More why I like Howard Dean
In an interview with the online magazine Truthout, Howard Dean today discusses his views on the Patriot Act and the media. In Grist magazine, he shares his concerns about the environment and his anger at President Bush’s energy and environmental failures. Finally, an Associated Press article about his successful online fundraising highlights that Dean “hit the $1 million mark in Internet fund raising last week, becoming the first 2004 presidential hopeful to announce he has done so.”
To read the Truthout interview, click here.
To read the Grist interview, click here.
To read the AP article, click here.
And speaking of the opposition to the Patriot Act, b!X tells me that the Common Council here in Albany NY has passed a resolution opposing it. Sure enough here’s the link I found.

I taped the CBS miniseries The Rise of Evil so that my mother and I can watch it with the commercials fast-forwarded. (Maybe that way she’ll stay awake.) But non-blogger ‘myrln’ did watch it, and this is what he has to say about it:
To those who didn’t see the Hitler mini-series, I say, Too bad. Were I a blogger, I would say to all who didn’t, Why not? Too much like ancient history? Well, that plays right into the hands of Dumbya and Gang. The fact is, CBS deserved support for getting this program done and on the air, but it couldn’t attract major advertisers and settled for PSAs and mail order ads mostly. Business, I guess, didn’t want to risk offending Zionists who condemned the program (tho’ major Jewish leaders who previewed it gave it the highest praise), or didn’t want to risk offending the current administration(?).
Anyone who didn’t see it but cares and knows history can/does repeat itself needs to buy/rent it when it’s released into general distribution. Why? Because while it’s not directly analogous to 2003 America, it’s familiar enough to be unnerving. How? Let me
count the ways.
— Hitler’s relentless drive to consolidate the power in the Chancellor while at the same time usurping congressional (Reichstag) powers.
— Reluctance of media to report on Brown-shirt thuggery for fear of offending Hitler. As one reporter/editor says, “No one wants to read about anything they could do something about. It’s as if we’ve gone stupid or blind.” (Seem familiar?) And when he does get something in print, his home and wife are threatened, the paper smoke-bombed, and eventually, he is taken into “protective custody” and ultimately sent to the early camps, one of the first at Dachau, where he is finally killed. His wife is never told of his death, only receives a package with his bloodied, broken glasses.
— Movie news (’30s equivalent of tv news) becomes rah-rah propaganda for Hitler and the National Socialist Party (Nazis). (Sound familiar?)
— His subversion of democratic process to empower his party and move toward chancellorship by having his party consistently walk out of Reichstag and thus force new elections. (Well…that sounds like Texas.)
— Then he secretly orders the Reichstag building burned and afterward claims, “The terorists have opened fire, and we will fire back.” (Sound familiar??)
— To fight the alleged terrorists, he engineers new procedures: all legislative matters will be handled by the administration as well as communications etc. under what he called the Enabling Act. “Any refusal to go along would be regarded as opposition,” he said, making clear the implication that “opposition” was equivalent of terrorism or treason. (Sound familiar?)
The final impression was one of Nazi Germany’s echoes in history becoming voices again in our current age in our own country. Not exact parallels, as I said, but so unnervingly familiar. Right down to when he’s take full control of the country and the final moments of “Deutschland Uber Alles” filling the air over pictures Krystalnacht, and the camps, and of bodies from the camps stacked like cordwood (those same ones I saw in movietone news after WWII ended). Somehow, I heard simultaneously in my head the almost ubiquitous “God Bless America” just under the other melody.
All too close for comfort. CBS deserves a medal, or at least praise, for doing the miniseries.
I notice that lots of people are reluctant to make the comparison between Hitler and Bush. But, isn’t it obvious???

The Gravity of Gardens (May 2002)
They gave me a garden
the size of a grave,
so I filled it with raucous
reminders of sense:
marigold nests,
nasturtium fountains,
explosions of parsley, and
riots of lavender —
forests of tomato plants
asserting lush ascendance
over scent-full beds of
rosemary, basil, and sage.
And waving madly above them all,
stalks of perplexing
Jerusalem artichoke,
that unkillable weed
that blossoms and burrows
and grows up to nine feet tall,
defying the grim arrogance
of gravity.
Gardening the Grave (May 2003)
Four stakes,
two tomato plants
(so far),
last year

The fabric of our lives.
Yesterday
I sent a package
to my second cousin,
stationed in Iraq

One assignment at the poetry workshop led by Joan Murray and held at the Still Point Retreat Center was to write a poem that dealt with fear.
An old story
Another noiseless night,
and, again, the ambulance
waits below her window,
its strobe striping red
through the slats
of her closed blinds.
She listens for whispers
from the long hallway,
some hint of who it is
this time —
maybe the frowning one
who drifts, slow in motion,
beside her grizzled
three-legged dog;
maybe that sweet sad man
who wheels himself each day at three
into the patch of sun at the front door;
or maybe someone still
faceless and frightened
keeping silent vigil
until three a.m.
(copyright EF 2003)

From myrln, who heard about it on NPR:
You may remember Dumbya’s big “hydrogen car” plan in his proposed budget at some couple of billion or so bucks. Many said, Huh? Well, get ready to huh again.
Now there are basically 2 ways to get hydrogen: from water and from hydrocarbons. The former leaves behind oxygen, the latter carbon. Which method does the Dumbya plan focus on? Why the hydrocarbon one, silly. Why? Because the basic hydrocarbons to be used are FOSSIL FUELS!!!!!!!!!!!! Which means precisely no difference in our basic approach since we’d still be totally dependent on fossil fuels. Why would he choose that approach? Can you say Halliburton? Can you say Oil. Can you say Iraq?
(And btw, carbon is harmful to environment, too — airwise, I think. Supposedly it would have to be bonded to rocks and buried in the earth, a very expensive process and likely another $$$bone Dumbya can toss his businessbuds
Are we going to let him get away with this??? Are we going to vote those unethical manipulators out of office?

They’re making a movie of Jessica Lynch’s rescue. Surprise, surprise! Except the original rescue was already a made-for-tv movie according to the BBC, as reported in an article in the Austin American Statesman
“It was like a Hollywood film,” Uday said, according to the BBC. “They cried, ‘Go, go, go,’ with guns and blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show — an action movie like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan, with jumping and shouting, breaking down doors.”
Kampfner, writing in the Guardian, said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman in Washington, declined to release the unedited military video to clear up discrepancies. Nor would Whitman comment on Lynch’s injuries, saying only that he understood there is “some conflicting information out there.”

The Stone Labyrinth at Still Point
Sometimes, Life
Sometimes life,
like a labyrinth,
leads you
where you have to go.
You think you make choices

I thought it would be nice to do something (anything!) with my mother on Mother