Everybody who is anybody I know showed up at last Tuesday’s DEM caucuses. I felt so bad for all of them, tuned in, activated, braced to make elections work this time. But to work for whom? Not them. We are indeed lemmings, our legs spinning, our arms waving, our faith unshakable because to not jump off the cliff would be to derail the train without the engineer and be left to organize a can of worms.
The media, the parties, everyone is in election year mode. Get Out the Vote, Be the Change, You Can’t Win if You Don’t Play, the candidates shaking themselves out like Lotto balls coming up the tube. Meanwhile we’ve got our heads down eagerly keeping the turkey cold for whoever gets Bingo. Perhaps our selfless trust in them will be reciprocated by an equal lack of self-interest on their part to help us. Do you think?
My local district caucus on the West Side was positively humming with enthusiasm. It could have been related to people thinking they might get to attend the Democratic National Convention in Denver, or even the State Convention to be held right here. But there also seemed to be an urgency about securing a nomination for Obama instead of for old Hillary.
Out with the old, in with change. Almost no one in my precinct wanted to speak in favor of Hillary, she had supporters but none that dared speak. The posters and endorsements were mostly for Obama, and the enforcement was heavy handed. One woman was told her Clinton posters were not needed in the caucus rooms because the posters there were already 50/50, when clearly they were not.
Another friend of mine in another precinct wanted to make a pitch for Clinton in hope of convincing just one person to tilt her way to reach the minimum required to earn one delegate. Otherwise the six individuals for Clinton would be thrown into the Obama majority. Thus instead of sending one delegate for Clinton against Obama’s seven, Obama would get them all. (It’s complicated the way I can’t explain it, isn’t it?) An Obama disciple approached her to explain that Obama was for uniting the party, not for dividing it, and what my friend was proposing was definitely divisive and not in keeping with the spirit of Obama. Her precinct chairman concurred and my friend was not allowed to speak. There was just that kind of fervor.
I was offered an Obama sticker which I declined. I explained that I wanted to remain undeclared, there were a few of us actually, because I thought we were being given no real alternative, certainly not relative to American war-making. The button giver sympathized with me, and offered instead that she liked the stand Obama had taken on the war in his speech before the Democratic National Convention in 2004. He spoke against the war there, and what he had said afforded her some hope.
I’d have to agree that Obama gave a great speech in ’04. Is that really going to be the basis for selecting him to be president? What has he done since, as a Senator or high-profile contender, all this time? Has he advanced, lobbied, spoken out, championed, appealed, endorsed, raised his voice about anything?!
If Obama’s speech was so convincing, why didn’t Democrats nominate him then and there for their candidate? I agree he was promising then! Now he is a confirmed professional campaigner. Not unlike… Bush! (This thread to be continued…)
What I take to be the lesson of DNC 2004 is to save the decision until all the really impressive orators have spoken, then pick one. Why tie ourselves to a nominee before all the suitors have made their overtures? Especially if we’re going to make our decision based on a speech. Let’s leave our options open. If we’d done that in 2004, we could have had Obama, and none too soon. Let’s do it this year and see who rises to the occasion. At every convention, there’s always a side player at liberty to offer a more interesting sermon.
At the 2006 state convention, soon-to-be-governor Ritter gave the worst speech I’d ever heard. I didn’t even have to close my eyes to wonder if he was a Republican, a Democrat or a Saturn dealer. It was the most bland claptrap, and he’s delivered precisely that in office. The same day, a would-be state representative spoke in amazingly blunt terms and brought down the house. Based on Obama logic, he should have been nominated for governor. I wish he had.
Who’s going to be the Obama of 2008? It wouldn’t have to be an unknown. As I remember, Dennis Kucinich gave an underrated speech at the last convention. Perhaps we should give him a chance to do it again. And he has credentials. Or Al Sharpton, or Jesse Jackson. Give Ron Paul or Ross Perot a turn at the podium as well. Based on one speech we can definitely feel optimism for any such candidacy.
If you are enjoying tuning into the latest news, hoopla and dramatic tension of the 2008 horse race, you may want to ignore Florida and skip this post. In darkroom terms, over the last months, ballot prospects have been exposed, developed and stopped. Florida, as in the past, is the fix.
It’s going to be John McCain versus Hillary Clinton, with McCain to win. Which will be no worse outcome than we have now, nor indeed than what might have appeared to be a Democrat alternative.
The American empire is marching onward to slaughter, there’s less and less deliberating about doing otherwise. We embrace militarism, we advocate military intervention, our culture celebrates the simplistic charm of the simple-headed, we mistake might for right, and we cheer self-destructive greed uber alles.
FBI whistle blower Sibel Edmond’s original 2001 allegations of drug running and money laundering within FBI now exposes in the articles below, selling of nuclear secrets by an inner group of Turks within the FBI is connected to U.S. officials, Pakistan and Israel. Don’t expect the U.S. press to cover this. Because Pakistan’s ISI is a CIA/Army Intel. branch created and funded by way of 80’s proxy war against Russia in Afghanistan, the U.S. will not support removal of Mushariff. He holds too many secrets. They’ll kill him if he threatens to expose U.S. criminals. He may become another long term U.S. ally similar to Egypt’s tyrant and anti-democratic Mubarak. Repressive regimes are part and parcel of the U.S. power players criminal activities.
The IVAW are really pulling it together this year. And they’ve set upon an ambitious strategy that has precedent with Vietnam antiwar vets. Winter Soldier Redux, Washington DC, March 13-16, 2008.
In 1970 veterans of the Vietnam war convened in Detroit to share personal confessions of their part in atrocities perpetrated against the Vietnamese. The documentary made of these transcripts was kept from the US public and has only recently become available. Click here for some clips on YouTube.
While it might appear to make no difference if a candidate is Republican or Democrat, I’d say a freshly galvanized non-voter would be hard pressed to suggest that any of the Y2K presidential hopefuls could have performed with more mischievous malevolence than George W. Bush. Disengaged citizens used to be ambivalent about their lack of options. Now we have precedent for thinking very hard about the lesser of evils. We don’t want just the better of the worst, we have to be sure to pick the lesser EVIL.
Will 2008 be a veritable toss-up between shills? We need to know for Decision 2008 if there lurks another Alfred E. Neuman Nero in the bunch.
Remember this little boy? His occult powers and prepubescent morality made him the demonic despot of a little American farming town in an early Twilight Zone episode. He could read people’s minds and had the power to punish them at will. Though he might easily have been deposed by a collective effort, no one dared lay a finger. Frustrated individual insurgents were summarily disappeared to the corn fields.
With FISA surveillance and the Patriot Act, could this be George W.?
But even if we could discern the truly evil, the amorality which comes with profound lack of profundity, do we really have the power to make our choice heard?
We’re told the primaries determine the presidential winner. I heard an NPR reporter covering the circus interject with “here’s a fact:” and proceed to declare that no one below the second place in such and such caucus has ever gone on to win the nomination etc, etc. As if a statistical likelihood could yield an absolute. Then there’s the Iowa Caucus Curse or some such, to throw witchcraft into the pot for those blasphemers who think statistics can lie. I hear what they media pundits are really saying, when they “predict” with the caucus results, and it is true. The media have always determined who is going to win. Whether it’s in the primaries or in the final election. Whoever they choose wins. The distance between is a horse race.
Don’t expect to receive any chatty phone calls from your divorce attorney friends this week. Every year, during the first full week of January, divorce petitions are filed at a level nearly 50% higher than any other week.
The week of the Epiphany.
It seems that long-held resentment, simmering tensions, and excruciating days of holiday togetherness can unravel the threads holding a shaky marriage together. The sheer exhaustion that comes from seemingly endless holiday tasks, cooking and cleaning and shopping and baking and wrapping, can blunt well-honed coping skills. But the worst must be the grinning and greeting, the extended family and the mounds of baggage they bring, and the expectation that the wife perform for days on end wearing a tight bright holiday smile. It’s enough to make an unhappily married woman resolve to make a change. 2008 is going to be a better year.
I’ll tell you, this is the heart of the beast. Colorado Springs may be the apex of US religio-military nonsense, but the American beast is television, the rotten core of which is Fox TV, and its absolute poisoned heart is televised football.
Football is crass, violent, anonymous, uniformed, incorporated and a perfectly trivial distraction from all else. Nothing new, but I’d like to offer this impression.
For starters, have you noticed, the camera coverage of the cheerleaders is from exactly the angle a pervert would ask? In uncouth parlance it’s called “upskirt.” How do you suppose the camera bearers excuse themselves panning across the cheerleaders at bare thigh level? It’s neither a spectator POV, nor that of any athlete, unless he’s Chucky, strolling well wide to receive the cheerleaders. When the girls leap on and off the shoulders of their male counterparts, the cameras explicably-enough climb to male shoulder level.
Of course it’s not a matter of impolite cameramen getting up from their knees. The cameras today float on wires like surveillance robots to produce tailor-made angles. Being my point I suppose.
Thanks to these robots, the audience is afforded action shots without precedence. As a result, we can follow the action practically outside the context of what’s taking place. It’s great isn’t it? Who cares what bones are getting crunched outside the frame, follow the ball. The action is violent but without consequence. Athletes are expected to defy physics for cameras themselves liberated from constraint. Catch without thought to how you’ll land. The players are so jacked up on painkillers and adrenaline that the impacts will register only later. Off camera.
That’s how we fight wars, isn’t it? Eye on the bouncing ball, all damage is collateral, the players expendable.
Players jump all over themselves enthusiastically after successful plays, but lo, have been forbidden to posture victoriously in the end zone. The unsportsmanlike penalty is unpopular and proving difficult for the athletes to avoid. I can tell you what that’s about. The rich white man doesn’t mind his gladiators amping themselves for a challenge, but he’ll be damned if he has to witness what will almost always be a black man crowing about his superiority. Rich white men can propagate rap music to the masses like crack cocaine, but they’re not about to abide the braggadocio themselves. When did acting too-big-for-your-britches become unsportsmanlike behavior? When it proved to make heroes of the likes of Muhammed Ali. Who went to jail sooner than go to Vietnam.
The media coverage is equally restrictive about which athletes it acquaints with viewers. Do you think Peyton Manning is the only charismatic quarterback, or rather the only safe spokesman? The videotaped segments of players introducing themselves have become completely stilted in formality. Post-game interviews mandate that athletes wear some official headgear which casts their features in shadow, preserving their anonymity. They remain monosyllabic gladiator brutes who otherwise wear helmets, increasingly now with visors like so many Power Ranger Storm Troopers.
The talking heads attendant to the bowl games, whether ex-athletes or sportscasters, were all wearing the Neocon uniform, the black suit, and new for 2008, a four button jacket buttoned to the top like a veritable military uniform. Only Brent Musburger had enough clout to decline the odd conformity. Black used to denote caretakers. Fully buttoned suits were for tailors and soldiers. History has never looked fondly on soldiers who wore black.
Who’s going to win in 2008? It’s a tough question to face. As sure as election year is upon us, someone in the current lineup is going to be elected. Who do I think it will be? I don’t want to separate who I want to predict as winner with who I’d like to see win. So who is that?
Much as I root for Kucinich, he’s been successfully ignored by the media. Kucinich will fold into the partyas per usual to endorse whoever will be the Democratic nominee. In the end having accomplished what? Did Kucinich truly expand the dialog among Democrats or just pander to the disenchanted across the window of opportunity they might have had to mount a third party?
Who does that leave among the contenders who are not agents of corporate rule? I’m rather inclined to agree with Ralph Nader that John Edwards might be the least beholden to corporate interests, hence the most promising candidate. Michael Moore think so too. So he’s my pick. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to vote for him.
The Democrats promise nothing and deliver it. While at the grassroots level it’s hard to argue that Democrats aren’t being responsive to their constituents, in the Colorado legislature as an example, further up the party it would seem to make no difference. Democratic governor Ritter vetoed our progressive labor bill. Our Democrat representatives in DC are but handservants to the Republicans and their lobbyists.
It’s time to vote for a third party candidate, no matter who is saying it won’t work. Throw your vote away sooner than throw in with corporate rule!
I love love love the Olympics. The Olympic Games epitomize humankind’s best and highest physical achievement, our ability to live in peace with other countries, to ignore race and to play fair, if only for a time. Sitius, altius, fortius indeed!
Historically, because the International Olympic Committee has avoided entanglement in world politics, the Olympics have had a larger number of team participants than there are UN-recognized countries. Puerto Rico, Hong Kong, Taiwan have been allowed to send teams to the Games despite their status as possessions of other nations. Even during the Cold War, athletic contests leading up to the Olympics took place behind the Iron Curtain. Talk to any Olympic athlete. They’ve been places that were off-limits to the rest of us. International sport transcends politics. And so it should.
This month the International Olympic Committee betrayed egalitarian tradition and denied the nation of Tibet a place at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Tibet, illegally-occupied by China since 1949, will not be allowed to field an Olympic team because China claims ownership of their land and their people. To add insult, China has plans to take the Olympic torch to the top of Mt. Everest, a mountain that rightfully belongs to Tibet and Nepal, to solidify its “ownership” of Tibet in the eyes of the world. China has already stepped up its presence at Everest, an easily identifiable landmark to Westerners, in anticipation of the propaganda campaign to come.
China should never have been chosen to host the Olympics in the first place. Countries with a history of egregious human rights violations have traditionally been disqualified as potential Olympic hosts. China bullshitted the IOC with progress and promises. We’re different now! Look how far we’ve come! And for whatever reason, monetary or political gain, good television potential, or maybe just plain old ignorance, the IOC bought the lie. And now they’ve become complicitous in Tibet’s oppression.
So when you see that beautiful Olympic torch, that symbol of good fellowship and unity, carried up Mt. Everest in May by the Chinese, remember that the Tibetan people have been denied their land, their identity, their religious and cultural practices, and a place at the Beijing games. You’ll have to count on memory, because you won’t see any protests during the climb. China has already warned foreigners about engaging in activities concerning the sovereignty and unity of China. Tibetans and Chinese won’t dare make a public spectacle; they know they’ll be shot on sight. Even now, four American citizens are being detained by the Chinese government for unfurling a banner calling for Tibet’s independence during a recent torch relay assessment.
I’m sure the worldwide media will honor the Chinese request for silence and make nary a peep about human rights violations in Tibet and elsewhere. And it’s going to make me sick sick sick.
Americans have what options really? Rigged voting machines, gerrymandered voter rolls, election day harassment at the polls, and media misdirection.
If we could somehow count on an honest result, have we any real choices? Republicans are corporate wolves for the thieving Neocons, and Democrats are the same in sheep’s clothing. Isn’t the disguise wearing thin?
The good news is that US sniper teams may not be shooting at everyone they come across anymore, as has been alleged though seldom reported. After all, the rules of war apply to snipers just as they would ordinary soldiers or paintballers: don’t shoot at someone who’s not a combatant, who’s unarmed, or who’s otherwise surrendering. But under pressure to up their kills, US snipers are defying the Hague Conventions with such innovations as 1) bait/entrapment, 2) getting go-ahead to assassinate, and 3) using fingerprint identification to confirm eligibility for execution.
1. Bait and switch
The Asymmetric Warfare Group issues to US snipers “drop items,” insurgent-type items which may be planted on Iraqis they’ve shot, but much more productively, to use as bait to lure passing Iraqis, tempting empty-handed civilians to become item-wielding insurgents whom you don’t have to get permission to shoot. The Washington Post reports:
“Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy,” Capt. Matthew P. Didier, the leader of an elite sniper scout platoon attached to the 1st Battalion of the 501st Infantry Regiment, said in a sworn statement. “Basically, we would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against U.S. Forces.”
2. Under suspicion is as good as being condemned
US snipers are executing targets if they can be confirmed as being suspects. With the cross hairs of your sniper scope aimed at your chosen Iraqi or Afghan, you can await authorization to pull the trigger based on learning the person’s identity, whether by informer or a shouted inquiry. Then according to the US rules of engagement you can terminate him. Here’s an example from the International Herald Tribune.
“From his position about 100 yards away, Master Sergeant Troy Anderson had a clear shot of the Afghan man standing outside a residential compound in a small village near the Pakistan border last October. And when Captain Dave Staffel, the Special Forces officer in charge, gave the order to shoot, Anderson fired a single bullet into the man’s head, killing him instantly.
…the shooting, near the village of Hasan Kheyl last October, was a textbook example of a classified mission completed in accordance with the American rules of engagement. The men said such rules allowed them to kill Buntangyar, whom the American military had designated a terrorist cell leader, once they positively identified him.”
3. Coming soon: fingerprint and biometric matching
In early 2008 US snipers will be given a more efficient system for making split decisions about whether their target may be summarily liquidated. Now with the subject in your sights, you can await instructions from an intelligence database about whether your target has a fingerprint, retina scan, or biometric profile in the records as a suspected insurgent. In which case, be he standing idle, detained or captive, you can shoot him. Read this account from the Washington Post about the JEFF:
“…the Joint Expeditionary Forensics Facilities (JEFF) project or “lab in a box,” analyzes biometrics. It will be delivered to Iraq at the beginning of 2008, the Navy said, to help distinguish insurgents from civilians.
…the military has been scanning the irises and taking the fingerprints of Iraqis, feeding a biometrics data base in West Virginia. To date, a few ad hoc labs have processed about 85,000 pieces of evidence taken from weapons caches or roadside devices.
Each collapsible, sand-colored, 20-by-20-foot unit has its own generator and satellite link. If things go as planned, data will beamed to the Biometric Fusion Center to check against more than a million Iraqi fingerprints.
The next stage is to miniaturize, create “a backpack lab,” so that soldiers who encounter a suspect “could find out within minutes” if he’s on a terrorist watch list, [says the JEFF weapon designer] “A war fighter needs to know one of three things: Do I let him go? Keep him? Or shoot him on the spot?”
Nader in 2008? It’s better than voting for the Democrat or Republican at least. Nader is definitely at this point outside backing more corporate control of America. Or you?
Al Gore throws race to Hillary, Hillary throws race to the Republicans by supporting nuking Iran alongside Dick Cheney. Meanwhile, Edwards and Obama play their part, as they make Hillary’s one ring circus act, which is pretty damn boring by itself, a three ring circus act for now. Al Gore continues to run his freak show outside the tents.
What a pathetic charade of pretend opposition to Republican governance. Oh, and I forgot to throw in mention of the other 2 big DP performers, Slick Willie and the Peanut Man for World Peace and Democracy. They both have their own seemingly independent tent revivals going, too. There are plenty of yokel suckers to go around.
We should boycott this charade of pretend democracy and just not vote at all in 2008. The System is totally rigged the way it is. Until we get some massive movements for peace and justice going, America will continue to be led by its collective nose.
The people just do not seem ready to wake up yet. Very sad, but unfortunately the case. The anger is there for about 2% of the population, but the rest are out shopping the same old bag. It’s still circus time for America’s rubes. Even reruns of Benny Hinn are more interesting IMO than the 3 ring DP circus that’s coming soon to town.
Yes, didn’t you know? Our corporations have already picked the next president of the US for you. Somebody called Hillary Giuliani. The 2112 ‘campaign’ will be starting shortly.
Quietly, with little mention in the press, the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive was signed in May 2007. This directive places all governmental power in the hands of the President in the case of a catastrophic emergency (as defined by him alone). It also allows him to take control of the private and nonprofit sectors. It effectively abolishes the checks and balances built into the Constitution and demolishes the Bill of Rights. This is, of course, necessary to keep us safe in case of a national disaster. The “Unitary Executive” would be able to act quickly and decisively, without any interference from those other two annoying branches of government, slow-moving and contentious as they are.
Our Constitution has never been about efficiency. The checks and balances built into it were created to keep any one individual or branch of government from having unilateral power. It lays the groundwork for a democracy, not for a well-oiled machine.
George Bush has shown extreme disdain for the Constitution, the very document he swore to uphold. He has vetoed only a handful of bills while in office, but he has attached signing statements to more than a thousand, clearly indicating scorn for Congress and his commitment to enforce only the laws he chooses. He has taken bills designed to protect the American public and has amended them to be used against us. Congress recently handed Zippy even more power by passing the Police America Act 2007. He has stripped us of our right to privacy, our right against unreasonable search and seizure, our right to due process. All in the name of the fighting terror.
We already know that President “Hyperbole” Bush is a master of exaggeration, if not outright prevarication. He and his oil buddy, Cheney, lied to get us into Iraq. They’ve lied to keep us in Iraq. Long ago they planned to get their hands on all of that beautiful unctuous black gold under the desert. They are not about to cede power to a successor until they’ve gotten the goods. What terrible national catastrophe is up his sleeve that will enable him to retain power?
I won’t speculate about what the catastrophe will be, but WorldNetDaily.com reported yesterday that the administration has been authorized to set up civilian prisons at military installations, something that has not been done in our country since the WWII Japanese internment camps. Under international law, internment camps are used in times of war to incarcerate large groups of people deemed to be enemies or “belligerents,” indefinitely and without trial, of course. Hasn’t Bush already warned us that if we are not with him, then we are with the terrorists? Read the handwriting on the wall.
When the occupant of the highest office in the land decides what the law is, singlehandedly, we no longer live in a democratic society. We live under a dictator, the Unitary Executive. While we were sleeping, Zippy the Monkey’s big dream of being THE Decider has been realized. We are basically living in an autocracy. The Founding Fathers are turning over and over in their graves. But few of the living seem to care.
Prepare yourself for the war with Iran. Prepare yourself for the impending terrorist attack. Prepare for the national catastrophe that will allow the Unitary Executive to suspend the 2008 election and stay in power indefinitely.
Just watch. He’ll do it. He’s the DECIDER. We gave him that power. And he’s willing and able to use it.
Would you entrust your children to the care of a teacher who didn’t have a Kucinich 2008 bumper sticker on their car? Or a sign in their window reading “What are you doing about global warming?” I know another elementary school teacher who distributes peace buttons wherever he goes, and another who teaches at peace camp during the summer.
What do the other teachers think they’re doing? Worrying about not getting fired by school administration lackeys, to hell with the children?
What teacher would not by nature be an activist? As our children’s guides to a better future, their function is one and the same. What kind of farmer doesn’t care if pollution is flowing into his fields? What kind of rancher feeds his herd in a cesspool? If teachers aren’t worried about the state of the world, they’re not showing any optimism for the fate of our children.
It’s time to be more discriminating about whose voices we mean to subject our children. And subject ourselves, from the media for example. Anyone in the visual or audio media, who reports about President Bush without a knowing intonation that Bush is a moron or crook, is clearly a crook or moron themselves.
If a door to door salesman tried to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge, you’d laugh him off the stoop, perhaps you’d call the police. What if he reappeared everyday, several times a day even, to repeat his pitch, without even a hint of admission that he’s been discredited. If neither the police, nor your politicians, are going to protect you from his fraud, and you want to preserve your sanity, you’ll have to close the door in his face.
I predict a Republican win in 2008, sorry to say, with really little we can do about it unless we can silence the media forked tongues. This country is headed for an election in 2008 we the people can’t win, and it won’t take black box voting, purged voter registers, or harassment at the polls to do it. Rove’s crew, the corporate interests and the GOP are lining up opposition candidate(s) who can’t win.
Barack, Hillary. Give me a break. In 2004 we couldn’t get Joe public to vote in great enough number to remove our certifiable idiot in chief, and this time he’s going to vote for a black president? Americans are still not ready to give gay partners equal treatment under the law, do you mean to tell me they’re ready for a woman president?
And those of us who can scrape together a third party coalition, are we going to do any better than split the vote between the Democratic Party stooge and a third party hopeful? The corporate media will blame the former for defeatism in Iraq and lambaste the latter as unelectable. Unless the power can be pulled from the traitors-to-democracy at the microphones, the average American lout will cast his lot with the Republican mafia/mormon/moron don du jour.
As a powerful antidote against the nonsensical Juneteenth Day event here in Colorado Springs, thank you, Cynthia McKinney, woman in Green. This is a powerful speech, where she talks about COINTELPRO, the police, and how crappy America currently is now. Cynthia McKinney in Green, 2008. Oh, and LOVE.
The Republicans are anticipating an ass-wooping in 2008 and as is the perverted way, they give themselves a voice in advising the Democrats about what to do. It’s like the coach of a football game advising his lesser adversary. Maybe it is hard to rebuff the generous advice of the side currently on top, especially before the public, but while the game is still on? In sports that condescending chiding is really just a psych-out. You wouldn’t heed the poker player telling you whether or not to call his bluff.
In this case, the corporate backers of the Republicans need to line up a Dem ringer for the 2008 election. They’re focusing on two sure-fire losers and banking on the Democrats to be optimistic and PC to a fault. I have no problem with a black man or a woman as president, but do you? If America has indeed become color and gender blind, let the Republcans put their money behind a non-white non-male. The corporate backers, which include the media owners, are already placing their bets in the funds for Mitt and Rudy.
So who does the opposite team keep insisting are the Dems most electable players? An unaccomplished senator and a universally lampooned first lady. That Hillary is a woman might be as meaningless as Obama being black. Geraldine Ferraro and Jesse Jackson were big deals back when for not being white males. America has come how far since then? If even forward? What’s your sense on whether we are behaving more or less bigoted/conservative/parochial these days?
America’s ruling elite have split about whether Bush’s decision to expand the War to Steal Iraq’s Oil into the neighboring countries of Syria, Lebanon, and Iran is likely to succeed or not. Wesley Clark, Clinton’s mad war criminal bomber of Yugoslavia, certainly is on the side that fears future failure by the Bush Administration.
He even has his own website dedicated to trying to stop the expansion of US government started warfare into Iran. But in the Amy Goodman interview, it appears that he actually wanted to attack Iran, and not Iraq, first. Now he feels that it is a mistaken strategy to do this attack he previously supported, after 6 years of Bush’s bungling, incompetence, and failure.
Amy Goodman all but begged Wesley Clark to run for president, echoing the incomprehensible stupidity of Michael Moore in the previous election. These liberals seem to be looking for some Dwight Eisenhower type to latch on to? How pathetic, since Wesley Clark is absolutely nothing more than a war criminal who started a war with a sovereign country illegally, and sat quiet as Clinton/ Gore killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi innocents through economic sanctions and continual bombings of Iraq during the 8 years of that Administration. These are the type of imperialist liberals who now talk of helping citizens of Sudan out, when during their time in office they were bombing illegally targets in that country, specifically one of Africa’s largest pharmaceutical factories. Clark, and his Slick Commander Clinton, sat and twiddled their thumbs, while hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were cut down. The US and French could easily have stopped that slaughte, but they were occupied with ‘stopping the Serbs’.
After much of the interview with Clark by Goodman conducted on a chit-chat friendly level, Goodman eventually felt the need to let Clark pretend to respond somewhat adequately to his record of continually bombing Yugoslav civilian infrastructure when he was top general in command of the Clinton war of Aggression Against Yugoslavia. This record includes the deliberate bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, also bombing the Serbian television station in that city killing journalists and and other civilians at work there, and bombing various factories along the Danube River, thereby contaminating that important waterway for years afterwards with toxic chemicals, as well as killing workers and neighborhood residents. The few parts of his miserable terrorist record Clark was asked to account for by Goodman, was predictably blamed on Milosevic and the Serbs themselves. Goodman made no effort to illustrate the dishonesty of his responses.
Further, Clark went on to support the continued US use of nuclear weapons and cluster bombs in US war making. Amy Goodwin let him walk on all of this, absolutely free as a breeze. How very sad to see this desperate desire for allies against the neocons turned into Goodman’s covert prompting of Clark towards a run for US presidency by this war criminal. Shame on you, Amy. I respect your show immensely but felt ashamed for you Friday night. Don’t let these rats off the hook when they try to desert the ship that Bush is trying to run aground. These imperialist just want a better vessel at hand to continue their imperialist aggressions against other countries. Certainly everything about Wesley Clark points towards continued disaster if he were actually to gain the presidency in 2008. Why prompt for more capable imperialists to regain command? Wesley Clark couldn’t even muster up a call for the impeachment of Bush or a description of the invasion and occupation of Iraq as being illegal. I guess not, since that would have been to illustrate how he himself had carried out and commanded an illegal war against Yugoslavia.
Despite the weather, illness (the other driver got sick), and early departure time, a small band of us made our way to Denver yesterday, to attend both a summit for the defense of Colorado’s many affirmative action programs (the Colorado Unity 2007 Coalition Conference), and the antiwar rally held on the steps of the state capitol building.
The conference was to spark an alert to the public that national Right Wing groups are going to try to implement legislation come 2008, that would reverse the many affirmative action programs that are in place that mandate fair treatment to women and minority racial sectors of our population here in this state. And well, the rally was part of a national effort to end the war and to prevent it from being further extended regionally into Iran, Syria, and Lebanon.
The keynote address to the conference was to have been the Democratic governor of the state, but apparently he was too exhausted from the previous night’s business gala here in The Springs to either attend the conference, or to attend the rally at the capitol building against the war. Go figure? However, I was pleasantly surprised by another Democratic Party speaker, the president of the Colorado state senate, Peter Groff. Instead of the usual pretending that the Democrats are preparing to change it all around, Senator Groff basically all but admitted that his fellow democrats were a fairly totally hopeless cause for backing up any progressive political issue! What a breath of fresh air and from a Democratic Party politician no less. Honesty, and honestly. To see what I mean about the man, here are some remarks he made on MLK Day this year.
At 11:45 we headed towards the antiwar rally, and we were met by crowds of people streaming toward the capitol building. Protesters were already assembled up the steps, and cars passing by were highly supportive with their honking and varying salutes to the people at the protest. The rally was definitely spirited and the numbers were fairly good, though not great. I would say that there were about 1300-1500 that participated. Certainly this merits coverage by the Colorado Press, but they deliberately blacked us out. Instead, the Rocky Mountain Mainly Censored News carried an AP release titled, Thousands protest from coast to coast that mentioned none of us protesting the war in cities in between.
There was also a march and protest in Boulder of at least hundreds of people. The Boulder Blocked Camera hid this away under a headline titled, “Activists, Stop funding”. Actually behind this hidden door, the coverage of the local event was not too horrible, but nothing about Denver there at all. And our on local toilet paper, The Gazette? Well really, does anybody really go there to get news coverage anyway? Suffice it to say that their coverage of national antiwar actions and local was their standard par for the hole. About 20 strokes and into the pond. We can only hope that the publishers there do more bird hunting with Dick Cheney. They have nothing to worry about anyway, since they are heartless ideological fools, so the birdshot will not damage.
After the rally, we headed back for the afternoon sessions of the Affirmative Action conference. Lessons learned for the day? We cannot depend much on either the politicians are the corporate press to support what’s right for us and the rest of the world. Without more anger there will not be more action. We certainly need more groups like Colorado Unity to defend equal treatment before the law in jobs and education, but if we as a people don’t have any fight back in ourselves, then we will still get trompled by the Right. We as a people are being assaulted on all fronts, and yet the anger has yet to reach a level where other than a few people will do much of anything.
Colorado Unity needs the public’s help to defend Affirmative Action in this state. Without it, the already privileged will stomp on the rest of us. Equal access to opportunities, and equal pay for equal work. That’s Affirmative Action.
Everybody who is anybody I know showed up at last Tuesday’s DEM caucuses. I felt so bad for all of them, tuned in, activated, braced to make elections work this time. But to work for whom? Not them. We are indeed lemmings, our legs spinning, our arms waving, our faith unshakable because to not jump off the cliff would be to derail the train without the engineer and be left to organize a can of worms.
Don’t expect to receive any chatty phone calls from your divorce attorney friends this week. Every year, during the first full week of January, divorce petitions are filed at a level nearly 50% higher than any other week.
I’ll tell you, this is the heart of the beast. Colorado Springs may be the apex of US religio-military nonsense, but the American beast is television, the rotten core of which is Fox TV, and its absolute poisoned heart is televised football.
It’s time to vote for a third party candidate, no matter who is saying it won’t work. Throw your vote away sooner than throw in with corporate rule!
I love love love the Olympics. The Olympic Games epitomize humankind’s best and highest physical achievement, our ability to live in peace with other countries, to ignore race and to play fair, if only for a time. Sitius, altius, fortius indeed! 
Quietly, with little mention in the press, the 
Would you entrust your children to the care of a teacher who didn’t have a Kucinich 2008 bumper sticker on their car? Or a sign in their window reading “What are you doing about global warming?” I know another elementary school teacher who distributes peace buttons wherever he goes, and another who teaches at peace camp during the summer.