Washblog

I see where the VFW chose to endorse a Republican candidate who has never served in the military and repudiate Tammy Duckworth, a Democratic candidate who is not only a Vet but lost both legs in the Occupation of Iraq. If the local VFW comes calling to recruit me into membership, they need to send someone like Bill Moyer, a 73-year-old vet who wore the "bullshit protector" in his ear while at the VFW convention. The apparent thinking as voiced by the VFW endorsing entity had to do with the Repug's track record of cheap talk and votes in support of military and or veteran issues ... as if a newly elected Iraq Veteran in Congress would not vote with an even greater wisdom. There is a horrendous naiveté in this action in that VFW veterans who have been there and done that have taken a coward's route perhaps voting more their fear about pensions and health benefits (ironically endangered more under Bushco than any administration) than demonstrating any long-time veteran's genuine desire for national well-being. If so, this in a way makes of the VFW the same corporate capitalists as jokers like Delay, Ney, and Burns  and others who accept money from Abramhoff in exchange for votes and endorsements.

Note:Lietta, dyingwarriors is having trouble getting into her Daily Kos account. Given the timeliness of her most recent writing, she's asked me to post this for her at DK. I fully endorse everything she has written. This diary is cross-posted at Daily KosIf you will, please go to DK and give it notice. - Arthur Ruger

Our troops are speaking, and this time directly to Congress.  In campaign 'Appeal for Redress' the numbers of active duty troops signing the appeal is increasing daily, if not hourly.  How many U.S. Troops killed in Iraq this month - 91 - and the month is not yet over. How many other courageous soldiers have demonstrated the courage to 'speak out' publicly via media in recent months?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) More than 200 active duty U.S. armed service members, fed up with the war in Iraq, have joined an unusual protest calling for withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country, organisers said on Wednesday.

The campaign, called the Appeal for Redress from the War in Iraq, is the first of its kind in the Iraq war and takes advantage of U.S. Defence Department rules allowing active duty troops to express personal opinions to members of Congress without fear of retaliation, organisers said.

"As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq," states the appeal posted on the campaign's Web site at www.appealforredress.org.

read more below the fold..link to full story

Political documentary American Blackout will be shown tonight at 7:00pm at Columbia City Cinema. This is part of the Langston Hughes African American Film Festival.

American Blackout details the systematic and widespread efforts to disenfranchise African American voters in Florida and Ohio during the 2000 and 2004 elections. This stuff is familiar to anyone who has read US Rep. Conyers' report What Went Wrong in Ohio (available online here).

I'm really sorry about the late notice. I either completely missed or spaced this event. My bad. (Now I have to choose between our LD meeting and this documentary.)

Faith-based whistle blower on Colbert's show "George Bush IS for the poor. He made alot of them ..." Reverend Falwell, national chairman of the Faith and Values Coalition and Moral Majority founder, also labeled the National Organization for Women (NOW) the "National Order of Witches," and called Americans United for Separation of Church and State "an anti-Christ" group.

When the silent and believing majority keep their spirituality locked up and private as we were "Constitutionally taught" in civics classes, today's moral propagandists diminish each of us and our trusting quiet respect for Constitutional  privacy. We are those who must speak up and bring about a shut-up of the blowhards. Prior to the 2004 election, Dr. Jerry Falwell wrote in a newsletter and on his Web site: "I believe it is the responsibility of every political conservative, every evangelical Christian, every pro-life Catholic, and every traditional Jew, every Reagan Democrat, and everyone in between to get serious about re-electing President Bush."

by Paul Lehto, Attorney at Law,
October 17, 2006

Habeas corpus -- it's your most fundamental legal right, your right to go to a court and get an order requiring the government to prove that it is holding you in prison with proper legal authority to do so. Without that right, one necessarily lives in a dictatorship.  President Bush today on October 17, 2006 signed a bill repealing that law, meaning that the administration need not comply or show compliance with law any more with regard to who goes to prison or Gitmo.

While it supposedly applies just to terrorism cases, that doesn't prevent it from ending the rule of law in the United States for our newly all-powerful Executive.  This is true not just because terrorism is construed so broadly in the prohibition of "material support" for terrorism (which by the way has already been held to include a lawyer's press release on behalf of a terrorist client) but because the administration NEED NOT PROVE IT'S REALLY TERRORISM because they don't need to answer to any court in the land at any time.

Thanks also to Cartoonist Mike Lukovich and truthdig.com

What's wrong with that party?

Why do folks like Pat Buchannan and others say it's not the Republican party of old?

Watch Reichert's political ads - no substance and pure desperation.

Watch McGavick's ads - the silliest campaigning we've seen in years. His "stand-on-the-stage" act comes across as an amateur attempt at light-hearted but friendly negative campaigning. Instead he comes out looking like Republican light-weight with no substance and nothing more than empty platitudes.

Then see how a party proclaiming family values - the party of McGavick, Reichert, Hastings & McMorris - really sets priorities about protection of the family.

Check out this brief story out of the conservative The New Republic: How Rove Twisted [Mark] Foley's Arm

Global Warming while a nation freezes and slips deeper into numbness.

Whining about Bush and Cheney Republicans gets wearisome. Whacking inept Washington State Republicans and their campaigns remains tempting and Lord knows, they continually give us workable material.   But more and more when my own favorite ax to grind gets additional voices I like it.  We need more focus around the toxicity in America's personal domestic life that invites exploitation. I have a subscription to the weekly newsletter from Online Journal. Saturday mornings now have to include a cup of coffee and at least half an hour to read those listed articles that interest me. I read earlier this morning that the international edition of last week's  Newsweek's international mag front page is about Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan. Newsweek's domestic front page was of course more or less  germaine in a kind of international way; definitely more pertinent and consistent with domestic priorities and values ... The US edition of Newsweek, however, sports on the front page a picture of Annie Leibowitz, photographer to the stars, completing her rigorous and danger-ridden assignment of interviewing Angelina Jolie. Luciana Bohne Online Journal Contributing Writer and continually toxic.

[Update 9/30: It's looking even more like House leadership knew -- and are now covering up.

• From today's ABC News: "Rep. Thomas Reynolds, head of the House Republican election effort, said Saturday he told Speaker Dennis Hastert (last fall) about concerns that a fellow GOP lawmaker had sent inappropriate messages to a teenage boy."
• From today's Washington Post: "House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) told The Washington Post last night that he had learned this spring of inappropriate "contact" between Foley and a 16-year-old page. Boehner said he then told House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). Boehner later contacted The Post and said he could not remember whether he talked to Hastert."

Washington's own Doc Hastings, the chair of the Ethics Committee either did not know, or also helped cover it up.]

It looks like Representative Mark Foley from Florida has been engaging in explicit sexual exchanges with underage men on the Internet for some time now.  What's more, it looks like these underaged men work as pages for the US House -- and that the Republican House leadership, -- so sanctimoniously vocal about sexual abstinence, etc., has known about it for months without taking action.  The blog I cite below provides a quote from a San Francisco Chronicle article indicating that leadership knew.  The article that is linked to does not contain the quote attributed to it. A misquote? A redaction from the article? Perhaps we'll find out. In any event, this is a big, breaking scandal that gets right to the core of Republican corruption and hypocricy.

My Country Tis of Thee ...

Sweet Land of Liberty ...

... For Thee I Weep

Lynn Allen of Evergreen Politics attended the Hightower event at Town Hall Seattle last night and interviewed him on Karl Rove.  Here's a clip on here on Seattle Times.

Horses Ass and Postman on Politics both cover it briefly.

Truthdig.com

Click here for the larger version of the picture.

 

Interesting view out of Great Britain. Is this what we original Trekkies anticipated?

The Times online -  To Boldly Go and Interfere
By Patrick West
September 08, 2006

So apparently Iraq and Al Qaida never liked each other - according to our finest institution, the United States Senate.

Saddam Hussein thought of Al Qaida as an enemy - imagine that? As my wife constantly tells me, NO SHIT, SHERLOCK.

Why is this all of the sudden news? It was as plain to see at a laser to me. Am I all alone in this thought process?
Which part of secularism and fundamentalism do you not understand, America?

But that is not the point of this rant. In my opinion, we are under the grips of a fascist dictatorship in desguise - just tune into Fox News at any time of the day, or with the latest crap coming out of our corporate entertainment empire. Take a look at ABC (AKA Channel 4, KOMO). Surely someone has heard about that and the fakeumentary about 9/11.

So that is at least two major networks that are actively working against truth. Any others? Hmm, lets see - NBC perhaps? Owned by General Electric, one of the biggest military industrial complexes in the world, with many Billion$ on the line in Iraq. Jack Welsh may ring a bell or two - he was the CEO of GE/NBC when the 2000 elections took place. Did he not intervine during the newscasts and demand that FLORIDA be called for dubya? From the control booth in NBC? Yes he did. The guy went into the control booth and personally made sure that millions of Americans believed dubya won the 2000 election - even though Florida was in total doubt.

The trap was sprung. And here we are. Stuck like a coyote? Thats what the GOP was hoping for. A fascist America. Good morning.

Fascist - is sounds evil just saying it. Guess what: we are not far from living it. At some point rejection of what is happening would take place, but thanks to the American version of facism, the news and other corporate mediums will placate us and help make us think that we are ok enough (except we need repubs to keep us safe) until the next major terrorist attack. And when the next attack happens we should be fully supportave of restrictions on our lives, travels, maybe even communications, right? All in the name of security (or politics).

David Sirota and Thom Hartmann have powerful stuff to say that counters much of the mid-term pretend sincerity we're seeing from republican candidates all over the country.

Sirota: So, today, if you see a Republican politician say with a straight face that he/she really cares about workers, remember the facts documented in this op-ed (On America Working: The war on workers, by David Sirota in today's SF Chronicle) - they tell the real story.

Rob   Kall's book review. (Rob Kall is executive editor and publisher of OpEdNews.com)

The book walks through so many of the big lies (taxes, big government, trickle down economics) of the faux conservatives-- which he calls, so appropriately-- "Cons."

As a publisher of a progressive website, I kept reading stretches of chapters and saying to myself-- "Wow, that would make a great article." While the book is a non-fiction book, it started off in the first two pages touching my heart, bringing tears to my eyes. (watching inconvenient truth brought tears too.) It is a very fast, smooth read. You do have to put it down every now and then, to deal with outrage build-up.

In her PI opinion piece of today, Is more violence and less safety what we want?, Lynn Allen of Evergreenpolitics.com   recounts her experience at "Ground Zero" on September 11, 2001 and shows how our response has generated more, not less, violence.  

And she suggests that "it's not too late to change direction, to write the alternative story," -- one in which we respond to Muslim terrorism strategically, strengthening the position of our Muslim allies, weakening the position of the terrorists, and recognizing through our actions the interconnected nature of our world.  After you read it, go on over to her post of this morning: Witness to History for more insight and reader responses.