Anti-Bush despite my dream in which I was Laura Bush and loved George and was so grateful to him for making me the First Lady that - although I knew he was really doing a bad job - I decided I was going to work for his re-election because being the First Lady was so much fun and I sure didn't want to give it up...

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Annoying Bloggers Equal Felons

Are you an anonymous blogger?

Are you "annoying?"

Well, you can now be charged with a felony.

This is no joke.

In January President Bush signed a bill into law that has the potential to make any anonymous blogger who "annoys" anyone (and the definition of "annoy" is slippery) a felon.

The law, originally intended to punish those who stalk others anonymously via phone calls has morphed into an entirely different beast that now has jurisdiction over Internet communications, blogs and websites.

Considering how this administration uses every means to attain its ends, it is only realistic to face that this legislation could be used to stifle liberal free speech and rant that "annoys" those who still support the Bush regime.

Couple this with Republicans killing Net Neutrality and I'd say that liberal blogs will go the way of India's blogs which were banned from the Internet by India's government.

While India's ban seems to have been reversed, don't count on that happening for U.S. bloggers. Yet, perhaps there is a way around bans. This from refWrite:

The ban on accessing blogspot blogs seems to have brought Pakistani and Indian bloggers a little closer. Help-Pakistan.com says “In light of the recent blogspot ban in India, the blogging community in Pakistan would like to present as a gift to the Indian blogging community a small script that can be inserted into their websites which converts all Blogspot links into a URL utilizing the proxy servers of pkblogs.com.

On another topic, I can't pass this up:

In her July 26th column, Maureen Dowd informs us that 300 garbage collectors have been killed in Iraq in the last six months and gives us this quote from President Bush:

"That's what leaders do..." "They see problems, they address problems, and they lay out a plan to solve the problems."

Ergo, by his own definition, he is not a leader. He doesn't see problems. He manufactures problems. He creates, instead of solves, problems.

Bush is the Unleader.

(And regarding those 300 dead garbage collectors: Can you imagine the hell Iraqis are living in? They live without clean water, food electricity, jobs or security. Bodies are being blown up every day and virtually everyone has lost someone. Yet, that's not enough. With garbage collectors being killed at such an astonishing rate the garbage must be piled high. How do we live with ourselves considering what we have allowed to happen to them in our name?)

BTW, did you notice that Israel stopped bombing Lebanon "in deference" to Condolezza Rice when she was in Beruit? I'm sure someone said: "Hey, if we kill Condi, Bush will be pissed so we better stop bombing and not risk it."

So: what does that mean?

It means that the most effective use of our Secretary of State would be to have her MOVE PERMANENTLY TO BERUIT.

Let her set up permanent residence there where her presence would actually be accomplishing something, for a change.

Another insult added to injury:

Remember the story about Bush using government resources and lawyers to block medical suits brought by persons harmed by pharmaceutical companies?

Just like firing half the IRS lawyers who dealt with the tax returns of the very wealthy in order to circumvent the Estate Tax, fighting the consumer in court is just part of an overall plan to maximize corporate profits and consolidate wealth and power in the hands of the ultra rich.

This from a story by Gardiner Harris:

A 15-month inquiry by a top House Democrat has found that enforcement of the nation's food and drug laws declined sharply during the first five years of the Bush administration.

For instance, the investigation found, the number of warning letters that the Food and Drug Administration issued to drug companies, medical device makers and others dropped 54 percent, to 535 in 2005 from 1,154 in 2000.

The seizure of mislabeled, defective or dangerous products dipped 44 percent, according to the inquiry, pursued by Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, the senior Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee.

The research found no evidence that such declines could be attributed to increased compliance with regulations. Investigators at the F.D.A. continued to uncover about the same number of problems at drug and device companies as before, Mr. Waxman's inquiry found, but top officials of the agency increasingly overruled the investigators' enforcement recommendations.

Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe, director of the Health Research Group at the watchdog organization Public Citizen, noted that the agency now received about $380 million a year in fees from drug makers.

"The public," Dr. Wolfe said, "is getting the kind of F.D.A. that the industry is paying for them to get."


Want another little gem?

On February 17, 2005 U.S. Representative Steny Hoyer introduced legislation to appeal the 22nd amendment to the Constitution which would lift limits and allow a President to serve more than two terms in office.

It hasn't gotten anywhere - yet - but can you imagine if Bush could be elected to a third term?

Steny is a democrat so I don't know what he's thinking - unless he's hoping to resurrect Bill Clinton and get him back in office. Still young, Clinton might be able to bail us out of the incredible mess Bush has created. But it would probably take him about twenty years.

Saturday, July 22, 2006

U.S. And Indian Blogs Censored

The Indian government has blocked all bloggers including blogspot.com.

Officials are answering no questions as to why all blogs have been blocked. There is no estimate in regard to when or if blogs will be allowed and freedom of opinion on the Internet restored.

When the New York Times called India's secretary for telecommunications, D. S. Mathur, he hung up the phone.

The Indian government is citing "security" reasons and alluding to the possibility that something in one of the blogs could be used by terrorists. For that they blocked them all.

Tell me this couldn't happen in the United States and I have a bridge you can buy.

Notably, the United States government just fired Christine Axsmith on Monday after C.I.A. officials objected to a message she posted - on an internal blog - that criticized the interrogation technique called "waterboarding.

[This from an anonymous post: "The modern practice of waterboarding involves tying the victim to a board with the head lower than the feet so that he or she is unable to move. A piece of cloth is held tightly over the face, and water is poured onto the cloth. Breathing is extremely difficult and the victim will be in fear of imminent death by asphyxiation."]

In March 2005 J. Porter Goss - the incompetent flack Bush appointed to head the C.I.A. - described waterboarding as a "professional interrogation technique."

Ms. Axsmith expressed the opinion on an interdepartmental C.I.A. blog - not accessible by the public or news media - that "waterboarding is torture and torture is wrong."

She is of the opinion that the majority of C.I.A. employees are against torture. She also believes that if they are allowed to express their frustrations on the blog - since C.I.A. workers are often prohibited from discussing their work (and their opinions about their work) even with other agency officials - they may have less desire to go public with their concerns.

[Imagine not being able to talk about things that bother you at work. That's the pressure employees of the C.I.A. are under.]

"The blogs are a safety valve for people to discuss controversial topics," she said. "It reduces the chances that people may leak to the press."

I'm sure she's sincere in that opinion. However, there is always the possibility that they could realize they are, virtually, of one mind and decide they are not going to be puppets of a government that is acting immorally.

They might unite and rebel and threaten to walk out en mass. What would BushCo do? Fire them all? They might be able to exert power and say: stop the torture or we're walking out; we're going to the media.

After all, these people are highly educated, experienced and they see the inside picture. They know what's going on. They have high morals and no one can question their loyalty. They went into the C.I.A. to protect their country.

Yet all these people are faced with a moral question of how do I keep quiet and how do I allow myself to be used by an immoral administration? Yet they know they have to, not just to keep their jobs but to get any job after they're fired.

Like Ms. Axsmith, they can - acting individually - have their careers and security clearances erased in a nanosecond. That is a horrible dilemna and one, I'm sure, that this government doesn't want them acknowledging or discussing among themselves.

BushCo and his puppets at the C.I.A. want to keep people divided, uncertain, cowed.

Bottom line, these two examples just add evidence to why Net Neutrality is so important. Censorship is just waiting to happen. And once this Bush loving Congress sells us out, telecos will be able to block blogs, news, sites - anything they don't like or which doesn't pay them enough.

By the way, Ms. Axsmith has a public blog here on blogspot.com entitled Econo-Girl.

She says she guesses she has too big a mouth to be affiliated with the C.I.A. I say the mouths of the others are too small.

When we are judged as a nation - as Germany was for the Holocaust - Bush isn't the only one who is going to be held accountable for the war in Iraq, torture, etc. Our entire nation - and all of us - will be indicted by history, that is if there is any history after Global Warming sets in.

Which creates a segueway for the last story.

Bush ordered a change in NASA's mission statement.

He had "to protect and understand our home planet" deleted in order to stop NASA's involvement in gathering information on Global Warming, among other environmental concerns. He obviously intends to continue destroying Earth - and us - full speed ahead.



Thursday, July 20, 2006

Friedman: Talking About Us?

Thomas Friedman wrote about the Kidnapping of Democracy in Lebanon and Israel on July 14th, in the New York Times.

A few quotes:

What we are seeing in Iraq, the Palestinian territories and Lebanon is an effort by Islamist parties to use elections to pursue their long-term aim of Islamizing the Arab-Muslim world.

The tiny militant wing of Hamas today is pulling all the strings of Palestinian politics, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah Shiite Islamic party is doing the same in Lebanon...

As a result, the...democracy experiment in the Arab-Muslim world is being hijacked.

Yes, basically free and fair elections were held...[yet] they refuse to be accountable to international law

Then why do parties like Hamas and Hezbollah get elected? Often because they effectively run against the corruption of the old secular state-controlled parties...But once these Islamists are in office they revert to serving their own factional interests, not those of the broad community.

Why don’t the silent majorities punish these elected Islamist parties for working against the real interests of their people? Because those who speak against Hamas or Hezbollah are either delegitimized as “American lackeys’’...


Friedman then laments that the flower of democracy may wither and die in the Mid-East.

Okay, let's back up, this time substituting a few words:

What we are seeing in the U.S. is an effort by Christian extremists to use elections to pursue their long-term aim of changing the U.S. from a secular and religiously tolerant nation to one of Christian fundamentalism.

The...militant Christian right aligned with Republican extremists today are pulling all the strings of American politics...

As a result, the...democracy experiment in the United States is being hijacked.

Yes, basically free and fair elections were held...[yet] the Bush Administration refuses to be accountable to international law...

Then why do parties like the G.O.P. and Grover Norquist's neo-cons get elected? Often because they effectively run against the corruption in government under the secular Democratic party. But once these extremists are in office they revert to serving their own factional interests, not those of the broad community.

Why don’t the silent majorities punish these elected right wing parties for working against the real interests of their people? Because those who speak against the Christian right or the Bush administration are either delegitimized as “liberal lackeys" and lose their jobs or...


My point is this:

What’s happening in Israel and Lebanon is part of a bigger picture, a trend toward backward thinking and aggression. Anyone aware of U.S. politics knows that we in the U.S. are also under the control of an aggressive and hostile minority that has used elections to kidnap democracy.

Let’s review:

Voting districts have been reapportioned by Republicans to include individual streets and houses in order to assure election results. Both of our presidential elections were hijacked, our Constitution is ignored, our populace spied upon and investigations into government’s role subverted.

Protesters have been blocked from protesting, jailed and beaten. Fake news has been generated and widely disseminated at government cost. Legitimate media has been cowed, threatened with lawsuits or bought. A covert CIA operative was exposed in retaliation over her husband’s attempts to tell the truth about government machinations.

Based upon lies and false pretenses, Iraq was attacked and virtually destroyed, with tens of thousands—perhaps hundreds of thousands—of civilians killed as a result. Torture has become U.S. policy. To no one’s surprise, Amnesty International has found the U.S. to be a human rights violator.

Meanwhile, 80% of all environmental regulations have been rolled back and cuts made to all social services. Real progress has been made in drying up funding for public schools, Medicare, the VA and PBS. Every law and institution, from affirmative action to the National Direct Loan, from the Freedom of Information Act to Social Security, from the EPA to FEMA, (all created to promote democracy, justice and the collective welfare of the American people) has been assaulted if not damaged, dismantled or destroyed.

How could this happen? To quote Friedmann, "…the roots of democracy are so shallow" and our own "moderate majorities so weak and intimidated that we are getting the worst of all worlds" right here in the United States.

Witness our domestic policies, national debt, outsourced jobs, shrinking American dream, gutted social services, lack of health care, abandoned poor, etc.

Friedmann asks: "So why did this party get elected?...Why don’t the silent majorities punish these elected...parties for working against the real interests of their people?”

Although he asks this about the Israelis and Lebanese, he could, as easily, ask the same questions about the American people.

It’s time to face that Americans have wanted simple answers and simpler politicians. We have allowed our ideals to be sold out from under us in exchange for cheap goods at Wal-Mart. Now our youth is exchanging their intellects for an expanded choice of cell phones.

Truth be told, we find it all too convenient to shop for politicians as we do for consumer goods — looking at the ads — and lumping all government corruption together with the intellectually lazy claim that the parties are “all alike.”

The parties are not alike. And anyone who seriously bothered to research George Bush's record along with the Republican agenda could have predicted the destruction visited upon us by this administration. Yet most Americans didn’t. They preferred voting for a man who made the world seem simple.

His message was, basically: “Us right, them wrong. Cut taxes. Grog be okay.”

Well, the super rich are okay, but the country isn't doing so well.

By surrendering our responsibility to read, analyze, think logically and turn our attention from entertainment to reality, Americans have allowed their government to be hijacked by billionaires, corporate lobbyists, the religious wrong and warmongers.

Unaware that we are being swung toward fascism and feudalism, we are sinking into the morass from which we once fought to escape: primitive thinking. So given that this is happening to us, can we really expect Israel and Lebanon to overcome what we cannot?

One thing's for certain: we in the U.S. no longer have the credibility to preach at others - with any effectiveness - or convince them to embrace democracy. After all, we’ve virtually discarded ours.

Frankly, I think this is a worldwide trend and, based upon how democracy is withering in the U.S., there's zero hope that democracy will take root in the Middle-East. At best, with super human effort, we Americans might realize we need to resurrect it here at home.

Monday, July 03, 2006

4th Of July


July 4th is the anniversary of the birth of our nation, a nation founded on principles of justice, equality and freedom.

Yet, as we prepare to celebrate - if we are honest - we must admit that our nation has strayed from these principles. If you want to know how far, consider that 77% of the people in Great Britain - one of our staunchest allies - have a very bad opinion of us and "...disagree with the statement that the US is 'a beacon of hope for the world'".

"A massive 83 percent of those questioned said that the United States doesn't care what the rest of the world thinks. More than two-thirds who offered an opinion said America is essentially an imperial power seeking world domination. And 81 per cent of those who took a view said President George W Bush hypocritically championed democracy as a cover for the pursuit of American self-interests."

Although it is, generally, unreported by corporate media, more and more people we respect are speaking up about what has happened - and is happening - to our national character and values. Yet we don't hear about it.

For instance, NBA player Etan Thomas of the Washington Wizards delivered an impassioned speech to 30,000 people on this issue during an anti-war protest in Washington D.C., yet it was never reported in any of our major media outlets or papers, including the Washington Post.

I happen to believe the American people are good people. But we can't make good decisions when the hard information is kept from us. We can't make good decisions when a perpetual war is started to distract us from pressing domestic problems such as the inability of millions to earn a decent wage.

Why does our nation no longer value work? If it did we would respect the immigrants who are performing so much of it.

Why does our nation no longer believe that working at a job should keep a person out of poverty, not trap one inside it?

Why is it out of fashion to talk about a worker being paid a fair wage for a day’s work?

And why is our current federal minimum wage still at $5.15 an hour?

This is a disgraceful pittance, a wage that forces families to choose between buying groceries and paying rent.

A person who works a 40-hour week earns $10,712 for a 52-week year. That's six thousand dollars below the poverty line.

We all know the cost of rent, gas, food, clothing. Could any of us live on just over ten thousand dollars a year? If you have a child, could you care for and raise that child on that amount?

You know the answer.

Therefore, I urge you to support Senator Ted Kennedy’s amendment to the Department of Defense authorization bill to increase the federal minimum wage to $7.25 an hour.

As the number of Americans living in poverty continues to increase at an alarming rate, now is the time to take action to prevent this desperate spiral of unreasonable choices and despair. Increasing the federal minimum wage is an important step toward slowing the poverty growth rate in America.

Bear in mind that, even as Congress sells out the American people to corporate interests and has received record low approval ratings for doing so, House lawmakers gave themselves a $3,300 pay raise on Tuesday, June 13, 2006, that will increase their salaries to $168,500. They have full medical and dental plus countless perks that a simple working man or woman earning minimum wage never has.

These inequities are not right. Write to your Senators and Congressional Representatives today.

For more on the minimum wage issue, visit Living Wage Campaign.

For more on economic justice issues, such as the inequities in the 2007 Federal budget, the need for labor unions, and the move by 18 billionaires to repeal the estate tax, visit this highly informative Take Action Page.

I've written before that if Americans want a dose of reality then, instead of watching "reality" TV, let them paint their faces brown and go live in the ghetto where they'll never get voted out. Here's an excerpt from the transcript of Etan Thomas' speech regarding the politicians and pundits who dominate the news and are shaping our values and policies today. He says it better than I ever could:

I'd like to take some of these cats on a field trip. I want to get big yellow buses with no air conditioner and no seatbelts and round up Bill O'Reilly, Pat Buchanan, Trent Lott, Sean Hannity, Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, Bush Jr. and Bush Sr., John Ashcroft, Giuliani, Ed Gillespie, Katherine Harris, that little bow-tied Tucker Carlson and any other right-wing conservative Republicans I can think of, and take them all on a trip to the ‘hood. Not to do no 30-minute documentary. I mean, I want to drop them off and leave them there, let them become one with the other side of the tracks, get them four mouths to feed and no welfare, have scare tactics run through them like a laxative, criticizing them for needing assistance.

I’d show them working families that make too much to receive welfare but not enough to make ends meet. I’d employ them with jobs with little security, let them know how it feels to be an employee at will, able to be fired at the drop of a hat. I’d take away their opportunities, then try their children as adults, sending their 13-year-old babies to life in prison. I’d sell them dreams of hopelessness while spoon-feeding their young with a daily dose of inferior education. I’d tell them no child shall be left behind, then take more money out of their schools, tell them to show and prove themselves on standardized exams testing their knowledge on things that they haven’t been taught, and then I’d call them inferior.

I’d soak into their interior notions of endless possibilities. I’d paint pictures of assisted productivity if they only agreed to be all they can be, dress them up with fatigues and boots with promises of pots of gold at the end of rainbows, free education to waste terrain on those who finish their bid. Then I’d close the lid on that barrel of fool’s gold by starting a war, sending their children into the midst of a hostile situation, and while they're worried about their babies being murdered and slain in foreign lands, I’d grace them with the pain of being sick and unable to get medicine.

Give them health benefits that barely cover the common cold. John Q. would become their reality as HMOs introduce them to the world of inferior care, filling their lungs with inadequate air, penny pinching at the expense of patients, doctors practicing medicine in an intricate web of rationing and regulations. Patients wander the maze of managed bureaucracy, costs rise and quality quickly deteriorates, but they say that managed care is cheaper. They’ll say that free choice in medicine will defeat the overall productivity, and as co-payments are steadily rising, I'll make their grandparents have to choose between buying their medicine and paying their rent.

Then I'd feed them hypocritical lines of being pro-life as the only Christian way to be. Then very contradictingly, I’d fight for the spread of the death penalty, as if thou shall not kill applies to babies but not to criminals.

Then I’d introduce them to those sworn to protect and serve, creating a curb in their trust in the law. I’d show them the nightsticks and plungers, the pepper spray and stun guns, the mace and magnums that they’d soon become acquainted with, the shakedowns and illegal search and seizures, the planted evidence, being stopped for no reason. Harassment ain’t even the half of it. Forty-one shots to two raised hands, cell phones and wallets that are confused with illegal contrabands. I’d introduce them to pigs who love making their guns click like wine glasses. Everlasting targets surrounded by bullets, making them a walking bull's eye, a living piñata, held at the mercy of police brutality, and then we’ll see if they finally weren’t aware of the truth, if their eyes weren’t finally open like a box of Pandora.

I’d show them how the other side of the tracks carries the weight of the world on our shoulders and how society seems to be holding us down with the force of a boulder. The bird of democracy flew the coop back in Florida. See, for some, and justice comes in packs like wolves in sheep's clothing. T.K.O.d by the right hooks of life, many are left staggering under the weight of the day, leaning against the ropes of hope. When your dreams have fallen on barren ground, it becomes difficult to keep pushing yourself forward like a train, administering pain like a doctor with a needle, their sequels continue more lethal than injections.

They keep telling us all is equal. I’d tell them that instead of giving tax breaks to the rich, financing corporate mergers and leading us into unnecessary wars and under-table dealings with Enron and Halliburton, maybe they can work on making society more peaceful. Instead, they take more and more money out of inner city schools, give up on the idea of rehabilitation and build more prisons for poor people. With unemployment continuing to rise like a deficit, it's no wonder why so many think that crime pays.

Maybe this trip will make them see the error of their ways. Or maybe next time, we'll just all get out and vote. And as far as their stay in the White House, tell them that numbered are their days.


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