November 27, 2004

Got this link in an email from Dean Landsman -- a future EPIC not to be missed.

It's 2014, and Google and Microsoft have figured out how to be in charge of all the informational media available to us. They pay bloggers to be a part of their networks. Our news comes to us based on our topic preferences. The NY Times et al are defunct.

How does that happen? How does it work? Watch the short piece here.

It's what we wanted. Isn't it?

Got this from Jim Culleny of NoUtopia.

I NEVER EVER watch Fox News, and I didn't think I have the option to take it off my cable list of channels. I never thought of writing Fox to express my disgust at their biased news coverage. But a friend of Jim's sent him the following e-mail, which I share here in hopes of generating some direct dissent against Fox News Network:

Subject: Foxless in America:

This is such simple, brilliant, potentially effective idea, I wish I could say I thought of it. It was actually sent to me by a friend who is impatient for grass roots action against the right wing to begin. I'm doing this at once. I hope you'll decide to do the same and circulate the idea to at least a hundred million of your closest friends.

LET'S SEE THE STOCKS PLUMMET- FEED YOUR STRENGTH

If you, too, have had enough with the FOX news channel, please read below. This action will make your voice heard while simply choosing not to watch the station can not.

I have decided to make a political statement. I called mySatellite TV provider and asked them to remove Fox News from my television. Since the election I have wanted to stick my head out of a window of a tall building and shout I can't take it anymore but I soon came to realize that there is a better and easier way to send a message to Rupert Murdoch and his blathering bunch at Fox News and that was to simply make them disappear from my life.

I called my cable TV provider and had Fox News deleted from my television. It was simple I called the Repair Department at Comcast and said I wanted to be Foxless in America. I then wrote an email to the following: Reed Nolte VP Investor Relations for News Corporation (the parent company of Fox News) at rnolte@newscorp.com and Brian Lewis, Senior VP Corporate Communications for Fox News at brian.lewis@foxnews.com and to top it off I copied murdoch@newscorp.com. I told them that I cannot take the Fox distortion and biased presentation of the news any longer and that they ought to inform their sponsors that there are millions like me. I can't tell you the immense satisfaction I gained from becoming Foxless in America.

I am asking you to follow me in this protest and let it be heard by all that want to control what we all see and hear. This could be a way to have your voice heard-Become Foxless in America. We can start a movement if each of you send this email to all the others you know who are fed up with Fox News.

The email ends with some quotes worth sharing here:

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." -- - -Mahatma Ghandi ""If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They'll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads. But if an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government." -- - - Dwight D. Eisenhower ""I'd rather be Don Quixote than another statistic." --Douglas L. Wilson ""To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -- Theodore Roosevelt

I remember when Thanksgiving was fun -- noisy with relatives who all lived within a block of each other and nosey with relatives who drove in from the next county or the next state. Everyone ate too much, drank too much, and laughed enough to keep us going until Christmas, when we'd do it all over again, except on a larger scale and a different menu.

It was just me and my mother this year. I cooked the traditional fare (including Polish kapusta, which is traditional for my family), but I don't know why I bothered. While my mom ate up (she's too frail and forgetful to have helped prepare anything), I was full from all the tasting I did along the way from cutting board to table. After dinner, I went and watched the same tv programs that I usually watch on Thursday nights (at least the ones that were on despite the "holiday") while my mother napped in her recliner.

My daughter and her family (a couple of hours' drive away) went out to dinner with her in-law family. She's still getting her recently purchased home set up, and no one else wanted to cook.

My brother, who's a vegetarian and lives an hour and a half away, is working on his house, so he didn't even bother acknowledging the holiday.

Back in my home town, it was my aunt (who's about in the same shape as my mother), her daughter, and her sister-in-law. They usually have pork, anyway.

Rituals and holidays used to be celebratory. Now so many of them are just a chore. We do what we've always done. Except everything else is different. And so we go through the motions. Motions without the satisfying E-motions.

I think that next year, I'm going to tell my brother to take my mother down to my aunts' for Thanksgiving, and I'm heading out to my daughter's. By then, her home wil be more than ready for company, and she plans to really get into the process and the product.

I'll volunteer to make the kapusta. Maybe some butternut squash with apples and brown sugar, too. But that's it. And I'll eat too much and drink too much and laugh a lot.

I will bask in the noises of families fraternizing while the turkey bastes and new memories emerge. And, again, I will feel the full flood of thanks.

In his widely read blog, New Media Musings, respected writer/blogger J.D. Lasica promotes the efforts of the Portland community to find funding for b!X's Portland Communique.

Just before Thanksgiving, the Willamette Week newspaper in Portland came out with a Giving Guide, which -- at the behest of many of b!X's Portland fans -- included a piece on the Portland Communique as a fitting recipient for charitable donations.

As Lasica states:
b!X' has already announced that he may have to shut down his Portland Communique weblog at the end of December unless it begins to generate some revenue. The Communique – an experiment in amateur journalism and hobbyist reporting – has become a fixture in the local media scene, read by City Council members, City Hall staffers, local political reporters and columnists, and general local political junkies. Willamette Week (and its readers in a separate poll) named it best local weblog, and The Oregonian published a front-page profile on him and what he does with the site.

Hopefully, a few more savvy "social media" experts will hop on the bandwagon to urge financial support for what b!X calls his "experiment in citizen journalism."

There are lots of people blogging about national issues, and whether or not what they have to say and report is truly affecting national policies and procedures is debatable. But the Portland Communique has had/is having a laudable affect on the governance of the city of Portland Oregon. If it can't continue, there are going to be a lot involved Portland citizens who find themselves again out in the informational hinterlands.

I've been donating all the while, and I don't even live in Portland. But, of course, I have an even better reason, right?

November 24, 2004

I was driving around with NPR on my radio the other day when I heard this poem by Ginger Andrews, from An Honest Answer © Story Line Press

Pre-Holiday PMS

I don't want to be thankful this year.
I don't want to eat turkey and I could care
if I never again tasted
your mother's cornbread stuffing.
I hate sweet potato pie. I hate mini marshmallows.
I hate doing dishes while you watch football.

I hate Christmas. I hate name-drawing.
I hate tree-trimming, gift-wrapping,
and Rudolph the zipper-necked red-nosed reindeer.
I just want to skip the whole merry mess—
unless, of course, you'd like to try
to change my mind. You could start
by telling me I'm pretty and leaving me
your charge cards
and all your cash.

Couldn't resist sharing it here.

November 23, 2004

Yesterday was the 41st Anniversary of the assassinationi of President John F. Kennedy. Yet, if you Google the subject, there is little recognition of the horror of the actual event. Instead, headlines focus on the awful

..... new video game ..... called "JFK Reloaded." The goal of the game: To assassinate John F. Kennedy just as it really happened. Shooting the ex-president in the right spots (according to the Warren Commission) earns you points, while shooting wrong "targets" such as Jacqueline Kennedy costs point deductions.

It all becomes a game, doesn't it? Living, dying, voting. Everything becomes unimportant because when the game's over, you're still the same. You turn around and plug into another game. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and nothing changes. You disconnect from life's bloody messes and connect into the clean, flick-switch, walk-away game.

But I remember that day in 1963 when, half way up the hill, taking my toddler daughter for a walk, my neighbor stuck her head out her door and yelled "The President's been shot!"

"The president of what?" I called back, never even beginning to think that it might be THE President."

JFK was our hero. Our hope. We believed in his ability to lead us. He knew how to inspire us, stir our sense of pride in being Americans.

My daughter and I scuttled back home and turned on the television. And that's pretty much where I sat for the next few days, watching real "reality" television.

It seems to me the good die young.

Or maybe too many of our young are forgetting what's good in life in favor of playing the goodless game.

November 22, 2004

Frank Paynter is asking bloggers why they blog. From some of the early responses, I have to admit that their reasons are a lot more engaging than mine. Their answers to that question are a lot more clever, creative, and funny than mine (which I will include at the end of this post).

The main difference between a simple website and a weblog is that (most) weblogs invite comments. Therefore, most weblogs are invitations to conversations. And so lots of webloggers are as interested in generating comments as they are in posting interesting stuff. I started out that way, and I still appreciate getting a good comment conversation going. But that's not why I blog.

Here's why I blog:

I’m a writer. Not a great writer, but a pretty good writer. For me, writing has always been an addiction. Writing is part of who I am. I write to make sense of the world around me – to strengthen my sense of place in it. I blog to maintain that part of me that’s a writer. I blog to keep my brain working. Use it or lose it.

I use the most simple blogging technology possible. I don’t know aggregators from aggravators, and I tend to avoid both.

When I began blogging, I felt compelled to reach out to an audience and insert myself into various blogging communities. I began developing a blogroll that’s now terribly out of date. I used to leave lots of comments on others’ weblogs as a way to generate community energy. But I no longer have the energy to do even that. Now, I write assuming that I’m read pretty much by family and friends. The truth is, however, because of the kinds of things I write about, I get a steady stream of strangers -- and their friends -- stopping by because someone picked me up on Google. The sense of community I originally sought is not the one I’ve wound up with, and that’s fine. For example, people like Ramona Moorman, who is close to my age and the editor of a small newspaper in the Midwest, found me through Google and has become a regular reader. We also email each other.

I learned early on in my life that I couldn’t be all things to all people. In terms of my identity as a blogger, it was much easier to keep to that philosophy early on, when there weren’t that many of us who were trying to use blogging as a way to establish connections with like hearts and minds. But times have changed. The blogging population has exploded. I can’t be all things to all bloggers. So, I’ve taken the position that those who are attracted to who I am as a writer and what I write about will gravitate toward my weblog. And it works the same way from my end.

I blog to connect with the world outside myself that I’m trying to make sense of.

I blog to keep up my spirit; to stir the spirit of others; to stir my blood, my brain, and my beliefs. I blog because I’m not a Molly Ivins or a Mary Oliver.

I blog because I’m a writer and blogging gives me a place to put it all.

So, while weblog conversations continue about the value, the accuracy, the truthfulness, and the confusions of blogging, I say "Feh!" It's like having a conversation about the value, the accuracy, the truthfulness, and the confusions of poetry. Poets write because it's what they do, because it's what they love to do, because it's what they have to do. Bloggers blog for the same reasons. Of course, blogs have a much wider audience and much broader innfluence than poetry. Well, the public out there reading blogs are just going to have to educate themselves to understand how the medium affects the message. Just as with poetry.

November 21, 2004

He was here -- beard and funky hat and laptop, and wearing one of his Agitshop t-shirts. The surprising thing was the little splotch of silvery gray hair right where his widow's peak is and the flecks of other such strands throughout as well. Some things have changed a lot in the six or so years since I last saw him outside his old Millennium Cafe. But most things haven't changed. He's still the b!X we know and love.

It was Thanksgiving and Christmas and their birthdays all rolled into one -- food and family-filled, noisy, and much too short.

And so, still half-asleep, we waited together for the morning train that took him to New York City, where he's staying at the Algonquin Hotel -- a combined birthday/Christmas gift to our much-loved writer/son --- so that he can catch up with some old-time blogger buddies before he catches his plane for the other end of the country.

I don't want him to go, hug him tightly, kiss his bearded cheek, this man who's my only son and who's leaving. Again. I think back to the Kahil Gibran piece On Children I sent my mother my freshman year in college.

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.........

He'll be back at his home, 3,000 miles away, before Thanksgiving. Who knows when we'll have a chance to see him again. We might all be very very silvery gray by then.

I stand by the train station window and watch him disappear, remembering the first time:

Leaving Home

Young Dionysus, a faded blue bandana
circling his head like a halo,
layers himself with choices
forgotton by the gods.

He smells of earth, of dreams,
of rain that flows with ease
along acres of hilly woodland,
filling some final need
in the deep hollows of stones.

He releases himself to the magic of motley,
to the wind, alive in his unbound hair,
to sweet pickings, scattered
like ripening berries
along miles of roadside vines.

As he leaves, the hearthfire
crackles softly.
Blackbirds loose feathers
from the heights of sky-borne oaks,
and honey bees sing to the sun.

(copyright Elaine Frankonis 1987)

November 17, 2004

There's the Spam we all hated as kids -- that salty, odd-tasting, hammy block of mystery meat that everyone ate during WWII because there was rationing of the good stuff and Spam was cheap. We put up with it because he had to.

Now we have another kind of spam that I'm getting more fed up with than I was with the original edible version. This weblog had over a hundred spam comments hawking drugs and whatnot from the same IP address. I do have a blacklist package that's supposed to alert me when I get a comment; then I can decide if I want to delete it and blacklist the poster. Somehow this clever spammer has figured out how to leave a comment without being noticed by the blacklisting mechanism. I finally figured out how to get rid of the spam comments in a very roundabout way. b!X says that when he gets back to Oregon he'll upgrade the software that makes this blog happen and the problem should be fixed.

Meanwhile, this spam is making me about as nauseous as the Spam of old. I wish I could puke all over the "Socrates/Antonio" who keeps leaving spam comments from IP 64.19.80.100. He's indefatigable. Well, guess what, so am I.

November 16, 2004

Everyone else will be gathering with their families next week for Thanksgiving dinner.

My thanks and feasting will come this weekend, when, for the first time in more than six years, my offspring will both be here with me -- along, of course, with my son-in-law and my grandson. And -- unless something happens between now and then -- my 88 year old mother.

I've been cleaning and cooking -- pierogi -- three different kinds; chocolate cream pies; potato salad; cooked Chex cereal; beef, bean, and macaroni soup -- all the comfort foods from their childhoods. Well, not the soup. That's a more recent addition to my menu.

b!X will meet his toddler nephew for the first time. He zig-zagged across the country in a 12-hour trip today (that's what happens when you get a cheap flight) and should be arriving at his dad's soon. His sister and her family will actually drive from Massachusetts to New York for the first time since they got their first drivers' licences and their first car over the summer. This family reunion is a big deal for all of us.

I am thankful for the graces of this odd-ball family of mine. Thankful that we are all getting together while my mother can still enjoy their presence. Of course, I have lots of presents for them. And food. Lots of food. Love, you know.

She wants to smell lilacs -- the kind that grew all over her family's farm in Poland when she was a girl. But we had snow showers here last week. The lilacs have been long gone.

She can't remember to take her pills or if she ate lunch or that she's supposed to set the table for dinner. She drinks instant coffee because she can't remember how to work the coffee maker. She only listens to the radio or watches tv because she knows how to turn them on and off. She can't remember how to use the audiotape or CD players.

But she remembers the scent of lilacs. She wants to smell lilacs.

So, we stop and the Health Hut and I buy some Lilac essential oil, fill up a spray bottle with water and pour in some of the oil. I spray the air, her clothes, her bed.

And so, I sit here smelling lilacs.

Actually, I prefer lavender.

November 12, 2004

Most women will spend 17 years caring for children and 18 years helping an elderly parent.

It’s usually a woman, you know,
who opens a hand, lends a heart.
Usually a woman, you know,
who takes a full plate,
sends a silly card,
welcomes someone else’s child
into softly tireless arms.

It’s usually a woman,you know,
who gives in, gives up, gives.
Usually a woman, you know,
who knits her brow over fevered ones,
endlessly stitching raveled sleaves.

It’s usually a woman, you know,
who nurses, nods, kneels.
Usually a woman, you know,
who comforts, cares – not just, you know,
for moments, but, you know,
for life.

Oh, I know. There are men
who do that too. But how many do

you know?

copyright 2004

November 11, 2004

F is for fraud. Voting fraud. My in box has been indundated with calls to sign petitions to urge Congress to do an in-depth investigation into the inaccuracy of the vote counts in Ohio and Florida.

F is also for fear. Lots of us are afraid of the way this nation is being led away from the fundament tenets of a constitutional democracy.

F is also for farblondzhet -- an expressive Yiddish word meaning all mixed up. Because that's what the Democratic Party is these days.

In response to a couple of feature pieces in the Portland Mercury, b!X pretty much lays it out there for us "Blues," saying that the second piece, by Sean Nelson...

...argues for a loud and vocal reclamation of what it means to be liberal, which, he says, literally means "free from bigotry... favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded." He rattles of a string of (yes) values which are common amongst residents of our urban archipelago, including education and true literacy, science, reason, history, and the social contract (and the taxes it requires).

[snip]

........ To move forward, the Democratic Party above and before all else, must reassert its claim upon the values represented by this urban archipelago -- which first requires that it stop pretending that these values are somehow things to be ashamed of, or only spoken of in private amongst other Democrats.

They are also both entirely correct that the America described by these urban values indeed simply is a better America than the one desired by the base of the Republican Party out there in its vast Red Sea. It is, in fact, simply a more American America.

Yes, there is a not insignificant portion of the country that for some reasons insists upon and persists in pretending to be stuck somewhere in the middle, between these two value systems, and they repeatedly demand attention, routinely compel the parties and their candidates to cater and pander to them.

But just as the Democratic Party needs to stop trying to reach out to the hardest of the hardcore Reds who will never share the small-d democratic values of the urban archipelago, it should also resist the temptation to reward those who, at this point, seem willfully and selfishly to pretend to be in conflict when it comes to these two competing value systems. It's time for the Democratic Party to stand firm as the party of tolerance, reason, and the social contract, and tell the whining middle to make up their minds which version of society they want America to resemble.

In our heart of hearts, we of the urban archipelago, those strongholds of the true Democratic Party, know what we believe, and know those values for which we stand. And we know they are quintessentially American values.

We also know the the rightest of the right-wing Reds will never agree, simply are beyond the reach of reason, and perhaps will only ever come around -- if they do at all -- when they see by our example that our way of life is a better one.

And we know that the whining middle needs to grow up and decide for themselves. No more pandering to their insistence that we reach out to them. They are supposed to be adults and citizens of a democratic republic. They've been given more than ample opportunity to see each version of America, and it's time for them to pick a side.

So, maybe F is also for the "future." Maybe we need to let the present administration stumble along for the next four years, fertilizing the political ground with its constant crap. And we liberals and Democrats need to take those four years to prove that we are better Americans -- more truthful, more tolerant, more reasonable, and more invested in honoring our American social contract.

Just as I believe that, if we want other countries to desire democracy for their own people, we Americans must convince them to pursue that goal by example and not by force, so must I believe that the Democratic Party needs to set the example for how an ethical, moral, truthful American political system functions. We liberals need to show that our way of life is better than the constrained and strained movements of the Reds.

Of course, that doesn't mean I'm not going to continue my dissenting tendencies when appropriate and necessary. After all, that's also the true Blue American way.

November 09, 2004

In my local paper on Sunday, my favorite local columnist again wrote a perfect piece. This time it was in anticipation of Veteran's Day. Diane Cameron wrote:

[snip]
We know that the holiday requires something of us, and that we should care. We know that when prompted by the calendar, we are to offer words of appreciation for what our soldiers have done.

It's especially true this year as soldiers from our region leave for Iraq. We get to see up close what it's like for men and women to leave their children, aging parents and other family members behind. But we often miss the greater sacrifice: Soldiers stand in harm's way for us and they kill other people for us. They give up pieces of their psyche and their soul -- for us.

I've thought about this the past few months as we've heard the accusations lobbed at John Kerry for tossing away his Vietnam War medals. He did, along with other vets, toss away some medals, but many people don't know the total impact of that event.

The 1971 medal "turn-in" ceremony was part of a protest against the war in Vietnam. But it was also a protest against the way that veterans were being treated when they sought help for injuries sustained in that war.

The term "post-traumatic stress disorder" is common parlance now. What we forget is that this fancy name for "battle fatigue" wasn't invented in the Vietnam War. That term and diagnosis came years later because of the activism of veterans like Kerry.

In the late '60s and early '70s, thousands of returning vets were turned away from VA hospitals because their mental health problems did not fit a category in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual -- the "DSM" -- the bible of the American Psychiatric Association. With no specific category, there could be no reimbursement or payment. That meant that vets were turned away or misdiagnosed.

What Kerry and others saw were thousands of vets committing suicide, dying of addiction or locked in mental hospitals and being numbed to zombie-like states by misprescribed anti-psychotic medications. Vietnam Veterans Against the War, which staged the 1971 medal "turn-in," demanded that the U.S. government respond. With attention brought to the bureaucratic and political malfunction, the American Psychiatric Association was pressured to include "Vietnam syndrome" and, later, post-traumatic stress disorder in the DSM, which meant that vets could receive services. The psychiatric association had dropped an earlier diagnostic category, "war neurosis," from the DSM in the early '60s, out of fear that the demand for services could bankrupt the government.

Today, we are in danger of making a mistake again as we try to deal with the current war's veterans. Some have said that Iraq is "like Vietnam," when, in fact, this war's veterans face different psychological injuries and will need still different treatments.

A pattern is clear. When considering the kind of psychic damage soldiers sustain, our government and medical systems first deny it, then exaggerate it, finally accept it, but then forget.

The rest of us forget, too. We forget how bad war is. We forget the lasting cost to those who go to fight and kill, and then come home broken. We forget that this war's casualty list will be doubled or tripled by psychological injuries.

So, what do we say to our soldiers for bearing all of that for us?

Oh, yes. Thank you.

And thank YOU, Diane, for explaining it all so much better than I ever could.

November 08, 2004

I wish that I could take credit for writing this, but I didn't write it, so I can't. I don't know who wrote it, but I got it forwarded to me in an email. Feel free to do the same.

Dear President Bush,

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can.

When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination... End of debate.

I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God's Laws and how to follow them.

1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness - Leviticus 15:19-24. The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Leviticus 1:9. The problem is, my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath.Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?

6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination - Leviticus 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there 'degrees' of abomination?

7. Leviticus 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?

8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Leviticus 19:27. How
should they die?

9. I know from Leviticus 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Leviticus 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? Leviticus 24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Leviticus 20:14). I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I am
confident you can help.

Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging. Plesae feel free to consult Atty Gen'l Ashcroft about any of these issues if you wish.

Your adoring fan,
Homer Simpsons

In case you didn't catch it, here's the Op Ed piece from the London Mirror:

GOD HELP AMERICA Nov 5 2004

THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN..

THEY say that in life you get what you deserve. Well, today America has deservedly got a lawless cowboy to lead them further into carnage and isolation and the unreserved contempt of most of the rest of the world.

This once-great country has pulled up its drawbridge for another four years and stuck a finger up to the billions of us forced to share the same air. And in doing so, it has shown itself to be a fearful, backward-looking and very small nation.

This should have been the day when Americans finally answered their critics by raising their eyes from their own sidewalks and looking outward towards the rest of humanity.

And for a few hours early yesterday, when the exit polls predicted a John Kerry victory, it seemed they had.

But then the horrible, inevitable truth hit home. They had somehow managed to re-elect the most devious, blinkered and reckless leader ever put before them. The Yellow Rogue of Texas.

A self-serving, dim-witted, draft-dodging, gung-ho little rich boy, whose idea of courage is to yell: "I feel good," as he unleashes an awesome fury which slaughters 100,000 innocents for no other reason than greed and vanity.

A dangerous chameleon, his charming exterior provides cover for a power-crazed clique of Doctor Strangeloves whose goal is to increase America's grip on the world's economies and natural resources.

And in foolishly backing him, Americans have given the go-ahead for more unilateral pre-emptive strikes, more world instability and most probably another 9/11.

Why else do you think bin Laden was so happy to scare them to the polls, then made no attempt to scupper the outcome?

There's only one headline in town today, folks: "It Was Osama Wot Won It."

And soon he'll expect pay-back. Well, he can't allow Bush to have his folks whoopin' and a-hollerin' without his own getting a share of the fun, can he?

Heck, guys, I hope you're feeling proud today.

To the tens of millions who voted for John Kerry, my commiserations.

To the overwhelming majority of you who didn't, I simply ask: Have you learnt nothing? Do you despise your own image that much?

Do you care so little about the world beyond your shores? How could you do this to yourselves?

How appalling must one man's record at home and abroad be for you to reject him?

Kerry wasn't the best presidential candidate the Democrats have ever fielded (and he did deserve a kicking for that "reporting for doo-dee" moment), but at least he understood the complexity of the world outside America, and domestic disgraces like the 45 million of his fellow citizens without health cover.

He would have done something to make that country fairer and re-connected it with the wider world.

Instead America chose a man without morals or vision. An economic incompetent who inherited a $2billion surplus from Clinton, gave it in tax cuts to the rich and turned the US into the world's largest debtor nation.

A man who sneers at the rights of other nations. Who has withdrawn from international treaties on the environment and chemical weapons.

A man who flattens sovereign states then hands the rebuilding contracts to his own billionaire party backers.

A man who promotes trade protectionism and backs an Israeli government which continually flouts UN resolutions.

America has chosen a menacingly immature buffoon who likened the pursuit of the 9/11 terrorists to a Wild West, Wanted Dead or Alive man-hunt and, during the Afghanistan war, kept a baseball scorecard in his drawer, notching up hits when news came through of enemy deaths.

A RADICAL Christian fanatic who decided the world was made up of the forces of good and evil, who invented a war on terror, and thus as author of it, believed he had the right to set the rules of engagement.

Which translates to telling his troops to do what the hell they want to the bad guys. As he has at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and countless towns across Iraq.

You have to feel sorry for the millions of Yanks in the big cities like New York, Washington, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco who voted to kick him out.

These are the sophisticated side of the electorate who recognise a gibbon when they see one.

As for the ones who put him in, across the Bible Belt and the South, us outsiders can only feel pity.

Were I a Kerry voter, though, I'd feel deep anger, not only at them returning Bush to power, but for allowing the outside world to lump us all into the same category of moronic muppets.

The self-righteous, gun-totin', military lovin', sister marryin', abortion-hatin', gay-loathin', foreigner-despisin', non-passport ownin' red-necks, who believe God gave America the biggest dick in the world so it could urinate on the rest of us and make their land "free and strong".

You probably won't be surprised to learn of would-be Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn who, on Tuesday, promised to ban abortion and execute any doctors who carried them out.

He also told voters that lesbianism is so rampant in the state's schools that girls were being sent to toilets on their own. Not that any principal could be found to back him up.

These are the people who hijack the word patriot and liken compassion to child-molesting. And they are unknowingly bin Laden's chief recruiting officers.

Al-Qaeda's existence is fuelled by the outpourings of America's Christian right. Bush is its commander-in-chief. And he and bin Laden need each other to survive.

Both need to play Lex Luther to each others' Superman with their own fanatical people. Maybe that's why the mightiest military machine ever assembled has failed to catch the world's most wanted man.

Or is the reason simply that America is incompetent? That behind the bluff they are frightened and clueless, which is why they've stayed with the devil they know.

VISITORS from another planet watching this election would surely not credit the amateurism.

The queues for hours to register a tick; the 17,000 lawyers needed to ensure there was no cheating; the $1.2bn wasted by parties trying to discredit the enemy; the allegations of fraud, intimidation and dirty tricks; the exit polls which were so wildly inaccurate; an Electoral College voting system that makes the Eurovision Song Contest look like a beacon of democracy and efficiency; and the delays and the legal wrangles in announcing the victor.

Yet America would have us believe theirs is the finest democracy in the world. Well, that fine democracy has got the man it deserved. George W Bush.

But is America safer today without Kerry in charge? A man who overnight would have given back to the UN some credibility and authority. Who would have worked out the best way to undo the Iraq mess without fear of losing face.

Instead, the questions facing America today are - how many more thousands of their sons will die as Iraq descends into a new Vietnam? And how many more Vietnams are on the horizon now they have given Bush the mandate to go after Iran, Syria, North Korea or Cuba...?

Today is a sad day for the world, but it's even sadder for the millions of intelligent Americans embarrassed by a gung-ho leader and backed by a banal electorate, half of whom still believe Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11.

Yanks had the chance to show the world a better way this week, instead they made a thuggish cowboy ride off into the sunset bathed in glory.

And in doing so it brought Armageddon that little bit closer and re-christened their beloved nation The Home Of The Knave and the Land Of The Freak.

God Help America.

Save us from the Yellow Rogue of Texas! (Ya' gotta love the liberal Brits.)

He didn't get it before he was elected, but we Blues knew that. Now the Reds are going to have to start recognizing that he doesn't get it as well. From msnbc.com:

WASHINGTON - As President Bush mulls what to do after winning re-election, voters say his first priority should be resolving the situation in Iraq, where the fighting is growing more intense.

They also want Bush to cut the deficit, which ballooned under his watch, rather than pushing for more tax cuts, according to an Associated Press poll taken right after the election.

The voters’ concerns stood in contrast to the priorities Bush cited after he defeated Democrat John Kerry. Bush pledged to aggressively pursue major changes in Social Security, tax laws and medical malpractice awards. Terrorism was a chief concern both for Bush and many voters in the poll.

“I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it,” Bush said a day after becoming the first president in 68 years to win re-election and gain seats in both the House and Senate.

Some 27 percent of respondents named Iraq as the top priority for the president’s second term, ahead of issues such as terrorism, the economy and health care.

Only 2 percent named taxes as a priority. By more than a 2-1 margin, voters said they preferred that the president balance the budget rather than reduce taxes further.

And...AND...AND!!!
I went searching for information on this after I caught a mention on my local news tonight. I found it in an Associated Press piece in the Seattle Post, which says:

Despite the Bush administration's pledge to battle terrorist financing, the government's average penalty against companies doing business with countries listed as terrorist-sponsoring states fell sharply after the Sept. 11 attacks, an Associated Press analysis of federal records shows.

The average penalty for a company doing business with Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan or Libya dropped nearly threefold, from more than $50,000 in the five years before the 2001 attacks to about $18,700 afterward, according to a computer-assisted analysis of federal records.

[snip]

Vice President Dick Cheney was a vocal critic of trade embargoes while he headed Halliburton, a Houston-based oil services conglomerate, from 1995 to 2000. Under Cheney, Halliburton expanded its trade with Iran through an offshore subsidiary. That arrangement is now being investigated by a federal grand jury.

Nineteen executives or directors of companies fined by OFAC for dealing with state sponsors of terrorism were top campaign fund-raisers for Bush. [emphasis mine]

One example is Joseph J. Grano Jr., chairman of the federal Homeland Security Advisory Council, which the president created by executive order and whose members he selected. Grano formerly headed the U.S. subsidiary of the Swiss bank UBS AG. It paid more than $100 million in fines for trading U.S. currency to Iran and other nations and for transferring funds to Iraq during Saddam's rule.

Ummm. And aren't ethics and morality kind of intertwined? So how can our morality-emphasizing leadership purport to be "moral" if they're so obviously unethical.

Well, we know the answer to that one, don't we.

[snip]

The AP used publicly available OFAC records to compile a database of penalties paid by companies for doing business with terrorists or their state sponsors. The database includes entries for more than 500 such cases since 1996.

Analysis of the database showed average penalties for violating the embargoes fell for every terrorism-sponsoring country after the attacks.

And this is the leadership from your scripture-quoting, terrorism-fighting president?

Throughout the whole fiasco of the past four years, I always wondered why the Rapture-awaiters don't see all the parallels between our current president and the anti-Christ of fundamentalist belief. (Bush-supporting Catholics, please be sure to follow this last link.)

Under the many-tendriled Bush, America is a country of lambs being led to the slaughter. That's what an anti-Christ would do, right? Make everyone believe he's the Saviour, dupe us all into believing in him instead of using our god-given intelligence to see through the deception?

I'm no sheep.

I'm a dragon, by birth. And, on top of that, I'm a Metal Dragon:

Watch out, Dumbya, you can't fool us Dragons, can't lead us down that illusary garden path to destruction.

We breathe the fire of dissent.

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann posts on his weblog an piece that promises to keep digging out what might be some embarassing truths for the current administration if any of the vote-fixing rumors are facts. In his article, Olbermann says:

.....a lot gets left out of newspapers, radio, and tv - but what’s left in tends to be, in the words of my old CNN Sports colleague NickCharles, a lead-pipe cinch.

Thus the majority of the media has yet to touch the other stories of Ohio (the amazing Bush Times Ten voting machine in Gahanna) or the sagas of Ohio South: huge margins for Bush in Florida counties in which registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans 2-1, places where the optical scanning of precinct totals seems to have turned results from perfect matches for the pro-Kerry exit poll data, to Bush sweeps.

We will be endeavoring to pull those stories, along with the Warren County farce, into the mainstream Monday and/or Tuesday nights on Countdown. That is, if we can wedge them in there among the news media’s main concerns since last Tuesday:

--- Who fixed the Exit Polls? Yes - you could deliberately skew a national series of post-vote questionnaires in favor of Kerry to discourage people from voting out west, where everything but New Mexico had been ceded to Kerry anyway, but you couldn’t alter key precinct votes in Ohio and/or Florida; and,

--- What will Bush do with his Mandate and his Political Capital? He got the highest vote total for a presidential candidate, you know. Did anybody notice who’s second on the list? A Mr. Kerry. Since when was the term “mandate” applied when 56 million people voted against a guy? And by the way, how about that Karl Rove and his Freudian slip on “Fox News Sunday”? Rove was asked if the electoral triumph would be as impactful on the balance of power between the parties as William McKinley’s in 1896 and he forgot his own talking points. The victories were “similarly narrow,” Rove began, and then, seemingly aghast at his forthrightness, corrected himself. “Not narrow; similarly structured.”

Gotta dash now. Some of us have to get to work on the Warren and Florida stories.

In the interim, Senator Kerry, kindly don’t leave the country.

This is a story we should all keep following. Don't let it get buried by the mainstreamers.

November 07, 2004

I must have spent 12 of the past 24 hours struggling determinedly to make some changes on my weblog. I really don't know how to code, so I had to keep going back to pages that were already set up and trying to figure out what I needed to copy into my new pieces to make them work. Lots of trial and error, saving and rebuilding. I guess I'm still not too old to learn new things, but boy is remembering each little < and > really taxing on my aging brain (to say nothing of my eyes!)

I also added an "About Me" page -- something I started a long time ago and just never had the energy to really tackle until now. Next I want to revamp and update my blogroll.

I was so groggy when my cat woke me up this morning to feed her that I accidentally put my honey roasted sesame snacks in her bowl instead of her cat food. I store both in glass jars, but they don't look anything alike. I don't funtion well after only 3 hours sleep.

When I finally did get up, I noticed that my cat kept going over to her bowl and looking up at me expectantly. I also noticed that there were sesame snacks in her bowl instead of her food -- and that she had eaten some of them. I replaced what was left with her own food, but she's been looking a little green around the gills all day. Poor thing.

The following is verbatim from a new website that asks you to sign a petition that will be sent to the Democratic National Committee asking that Howard Dean be selected as the new chairman of the DNC. Links to the petition and other relevant information appear at the end of this article:
____________________________________________

GIVE DR. DEAN THE DNC

Albert Einstein once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

In the aftermath of three successive failures -- the 2000 presidential election, the 2002 midterm election, and the 2004 presidential election -- now is the time for the Democratic Party to abandon its strategy of concession and capitulation.

Refining a failed strategy is not the answer. Our party must reinvent itself in ways appropriate to the inevitably-dire circumstances of President Bush's second term.

During the 2004 presidential primary campaign, Howard Dean brought an authentic sense of urgency to the Democratic Party, and through a distributed and networked organization laid the foundation for turning a newly-energized grassroots into ground troops ready to fight the good fight.

That approach to organization, and that level of energy, is what the Democratic Party needs as it prepares to engage in fierce opposition to the Bush Administration's falsely-claimed mandate.

Therefore, we Democrats -- both long-time and newly-arrived -- urge the Democratic Party to select Howard Dean as the new Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and further urge Dr. Dean to bring to bear the sense of urgency exhibited during his presidential campaign upon the very machine of the Democratic Party, from the inside.

IMPORTANT NOTE

It is expected that current DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe will be stepping down from that post early next year. Many of the Democrats rumored to be under consideration are either examples of the failed strategies of the past or members considered by the insulated party elite to be "up and comers".

We have set a deadline for this petition of December 31, 2004, based upon McAuliffe's "early next year" departure. However, it is important to obtain as many signatures as possible, as quickly as possible, in the event things move quickly and it looks like the party is going to announce a replacement well before McAuliffe leaves.

Sign The Petition (External Link)
Read The Original 'Give Dr. Dean The DNC' Article
Frequently Asked Questions

__________________________________________

Of course, I've already signed. I was an early Dean supporter, and I still dream of what inspiring path America might be on today had he not been the target of evil conservative information manipulation. I'm a registered Independent, but with Dean at the helm of the party, I would switch to give the Democrats all the support that I can.

Now that the Vote or Die campaign has died, theonetrueb!X has launched a new enterprise: "The One True Agitshop." I'm sure that this is just the start of something big.

November 06, 2004

In New York yesterday, former President Bill Clinton said it would be "a mistake for our party to sit around and ... whine about this and that or the other thing."

Mr. Clinton said Mr. Kerry was particularly weak on connecting with voters on moral issues.

"If we let people believe that our party doesn't believe in faith and family, doesn't believe in work and freedom, that's our fault," he said in a speech to the Urban Land Institute.

He added that Democrats "need a clear national message and they have to do this without one big advantage the Republicans have, which is they won't have a theological message that basically paints the other guy as evil."

While President Clinton might have personally succumbed to the weakness of the flesh, Dumbya beats it all in his succumbing to the devilish temptation of ego and global self-importance. To compare the moral devastation of their two sins is absurd.

The neocons (who actually have an impressive roster of fleshily sinful members) have portrayed us liberals as godless and immoral and enemies of faith, family, work, and freedom. Clinton is right. We need to push hard to reveal that part of the truth of who we are -- which is much more moral than those hypocritical neocons. We need to push hard, push harder.

Truth is a virus. Talk hard.

Several years ago, two musicians, one from Seattle and one from Los Angeles started writing music together, using the mail to send each other the pieces of the bits of music each had created. After several months, they had jointly composed an album. They decided to call themselves "Postal Service" after their method of working together.

Then they heard from the real Postal Service with a cease-and-desist letter.

The outcome was as unusual as the band itself. This week the real U.S. Postal Service signed an agreement with the band's label granting a free license to use the name in exchange for working to promote using the mail. Future copies of of the album will have a notice about copyright, while the federal Postal Poster Service will sell the band CDs on its website.

According to an article about this win/win compromise in the NY Times:

Gary Thuro, a manager of communications for the United States Postal Service who handles licensing and promotion, said the publicity would be valuable.

"We're always looking for ways to extend our brand and reach into areas we don't typically reach," he said, "like teens and people in their 20's, who are typically doing business online and are not familiar with the Postal Service."

When my kids were little, I used to cut my neighbor's kids' and husband's hair in return for fresh vegetables from her garden. I bartered my friend's hand-made jewelry and batik for Barbie clothes that I knitted for her daughters.

I predict that rough economic times are coming for us have-lesses under Bush's delusionary "mandate." Maybe we can do some creative bartering to keep our personal costs down. Hell, if the federal Post Office can do it to avoid spending money and time on litigation, why can't we barter to keep our own expenses down.

Hair cut, anyone?

November 05, 2004

On a black screen Michael Moore gives us 17 reasons not to give up. My favorites are the last two:

16. There are nearly 300 million Americans -- 200 million of them of voting age. We only lost by three and a half million! That's not a landslide -- it means we're almost there. Imagine losing by 20 million. If you had 58 yards to go before you reached the goal line and then you barreled down 55 of those yards, would you stop on the three yard line, pick up the ball and go home crying -- especially when you get to start the next down on the three yard line? Of course not! Buck up! Have hope! More sports analogies are coming!!!

17. Finally and most importantly, over 55 million Americans voted for the candidate dubbed "The #1 Liberal in the Senate." That's more than the total number of voters who voted for either Reagan, Bush I, Clinton or Gore. Again, more people voted for Kerry than Reagan. If the media are looking for a trend it should be this -- that so many Americans were, for the first time since Kennedy, willing to vote for an out-and-out liberal. The country has always been filled with evangelicals -- that is not news. What IS news is that so many people have shifted toward a Massachusetts liberal. In fact, that's BIG news. Which means, don't expect the mainstream media, the ones who brought you the Iraq War, to ever report the real truth about November 2, 2004. In fact, it's better that they don't. We'll need the element of surprise in 2008.

And my other favority is Paul Krugman, who begins his Op Ed piece with:

President Bush isn't a conservative. He's a radical - the leader of a coalition that deeply dislikes America as it is. Part of that coalition wants to tear down the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt, eviscerating Social Security and, eventually, Medicare. Another part wants to break down the barriers between church and state. And thanks to a heavy turnout by evangelical Christians, Mr. Bush has four more years to advance that radical agenda

and then he says what I, too, believe:

So what should the Democrats do?

One faction of the party is already calling for the Democrats to blur the differences between themselves and the Republicans. Or at least that's what I think Al From of the Democratic Leadership Council means when he says, "We've got to close the cultural gap." But that's a losing proposition.

Yes, Democrats need to make it clear that they support personal virtue, that they value fidelity, responsibility, honesty and faith. This shouldn't be a hard case to make: Democrats are as likely as Republicans to be faithful spouses and good parents, and Republicans are as likely as Democrats to be adulterers, gamblers or drug abusers. Massachusetts has the lowest divorce rate in the country; blue states, on average, have lower rates of out-of-wedlock births than red states.

But Democrats are not going to get the support of people whose votes are motivated, above all, by their opposition to abortion and gay rights (and, in the background, opposition to minority rights). All they will do if they try to cater to intolerance is alienate their own base.

Does this mean that the Democrats are condemned to permanent minority status? No. The religious right - not to be confused with religious Americans in general - isn't a majority, or even a dominant minority. It's just one bloc of voters, whom the Republican Party has learned to mobilize with wedge issues like this year's polarizing debate over gay marriage.

Rather than catering to voters who will never support them, the Democrats - who are doing pretty well at getting the votes of moderates and independents - need to become equally effective at mobilizing their own base.

In fact, they have made good strides, showing much more unity and intensity than anyone thought possible a year ago. But for the lingering aura of 9/11, they would have won.

What they need to do now is develop a political program aimed at maintaining and increasing the intensity. That means setting some realistic but critical goals for the next year.

Democrats shouldn't cave in to Mr. Bush when he tries to appoint highly partisan judges - even when the effort to block a bad appointment fails, it will show supporters that the party stands for something. They should gear up for a bid to retake the Senate or at least make a major dent in the Republican lead. They should keep the pressure on Mr. Bush when he makes terrible policy decisions, which he will.

C'mon Democrats! Push hard or get out of my way.

And make Dr. Dean head of the Democrative National Committee

A Day in the Life of Joe Republican made the email rounds a while ago. But if you haven't read it, now's the time.

I am so sorry you feel this way. If you actually had a clue as to what made this nation great, you would quit trying to suck the life out of it. America was founded on great conservative christian values (the Ten Commandments). You are free in this country to think and for the most part do what ever you want. But you do not have the right to hijack this country with your socialist values that undermine our national identity and security. We will continue to fight you and the terrorist with every fiber in our bodies. Because it is you who invited the terrorist into our country to kill our family members

The quote above is a comment left on my Radical Rosie post by someone calling him/herself "Righteous."

Well, I say that those who don't know our country's history are bound to keep screwing it up.

Perhaps "Righteous" is referring to those "Christians" who fled from Europe to seek religious freedom, freedom from persecution. Oddly enough,

Although they were victims of religious persecution in Europe, the Puritans supported the Old World theory that sanctioned it, the need for uniformity of religion in the state. Once in control in New England, they sought to break "the very neck of Schism and vile opinions." The "business" of the first settlers, a Puritan minister recalled in 1681, "was not Toleration, but [they] were professed enemies of it." Puritans expelled dissenters from their colonies, a fate that in 1636 befell Roger Williams and in 1638 Anne Hutchinson, America's first major female religious leader. Those who defied the Puritans by persistently returning to their jurisdictions risked capital punishment, a penalty imposed on four Quakers between 1659 and 1661.

In other words, those righteous Christians became the kind of persecutors they were running away from. We all know what they did to those poor old women they decided were witches, right? But that's another long and horrible story that needs truth telling about.

And let's not forget all those Native Americans that were displaced and persecuted and executed by all of those righteous Christian members of our military:

“I did not know how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream...” — Black Elk. Oglala Holy Man on the aftermath of the Massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota December, 1890. (The United States Army Seventh Cavalry used gattling guns to slaughter 300 helpless Lakota children, men and women.)

Oh, well, maybe my commentor was referring to our Founding Fathers -- you know, the ones who were smart enough to use the structure of the Iroquois Confederacy to inform the creation of our Constitutional form of government:

On June 11, 1776 while the question of independence was being debated, the visiting Iroquois chiefs were formally invited into the meeting hall of the Continental Congress. There a speech was delivered, in which they were addressed as "Brothers" and told of the delegates' wish that the "friendship" between them would "continue as long as the sun shall shine" and the "waters run." The speech also expressed the hope that the new Americans and the Iroquois act "as one people, and have but one heart."[18] After this speech, an Onondaga chief requested permission to give Hancock an Indian name. The Congress graciously consented, and so the president was renamed "Karanduawn, or the Great Tree." With the Iroquois chiefs inside the halls of Congress on the eve of American Independence, the impact of Iroquois ideas on the founders is unmistakable. History is indebted to Charles Thomson, an adopted Delaware, whose knowledge of and respect for American Indians is reflected in the attention that he gave to this ceremony in the records of the Continental Congress.[19]

Now, speaking of those founding fathers,

Some people today assert that the United States government came from Christian foundations. They argue that our political system represents a Christian ideal form of government and that Jefferson, Madison, et al, had simply expressed Christian values while framing the Constitution. If this proved true, then we should have a wealth of evidence to support it, yet just the opposite proves the case.

Although, indeed, many of America's colonial statesmen practiced Christianity, our most influential Founding Fathers broke away from traditional religious thinking. The ideas of the Great Enlightenment that began in Europe had begun to sever the chains of monarchical theocracy. These heretical European ideas spread throughout early America. Instead of relying on faith, people began to use reason and science as their guide. The humanistic philosophical writers of the Enlightenment, such as Locke, Rousseau, and Voltaire, had greatly influenced our Founding Fathers and Isaac Newton's mechanical and mathematical foundations served as a grounding post for their scientific reasoning.

A few Christian fundamentalists attempt to convince us to return to the Christianity of early America, yet according to the historian, Robert T. Handy, "No more than 10 percent-- probably less-- of Americans in 1800 were members of congregations."

The Founding Fathers, also, rarely practiced Christian orthodoxy. Although they supported the free exercise of any religion, they understood the dangers of religion. Most of them believed in deism and attended Freemasonry lodges. According to John J. Robinson, "Freemasonry had been a powerful force for religious freedom." Freemasons took seriously the principle that men should worship according to their own conscious. Masonry welcomed anyone from any religion or non-religion, as long as they believed in a Supreme Being. Washington, Franklin, Hancock, Hamilton, Lafayette, and many others accepted Freemasonry.

The Constitution reflects our founders views of a secular government, protecting the freedom of any belief or unbelief. The historian, Robert Middlekauff, observed, "the idea that the Constitution expressed a moral view seems absurd. There were no genuine evangelicals in the Convention, and there were no heated declarations of Christian piety."

How about we let those Founding Fathers of ours speak for themselves (and for me):

John Adams:

"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved--the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!"--John Adams in a letter to Thomas Jefferson

"But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legaends, hae been blended with both Jewish and Chiistian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed.--John Adams in a letter to F.A. Van der Kamp, Dec. 27, 1816, _2000_Years_of_Disbelief_, John A. Haught

"The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity." --John Adams

Benjamin Franklin

"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."--Benjamin Franklin, _Poor_Richard_, 1758

"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason."--Benjamin Franklin, _Poor_Richard_, 1758

"I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it." -- Benjamin Franklin, _Articles_Of_Belief_and_Acts_of_Religion_, Nov.20, 1728

"I wish it (Christianity) were more productive of good works ... I mean real good works ... not holy day keeping, sermon-hearing ... or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity." -- Benjamin Franklin , _Works_ Vol.VII, p.75

"If we look back into history for the character of the present sects of Christianity, we shall find few that have not in turns been persecutors and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in Pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution on the Roman church, but preactied i on the Puritans. They found it wrong in Bishops, but fell into the practice both here (England) and in New England"--Benjamin Franklin, _Poor_Richard_, 1758

"When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one." -- Benjamin Franklin, _2000_Years_of_Disbelief_ by James A. Haught

"Religion I found to be without any tendency to inspire, promote, or confirm morality, serves principally to divide us and make us unfriendly to one another."--Benjamin Franklin

Thomas Jefferson

"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are serviley crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God, because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blind faith." -- Thomas Jefferson

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State."--Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association on Jan. 1, 1802, _The_Writings_of_Thomas_Jefferson_Memorial_Edition_, edited by Lipscomb and Bergh, 1903-04, 16:281

"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."--Thomas Jefferson, _Notes_on_Virginia_, _Jefferson_the_President:_First_Term_1801-1805_, Dumas Malon, Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1970, p. 191

"...no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship ministry or shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise.. affect their civil capacities."--Thomas Jefferson, _Statute_for_Religious_Freedom_, 1779, The_Papers_of_Thomas_Jefferson_, edited by Julron P. Boyd, 1950, 2:546_

I could go on and on. But I'm not about to try to teach historical facts to those Righteous Christians who obviously never got educated beyond what they've been told is in the Bible.

No, Righteous, it's neither me nor my ilk who make other peoples look at this country with hatred and resentment. It's neither me nor my Blue Brothers and Sisters who treat other cultures, lifestyles, and personal beliefs with such disrespect, misunderstanding, and righteousness that the seeds of potential terrorism are ungraciously fertilized.

My Blue America doesn't require that everyone believe that the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament are the rule of law of the land. My Blue America requires that every citizen abide by the Constitution and Bill of Rights and, in addition to that, have the right to embrace the Old Testament and its Ten Commandments, and/or the New Testament teachings of Jesus, or the teachings of Upanishads or the Koran, or the Tao te Ching.

My Blue America does not pretend to be perfect. It does not insist on being Christian.

As the PBS series The Meaning of America explained:

Beyond the symbolism of flag-waving and patriotic cliches lies the heart of American Democracy: our system of personal rights and human dignity. Conceived in rebellion against the absolute right of monarchs, the American revolution asserted that the people are sovereign, that they must be free to speak, to choose their leaders, to pray — or not to pray — as they wish. Messy, highly imperfect and in need of constant maintenance, it is a system that confers on us the priceless gift of human freedom

And that means the freedom to dissent.

As our Declaration of Independence states: In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Amen, amen, I say to that.

[addendum: as one might expect, the email address left by the cowardly Righteous was bogus.]

A GOP nemesis of mine has accused me of "sour grapes" for continuing to oppose Bush and his policies. I'm far from the only one who maintains that it's not a matter of sour grapes; its a matter of some rotten fruit on the American political vine. Just check out these links:

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
http://www.votergate.tv/
http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=388
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1104-38.htm
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/3/52213/1921
http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/04/11/ana04025.html

November 04, 2004

appropriately blue-hatted.

From blogger Glovefox (whose site is retricted), an email documenting that fact that Liberal Britain goes into depression and shock as it sides with the Blue States of America.

We are not alone.

And, just for more to ponder, a couple of relevant quotes:

"The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life." -- Adolph Hitler, 1933 (Proclamation to the German Nation at Berlin, February 1, 1933).

(I think I'll put the above in my sidebar.)

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." -- Edmund Burke

Heh. Just found some other Hitler quotes that seems uniquely appropriate to what we just witnessed from the GOP:

All propaganda has to be popular and has to adapt its spiritual level to the perception of the least intelligent of those towards whom it intends to direct itself." -- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. I I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almight Creator by warding off the Jews. I am fighting for the Lord's work. -- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

In a couple of weeks, it will be Kalilily Time's third anniversay. I started out on Blogger.com. Today I looked back at my very first posts. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

P. Diddy may have stolen my years-old "VOTE OR DIE!" slogan and pimped himself all over the media as a result, but that's okay, I've got a new one, although it's not quite as sublime.

Push back, or get the Hell out of my way.

So ends b!X's eloquent essay about his (and Portland's) response to the election results. Be sure to follow the links, especially this one and this one for some graphically appropriate statements.

His links show that I'm not the only one advocating seceding from the broken Union. And maybe the time is coming to seriously think about moving to the proposed Republic of Cascadia.

Non-blogger myrln reports: Daily Show tonite: If you want to make same sex love or visit a library, this is probably the last night you can do so.

More than five decades of pushing back has made for a tiring political effort to keep America from falling off the Righteous edge, but, hey, there's a dance in the ol' dame yet.

And so I'll still be pushing -- only now even harder.

November 03, 2004

My friends have been calling. They're all so depressed, angry. Do we get more involved in forcing change or do we opt out for the next four years.

This email I got from TrueMajority makes me feel like it would be worthwhile to get even more active:

There is a lot of bad news coming out of this election, and we won’t burden you with more of what you already know. Bush’s reelection and Republican gains in both houses will make the struggle for justice and peace in our country harder over the next four years. Yep, we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.

Maybe it’s the lack of sleep talking, but we here at TrueMajority still have hope for our future. Why? Because TrueMajority members had a front-row seat to the beginnings of a revolution in American politics. It’s just in the beginning phases, and clearly it didn’t all work.

But look at the evidence. Before this year, political campaigns were like watching a bad movie on TV without a remote to turn it off. Our job as citizens was to watch the ads and vote. That was it.

What a difference four years makes. For the first time in decades, the number of people voting went way up. The number of folks who actually got involved in the election went through the roof. But the change was far deeper than that. Big money was still monumental, but little money collected online from lots of people added up to big money. More important, the things that really mattered in the end were accomplished by an army of regular folks. Millions of doors were knocked on, and even more calls to new voters were made. Regular people who were never political activists held house parties to share their enthusiasm with friends. Quite simply, politics went from something we watched on TV to something we all did.

What made all this possible? There were many factors, but an important one was the rise of a bunch of online groups like TrueMajority that make instantaneous nationwide conversations possible with the click of a mouse. This emerging online community was able to offer you ways to get involved, such as volunteering to contact voters, raise money, distribute information and create your own projects — all with a tiny staff and an efficient budget. Regular folks with an e-mail address have proven that they can pitch in what time and money they can to create a powerful wave of change. It really worked. Just look at the unprecedented get-out-the-vote efforts that produced record turnout.

We’ll need all of these new skills and tactics as we take on an ever-more-hostile environment in Washington. It’ll take a bit of time to rest and regroup, and then we’ll continue the struggle for social justice. For the first time in a long time, we’ve helped fashion a path that can lead to a real change in America. And that’s a reason for hope.

The next phase may well involve helping people build local initiatives and organizations around leaders who have the strength and commitment to champion compassion, justice, sustainability and international cooperation. Conservatives rebuilt their activist groups through devotion to a set of values they believed in and could communicate with passion to voters. It’s time for us to do that too.

So our pledge to you today is that this is just the beginning. We at TrueMajority will keep an eye on what’s going on in Washington and elsewhere for our 550,000 members, and we’ll keep offering you different ways that you can make a difference. You’ve shown that this can really work.

The first place I went online to give myself some support after hearing the election results was to Josh Marhsall's weblog, talkingpointsmemo.com From there, I linked over this statement about Federalism on Andrew Sullivan's weblog, which I never read.

What we're seeing, I think, is a huge fundamentalist Christian revival in this country, a religious movement that is now explicitly political as well. It is unsurprising, of course, given the uncertainty of today's world, the devastating attacks on our country, and the emergence of so many more liberal cultures in urban America. And it is completely legitimate in this country for such views to be represented in public policy, however much I disagree with them. But the intensity of the passion, and the inherently totalist nature of religiously motivated politics means deep social conflict if we are not careful. Our safety valve must be federalism. We have to live and let live. As blue states become more secular, and red states become less so, the only alternative to a national religious war is to allow different states to pursue different options. That goes for things like decriminalization of marijuana, abortion rights, stem cell research and marriage rights. Forcing California and Mississippi into one model is a recipe for disaster. Federalism is now more important than ever. I just hope that Republican federalists understand this. I fear they don't.

The more I read about Federalism, the more it appeals to me.

Or, even better, how about if all us liberal northeast states band together and form a Union of Federalist States as part of the United States. Then we can control our laws about gay marriage, abortion, separation of church and state, protecting personal privacy from the extremes of the Patriot Act etc. etc.

I don't know enough about Federalism to understand how those expanded states rights interface with national responsibilities. I guess that I have my reading cut out for me.

I figure that the two avenues we have for working our way out of Bush's imperial dictatorship is ferment civil war or ferment Federalism. Being a pacifist at heart, I opt for fermenting a New Federalist Movement.

..and depressed. That's what I am over this election. The country was split just about half and half and Bush interprets that as a mandate to stay the course. A MANDATE!!! Yeah, from half of the country. What about us in the other half? Will he change his course and represent (as he should if he wants us to consider him our president as well as theirs) OUR priorities, OUR moral and ethical standards? We all know the answer to that.

some emails I got say it all for me:

from a local poet:
Four more years of a bent Supreme Court
Four more years of our youth being slaughtered
Four more years of the US being the bully of the planet
Four more years of ignoring the death camps in Sudan
Four more years of being ashamed of my country

from a Londoner:

Dear Fellow Bloggers,

I sat up as late as I could following the progress of the US elections, fell
asleep and then woke up to a news soundbites of the GOP cheering for
"Florida calls for Bush", chants of "4 more years!! 4 more years!!" and then
was bombarded throughout the day--on BBC Radio 4, the bastion of balanced
(though liberal-leaning) thought, no less--with "The White House declares
Bush the clear winner".

And now, it's just been announced that John Kerry has just called Bush to
concede defeat.

Right now, as I commented in response to a blog entry by a Canadian friend,
this is what I (and many other non-Americans who have been unable to vote
but were praying and hoping so hard) feel:

"4 more years of insanity is exactly what it's going to be if some miracle
doesn't happen in the next day or so.

For the last few years, The Rest of the World consciously separated the
American people from the U.S. administration, believing that Bush stole the
2000 election.

Now that Bush is winning the popular vote, I think that even that effort to
make a distinction between people and government will be wiped out because
this time, the majority voted for Bush in the full knowledge of what he is
and what he did.

I don't really know what to make of Americans anymore. It used to be that
America largely had its heart in the right place but now, it doesn't and
that's frightening, seeing as it's the teenager nation who has shown that it
is fully capable of lording it over the world with superior firepower and
that arrogant teenaged sense of self-righteousness."

Okay, the pundits amongst you will point out that I'm generalising again but
to someone like me whose beliefs and values are the anti-thesis to
everything championed by the Bush administration (who are an affront to
everything I hold dear):

It's frightening to even contemplate the thought of the sheer scale and type
of mess the Bush administration is going to leave America and the world in
by the time they leave office in 4 years. Perhaps a Kerry-Edwards
administration would not change things that much but at least it would have
brought some reason and sanity back, as I see it.

The lesser of two evils is still the lesser of two evils.

One thing's for sure: the America I once knew, admired and respected looks
like it's heading the way of the Titanic. And since the USA wields so much
influence over world events, I wouldn't be surprised if the rest of the
world will feel the effects of this for a long time to come.

Once upon a time, America led by example. Today...

Anyway, I'd just like to say "Thank you" to all of you for doing your bit to
try to vote Bush out of office and especially to those of you who went one
further and volunteered to work on the Kerry-Edwards campaign.

I guess we won't be having those wild street parties in Oxford tonight but
we hope that you will all continue to fight the good fight and to one day
restore the America the rest of us knew and loved. And I hope that one day
the painful divisions in your country will be healed.