One Million Pissed Off Women (OMPOW)

From here:

From breast pumps to Big Bird, and from food stamps to family planning, the GOP is waging a war on America’s women and children. Full-​fledged Republican battles against women now include anti-​abortion bills, anti-​contraception efforts, bills that literally would allow women to die in hospitals across America to protect “conscience rights” of doctors, attempts to defund Planned Parenthood, and GOP-​sponsored bills that reduce, hamper, or even attempt to eliminate women’s constitutional rights to abortion and reproductive health services.

Yes, despite the fact that 64% of Americans say unemployment and the economy in general are “the most important problems facing this country today,” the GOP has chosen to focus on effectively eliminating the constitutional right to abortion.

And so a new Facebook group has been formed:to raise awareness, consciousness, and the determination to fight back to a level where the lawmakers around the nation understand that women are 51% of the population and we are TIRED of others making our laws and decisions for us.

Founded in April of 2011, OMPOW’s Goal is to take action to bring about equality for all women. OMPOW plans to bring the Public Spotlight on Elected Officials and our Political Parties through accountability for their actions directly impacting women. We intend to work to eliminate discrimination and harassment against all women, in the workplace, schools, the justice system, and all other sectors of society; secure abortion, birth control and reproductive rights for all women; end all forms of violence against women; eradicate racism, sexism and homophobia; and promote equality and justice in our society.

So, join OMPOW, and share the following with anyone and everyone who needs to read it.

From here:

Sexual Assault Prevention Tips Guaranteed to Work!

1. Don’t put drugs in people’s drinks in order to control their behavior.
2. When you see someone walking by themselves, leave them alone!
3. If you pull over to help someone with car problems, remember not to assault them!
4. NEVER open an unlocked door or window uninvited.
5. If you are in an elevator and someone else gets in, DON’T ASSAULT THEM!
6. Remember, people go to laundry to do their laundry, do not attempt to molest someone who is alone in a laundry room.
7. USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM! If you are not able to stop yourself from assaulting people, ask a friend to stay with you while you are in public.
8. Always be honest with people! Don’t pretend to be a caring friend in order to gain the trust of someone you want to assault. Consider telling them you plan to assault them. If you don’t communicate your intentions, the other person may take that as a sign that you do not plan to rape them.
9. Don’t forget: you can’t have sex with someone unless they are awake!
10. Carry a whistle! If you are worried you might assault someone “on accident” you can hand it to the person you are with, so they can blow it if you do.
And, ALWAYS REMEMBER: if you didn’t ask permission and then respect the answer the first time, you are commiting a crime- no matter how “into it” others appear to be.

an appeal to the financial backers of Chump Trump

Donald Trump is an embarrassment to your support of his television program. I am boycotting any program and product tied in any way to that egomaniacal racist. Do us all a favor and DUMP TRUMP. He is a national disgrace and we will make him a financial liability.

I have sent the above note to the following who provide support to Donal Trump:
Jeremy.Gaines@nbcuni.com, Rebecca.Marks@nbcuni.com, Lauren.Kapp@nbcuni.com, Kathy.Kelly-Brown@nbcuni.com, ataylor@erac.com

And I went to the sites listed below and filled out their forms with the same message.

http://www.drpeppersnapplegroup.com/contact/

http://www.campingworld.com/contactUsForm.cfm?&contactValue=General%20Questions

http://www.farouk.com/contactus.aspx

Please feel free to do the same.

this strange world

Each week, Harper’s offers its “Weekly Review—a digital newsletter that distills the world media’s discharge into three simple paragraphs.”

Here are some discharges (some amusing, some downright scary) from this week’s Harper’s Weekly Review. The links will take you to the original stories.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi denied accusations that he paid a teenage runaway for sex, explaining that he gave $65,000 to a bellydancer who goes by the name of Ruby the Heartbreaker to help her escape a life of prostitution by launching a beauty parlor, and that he thought she was Hosni Mubarak’s granddaughter. link

Donald Trump, who is giving “serious, serious thought” to running for president in 2012, outlined his Libya policy: “Either I’d go in and take the oil,“ he said, ”or I don’t go in at all.” link

Previously unseen emails revealed that BP tried to control independent research into the consequences of the Gulf oil spill. link

Hydraulic fracturing companies, an investigation revealed, injected hundreds of millions of gallons of hazardous or carcinogenic chemicals into wells in at least 13 states between 2005 and 2009, as well as salt, instant coffee, and walnut hulls, to stimulate the release of natural gas from underground reserves. link

Bolivia prepared to pass the Law of Mother Earth, which will grant nature rights equal to those of humans, although it is not yet clear how the legislation will be implemented. link

Scientists identified the part of the brain integral to embarrassment by asking subjects to listen to their own karaoke renditions of the Temptations’ 1964 hit “My Girl” played back without the musical accompaniment. link

A retired greengrocer from Southampton, England, spent 400 hours knitting a three-tier wedding cake to celebrate the upcoming marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton. “It’s not based on a pattern,” said 74-year-old Sheila Carter. “I just made it up. link

While I have to admit that, being an fanatical knitter, I was intrigued by the story of the knitted wedding cake. But only for a moment.

What really caught my attention was the Wired story about Bolivia.

Bolivia is one of South America’s poorest countries and is seeing its rural communities suffer with failing crops due to climatic events such as floods and droughts. Temperatures are set to rise by up to four degrees celsius over the next 100 years, while most of its glaciers are likely to melt within 20 years.

The Bolivian government — under president Evo Morales — will establish a ministry of mother earth and commit to give communities the authority to monitor and control the industries and businesses that are polluting the environment.

I hope the media keeps track of this story to see if what Morales proposes can work, given corporate greed, even in Bolivia.

one Republican’s good idea

There are very few issues on which I can agree with most Republicans. They want less government interference; I want more government oversight. They believe that everyone should be able to “pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.” I believe more in the “I am my brother’s keeper” socialist philosophy of Jesus Christ (even though I am an atheist).

“Government of the people, for the people, and by the people” is what our country’s founders intended, with “people” meaning ALL citizens or the representatives thereof. That means a strong federal government that serves the interests of ALL of its people, not just the rich and powerful.

Unfortunately, these days the richest and most powerful people are those who are supposed to represent us, with their closest financial friends backing them up.

So, when Virginia’s Republican James. M. LeMunyon wrote the following in the Wall Street Journal, I had to agree:

The U.S. Congress is in a state of serious disrepair and cannot fix itself. It has reached this point over the course of many years — in fact over decades. Regardless of the party in power, Congress has demonstrated a growing inability to effectively address the major issues of our time, including soaring federal debt and the extension of federal authority to states and localities.”

(I had to agree on the statement, but I probably wouldn’t agree on his interest in extending “federal authority to states and localities.)

LeMunyon calls for a Constitutional Convention, more specifically, an “Article V Constitutional Convention,” which is a process for delineating and submitting to Congress requests for changes to the Constitution that a majority of citizens support.

As a matter of fact, there is already, online, a petition to hold an Article V Convention, which

…is simply a deliberative assembly of state delegates discussing what might garner the approval from an overwhelming amount of citizens from across the political spectrum.

As one might expect, there is a lot of discussion going on about the value of having an Article V Convention.

Of course, I support such a move, especially because the technology enabled by the Internet can be used to draw out the actual desires of individual citizens. We, the people, telling our government what we need from it.

And one of the major things we need is the reform expressed in what I got as a forwarded email with no attribution. But it makes a good case, so I reprint it here:

Subject: Let’s NOT be sheep!

Take a minute and read this please

No one has been able to explain to me why young men and women serve in the U.S. Military for 20 years, risking their lives protecting freedom, and only get 50% of their pay. While politicians hold their political positions in the safe confines of the capital, protected by these same men and women, and receive full pay retirement after serving one term. It just does not make any sense.

Monday on Fox news they learned that the staffers of Congress family members are exempt from having to pay back student loans. This will get national attention if other news networks will broadcast it. When you add this to the below, just where will all of it stop?

Governors of 35 states have filed suit against the Federal Government for imposing unlawful burdens upon them. It only takes 38 (of the 50) States to convene a Constitutional Convention.

This will take less than thirty seconds to read. If you agree, please pass it on.

This is an idea that we should address.

For too long we have been too complacent about the workings of Congress. Many citizens had no idea that members of Congress could retire with the same pay after only one term, that they specifically exempted themselves from many of the laws they have passed (such as being exempt from any fear of prosecution for sexual harassment) while ordinary citizens must live under those laws. The latest is to exempt themselves from the Healthcare Reform… in all of its forms. Somehow, that doesn’t seem logical. We do not have an elite that is above the law. I truly don’t care if they are Democrat, Republican, Independent or whatever. The self-serving must stop.

If each person that receives this will forward it on to 20 people, in three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message.. This is one proposal that really should be passed around.

Proposed 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution: “Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and/or Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and/or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States .”

Please pass this on!

on turning 71 today

It’s March 11, 2011.

There was a terrible earthquake in Pacific Ocean today, and Japan is being hit with 30 foot waves. Tsunamis of various sizes are headed toward both North and South America. Untold lives are being destroyed even as I write this.

Rebellion and unrest in the Middle East and Africa continues to escalate, as untold lives are being destroyed even as I write this.

The state of Wisconsin is leading the way toward an America I’m not going to want to live in, and untold lives are being destroyed even as I write this.

It is my 71st birthday today, and, as I watch and listen to the devastating events going on all around me, I am grateful for the life I have right now, uneventful ‘tho it often is.

And that’s why today, on my 71st birthday, I am filling out forms to be a hospice volunteer — because I am used to doing useful things and need to do something useful with the time I have left.

When I moved here to be with my daughter and family two years ago — after almost a decade of care-giving and 40 years of various other “useful” jobs — I thought that I would be happy hanging-out, relaxing, reading, doing my crafts, gabbing with my daughter, playing with my grandson.

Well, I’ve been doing that for two years, and now I’m ready to get on with some kind of more useful life.

There are about five nursing homes in my immediate area, all of which have hospice units. I’ve been on the receiving end of hospice services as a family member through both my dad’s and mom’s illnesses. I know, from experience, what kind of support people in that situation need. And, since I was an undertaker’s daughter, death has been a part of my life since I was born. It is as though I am coming full circle.

I’m not doing this for altruistic reasons. My reasons are rather selfish. I need to interact with and meet other people (and I discovered that the gym and senior citizen center are just not my style); I need to do something useful.

And that “usefulness” might even spill over to my creative crafting, since I would be interested in making the kind of “memory pillow” that I made for my mother for others who might find them comforting.

So, at 71 I’m shifting gears yet another time so that my time here has meaning for me. My mother lived until she was 94. I don’t know if I’ll last that long, but, while I’m here, I want to be engaged with the world in a more meaningful way.

For my birthday dinner, my daughter is making my favorites: shrimp scampi and key lime cheesecake.

It’s my 71st birthday, and, even as I write this, my life is good. But as I watch the news on CNN, I wonder — for how long?

The Whole Truth

We never really know the whole truth, we ordinary people who try to survive in a context over which we have no control. We try to follow the trail of newsworthy events, forgetting that news and histories are written — well, by whoever writes it all up.

And, sometimes acknowledged fiction writers, creating a fictional story line, seem to come closer to the truth than what we are fed as the truth.

The Whole Truth, David Baldacci’s 2008 international intrigue novel, might have a story line metaphorically closer to the truth than what we are being fed by the “news. There is a character that might well be an (only slightly exaggerated) embodiment of the Koch Brothers and a story line that takes the premise farther than Wag the Dog.

One commentary piece that everyone should read that accurately and succinctly gets to some of the bottom-line truths about what’s happening in America today is Ronni Bennett’s (Time Goes By) post, “Something’s Happening Here.”

She supports the following statement with factual links and graphs:

Although citizens of the U.S. are not detained, imprisoned, tortured, executed or shot in the streets as in some Arab countries, we are nonetheless oppressed. Our government, in long-time cahoots with the corporate elite, started decades before this current financial crisis to steal for themselves all but the shirts on our backs.

And, in addressing the incendiary situation in Wisconsin, she says what I hope lots of us are thinking:

If I am right about what they and their supporters are doing, the protests will spread throughout the land, particularly when the weather warms up in a few weeks. Massive street protests are the only power we the people have left against the corporate/government plutocracy.

God, I hope I’m right, that these people are the vanguard of what is coming. If so, it will be a long and bitter struggle against Mr. Jones, but I don’t see an alternative. We must fight back even if, in the end, we lose.

They’re doing it in the Middle East, setting a standard for the value of human rights and freedom,

Of course, in Baldacci’s novel, there’s a “hero” who determinedly figures it all out.

But we have no heroes. We only have ourselves.

Will the 9/11 First Responders Law Do the Job?

[Note: The following is a guest post by Barbara O’ Brien, whose blogging at The Mahablog, Crooks and Liars, AlterNet, and elsewhere on the progressive political and health blogophere has earned her the honor of being a panelist at the Yearly Kos Convention and a featured guest blogger at the Take Back America Conference in Washington, DC. Her piece here is just another worrisome indication that we must keep fighting the opponents of health care improvement on all fronts.]

In the final days of the 111th Congress, the James Zadroga 9/11 Health And Compensation Act, also called the “9/11 First Responders bill,” finally passed. The Act will provide medical monitoring and care for those who worked on the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks, as well as for many who lived and worked nearby.

However, at the insistence of some senators, the final bill was considerably watered down from what it had been originally. More than $3 billion in funding was cut from a previous version of the bill, for example. Will the revised bill still do the job?

When the Senate passed the bill, initial news reports said that the monitoring and health care program would end after five years. However, the actual language of the bill provides for funding limitations for monitoring and health care after fiscal year 2016, which suggests the program might continue if Congress authorizes funding for it.

The monitoring issue is particularly critical. The collapse of the mammoth World Trade Center towers released thousands of tons of toxic particles into the air. For many weeks after the attacks, people who lived and worked in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn suffered burning eyes and hacking coughs from the foul air. Yet at the time, the federal government and the city of New York assured people the stinging fumes were not dangerous, just unpleasant.

Several days after the terrorist attacks, some independent researchers slipped past the police barricades to take samples. They found the air contained more than twice the number of asbestos fibers considered “safe,” as well as deadly levels of benzene, dioxin, and other toxins.

Why should people exposed to the toxins continue to be monitored? Asbestos in particular is a very slow killer. It has been well documented that the first symptoms of the deadly lung cancer mesothelioma may not show up for 20 to 50 years after exposure to asbestos. But early detection should prolong lives and make mesothelioma treatment and other medical care more effective.

The final bill does close the Victims Compensation Fund in five years, which is separate from the health monitoring and care part of the bill. It also provides for more stringent monitoring of benefits, which might make it harder for people to get into the program.

Today — more than nine years after the attacks — many rescue and recovery workers are suffering deteriorating health. A study published in April 2010 in the New England Journal of Medicine found that New York City firefighters and emergency workers continue to suffer from severe and persistent lung problems because of their exposure to the World Trade Center debris. Some of these 9/11 heroes already have died.

Firefighters, police officers, and other responders who had been begging Congress for help for nine years called the passage of the bill a “Christmas miracle.” Let us hope the final version of the bill will do the job.

My Blue America
Our Secular America (part 2)

[This piece is even more appropriate now than it was six years ago, when I originally posted it after the fiasco that was the election of George W. Bush. The archives link has been truncated for some reason, but I had a text version. And so I am re-posting, as a small lesson in history for those who don’t know. You can read Part 1 here.]

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 blogpost of 04/11/04 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 religious persecution.

Oddly enough,

Although they were victims of religious persecution in Europe, 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 Christian Puritans became just the kind of persecutors from whom they were running away. And 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. (The United States Army Seventh Cavalry used gattling guns to slaughter 300 helpless Lakota children, men and women.)

I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when 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. And I, to whom so great a vision was given in my youth, — you see me now a pitiful old man who has done nothing, for the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead. — Black Elk. Oglala Holy Man on the aftermath of the Massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota December, 1890

Oh, well, maybe my commenter 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.” 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.

Now, speaking of those founding fathers:

The Framers derived an independent government out of Enlightenment thinking against the grievances caused by Great Britain. Our Founders paid little heed to political beliefs about Christianity. The 1st Amendment stands as the bulkhead against an establishment of religion and at the same time insures the free expression of any belief. The Treaty of Tripoli, an instrument of the Constitution, clearly stated our non-Christian foundation. We inherited common law from Great Britain which derived from pre-Christian Saxons rather than from Biblical scripture.

[snip]

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 imposing 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 conscience….

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 about how they feel regarding mixing religion and government:

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! …in a letter to Thomas Jefferson.

But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed. …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.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Lighthouses are more helpful than churches. ….Poor Richard, 1758

The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason . ….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. …. 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.

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. …to the Danbury Baptist Association on Jan. 1, 1802;

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. ….The Writing of Thoma 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. ….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. ….”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 people 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. In addition to that responsibility, they 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.

Amen, amen, I say to that.

Addenda:
— as one might expect, the email address left by the cowardly Righteous was bogus.
–Much of my original interest in the the legacies left to this country by the Six Nations was stirred up while I worked in the New York State Museum, where the histories of the Hau de no sau nee are preserved and revered. It was there I learned about the status and influence that women, especially older women, held in those Native American communities. Among all of the important democratic legacies of the Six Nations that our American system has discarded is the fundamental role of the Clan Mother, the Crone. Dr. Friedberg explores those legacies in her “Death of Democracy” article (no longer online).
— However, these other pieces by her are available:
http://www.opednews.com/friedberg_111504_media_whitewash.htm
http://www.opednews.com/friedberg_111104_america.htm
— You also might also take a look at a piece written by The One True b!X shortly after the election of George W. Bush, which was the inspiration for my Radical Rosie image/post.
— other relevant posts by b!X (who is becoming an expert on the separation of church and state) can be found among the other pieces here.

Our Secular America: the truth is out there (part 1)

Every once in a while I get obsessed about some issue — usually not a minor one. I try to deal with my obsessions with some degree of intelligence.

Occasionally I do a really worthwhile job, and so before I embark upon several posts that are developing from my current obsession, I’m going to share some evidence of my credibility, my ability to do a worthy job of intelligently obsessing.

More than six years ago, I posted a piece that is no longer accessible online because some of my archives were lost when I switched from a MoveableType to a WordPress blog format. But I did have the text saved as a document and it will be my next post.

Right now, however, I am self-servingly sharing part of an old post with the response I got to that six-year-old piece from a (then) doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago. And here it is:

Hello Elaine,
I recently discovered your website, and was so delighted (and sincerely impressed with the very good content) that I mention it in my most recent column, “Voices of the Peoples” at the ClarkPost. This month’s column is called “The Death of Democracy in America: The Foundering Fathers and the White Roots of Peace” and includes a paragraph or two about your site.

I do hope you’ll understand my discussion of your site in the appreciative and playful spirit it is intended. It is a wonderful place to visit.

Another dissenting Crone,
Lilian Friedberg, PhD
Cognitive Dissident

Dr. Friedberg’s piece [no longer available online] is long but worth reading for the well-researched perspective she gives not only on the death of democracy in America, but also on its origins and the misconceptions most people have about its development.

Of course, to me, the best parts are what she says about Kalilily Time, which I post here with a big dissident smile on my face. Note that the kitschy clip art to which she refers was the design of my old format.

To my cognitively dissonant delight—one ray of inspiration did appear on an otherwise dim string of search results which led me to the weblog of Elaine of Kalilily, Self-Proclaimed Resident Crone of Blogdom, who also describes herself as a “True Blue American,” and whose blog entry for November 5, 2004, “My Blue America,” glimmers with subtly placed signs of hope. The real gems are buried in the links she supplies: truths debunking myths of Puritans fleeing religious persecution only to export it to the colonies in the form of domestic tyranny abroad, truths about witch-burnings, and about the foundational principle of genocide underlying the birth of this nation—on a link that’s worth singling out here, since it’s rather cleverly cached behind a hyperlinked reference to the military that benignly obscures the page’s content. [link no longer works] (Genocide and The American Indian Peoples)

Nor did I leave Kalilily’s site without finding the scoop I was looking for on the founding fathers, in particular as they relate to the third part of this essay, The White Roots of Peace—but we’ll return to that in a moment.

Emoticons cannot express my response to the quality and truth content of these treasures on a site that looked, at first blue blush, to be an exercise in kitsch- and cupcake-artistry. Just goes to show, never judge a blog by its clip art.

About the time I hit the genocide link, I went back and, with a quizzed “who-the-hell-is-this-person” look, and clicked on the “ABOUT ME” link. Voila!: My faith in the American people restored. At the risk of offending the self-proclaimed Crone of Blogdom, I must admit what first came to mind: “Well, I’ll be damned,” I thought, “it’s just a little old retired grandma sitting there raising hell at the keyboard!” (That wouldn’t be an altogether fair assessment of a rather accomplished career woman and crafty writer who truly has earned her Crone-Coronation, so I invite the reader to read her site for the rest of the story.

And it was on Elaine of Kalilily’s site that I found one of the spokes in the wheel I was hoping to “uninvent.”

The people of the Six Nations, also known by the French term, Iroquois Confederacy, call themselves the Hau de no sau nee (ho dee noe sho nee) meaning People Building a Long House. Located in the northeastern region of North America, originally the Six Nations was five and included the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. The sixth nation, the Tuscaroras, migrated into Iroquois country in the early eighteenth century. Together these peoples comprise the oldest living participatory democracy on earth. Their story, and governance truly based on the consent of the governed, contains a great deal of life-promoting intelligence for those of us not familiar with this area of American history. The original United States representative democracy, fashioned by such central authors as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, drew much inspiration from this confederacy of nations. In our present day, we can benefit immensely, in our quest to establish anew a government truly dedicated to all life’s liberty and happiness much as has been practiced by the Six Nations for over 800 hundred years. The Six Nations and the Oldest Living Participatory Democracy on Earth.

More than six years have gone by since I wrote the lost-in-cyberspace “My Blue America.” The dispute over the origins of our secular democratic roots has reached disturbing proportions, and, sadly, many of the most vocal political people in this country still don’t get it.

So, watch for my re-post of “My Blue America,” which will be Part 2 of my series on “Our Secular America.”

Dear Brian Williams and NBC

I sent this email to NBC the other day. Since I haven’t heard anything back, I figured that I’d try it here:

I am writing on behalf of six women, ages 50 to 70 – friends for decades who often spend our time together discussing politics and what would we do if we had the power to initiate change. We often – only half in jest – insist that we have the broad knowledge and experience among the six of us to run the country better than the men currently in charge.

Yesterday, we brainstormed, way into the evening, about what might be done to counteract the vitriol and misinformation generated by the extreme Right. Other than giving Rachel Maddow a prime time spot on NBC (which, we pragmatically recognize isn’t going to happen), we came up with this strategy for your consideration.

Brian Williams is just about the most respected newscaster out there, and his audience crosses the spectrum of political views.

At the end of each NBC Nightly News Broadcast, Williams should spend the last five minutes doing a version of Maddow’s “Debunktion Junction,” in which he presents hard facts that dispel myths being presented as fact by both the Right and the Left.

Brian Williams has the deserved reputation of presenting the news without bias, and, unlike Maddow (whom we love, by the way), his news programs reach citizens with a broad spectrum of political viewpoints.

We need a “political mythbusters,” a 2011 “Sgt. Joe Friday” to drag into the net of misinformation “just the facts.”