, 2004 will mark a major battle and will send a message to those around the world. The evicting of this incompetent regime from Our White House is imperative to the quagmire that is Iraq, a real, ethical securing of our homeland, as well as the fate and future of the working, middle, and poorer classes of the United States. Those who need help the most should receive the most help, and those who no longer need, but only want should be willing (or made) to sacrifice more for the betterment of their countrymen if not for the very country that has allowed and encouraged their success through policy. A move towards the "left" is needed and this election is an essential step number one.

Please remember to vote on November 2 (and remember to bring your ID).

peace.
dave


Tuesday, October 19, 2004

"Jesus" won't save us.

With just two weeks to go there is an anger and frustration welling up in me even more so than before. This president continues to run on irrelevant "wedge" issues as opposed to his record. No surprise there, right, but when i read that "jesus" was now part of the campaign..... Wow!

Having Mel Gibson's "jesus" on TV imploring Christians to vote will not save us from activist judges like justice clarence "pubic hair on her coke can" thomas or justice anthony "duck hunting with the defendent" scalia. He will not save us from the largest deficit in history (covered predominantly by China and Japan) or little george's increase in federal spending of over $400 billion, the fastest rate of growth in three decades (only $120,000,000,000.00 of which has been spent as of the last official update on the War in Iraq). Mel Gibson's "jesus" will not save the middle class from disappearing while both the poverty level and number of billionaires rise. He will not save us from rising jobless claims, lowering salaries, and the loss of so many manufacturing jobs. He will not save the planet that little george and his evangelicals believe their "god" created in seven days from the ravages of the "clear skies" program, the bankrupting of EPA enforcement budgets as well as the superfund, or the rape that is "healthy forests". Mel Gibson's "jesus" will not save us from the privatizing of our military. The second largest number of "boots" on the ground in Iraq are private contractors, who are paid far greater sums to go on supply, "suicide" missions than Our soldiers. Mel Gibson's "Jesus" will not save us from having our retirement benefits depend on the profits and stock prices of giant corporations like IBM. He will not save Our children from learning only to the test and nothing else, because if the test is failed their school will be lost. He will not save us from a "culture of life" that pre-emptively kills tens of thousands based on flawed, false, and fabricated "intelligence" (something this president at the very least pretends to lack). The man that Mel Gibson nailed to the cross will not save us from the rewriting of Our Constitution so that a group of Americans can legally be discriminated against.

President Carter said it best on Hardball when he said " People worship a savior who dedicated his commitment, his life and his words to the alleviation of the plight of the poor and the deprived and the scorned and the forgotten people, instead of elevating the rich to a position of preeminence. And I feel, as a steward of God‘s world, that I should take care of the environment. So there are many elements of Christianity—peace and justice and humility and service and compassion and love—that have been forgotten, with the elevation of a few other items.

And perhaps more importantly both President Carter and Senator Kerry agree that each has "always been a religious person, but was very careful never to mix the church and state."

Little bush is simply distracting an apathetic public that are sacrificing (unwittingly in some cases) their own economics so that the rich can get richer. He is preying on the beliefs and fears of people. He does this because he has nothing else to tell them. This administration is failure to everyone, but the wealthy, "ownership" class. If you are single, african-american, female, poor, working class, a union member, a teacher, a student, unemployed, or a person whose believes that we should love thy neighbor, turn the other cheek, and that the meek shall inherit the earth do yourself a favor and Vote for John Kerry for President of the United States of American. If you don't..... "god" help you.

peace.
dave

There are only two weeks left until the Election. Let's show the world that we have evolved and will continue to evolve as a society. Shout it from the mountain tops, preach it in the chat rooms (especially those of twons in Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania), email everyone you know, and tell them to email everyone they know. I'd rather not have to start the impeachment process in November. I want to support the President of the United States again.

Here are some videos to email your friends:
(Didn't Know I Was) Unamerican - by IanRhett
http://www.truemajorityaction.org/unamerican

bush's bad joke vid:
http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/04/10/con04438.html

Hard work vid
http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/04/10/con04418.html

Exaggeration vid:
http://www.democrats.org/exaggeration/index.html

And for the conspiracy theorists
What really happened at the Pentagon movie
http://www.pentagonstrike.co.uk/flash.htm#Main

a webpage devoted to bush's bulge (the one on his back):
http://homepage.mac.com/c.shaw/BushBulges/PhotoAlbum15.html

Where i got it from:

'JESUS' TAPES GET OUT VOTE MESSAGE....
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20041019-123226-2184r.htm

Carter Hardball transcript:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6281085/

Ten reasons to fire george w. bush:
http://reason.com/links/links071304.shtml

Saturday, October 09, 2004

a fact finding mission

An interesting thing happened the day after the vice presidential debate this past Tuesday. The talking heads of politics weren't spinning the question of who won, according to whose poll (which are being flooded by partisans regardless of who appears to come away the victor). Politicos everywhere were scrambling to check the facts. What a novel idea, if only they paid more attention to stories like that for the past 3 years. There was cheney's "Now, in my capacity as vice president, I am the president of Senate, the presiding officer. I‘m up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they‘re in session. The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight." Wrong! First off, since this administration took office cheney has, by my count, acted as president of the Senate on two Tuesdays, and by ABC's count the two had met at least three times before. And how about this whopper? "I have not suggested there is a connection between Iraq and 9/11." This from the man who told Meet the Press "If we’re successful in Iraq, if we can stand up a good representative government in Iraq, that secures the region so that it never again becomes a threat to its neighbors or to the United States, so it’s not pursuing weapons of mass destruction, so that it’s not a safe haven for terrorists, now we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11." At this point the link between Iraq and al Qaeda is so weak that rumsfeld has even said that he has "not seen any strong, hard evidence links the two". My favorite was when dick mistakenly said www.factcheck.com instead of www.factcheck.org in response to a Halliburton attack by Senator Edwards (an attack the factcheck.org agreed with, mostly ) Factcheck.com turned out to be a Cayman Islands-based Name Administration Inc. When this site got swamped because of cheney's slip, they decided to redirect everyone to the site of Democratic mega donor George Soros. The site's top banner reads "Why we must not re-elect President Bush,".

The mangling of facts and reports has gone so far that it is hard to discern what is real. I'm sure we'll be hearing the administration spin the recent report on job creation in September, even though the increase is less than the 148,000 projected and the roughly 150,000 needed to keep pace with the rate at which the work force is expanding (Not to mention 18,000 manufacturing jobs that were cut). Cheney has even tried to spin the latest, and probably last, report by an administration appointed weapons inspector, which informed the American people that Iraq had "essentially destroyed'' its illicit weapons ability by the end of 1991, with its last secret factory, a biological weapons plant, eliminated in 1996. The sanctions were working despite the corruption in the "oil for food" program. A program that Halliburton was making money on through their subsidiary Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co. while dick was the CEO and sanctions were in place.

So let Fox make up headlines for their website, let the administration define of "small business owner" in a way that includes cheney. It is up to us to research, fact check, pay attention, and then tell as many people as we can. These guys can't handle the reality that their policies are not working, or maybe they are working for them and their friends and they just can't handle telling us.

peace.
dave

Cheney on Iraq in 1992
"I would guess if we had gone in there," said Cheney in 1992, "I would still have forces in Baghdad today. We'd be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home. And the final point that I think needs to be made is this question of casualties. I don't think you could have done all of that without significant additional U.S. casualties. And while everybody was tremendously impressed with the low cost of the conflict, for the 146 Americans who were killed in action and for their families, it wasn't a cheap war."

Check out:

My favorite story of the week:
Vibrator shuts down Australian airport
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/australia_air_vibrator

www.factcheck.org

Krugman's "Ignorance Isn't Strength":
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/opinion/08krugman.html

Bob Herbert's "Working for a Pittance
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/opinion/08herbert1.html

What really happened at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001?
http://www.pentagonstrike.co.uk/flash.htm#Mai

Fox news ridiculous quotes:
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/politics/2826011

Where i got it from:

Halliburton subsidiaries do business with Iraq (Legal oil for food):
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/6/24/80648.shtml

Urging Fact-Checking, Cheney Got Site Wrong
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12901-2004Oct6.html

Cheney attendance record for tuesdays:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/10/6/11163/2940
as compiled from searches at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/crecord/index.html

Cheney on Meet the Press:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3080244/

Rumsfeld quote:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100604A.shtml

ABC reporting the three meetings between the two men:
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20041006_463.html

Tuesday, October 05, 2004

the first presidential debate of 2004

The first Presidential Debate of 2004 took place this past Thursday September 30. For Mr.Kerry, it was a chance to show the country his strength, his conviction, and his all around "presidentialness". He took advantage of this opportunity by doing just that. Standing up straight, in his red "power" tie, Senator John Kerry was the aggressor in this bout. There were no "knock out punch" one liners in this debate, a welcome change from the 24 hours, 30 second sound bite media which we are surrounded by. John Kerry stood strong, unwaivering in his attack on the president. Leaving an ill equipped president to ask for additional time on several occasions and, unlike his opponent, the president repeated and babbled through the blinking red light afixed to his podium (bending what were predominantly his rules).

After Kerry made reference to former president bush saying, "You know the president's father did not go into Iraq into Baghdad beyond Basra. And the reason he didn't is he said, he wrote in his book because there was no viable exit strategy. And he said our troops would be occupiers in a bitterly hostile land. That's exactly where we find ourselves today. There's a sense of American occupation." the president asked for additional time and then met the camera with a dazed 3-4 second
pause.

While the president was repeatedly telling the country how being the leader of the free world was "hard work". Senator Kerry spoke to the rising soldier deaths as well as the rising opium production in Afghanistan and the "hunt" for bin Laden. "The center is Afghanistan where, incidentally, there were more Americans killed last year than the year before, where the opium production is 75 percent of the world's opium production, where 40 to 60 percent of the economy of Afghanistan is based on opium, where the elections have been postponed three times. "

"The president relied on Afghan warlords that he outsourced that job to. That's wrong."

Kerry responded to the president's repeated mantra of "mixed messages" with the "mixed messages" the incumbent has sent to our country.

"what kind of mixed message does it send when you've got $500 million going over to Iraq to put police officers in the streets of Iraq and the president is cutting the cops program in America? What kind of message does it send to be sending money to open firehouses in Iraq but we're shutting firehouses, who are the first responders here in America?"

Kerry spoke to the disconnect between Iraq and al Qaeda's attacks on New York and D.C.

"smart means not diverting your attention from the real war on terror in Afghanistan against Osama bin Laden and taking it off to Iraq where the 9/11 commission confirms there was no connection to 9/11 itself and Saddam Hussein. And where the reason for going to war was weapons of mass destruction, not the removal of Saddam Hussein. This president has made, I regret to say, a colossal error of judgment."

To the "lead up" to the War in Iraq:
"The president said he would exhaust the remedies of the United Nations and go through that full process. He didn't. He cut it off, sort or arbitrarily. And we know that there were further diplomatic efforts under way. They just decided the time for diplomacy is over and rushed to war without planning for what happens afterwards.

And to the priorities that this president has set with respect to his budget:
"We didn't need that tax cut. America needed to be safe."

And as far as the statements made in the past Senator Kerry had this to say:

Mr. Kerry "Well, you know when I talked about the $87 billion I made a mistake in how I talk about the war. But the president made a mistake in invading Iraq. Which is worse?"

The president was frustrated and rattled and you could see it all over his face and in his body language. His image was that of an arrogant little man who feels he (and his office) are above questioning. Senator John Kerry finally took some of the fight we've all been calling for to the president, and all the repeated tag lines in the rove arsenal couldn't sway him.

"It's comin' y'all" - PIC
peace.
dave

P.S. The Vice Presidential debate takes place on October 5. It should be interesting to see the young, energetic, go getter, pretty boy go up against the old, shadowy, out from an undisclosed area incumbent.

P.P.S. The next two presidential debates will take place (October 8 and October 13).

A full transcript of this first debate can be obtained at :
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/01/politics/campaign/01dtext.html?pagewanted=1

In agreement:
The Boston Globe: "Ladies and gentlemen, you wake today to a whole new presidential race. Last night, John Kerry won as clear a debate victory as we've seen since Ronald Reagan outdueled Jimmy Carter in 1980, The Democratic challenger seemed more serious and substantive, more knowledgeable and confident, than the man who holds the job."

"Last night, I'm afraid, the president looked like a man who showed up for a nine-minute debate and was terrified to find it was a 90-minute debate," said Sen. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), D-Vt. "After nine minutes
he'd run out of Carl Rove's one-liners."

Joe Scarborough: "as far as the debate goes, I don't see how anybody could look at this debate and not score this a very clear win, on points, for John Kerry." (MSNBC)

Excellent voter information site:
www.nationalvoice.org

In other news:
British Guantanamo Detainee Alleges Abuse from Jail
http://news.myway.com/top/article/id/430408|top|10-01-2004::08:31|reuters.html

Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment Fails in House
http://news.myway.com/top/article/id/430261|top|09-30-2004::19:28|reuters.html

House Ethics Committee Admonishes DeLay
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041002/ap_on_go_co/delay_ethics_11