Kerry will take us to middle ground.
The front page of the Perspectives section of my local newspaper today endorses Kerry with some very succinct prose about why to vote for Kerry as
the candidate who will take the country back to the center, where it should be
Exactly.
Even though my own politics tend more toward the left, I accept the fact that, in a democracy such as ours, the place to be on a national level (at least most of the time) is at the center. That's where things that need to get done will get done with as much fairness and equality as possible.
I particularly like this part of the way the editorial presents Kerry's strengths:
....We heartily endorse Sen. John Kerry for president. In almost every way, he'd be better at such a crucial job at such a critical time.
Mr. Kerry, we're confident, would govern from reasonably close to the political center, as Mr. Clinton did. Mr. Kerry's long career in public life, dating back to his days as a Navy officer and then an anti-war activist, reveals a pragmatic but principled man. It reveals an unusually sharp intellect, and a president capable of seeing not only the dangerous world that Mr. Bush sees, but the complicated world that Mr. Bush will never see.
Unlike Mr. Bush, Mr. Kerry would be a president capable of learning from the mistakes that are inevitable in that job.....
In an email to family, b!X makes this prediction:
Since (1) young voters, who registered in high numbers, live on cell
fones which aren't called by pollsters, and (2) new registrations of
any kind have a lagtime before showing up in public records pollsters
can use to call and so also aren't being called by pollsters...
...the big story this election will be the media getting a story wrong
for the umpteenth time in the past four years. With the "get out the
vote" ground troops all across the country, the lead of Kerry over Bush
is going to be just enough to make all the worries about recounts, and
repeats of 2000, irrelevant.
(Like they say, the military always fights the previous war, the media
always plans to report the previous story.)
So much of the Bush campaigning and the press' reporting has skewed [sic] things up badly. I can only hope that a moment of clear thinking will come upon the still undecided as they reach to pull one lever or the other.
Middle ground, people. This is OUR America, not just theirs.
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A Stellar Lunar Night
The Red Sox were winning, and the Blood Moon, the Hunter's Moon, was beginning, and I was at my daughter's watching both, quietly slipping inside and out every fifteen minutes or, catching the best parts of each.
This Lunar Eclipse was the first I can remember watching alone, standing alone under the oaks, among the stillness, under a sky that cleared just in time for the show to begin. Everyone else on that dead-end street in western Massachusetts was inside rooting for the Red Sox. And so for those few crisp, clear moments, it was just me and the moon.
And so it began, preserved by the lens of my cheap little digital camera.
And just as it was ending, a magical red apple offered by an unseen hand reaching out of the black star-embellished sky, the Red Sox won.
What my camera couldn't catch was the face of that dark, bloody moon. The woman in the moon, the the moon-shaped face on the statue of Acua'ba that watches from the top shelf of my bookcase. Acua'ba, who seeds the seas and guides the night; who guides the seas and seeds the night.
I was in for the win, but then I went back outside to finish what the moon had begun.
Three times widdershins around the house, sending dark into dark, weaving points of cool starlight through the trickles of warm homeglow, spinning the emerging moonspurs into bright wishes, hopes, healing.
Banish Bush, I chant. Heal the wounds. Protect the sons. Moon Mother. Keep all of our sons safe and all of our daughters strong.
Begin the change. Open the hearts.
Banish the Bush.
ADDENDUM: I wrote this twenty or so years ago. I still feel the same way, especially as I wait for elections to be over.
The flocks are forming to the north,
flying in the face
of a hungry hunter’s moon.
This is a moment on the verge --
of a burst of bold wind
carving color from the mountain,
a glint of dark wing
shredding the edges
of yesterday’s clouds.
I sit between the seasons,
astride the fine line of morning,
waiting for shadows
and willing the wind.
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Bush-- Hypocrite of the Year
To adapt a quotation from Mark Twain, whenever we think of Bush, we are reminded that "a lie goes around the world, while the truth is still putting on its pants."
And what a windfall four years it has been for lying and hypocrisy since the Bush Cartel stole the White House in December of 2000!
It's exhausting just keeping up with the deception that comes out of these radical creeps. It's like a broom sweeper at a circus trying to sweep up the excrement as an elephant parades down the street. It just never stops dropping down on you, does it?
Read the editorial that starts out with the above quote.
And as long as you're checking out the facts, check out The Official Farenheit 9/11 Reader, whcih
is a powerful and informative book that includes the complete screenplay of the most provocative film of the year. The book also includes extensive sources that back up all facts in the film, as well as articles, letters, photos, and cartoons about the most influential documentary of all time."
Facts. Before you vote, know the facts.
And, as seen on some blog somewhere:
Q: What is the difference between the Vietnam War and the Iraq War?
A: George W. Bush had a plan to get out of the Vietnam War.
Categories:
Another Way to Rank the Candidates
Hee. Hee. From here.
Also on that website, a link to information about Instant Runoff Voting, which is something that seems worth exploring. If we had that process in the last election, our country would be a lot better off today, both nationally and inernationally. Not that we necessarily wouldn't be at war in the Middle East, but it would be a very different war with a very different goal an very different processes for working toward its success.
It's that difference that also hangs in the balance this time. If nothing else, Kerry sucks less. From my perspective, a lot less.
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An open post to my Stolen Honor commentors
I posted the following as my last comment on my post about the Stolen Honor video. Fifty comments, all but two male vets, as far as I can tell, just makes it seem that enough is enough. So, here's what I said there, in case you missed it:
And I would be happy to watch Stolen Honor the same way I watched Moore's movie -- buy renting it from Hollywood videos. I couldn't watch Moore's movie on tv because it was considered to be an unfair advantage to the Dems, so I don't want Stolen Honor to be on tv for the same reason.
And, please note, if you want to continue the discussion here, it will have to be without me, since I continue to post my perspctives in other pieces on www.kalilily.net. I don't have the time, energy, inclination, to repeat them here, although I will continue to keep reading any comments left. I do, after all, have an 88 year old mother to take care of and a two-year old grandson I can't wait to go out and visit. On the grand scale of history, it tends to be MOSTLY women who are the life-givers, and MOSTLY men who are the life-takers, isn't it?
I repeat what I said on this post :
There are those Americans who think everything is fine and the past four years have been fine (except for 9/11) and the current president is fine.
And there are those of us who think we need a drastic change in the direction our democracy is moving, both because of and despite 9/11.
All of the reasons for believing one or the other fall into one or the other categories.
I'm voting for change. It's as simple (and as complex) as that.
And, btw, we liberals take it for granted that the "disgusting things" perpetrated by terrorists and be-headers and other evil-doers in other parts of the world need to be dealt with, and we Americans need to participate in neutralizing their power. We take it for granted, so we don't see the point in arguing that. We agree they need to be dealt with. That's why we got into WWII. But the way Bush did it in Iraq is the wrong way. Finding the right way will not be easy. Bush makes it SOUND easy by his simplistic sound bites/bytes. But fighting corruption and repression is very very complex. Bush is not equipped to handle such complexity. He's proved that. Kerry is.
This is my last comment. You can read my lips at www.kalilily.net as time goes by.
Categories:
Bush supporters miscontrue Duelfer report
This from Doug's Dynamic Drivel:
It’s hopless that there can ever be meaningful dialogue between the left and the right. The Program on International Policy Attitudes recently did a "study of the differing perceptions of Bush and Kerry supporters, conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes and Knowledge Networks, based on polls conducted in September and October" and well the nicest thing I can say about Bush supporters is they are a few chiles short of a huevo ranchero.
Your can read the report’s synopsis (full report here [.pdf]):
Doug points out that, according to the study,
Even after the final report of Charles Duelfer to Congress saying that Iraq did not have a significant WMD program, 72% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq had actual WMD (47%) or a major program for developing them (25%). Fifty-six percent assume that most experts believe Iraq had actual WMD and 57% also assume, incorrectly, that Duelfer concluded Iraq had at least a major WMD program. Kerry supporters hold opposite beliefs on all these points.
Similarly, 75% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda, and 63% believe that clear evidence of this support has been found. Sixty percent of Bush supporters assume that this is also the conclusion of most experts, and 55% assume, incorrectly, that this was the conclusion of the 9/11 Commission. Here again, large majorities of Kerry supporters have exactly opposite perceptions.
I’m sorry but there’s just no way to say it but anyone who believes the things these people believe are just too stupid to be allowed to vote. They don’t deserve that right. You can’t convince such people with reason. Hell you can’t even convince them with hard evidence. Indeed even when the person they are supporting makes jokes about not finding WMD in Iraq - they still believe it. How can you reason with this kind of mindlessness?
It is obvious that Bush is a ‘father” figure to them. Father does not lie. Father does not do wrong. Father takes their best interests to heart. Just accept what father wants, does, says and all will be right. It’s this same sick accepting attitude that allows real fathers to abuse their children and if reported for it for people like this to say well the kid must have seduced the father or some such thing. They are sick. That’s really the kindest thing you can say about them, they are mentally ill.
via OneWorld. Net via Common Dreams
According to The One World article linked to by Doug:
One of the reasons that Bush supporters have these (erroneous) beliefs is that they perceive the Bush administration confirming them,” noted Steven Kull, PIPA’s director. “Interestingly, this is one point on which Bush and Kerry supporters agree.”
The survey also found a major gap between Bush’s stated positions on a number of international issues and what his supporters believe Bush’s position to be. A strong majority of Bush supporters believe, for example that the president supports a range of international treaties and institutions which is actually on record as opposing.
and
Similar results were found with respect to Hussein’s alleged support for al Qaeda, a theory that has been most persistently asserted by Vice president Dick Cheney, but that was thoroughly debunked by the final report of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission earlier this summer.
Seventy-five percent of Bush supporters said they believed that Iraq was providing “substantial” support to Al Qaeda, with 20 percent asserting that Iraq was directly involved in the 9/11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon. Sixty-three percent of Bush supporters even believed that the clear evidence of such support has actually been found, and 60 percent believe that “most experts” have reached the same conclusion.
And there's more and more and more statistical proof in that PIPA study that shows the way Bush manipulates his followers with clever distortions of the truth.
I kind of like the way Doug said it:
....the nicest thing I can say about Bush supporters is they are a few chiles short of a huevo ranchero.
Categories:
The latest from factcheck.org.
factcheck.org is a non-partisan website that shines the light of truth on statements made for or against the presidential candidates. This is that site's latest discovery:
A misleading Bush ad criticizes Kerry for proposing to cut intelligence spending -- a decade ago, by 4%, when some Republicans also proposed cuts.....
Speak Softly But Use Scary Words and Pictures
Using a soft-spoken female announcer to deliver the harsh message, the ad shows blurry images of a dark forest and a pack of hungry-looking wolves eying the camera and apparently contemplating an attack.
The announcer says that “after the first terrorist attack on America ” Kerry “voted to slash America ’s intelligence operations.” The ad is misleading in several ways, some of which we went over last March when President Bush first accused Kerry of trying to “gut” the intelligence budget.
Here are the ways this ad misleads voters:
Go there to read the whole misrepresentation, just one of many many that Bush's last minute ads are thowing out to an already badly misled public.
Categories:
my road not yet traveled
I have said it here before: if Bush wins, I'm going into hiding.
Actually, I'll be moving whether or not Bush wins, going to place that's perfect for hiding. If Kerry wins, all the better because it's part of a college town that has a young progressive mayor and sidewalk stores that still sell tie-dyed clothes. So, I win, either way.
Autumn is vibrant in the Northeast. Yesterday, I drove down the road I will travel, toward the Catskill escarpment at the foot of which I will reside, to let my mother enjoy the peaking leaves, glowing despite the cloudy skies.
We turn up the side road that meanders past thickly wooded lots where various artists, homemakers, and others who find their peace in nature have settled in. Possum live here. Possum and rabbits and deer. The sky starts to clear, and the foliage glistens.
We can see the stoney ridge more clearly now, jutting up from behind the thick stands of trees. We don't notice any rock climbers today, although they often arrive in droves, their voices echoing from ridge to hill
We turn in the driveway that snakes to my brother's house. I can barely see it behind the trees. I can't see it at all in the picture. Such sweet solitude.
No matter what happens with the election, I'm looking forward to changing the view from my window from this:
to this:
I don't know if my mother will be as happy with the move as I. But I figure that I gave her five years of my life as her sole caregiver in an environment that was confining and depressing. I'll be glad to give her five more years, but this time with help and the comfort of stone that has not been poured and set at right angles. And then there are the trees.
Categories:
Veterans against Kerry: Read this.
Lets' Right the Record on
1. Kerry's actual testimony before Congress about Vietnam, and
2. Kerry's voting record on Iraq.
1. Kerry's testimony
[Please note: the Editorial Notes are not mine; they are part of the online piece by Dr. Ernest Bolt, University of Richmond. The copy of Kerry's statement is part of a study module prepared Summer 1999 by Dr. Ernest Bolt and Amanda Garrett, University of Richmond graduate student in History. This online module is part of a course development project of the Associated Colleges of the South. ]
Statement of Mr. John Kerry
...I am not here as John Kerry. I am here as one member of the group of 1,000 which is a small representation of a very much larger group of veterans in this country, and were it possible for all of them to sit at this table they would be here and have the same kind of testimony....
WINTER SOLDIER INVESTIGATION
I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command....
They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.
We call this investigation the "Winter Soldier Investigation." The term "Winter Soldier" is a play on words of Thomas Paine in 1776 when he spoke of the Sunshine Patriot and summertime soldiers who deserted at Valley Forge because the going was rough.
We who have come here to Washington have come here because we f eel we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back to this country; we could be quiet; we could hold our silence; we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel because of what threatens this country, the fact that the crimes threaten it, not reds, and not redcoats but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out.
FEELINGS OF MEN COMING BACK FROM VIETNAM
...In our opinion, and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam, nothing which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia, or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart....
WHAT WAS FOUND AND LEARNED IN VIETNAM
We found that not only was it a civil war, an effort by a people who had for years been seeking their liberation from any colonial influence whatsoever, but also we found that the Vietnamese whom we had enthusiastically molded after our own image were hard put to take up the fight against the threat we were supposedly saving them from.
We found most people didn't even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart. They wanted everything to do with the war, particularly with this foreign presence of the United States of America, to leave them alone on peace, and they practiced the art of survival by siding with whichever military force was present at a particular time, be it Vietcong, North Vietnamese, or American.
We found also that all too often American men were dying in those rice paddies for want of support from their allies. We saw first hand how money from American taxes was used for a corrupt dictatorial regime. We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by our flag, as blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs as well as by search and destroy missions, as well as by Vietcong terrorism, and yet we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Viet Cong.
We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum.
We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of orientals.
We watched the U.S. falsification of body counts, in fact the glorification of body counts. We listened while month after month we were told the back of the enemy was about to break. We fought using weapons against "oriental human beings," with quotation marks around that. We fought using weapons against those people which I do not believe this country would dream of using were we fighting in the European theater or let us say a non-third-world people theater, and so we watched while men charged up hills because a general said that hill has to be taken, and after losing one platoon or two platoons they marched away to leave the high for the reoccupation by the North Vietnamese because we watched pride allow the most unimportant of battles to be blown into extravaganzas, because we couldn't lose, and we couldn't retreat, and because it didn't matter how many American bodies were lost to prove that point. And so there were Hamburger Hills and Khe Sanhs and Hill 881's and Fire Base 6's and so many others.
VIETNAMIZATION
Now we are told that the men who fought there must watch quietly while American lives are lost so that we can exercise the incredible arrogance of Vietnamizing the Vietnamese....
Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the United States doen'st have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say they we have made a mistake. Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, "the first President to lose a war."
We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? But we are trying to do that, and we are doing it with thousands of rationalizations, and if you read carefully the President's last speech to the people of this country, you can see that he says and says clearly:
But the issue, gentlemen, the issue is communism, and the question is whether or not we will leave that country to the Communists or whether or not we will try to give it hope to be a free people.
But the point is they are not a free people now under us. They are not a free people, and we cannot fight communism all over the world, and I think we should have learned that lesson by now....
REQUEST FOR ACTION BY CONGRESS
We are asking here in Washington for some action, action from the Congress of the United States of America which as the power to raise and maintain armies, and which by the Constitution also has the power to declare war.
We have come here, not to the President, because we believe that this body can be responsive to the will of the people, and we believe that the will of the people says that we should be out of Vietnam now....
WHERE IS THE LEADERSHIP?
We are also here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently, where are the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership? We are here to ask where are McNamara, Rostow, Bundy, Gilpatric, and so many others. Where are they now that we, the men whom they sent off to war, have returned? These are commanders who have deserted their troops, and there is no more serious crime in the law of war. The Army says they never leave their wounded.
The Marines say they never leave even their dead. These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude. They have left the real stuff of their reputations bleaching begin them in the sun in this country....
Editorial Note: Concluding his formal statement, Kerry commented about administration attempts to disown veterans and looked forward thirty years (to 2001) when the nation could look back proudly to a time when it turned from this war and the hate and fears driving us in Vietnam.
Following his formal testimony, the committee members questioned him during their discussion of some of the legislative proposals under consideration. In the course of this discussion, Kerry spoke with considerable familiarity and understanding about disengagement and withdrawal proposals being considered. In response to a question from Senator Aiken, Kerry endorsed "extensive reparations to the people of Indochina" as a "very definite obligation" of the U.S. (p. 191).
Kerry also commented on growth of American opposition to the war, the actions of Lt. Calley at My Lai, and strategic implications of the war.
...It is my opinion that the United States is still reacting in very much the 1945 mood and postwar cold-war period when we reacted to the forces which were at work in World War II and came out of it with this paranoia about the Russians and how the world was going to be divided up between the super powers, and the foreign policy of John Foster Dulles which was responsible for the created of the SEATO treaty, which was, in fact, a direct reaction to this so-called Communist monolith. And I think we are reacting under cold-war precepts which are no longer applicable.
I say that because so long as we have the kind of strike force we have, and I am not party to the secret statistics which you gentlemen have here, but as long as we have the ones which we of the public know we have, I think we have a strike force of such capability and I think we have a strike force simply in our Polaris submarines, in the 62 or some Polaris submarines, which are constantly roaming around under the sea. And I know as a Navy man that underwater detection is the hardest kind in the world, and they have not perfected it, that we have the ability to destroy the human race. Why do we have to, therefore, consider and keep considering threats?
At any time that an actual threat is posed to this country or to the security and freedom I will be one of the first people to pick up a gun and defend it, but right now we are reacting with paranoia t this question of peace and the people taking over the world. I think if were are ever going to get down to the question of dropping those bombs most of us in my generation simply don't want to be alive afterwards because of the kind of world that it would be with mutations and the genetic probabilities of freaks and everything else.
Therefore, I think it is ridiculous to assume we have to play this power game based on total warfare. I think there will be guerrilla wars and I think we must have a capability to fight those. And we may have to fight them somewhere based on legitimate threats, but we must learn, in this country, how to define those threats and that is what I would say to the question of world peace. I think it is bogus, totally artificial. There is no threat. The Communists are not about to take over our McDonald hamburger stands. [Laughter.]...
Editorial Note: Kerry's exchange with the senators consumed two complete hours, ranging from earlier French experiences in Indochina to the status of the war in 1971. Kerry faulted the electronic press for failure to report a recent antiwar conference because of its lack of "visual" appeal and entertainment value. He also cited the "exorbitant" power of the Executive, faulting Congress.
In response to Senator Symington's inquiry about American men and women still in Vietnam and their attitude toward opposition to the war within Congress, Kerry offered the following comments.
...I don't want to get into the game of saying I represent everybody over there, but let me try to say as straightforwardly as I can, we had an advertisement, ran full page, to show you what the troops read. It ran in Playboy and the response to it within two and a half weeks from Vietnam was 1,200 members. We received initially about 50 to 80 letters a day from troops arriving at our New York office. Some of these letters -- and I wanted to bring some down, I didn't know we were going to be testifying here and I can make them available to you -- are very, very moving, some of them written by hospital corpsmen on things, on casualty report sheets which say, you know, "Get us out of here." "You are the only hope he have got." "You have got to get us back; it is crazy." We received recently 80 members of the 101st Airborne signed up in one letter. Forty members from a helicopter assault squadron, crash and rescue mission signed up in another one.
I think they are expressing, some of these troops, solidarity with us, right now by wearing black arm bands and Vietnam Veterans Against the War buttons. They want to come out and I think they are looking at the people who want to try to get them out as a help.
However, I do recognize there are some men who are in the military for life. The job in the military is to fight wars. When they have a war to fight, they are just as happy in a sense, and I am sure that these men feel they are being stabbed in the back. But, at the same time, I think to most of them the realization of the emptiness, the hollowness, the absurdity of Vietnam has finally hit home, and I feel is they did come home the recrimination would certainly not come from the right, from the military. I don't think there would be that problem....
Editorial Note: Kerry returned to the theme of the mood of troops in Vietnam and back home as he concluded his testimony.
...You see the mind is changing over there and a search and destroy mission is a search and avoid mission, and troops don't -- you know, like that revolt that took place that was mentioned in the New York Times when they refused to go in after a piece of dead machinery, because it doesn't have any value. They are making their own judgments.
There is a GI movement in this country now as well as over there, and soon these people, these men, who are prescribing wars for these young men to fight are going to find out they are going to have to find some other men to fight them because we are going to change prescriptions. They are going to have to change doctors, because we are not going to fight for them. that is what they are going to realize. There is now a more militant attitude even within the military itself....
____________________
for a the complete text of Kerry's statement, go here on pbs.org.
___________________________
2. Kerry's actual voting record regarding the war in Iraq
Before George W. Bush's political operatives started pounding on John Kerry for voting against certain weapons systems during his years in the Senate, they should have taken a look at this quotation:
After completing 20 planes for which we have begun procurement, we will shut down further production of the B-2 bomber. We will cancel the small ICBM program. We will cease production of new warheads for our sea-based ballistic missiles. We will stop all new production of the Peacekeeper [MX] missile. And we will not purchase any more advanced cruise missiles. … The reductions I have approved will save us an additional $50 billion over the next five years. By 1997 we will have cut defense by 30 percent since I took office.
The speaker was President George H.W. Bush, the current president's father, in his State of the Union address on Jan. 28, 1992.
They should also have looked up some testimony by Dick Cheney, the first President Bush's secretary of defense (and now vice president), three days later, boasting of similar slashings before the Senate Armed Services Committee:
Overall, since I've been Secretary, we will have taken the five-year defense program down by well over $300 billion. That's the peace dividend. … And now we're adding to that another $50 billion … of so-called peace dividend.
Cheney proceeded to lay into the then-Democratically controlled Congress for refusing to cut more weapons systems.
Congress has let me cancel a few programs. But you've squabbled and sometimes bickered and horse-traded and ended up forcing me to spend money on weapons that don't fill a vital need in these times of tight budgets and new requirements. … You've directed me to buy more M-1s, F-14s, and F-16s—all great systems … but we have enough of them.
The Republican operatives might also have noticed Gen. Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at the same hearings, testifying about plans to cut Army divisions by one-third, Navy aircraft carriers by one-fifth, and active armed forces by half a million men and women, to say noting of "major reductions" in fighter wings and strategic bombers.
Granted, these reductions were made in the wake of the Soviet Union's dissolution and the Cold War's demise. But that's just the point: Proposed cuts must be examined in context. A vote against a particular weapons system doesn't necessarily indicate indifference toward national defense.
Looking at the weapons that the RNC says Kerry voted to cut, a good case could be made, certainly at the time, that some of them (the B-2 bomber and President Reagan's "Star Wars" missile-defense program) should have been cut. As for the others (the M-1 tank and the F-14, F-15, and F-16 fighter planes, among others), Kerry didn't really vote to cut them.
The claim about these votes was made in the Republican National Committee "Research Briefing" of Feb. 22. The report lists 13 weapons systems that Kerry voted to cut—the ones cited above, as well as Patriot air-defense missiles, Tomahawk cruise missiles, and AH64 Apache helicopters, among others.
It is instructive, however, to look at the footnotes. Almost all of them cite Kerry's vote on Senate bill S. 3189 (CQ Vote No. 273) on Oct. 15, 1990. Do a Google search, and you will learn that S. 3189 was the Fiscal Year 1991 Defense Appropriations Act, and CQ Vote No. 273 was a vote on the entire bill. There was no vote on those weapons systems specifically.
On a couple of the weapons, the RNC report cites H.R. 5803 and H.R. 2126. Look those up. They turn out to be votes on the House-Senate conference committee reports for the defense appropriations bills in October 1990 (the same year as S. 3189) and September 1995.
In other words, Kerry was one of 16 senators (including five Republicans) to vote against a defense appropriations bill 14 years ago. He was also one of an unspecified number of senators to vote against a conference report on a defense bill nine years ago. The RNC takes these facts and extrapolates from them that he voted against a dozen weapons systems that were in those bills. The Republicans could have claimed, with equal logic, that Kerry voted to abolish the entire U.S. armed forces, but that might have raised suspicions. Claiming that he opposed a list of specific weapons systems has an air of plausibility. On close examination, though, it reeks of rank dishonesty.
Another bit of dishonesty is RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie's claim, at a news conference today, that in 1995, Kerry voted to cut $1.5 billion from the intelligence budget. John Pike, who runs the invaluable globalsecurity.org Web site, told me what that cut was about: The Air Force's National Reconnaissance Office had appropriated that much money to operate a spy satellite that, as things turned out, it never launched. So the Senate passed an amendment rescinding the money—not to cancel a program, but to get a refund on a program that the NRO had canceled. Kerry voted for the amendment, as did a majority of his colleagues.
An examination of Kerry's real voting record during his 20 years in the Senate indicates that he did vote to restrict or cut certain weapons systems. From 1989-92, he supported amendments to halt production of the B-2 stealth bomber. (In 1992, George H.W. Bush halted it himself.) It is true that the B-2 came in handy during the recent war in Iraq—but for reasons having nothing to do with its original rationale.
The B-2 came into being as an airplane that would drop nuclear bombs on the Soviet Union. The program was very controversial at the time. It was extremely expensive. Its stealth technology had serious technical bugs. More to the point, a grand debate was raging in defense circles at the time over whether, in an age of intercontinental ballistic missiles and long-range cruise missiles, the United States needed any new bomber that would fly into the Soviet Union's heavily defended airspace. The debate was not just between hawks and doves; advocates and critics could be found among both.
In the latest war, B-2s—modified to carry conventional munitions—were among the planes that dropped smart bombs on Iraq. But that was like hopping in the Lincoln stretch limo to drop Grandma off at church. As for the other stealth plane used in both Iraq wars—the F-117, which was designed for non-nuclear missions—there is no indication that Kerry ever opposed it.
The RNC doesn't mention it, but Kerry also supported amendments to limit (but not kill) funding for President Reagan's fanciful (and eventually much-altered) "Star Wars" missile-defense system. Kerry sponsored amendments to ban tests of anti-satellite weapons, as long as the Soviet Union also refrained from testing. In retrospect, trying to limit the vulnerability of satellites was a very good idea since many of our smart bombs are guided to their targets by signals from satellites.
Kerry also voted for amendments to restrict the deployment of the MX missile (Reagan changed its deployment plan several times, and Bush finally stopped the program altogether) and to ban the production of nerve-gas weapons.
At the same time, in 1991, Kerry opposed an amendment to impose an arbitrary 2 percent cut in the military budget. In 1992, he opposed an amendment to cut Pentagon intelligence programs by $1 billion. In 1994, he voted against a motion to cut $30.5 billion from the defense budget over the next five years and to redistribute the money to programs for education and the disabled. That same year, he opposed an amendment to postpone construction of a new aircraft carrier. In 1996, he opposed a motion to cut six F-18 jet fighters from the budget. In 1999, he voted against a motion to terminate the Trident II missile. (Interestingly, the F-18 and Trident II are among the weapons systems that the RNC claims Kerry opposed.)
Are there votes in Kerry's 20-year record as a senator that might look embarrassing in retrospect? Probably. But these are not the ones.
____________________
And, if you want a non-partisan overview of Kerry's voting record on all issues, go to "On the Issues.
___________
And, don't forget to keep checking www.factcheck.org for the baloney and the beef on both sides.
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What the choice of president boils down to.
There are those Americans who think everything is fine and the past four years have been fine (except for 9/11) and the current president is fine.
And there are those of us who think we need a drastic change in the direction our democracy is moving, both because of and despite 9/11.
All of the reasons for believing one or the other fall into one or the other categories.
I'm voting for change. It's as simple (and as complex) as that.
Categories:
Hey Bushies, can you hear me now?
Apparently my perspectives as delineated in various posts, as well as comments here, became too complicated for some people to understand. And my pointers to non-partisan websites apparently really confused the already confused. So let me answer their question, "What were you thinking?" in the kind of simple terms they might be able to understand:
1. I link to non-partisan sites because I read about both sides and make my decisions based on who's the bigger obfuscator. Bush wins by a mile. And so he loses my respect and anything else he might want to get from me. And those losers who thought I linked to those sites by mistake must be, well, let's just say, shallow thinkers.
2. I have the deepest respect for the men and women of our armed forces who are prepared to defend this Constitutional democracy from attacks by other nations, groups, and individuals. I have the deepest compassion for those men and women of our armed forces who believed that they waged war on other soils for altruistic reasons and were mained and tortured for their bravery. I am afraid of those men and women of our armed forces who never learned to understand the difference between wars fought as a very last resort and wars fought for ego, oil, revenge, or any other reason based on self-serving lies and more lies -- and who are not able to bring themselves to admit that military brainwashing only serves to turn them into fighting machines that can't think for themselves when it comes to making moral decisions on the battlefield.
2. I do not want a president who
--a. believes that he is God's co-pilot and an instrument of His will.
--b. insists that he will continue to pursue an unjust war against a country that never had the WMDs that were the reason he says he went to war in the first place
--c. will not admit he screwed up big time both nationally and internationally and internationally again.
--c. chooses the most manipulative and crooked advisors to lead him by the nose (or maybe even whisper in his ear)
--c. only could get Poland as the sole eastern European country to back up his stupid and exit-empty plan. (Even though I'm Polish and proud of it, I have to wonder: WHAT WERE THEY THINKING! It must have had a lot to do with money.)
So, even if I assume that the propaganda generated by each side cancels the other out, Kerry still comes out as the better presidential choice to:
-- come up with carefully thought-out strategy to help fix the mess in Iraq and help get the country into a stable situation politically and economically
-- rekindle the global respect and support we used to have for our efforts to do the above
-- live his personal life by his religious beliefs BUT lead our country according to our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and democratic processes
-- thoughtfully begin the long, difficult process of fixing what Bush has broken of the American infrastructure of due process, equal rights, personal choice, and economic possibilities, recognizing that everything is a trade off, and the goal is to find a balance so that no American feels disenfranchised, dismissesd, or ignored. This last one is going to be a long hard road because of the success of Bush's single-minded, self-indulgent, and seriously misguided push toward his own peculiar vision of our country and its place in a global society
-- implement a better and more effective system of protecting our country from attacks by terrorists, while at the same time, building coalitions to both help do that and increase our effectiveness as global peacebuilders rather than pre-emptive attackers
-- make as one of his priorities efforts to dispel the polarization among Americans that Bush has successfully instituted with his short-term, narrow-minded, and disingenuous thinking and speaking processes
Now, we have to keep in mind that Kerry, as president, would have to lead within the context of the balance of powers provided by the Congress and the Supreme Court. As a lawyer, Kerry understands the importance of those checks and balances. Something Bush doesn't seem to understand. What that means is, Kerry might hope and plan to do all sorts of great things, but he would not be an emperor, after all, and would not make unilateral decisions.
Well, you asked me, "What were you thinking???" Now you know.
You don't have to follow my lead, boys. Just follow my links.
Categories:
$8 million worth of distortions
From the Cheney-recommended factcheck.org
Two Bush ads full of misleading and false statements ran more than 9,000 times in 45 cities last week.
Summary
Two misleading Bush ads accusing Kerry of supporting tax increases on gasoline and middle-class parents were running heavily last week. According to the Campaign Media Analysis Group of TNS Media Intelligence, which tracks TV ads in the top 100 markets, the two Bush ads accounted for nearly half of the estimated $16 million spent by Bush and the Republican National Committee during that week alone.
Both ads repeat claims we've repeatedly disputed here. They both attempt to portray Kerry as eager to raise taxes on middle-income taxpayers, which Kerry has said consistently he won't do. One ad characterizes Kerry's votes against proposed tax cuts as votes to "raise taxes," an outright falsehood.
Click the link below for the full article:
http://www.factcheck.org/article286m.html
Categories:
Solidarity
The "have-lesses" of America usually have their fingers on an important national pulse that the "have'mores" don't have to care much about.
The United Auto Workers Union magazine, "Solidarity" offers some telling facts about the effects that the Bush regime has had on the hard workers of America. These are just a few of the article titles in their current issue:
"The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get..."
"Republicans Condem Bush"
"Things About John Kerry that George W. Bush Doesn't Want You To Know"
"Things Bush Wants You to Forget"
There's lots more good information here that the guys who are waging a futile war with me here don't want to know. It's about twenty against one (me) and I still haven't given up. It's the Xena in me.
Two former presidents of the UAW put in their pitch for Kerry:
[excerpt]
Why is this election so critical? Because George W. Bush has set a radical — and we believe dangerous —course for America in both domestic and foreign policy.
George W. Bush had his chance — and he failed.
Bush’s policy choices over the past four years have created a raw deal for America’s working families. Too many are living paycheck to paycheck — or racking up crushing credit-card debt — as wages have stagnated or fallen, while health care, child care, energy and college tuition costs have soared. And too many workers have lost good-paying manufacturing jobs, and find themselves competing with their own kids for $7-an-hour jobs.
Bush’s misguided tax cuts have transformed the budget surpluses he inherited from President Clinton into record budget deficits that stall economic growth and take dollars away from education, Social Security, Medicare and other vital domestic programs.
We need more ways to share the truth with those who still can't see past the military perspectives on "stay the course" and Bush's version of "strong leadership."
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Bush Doesn't Get It. So, let's give it to him!!!
The following excerpted from a open letter written by Brooke Campbell, whose younger brother was killed in Iraq. Read the whole thing here and watch the television ad she made to plead with Americans not to re-elect Bush.
[snip]
Ryan was scheduled to complete his one-year assignment to Iraq on April 25. But on April 11, he emailed me to let me know not to expect him in Atlanta for a May visit, because his tour of duty had been involuntarily extended. "Just do me one big favor, ok?" he wrote. "Don't vote for Bush. No. Just don't do it. I would not be happy with you."
Last night, I listened to George W. Bush's live, televised speech at the Republican National Convention. He spoke to me and my family when he announced, "I have met with parents and wives and husbands who have received a folded flag, and said a final goodbye to a soldier they loved.
[snip]
This is my reply: Mr. President, I know that you probably still "don't do body counts," so you may not know that almost one thousand U.S. troops have died doing what you told them they had to do to protect America. Ryan was Number 832. Liberty was, indeed, precious to the one I lost-- so precious that he would rather have gone to prison than back to Iraq in February. Like you, I don't know where the strength for "such pride" on the part of people "so burdened with sorrow" comes from; maybe I spent it all holding my mother as she wept. I last saw my loved one at the Kansas City airport, staring after me as I walked away. I could see April 29 written on his sad, sand-chapped and sunburned face. I could see that he desperately wanted to believe that if he died, it would be while "doing good," as you put it. He wanted us to be able to be proud of him. Mr. President, you gave me and my mother a folded flag instead of the beautiful boy who called us "Moms" and "Brookster." But worse than that, you sold my little brother a bill of goods. Not only did you cheat him of a long meaningful life, but you cheated him of a meaningful death. You are in my prayers, Mr. President, because I think that you need them more than anyone on the face of the planet. But you will never get my vote.
So to whom it may concern: Don't vote for Bush. No. Just don't do it. I would not be happy with you.
Campbell is a member of the Band of Sisters, a courageous group of military wives, mothers and family members from around the country who have come together to speak out about the Bush foreign policy and its impact on their lives and families. The Band of Sisters don't just want their husbands and sons home, they want America to get Iraq right, and they've lost faith in George Bush to do that.
C'mon, all you mothers and wives and sisters who, in your hearts, know that sacrificing the men and women you love for this particular was is wrong. Dead wrong.
Bush sent them into the wrong country for the wrong reasons. Insisting that he will "stay the course" doesn't make it the right course. There were no WMDs. Bush sent our troops to die for his delusions.
The Band of Sisters are taking their message of hope around the United States in the following weeks. General Wesley Clark launched the Band of Sisters tour on September 14 in Green Bay, Wisconsin and over the next month the Sisters will tour the country, visiting battleground states including Iowa, New Hampshire and New Mexico.
The sisters are working closely with General Clark - who will be appearing as a guest at many of the events - to bring the truth to millions of Americans concerned by President Bush’s failing foreign policies. They want change, and they want you to help them help restore our America's standing in the world. Watch this space for up-to-date details about when the Band of Sisters will be coming to a town near you.
If by strength is meant moral power,
then woman is immeasurably man's superior.
Has she not greater intuition,
is she not more self-sacrificing,
has she not greater powers of endurance,
has she not greater courage?
Without her man could not be.
If nonviolence is the law of our being,
the future is with woman.
Mahatma Gandhi, 1930
This and lots of great quotes about women and peace here, where the statement is made that women contributed to the abolition of slavery, suffrage, and women's rights. As early as 1891 the National Council of Women (NCW) and the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) petitioned the U.S. Government to avoid war with Chile, and in 1895 women's groups urged that a Venezuelan border dispute with England be settled by arbitration.
Throughout history, women have embraced the role of peacemakers.
We've rocked the cradles. Now let's Rock the Vote and let Kerry bring us back to the moral center of America. For our children. For our grandchildren. For the America we want to be proud of.
Categories:
Who do you guys think I am?
kenneth.huffmaster@shell.com
pking@kingsurety.com
grfischer@charter.net
jon@ravenstudios.ca
allones1810@hotmail.com
delsys@email.com
fsbmc@hotmail.com
vzn05zsf@verizon.net
parhead62@aol.com
Dennis.flanders@comcast.net
o_foley777@yahoo.com
Mkea4461@aol.com
All you pro-Bush guys (above and any others whom they send my way) who keep trying to convince me that you're right and I'm wrong. You're wasting your time. I'm nobody -- I'm a nobody weblogger who likes to say what she believes up front. You don't have to agree with me. I don't have to agree with you. As a matter of fact, we will have to agree to disagree, 'cause none of us is going to budge a bit. And I don't have any influence at all. So, go spend your time in a more worthwhile way, like keeping up with the truth on non-partisan web sites like these, which I got from here:
SpinSanity is a non-partisan, independent website dedicated to unraveling "the real story" from both campaigns.
The Center for Public Integrity is a non-partisan website that dedicates itself to investigative journalism in the public interest. It is a great place to go for economic analysis and ethical issues on a federal and state level.
Opensecrets.com tracks money in the political process. Find out who is giving to whom. You can also do this at the Campaign Finance Information Center
The League of Women Voters is a non-partisan group, dedicated to educating the public on the candidates and the issues. Not just for women.
Project Vote Smart provides non-partisan, relevant information to help you sort through all the information put out by the campaigns. Check out their voter self-defense manual.
And, of course, there's alwayswww.factcheck.org.
Both Kerry and Bush are politicians trying to get elected. The difference is that Kerry thinks carefully before he acts; Bush acts without sufficient thinking. Kerry believes in God but doesn't assume God advises him. Bush sees himself as the instrument of God. There are lots more differences like those -- maybe too subtle for some people to get, but they are fundamental to the personalities and leadership styles of the two men. I'll take Kerry's leadership over Bush's any day. I'll also trust the advisors Kerry will surround himself with over Bush's cronies any day.
So, if Kerry wins, you guys, I will send you all an I TOLD YOU SO! email covered with smiley faces.
If Bush wins, I'm going into hiding for the next four years so that I can pretend he doesn't exist and that my country is not totally imploding. Then I'll resurface when there's a chance for me to participate in rebuilding America into what it's supposed to be.
In the meanwhile, waste your time commenting away here. Makes me no nevermind.
Categories:
I feel like Xena, or: Vets for Bush, read my lips.
She's always been my role model, but I have to say that's it's pretty exhausting and time consuming defending myself and my beliefs against the onslaught in my comments.
OK, it's not exactly an onslaught, but I'll bet that post is the reason I'm getting between 30 and 40 hits a day -- which hasn't happened since I was hanging around the fringes of the "A" bloggers and getting interviewed by the NY Times.
It's awfully hard to keep being nice to people who call me a hypocrite bitch. But I do believe in Christian charity and the necessity to hold up to the mirror of truth to the misguided and destructive nature of our very own Shrub.
And so, for all of those who keep telling me how they, as Vets, support Bush, I send them to these links, reminding them that we tend NOT TO SEE the world as IT IS, but rather AS WE ARE:
http://veteransforkerry.home.att.net/
http://usveteransfortruth.home.att.net/
http://veteransforkerry.home.att.net/truth_about__slime_boat_sailors_.htm
http://veteransforkerry.home.att.net/war_heroes_of_the_republican_par.htm
http://www.military.com/NewContent/0,13190,Youmans_012804,00.html
I particularly like this site, which documents the way the Swift Boater guys had manipulated truths about Kerry and his service in Vietnam. Holy Moley! These guys need to be hooked up to lie detectors!! Although they probably believe their own lies; after all, it's to their advantage to do so.
So, how about reading the account of Kerry and his Swift Boat by someone who was actually there on February 28, 1969 on the Dong Cung River: William Rood, also a Swift Boat officer.
He begins his article, (which was published in the Chicago Tribune) with this:
There were three swift boats on the river that day in Vietnam more than 35 years ago--three officers and 15 crew members. Only two of those officers remain to talk about what happened on February 28, 1969.
One is John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate who won a Silver Star for what happened on that date. I am the other.
He also makes this telling statement:
Known over radio circuits by the call sign "Latch," then-Capt. and now retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, the task force commander, fired off a message congratulating the three swift boats, saying at one point that the tactic of charging the ambushes was a "shining example of completely overwhelming the enemy" and that it "may be the most efficacious method of dealing with small numbers of ambushers."
Hoffmann has become a leading critic of Kerry's and now says that what the boats did on that day demonstrated Kerry's inclination to be impulsive to a fault.
Our decision to use that tactic under the right circumstances was not impulsive but was the result of discussions well beforehand and a mutual agreement of all three boat officers.
Let's hope the truth will out.
Addendum: Whether we support Bush or Kerry, we all seem to be convinced we are in the know and in the right. (see discussion here).
Further discussion there is futile because:
1. We are what we believe.
2. We do not see the world as it is; we see it as we are.
3. One man's fat slob (see comments here) is another man's hero.
Vote for someone with conscience and compassion; with the intelligence, eloquence, and perspective to lead a nation that must be a crucial contributor to global cooperation; who has personally experienced the horrors of war; who believes in the separation of church and state; who is not in the pockets of the "haves and have mores."
Categories:
I've joined the propaganda police.
I started linking from a comment left on a previous post of mine, and discovered the Center for Media and Democracy, where it says:
Disinfopedia: It's Wiki Cool
Big corporations and governments spend hundreds of millions of dollars on deceptive propaganda campaigns waged through front groups and industry-funded think tanks to sell wars (Iraqi National Congress), trash organic agriculture (Center for Global Food Issues), smear activists as terrorists (ActivistCash.com), tell the public that mad cow disease is no big deal (Harvard Center for Risk Analysis), and push right-wing policy agendas (Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute and American Enterprise Institute, to name just a few). These well-funded and strategic disinformation campaigns mislead and confuse the press and the public and prevent social change. Identifying and exposing the thousands of individuals, corporations and PR firms behind this propaganda has been almost impossible -- until now. The Center for Media and Democracy has launched a new on-line research project, the Disinfopedia, which uses innovative "wiki" technology to create a virtual community of collaborating citizen researchers and journalists. Visit the Disinfopedia, and join our growing team of online muckrakers.
So, I signed up for their weekly emails:
Welcome to the Weekly-Spin@prwatch.org mailing list! The Weekly Spin is a free email tip sheet compiled by the staff of PR Watch (www.prwatch.org) to help expose the public relations manipulations behind current news stories.
The Weekly Spin is excerpted each Wednesday from "Spin of the Day," which is updated daily on our website. Current stories and archives of Spin of the Day can be found at http://www.prwatch.org/spin/index.html
Issues of our quarterly newsletter, PR Watch, are also archived on our website at http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues
Much of my 30 odd years in the workforce was spent creating propaganda of one sort or another. Spinning straw into gold, we called it. Marketing firms do it all of the time; that's what getting consumers to buy stuff seems to require. But I wasn't selling a product. I was selling ideas, policies, perspectives -- for legislators, administrators, and educators. Luckily for my moral equilibrium, I believed in what I was selling most of the time. But it was still propaganda -- knowing what not to say as well as how to positively and creatively manipulate words and images to reach the hearts, as well as the minds, of our "consumers."
So, I'm am fascinated by the current flood of carefully crafted disinformation being churned out by those trying to get Bush re-elected. Information. Propaganda. Disinformation. It's so easy to be confused by the flood of it all.
Now, what's all this wiki stuff you ask? I still haven't figured it out. I can barely keep up with Microsoft updates and weblogging.
Categories:
the truth hurts
It may well be that speaking the hard truth winds up hurting an honest Sinclair Exec, according to a post at talkingpointsmemo.com:
The DC Bureau chief of Sinclair Broadcasting, Jon Lieberman, is denouncing his employer's plan to air an hourlong, unpaid Swift Boat ad later this week, according to the Baltimore Sun.
"It's biased political propaganda, with clear intentions to sway this election ... For me, it's not about right or left -- it's about what's right or wrong in news coverage this close to an election."
Sinclair News VP Joe DeFeo has told Lieberman he risks being canned for speaking out and refusing to participate in the presentation of the 'documentary.'
Which leads me to an email I got today:
Whatever happened to things like journalistic integrity, bipartisanship, even THE LAW? Sinclair Broadcasting Group seems to have forgotten these important aspects of broadcasting, and is forcing their 62 local stations to air the faux documentary “Stolen Honor,” which blatantly smears the record of Senator John Kerry.
What this means is simple—Sinclair is illegally donating millions of dollars in air time to the Bush campaign, all for anti-Kerry propaganda disguised as news. The only way to stop Sinclair from airing this smear campaign is to put pressure on their advertisers. You can take action by sending letters to their top advertisers at this website:
www.StolenAirTime.com
According to that site, the following are among the advertisers on Sinclair Broadcasting:
Dr. Pepper/ 7Up Inc.-- Wachovia Bank -- Best Buy -- Circuit City -- Dunkin Donuts -- Pfizer Inc. -- Applebees International -- Big Lots -- General Mills -- Elizabeth Arden Salon Holdings -- Discount Tire -- Walmart -- Taco Bell
If you go to that site, you can sign a petition that will go to Sinclair's major advertisers asking them to put pressure on Sinclair to stop their dirty tricks.
Truth is a Virus. Talk Hard.
And vote the lie-telling George Bush out of office.
Categories:
Truth is a Virus. Talk Hard.
In 1990, I gave a speech to the members of the New York State Reading Association. I just found a copy in some papers I was throwing out. It was a good speech, and I ended it with these Concrete Blonde lyrics (originally by Leonard Cohen) from the soundtrack of Pump Up the Volume. My theme was the movie's theme: Truth is a Virus. Talk Hard.
Everybody knows the dice are loaded.
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.
Everybody knows that the war is over.
Everybody knows that the good guys lost.
Everybody knows that the fight is fixed,
the poor stay poor and the rich get rich.
That's how it goes.
Everybody knows the boat is leaking.
Everybody knows the captain died.
Everybody's got this broken feeling
like their mama or their dog just died.
Everybody's hands are in their pockets.
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
or a long-stemmed rose.
Everybody knows.
That's how it goes.
Everybody knows.
Everybody knows it's now or never.
Everybody knows it's me or you.
Everybody knows that you'll live forever
when you have a line or two.
Everybody knows the deal is rotten:
Old Black Joe's still pickin' coton
for your ribbons and bows.
Everybody knows.
Truth is a virus. Talk hard.
Elect John Kerry and change what the citizens of the next decade will know.
Categories:
Waiting for Bin Laden
This is the beginning of a disturbing piece that I found via Doug Alder -- along with links to all the other writings referred to below.
During the home stretch of the Northamerican elections, Osama bin Laden could prove to be the ace in the sleeve of president Bush. As we speak, Washington is negotiating a highly secretive agreement with Beijing, the Chinese capital, for the eviction of bin Laden from his sanctuary in the turbulent Muslim provinces of China, in the Northwest of the Great Wall nation.
An when you finish reading that, check out Arianna Huffington's excellent piece that includes the following:
Thanks to the Bush campaign's unremitting fear-mongering, millions of voters are reacting not with their linear and logical left brain but with their lizard brain and their more emotional right brain.
What's more, people in a fog of fear are more likely to respond to someone whose primary means of communication is in the nonverbal realm, neither logical nor language-based. (Sound like any presidential candidate you know?)
And that's why Bush is still standing. It's not about left wing vs. right wing; it's about left brain vs. right brain.
And how does that all translate into what winds up happening in our individual lives? Heh. Read Jeneane Sessum's take on it here.
It's not the oblivion that bothers me--it's the blind obedience. It's the Bush era mentality. Be a good little American soldier, do your duty, and ask no questions, she writes as she tells about the toxic mold in the privatized school her daughter goes to and how this corporate-run Bush-flavored institution is going about doing almost nothing about it.
And, finally read about the testimonies of Vietnamese who witnessed what actually happened with Kerry and his swift boat incident during the war there:
On Nightline, Vietnamese witnesses further debunked Sinclair exec's report on Kerry's Silver Star
I'm with Jeneane when she writes:
Once we lose our critical thinking ability -- our drive to question, to wonder, to know -- we lose everything.
You want black and white thinking? I'm choosing black.
You want for us or against us? I'm choosing against.
March on lambs of Bush.
But march without me.
Categories:
Yes, Victoria, Bush is a liar.
This is an open message to -- well, let's just call her Victoria. Victoria and I have been exchanging emails ever since she left a comment on one of my posts last week. The last reply I sent her got bounced back to me. Her email was no longer functional. Victoria, I'm so sorry you felt that you had to do something drastic like changing your email just so you could end our conversation. At least I hope that it was your decision and not your husband's. You could have just asked me to stop replying to you. I would have respected your wishes.
I think it's worth sharing with the wider world my experience in trying to maintain an email interaction with Victoria, a woman my age (I think she's also white) but unlike me in just about every other aspect of our lives. All this comes out in our virtual interactions, which I document, here, in sequence.
Victoria left this October 12 comment on one of my posts:
WE LOVE BUSH. WE ARE VOTING FOR HIM, AND YOUR MONEY SOROS, IS NOT GOING TO HELP, NO MATTER HOW MUCH HATRED YOU SPREAD, BUSH WILL WIN!
I sent a test email out to Victoria to see if she left a real or bogus email address, since I've decided to exercise my right as perpetrator of this weblog to delete comments left with bogus emails.
Her October 14th reply:
WHO ARE YOU? AND WHY ARE YOU WRITING TO US? WHAT THE HELL IS A "TEST?" EITHER IDENTIFY YOURSELF, OR WE WILL REPORT YOU TO THE FBI.
THANK YOU.
Wow. A real person with a real email address. Ooops. I should have sent a message with more than just "test" in the subject line. Not very smart of me, but I was anticipating the usual bounce-back. I have to remember that people are really paranoid these days about the Internet.
So, I replied:
You left a comment on my weblog, and I was just testing to see if you had the courage to use a legitimate email or if you were one of many who don't. I delete the comments of those who don't have the courage of their convictions. Obviously, you do, so I did not delete your comment. I should have explained this in my original message. Sorry.
all the best
Elaine
And she responded:
YOU STILL ARE NOT IDENTIFYING YOURSELF. WHO ARE YOU. IF YOU DO NOT IDENTIFY YOURSELF WE ARE REPORTING YOU TO THE FBI. WE ARE KEEPING A RECORD OF YOUR EMAILS. YOU SAID A LOT OF THINGS, EXCEPT WHO YOU ARE. WHY SHOULD YOU BE TESTING US TO SEE IF I USE THE CORRECT EMAIL. WE WILL WAIT FOR YOU TO IDENTIFY YOURSELF, AND THEN, WE ARE CHANGING OUR EMAIL ADDRESS
THANK YOU.
Well, OK, I thought. She's a little confused and probably doesn't understand how weblogging works. So, I should have been more specific. I tried, again:
Relax. And please don't go through the trouble of changing your email bacause of me. Take a deep breath and go to http://www.kalilily.net/weblog/04/10/12/105835.html, which is where you left your comment on my weblog. If you Google Kalilily or Elaine Frankonis, you will get lots of information about who I am. You made contact with me first. When someone leaves a comment on my weblog, I get notified. Then I check to see if the person who left the comment (as you will see you did when you go to the above url) left an actual or a bogus email address along with the comment. I have begun deleting all those comments left by those too cowardly. to identify themselves. As you will see, I am many things -- but I'm not a coward.
I think that I will keep copies of your emails to me, too. The comment you left on my seb site is public information, and it includes the date you left it.
You should start keeping a log of where you leave your comments out there on the Internet. You're getting paranoid for no reason.
all the best, again.
Then I got this reply from Victoria.
My husband and I are curious as to how you came to have our email
address. Thank you
I thought I had explained that, but I tried yet again:
When you left a comment on my weblog, you entered it in a box in the comment feature that requires an email address. If you go back to that entry and comment (http://www.kalilily.net/weblog/04/10/12/105835.html) and scroll down to your comment, you'll see your name there, and if you click on your name, it will take you to an email box. I will not be doing anything with your email, believe me. If you want, I'll see if I can go in and take out your name and email address so no one else can get it. Let me know. If you leave comments elsewhere, you might want to lie about your name and email. I tend to delete the comments of people who do that, but lots of other webloggers don't.
Elaine
And Victoria responds:
Dear Elaine,
What we don't understand is that we never wrote to you, because we have never known of your existence. We received an email from you, and that is when the whole thing started. Anyway, we still would like to know how you came to have our email address. Looks like you are a nice person with misplaced political philosophies, but you must be young. Winston Churchill said it best when he said, "IF YOU ARE TWENTY, AND YOU ARE NOT A LIBERAL, YOU DON'T HAVE A HEART, BUT IF YOU ARE FORTY, AND YOU ARE NOT CONSERVATIVE, YOU DON'T HAVE A BRAIN." Now, tell us how you originally got our email address. I never left anything on your weblog, whatever that is. We received and email from you. Good luck
I had to respond to several things, so I did it in two separate emails:
Well, I tend not place too much stock in aphorisms, although I do like "too soon old, too late smart." And, believe it or not, I'm a lot more fiscally conservative now than I was in my youth. Actually, I think that's what your quote applies to.
My dad was a active Republican, but as he got older and saw how some of his party's policies aided the already rich too much and generated more disadvantages for the already disadvantaged, he became a liberal Republican, championing health care, support for Medicare and Social Security etc. He believed that we, through our system of humane and democratic government, indeed, are our brothers' (and sisters') keepers. He was also a devout Christian and followed the teachings of that great man (Jesus) who advocated for peace, equal distribution of wealth, tolerance, and compassion. I am a non-Christian who follows those teachings as well. At age 64, I've had a life that spanned several wars and more than several presidents. I've seen what works and what doesn't. I believe that what Bush is doing is ruining the heart of America. But, of course, you are welcome to your own opinion.
Now, as for how I got your email. Again, here it is::::
See way down in this message for what I copied directly from my weblog/online diary on the Internet, which, again is here: http://www.kalilily.net/weblog/04/10/12/105835.html -- and if you go to that url, you will see that it is, indeed there, and that if you click on your name, a box will come up that will let you send an email to yourself.
I clicked on your name and sent a quick "test" email, fully expecting that it would be bounced back with a message telling me that the email address is bogus. But, lo and behold, your address was legit. I learned a lesson from that experience, and now when I send out a "test" for email address legitimacy, I include a message explaining that I'm responding to a comment left on my weblog by someone using that email address.
If you did not leave that comment, then someone else used your name and email. If you go to the url above and scroll down, you will see that someone else left a comment AFTER yours and left, instead of an email signature, a URL to which I linked and I saw it was legit.
Anyway, here is exactly what appears when you go to the url above and scroll down. As you will see, there are boxes for your name, your email address, your url if you have a website, and for your comments. If you didn't leave that comment, than someone who has your email address did. [I included in that email the whole post and the comment format with the comments.]
Then, I realized that there might be another possibility, and so I also wrote back:
You (or whoever) mentions "Soros" in your (or whoever's) comment, which leaves me to believe that you (or whoever) thought you (or whoever) were leaving a comment on my post about Soros (which was one above the one that the comment with your name was actually on). Whoever left the comment probably found my site through Google, since Google picks up what I write.
Maybe that helps explains what happened??
And then a reply from Victoria responding to my efforts to explain where I'm coming from and to smooth things over:
As I said, I think you are a nice person who is misguided, but has good intentions. I think Stalin refer to people like that as "Useful Idiots. Where do you live? Good luck, good person
OK. We're starting to have a conversation. And so I respond Twice:
I live in Albany, NY
Today I took my 88 year old mom, for whom I am caregiver, to a "welcome home from Iraq" party for my cousin's soldier daughter and her soldier husband. Both had extended stays in Iraq; my cousin's daughter, who is an Army Captain, was in charge of convoys that were bringing supplies into Baghdad and other dangerous areas. She has photos of beautiful landscapes and cities in Iraq before and after we destroyed them. Pre-emptive war is evil, and all that is required for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. And so, for all of those soldiers who are dying so Halliburton and other of Bush's associates can make more money, for all of those innocent women and children dying on the desert's edge for our oil, for all of our grandchildren who will still be paying the costs of what we have done here and there, I do what I can to press for change in policy and priorities.
"Misguided with good intentions." I guess that's how I view conservative Republicans.
Next month I apply for Medicare and hope for the best.
Elaine
I love her next response. I'm getting to know this woman who thinks so differently from me. Maybe we'll learn from each other. She replies:
So what the heck are you doing so far? You are applying for Medicare? Well, if you worked all your life like I did, you'll do OK. We are the same age. You do sound like a very nice person, even if you are a Liberal. We all have reasons why we are what we are, and I'm sure you have yours. By the by, Kerry voted against the funds for what you are complaining about re the gear. I think that people like you are so hateful of Bush, that you are willing to destroy him, and take this flip flop. My husband is Hungarian, and so, he hates Soros, (a Hungarian Jew), for what he is doing. He wants the destruction of this society as we know it.
Do you ever come to California? Well, stop by and see us. As sorry as I feel for you, I think your intentions are good, misguided, but nevertheless, good. Be well, and thanks for telling me this story. Have you always been an activist? What did you study in college? Who did you associate with that led you down the slippery slope of life. Do you have a husband? Children? Good luck.
Oh! you thought I would put an email that was not my own? How do you
do that anyway?
Well now I'm getting really excited because she's opening up a little, but I guess that my next response to her was over the top -- because I haven't heard from her since I sent it, and her email no longer works. I replied:
First of all, about John Kerry's voting record about body armor etc. The following is from http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx@docID=177.html. which is Factcheck.org, the very site that Cheney suggested people look at during his debate with Edwards when he wanted to clarify something positive about Bush. According to its website, Factcheck.org is -- -- quote -- a nonpartisan, nonprofit, "consumer advocate" for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases. Our goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding. -- end quote --
This is on their website:
_____________begin quote________
Summary
Bush ads released April 26 recycle some distortions of Kerry's voting record
on military hardware. We've de-bunked these half-truths before but the Bush
campaign persists.
The ads -- many targeted to specific states -- repeat the claim that Kerry
opposed a list of mainstream weapons including Bradley Fighting Vehicles and
Apache helicopters, and also repeat the claim that he voted against body
armor for frontline troops in Iraq. In fact, Kerry voted against a few large
Pentagon money bills, of which Bradleys, Apaches and body armor were small
parts, but not against those items specifically.
Analysis
On April 26 the Bush campaign released a total of 10 ads, all repeating
claims that Kerry opposed a list of mainstream military hardware "vital to
winning the war on terror."
Misleading Claims
The claims are misleading, as we've pointed out before in articles we posted
on Feb. 26 and March 16. The Bush campaign bases its claim mainly on Kerry's
votes against overall Pentagon money bills in 1990, 1995 and 1996, but these
were not votes against specific weapons. And in fact, Kerry voted for
Pentagon authorization bills in 16 of the 19 years he's been in the Senate.
So even by the Bush campaign's twisted logic, Kerry should -- on balance --
be called a supporter of the "vital" weapons, more so than an opponent.
The claim that Kerry voted against body armor is based similarly on Kerry's
vote last year against an $87 billion emergency supplemental appropriation
bill to finance military operations and reconstruction efforts in Iraq and
Afghanistan. It included $300 million for the latest, ceramic-plate type of
body armor for troops who had been sent to war without it. The body-armor
funds amounted to about 1/3 of one percent of the total.
Missing Context
It is true that when Kerry first ran for the Senate in 1984 he did call
specifically for canceling the AH-64 Apache helicopter, but once elected he
opposed mainly such strategic weapons as Trident nuclear missiles and
space-based anti-ballistic systems. And Richard Cheney himself, who is now
Vice President but who then was Secretary of Defense, also proposed
canceling the Apache helicopter program five years after Kerry did. As
Cheney told the House Armed Services Committee on Aug. 13, 1989:
Cheney: The Army, as I indicated in my earlier testimony, recommended to
me that we keep a robust Apache helicopter program going forward, AH-64; . .
. I forced the Army to make choices. I said, "You can't have all three. We
don't have the money for all three." So I recommended that we cancel the
AH-64 program two years out. That would save $1.6 billion in procurement and
$200 million in spares over the next five years.
Two years later Cheney's Pentagon budget also proposed elimination of
further production of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle as well. It was among 81
Pentagon programs targeted for termination, including the F-14 and F-16
aircraft. "Cheney decided the military already has enough of these weapons,"
the Boston Globe reported at the time.
Does that make Cheney an opponent of "weapons vital to winning the war on
terror?" Of course not. But by the Bush campaign's logic, Cheney himself
would be vulnerable to just such a charge, and so would Bush's father, who
was president at the time..
_________end quote_______________________
You might want to check factcheck.org periodically to find out what the latest distortions of the truth are -- on both sides, of course.
Now, about me: Master's Degree in English and Education -- taught Junior High, worked for a Republican State Senate Majority Leader back in the 70s as a writer (got a really good education about how politicians distort; got the job through my Dad's contacts) -- worked for the NY State Education Department for 20 years and have a pension -- plan to apply for Medicare next month. Was married. Have two kids, one grandson. Am of Polish extraction on both sides.
I guess it's my life experiences that have brought me to my liberal politics -- working with disadvantaged kids, becoming proficient in tracking down facts as opposed to propaganda, learning that it's valuable to question authority.
I find that many women, because they love their husbands, just follow along with their husband's politics and never do the research on their own to see if they're on the right track. Be careful of that. Do a little research using non-partisan sources like Factcheck.org.
I guess that your husband has it against Hungarian Jews. I don't have that bias. Neither am I biased against rich people. This is a capitalist society, and if people get rich by being smart and honest, and then share their wealth, I say all the more power to them. I'm not prejudiced against anyone -- African Americans, Mid-Easterns, gays, Jews -- even conservative Republicans. :-)
Well, now that I read what I wrote, I can see why, if she wasn't annoyed with me, her husband sure would be. Howver, once a liberal/feminist/teacher always.....
Finally, I figured maybe if she could see me as a real person trying to get people to think about what they're doing in this country, I sent her the following email and photo. This one didn't get through. Too much, too late, I guess:
Just for fun, I've attached a photo of me in my Vote or Die t-shirt as I'm about to leave to have lunch with some friends.
So tell me about yourself???? Kids? Grandkids? Do you use the computer to get information or just for email? What's your background. I love getting to know and understand people who think differently from the way I do.
(And, if you do happen to change your mind about who you want to vote for, remember, your ballot is secret and no one will know but you.)
Elaine
Her email no longer works; either she or her husband decided to cancel it. I've got to learn to tone myself down.
P.S. At the party for my soldier cousin, I was standing chatting with a female relative, who -- I know -- is a fundamentalist and a Bush supporter, so I steered clear of politics. When she asked what my son was up to, I explained that he had a website that examines local political and government issues in the City of Portland, Oregon, etc. etc. She asked if he did that from a Democratic or Republican perspective. The truth is, I said, he does it simply from the perspective of analyzing the positions on the issues involved and how those positions will affect the community and its citizens. I've never seen him mention political parties at all in his analyses. But he is a liberal, as am I, I told her, in response to her asking. She turned away from me and avoided me for the rest of the afternoon. I can't win.
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Rock harder. Vote or Die.
Not only does Dumbya insist that we aren't going to need the draft because the volunteer army is working, he doesn't want young people even bringing up their worries about it. He certainly doesn't want them making it an issue worth discussing. So, as reported here:
......Now, the youth voter participation group Rock The Vote has been pushing this issue recently, calling for an election-year debate on the topic in ways you can see if you do a quick google search with their name in it.
And what has the response been from the president?
This week RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie sent the group a 'cease and desist' letter threatening legal action against the group and raising the possibility of seeking the revocation of the group's status as a tax-exempt 501c3 organization if the group did not cease discussing the draft issue.....
Oh yeah! Big Brother Bush is riding hard over those pesky young 'uns, trying to put leashes on them like he'd like to on his daughters. Muzzles and leashes. Sound familiar???
Yes. Yes. Rock the Boat. Rock the Vote. Vote or Die fighting Big Brother Bush's terrorizing war. If he wins, we all lose, even to the Seventh Generation.
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Bush is the wind beneath that un-Americanly right(eous) wing.
The Bush Administration has decided that it will stand by its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah’s flood rather than by geologic forces, according to internal documents obtained by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
[snip]
“Promoting creationism in our national parks is just as wrong as promoting it in our public schools,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, “If the Bush Administration is using public resources for pandering to Christian fundamentalists, it should at least have the decency to tell the truth about it.”
So says an October 13, 2004, announcement from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility that appears here.
And you can read a letter of protest from seven scientific societies here.
Please vote for John Kerry and save us all from Big Brother Bush.
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Anarchist goes undercover as GOP volunteer.
And Rolling Stone publishes his story.
I particularly like the quote below because it clarifies for me the indefatigability of the righteous wingers in the comments on this post of b!X's.
One of the great cliches of liberal criticism of the Christian right is the idea that these people are wrongheaded because they profess to know the will of God. H.L. Mencken put that one best, and perhaps first: "It is only the savage, whether of the African bush or the American gospel tent, who pretends to know the will and intent of God exactly and completely."
These criticisms sound like they make sense. But I think they are a little off-base. The problem not only with fundamentalist Christians but with Republicans in general is not that they act on blind faith, without thinking. The problem is that they are incorrigible doubters with an insatiable appetite for Evidence. What they get off on is not Believing, but in having their beliefs tested. That's why their conversations and their media are so completely dominated by implacable bogeymen: marrying gays, liberals, the ACLU, Sean Penn, Europeans and so on. Their faith both in God and in their political convictions is too weak to survive without an unceasing string of real and imaginary confrontations with those people -- and for those confrontations, they are constantly assembling evidence and facts to make their case.
But here's the twist. They are not looking for facts with which to defeat opponents. They are looking for facts that ensure them an ever-expanding roster of opponents. They can be correct facts, incorrect facts, irrelevant facts, it doesn't matter. The point is not to win the argument, the point is to make sure the argument never stops. Permanent war isn't a policy imposed from above; it's an emotional imperative that rises from the bottom. In a way, it actually helps if the fact is dubious or untrue (like the Swift-boat business), because that guarantees an argument. You're arguing the particulars, where you're right, while they're arguing the underlying generalities, where they are.
Once you grasp this fact, you're a long way to understanding what the Hannitys and Limbaughs figured out long ago: These people will swallow anything you feed them, so long as it leaves them with a demon to wrestle with in their dreams.
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More Bush attacks on civil liberties.
Excerpted rom an AP story reported here:
......Thursday’s event in Oregon sets a new bar for a Bush/Cheney campaign that has taken extraordinary measures to screen the opinions of those who attend Bush and Cheney speeches. For months, the Bush/Cheney campaign has limited event access to those willing to volunteer in Bush/Cheney campaign offices. In recent weeks, the Bush/Cheney campaign has gone so far as to have those who voice dissenting viewpoints at their events arrested and charged as criminals.
Thursday’s actions in Oregon set a new standard even for Bush/Cheney – removing and threatening with arrest citizens who in no way disrupt an event and wear clothing that expresses non-disruptive party-neutral viewpoints such as “Protect Our Civil Liberties.”
When Vice President Dick Cheney visited Eugene, Oregon on Sept. 17, a 54-Year old woman named Perry Patterson was charged with criminal trespass for blurting the word "No" when Cheney said that George W. Bush has made the world safer.
One day before, Sue Niederer, 55, the mother of a slain American soldier in Iraq was cuffed and arrested for criminal trespass when she interrupted a Laura Bush speech in New Jersey. Both women had tickets to the event.
We've always feared the tight leash of "Big Brother." So now we wind up with an even more repressive "Big Daddy."
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