The Purpose Of Life Is A Life Of Purpose.

A day of Thanksgiving and Praise.

2011-11-23T14:56:00.000-08:00

Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.

Yes, once again, I have neglected my blog all year only to remember that it exists when I remember its time for the re hack of my annual ….

“What’s all this then about Thanksgiving” posting…..

William Sydney “O. Henry” Porter, author of ”The Gift of The Magi”believed that, “There is one day that is ours. Thanksgiving Day is the one-day that is purely American.”

Me and other amateur hacks and pundits, have always felt compelled to write FOR and ABOUT Thanksgiving, which I think, is kind of the testimony of its uniqueness, more than any other day, in the American psyche. A time when, timely as the autumn leaves, I easily can pull from the recesses of my mind, thoughts and remembrances and ponder Thanksgiving in my life.

Year in and year out, I am moved by the sublime, prolific and axiomatic iconography of what it is to be an American in the Thanksgiving celebration.

Whether for financial or atheistical reasons most of us trying to ignore the ‘crazed consumerism’, with its almost entirely molested, synthetic marketing sheen; so quickly some of us are already sick of Christmas….but Thanksgiving ~ I mean com'on!

Thanksgiving, in its origins, traditions and celebration here in America, conjures the specter of togetherness and the act of rendering thanks, expressing gratitude, depending on what or who you believe, to fate or to God or to the grand wheel of life for its favors, mercies and blessings and for our lives, in whatever state of affairs we find them in during this time of year…and seemingly, most especially this year.

This time, every year, for centuries, there is mysterious and simultaneous pulse; we pause to preserve a moment with a pure, still heart, and let there be a celebration of thankfulness; the actualization of expressing our inner gratitude for the blessings and the kindnesses we’ve received.

It's noted by the American poet, John Clayton, that, "Christians were instructed to serve others, and the thanksgiving was for the grace of God and the fact that God offered a way for man to return to a positive relationship with Him".

This moment in the America calendar is the quintessence of thanksgiving, and, in its expression, regardless of how jaded and hardened we have become, is the very antithesis of what goes on at Christmas.

Just so we are all on the same page here, for a moment, lets get rid of the turkey and pumpkin pie and any traditional holiday trappings and their American inferences; leave only the state of and the gift of thankfulness.

Thankfulness is a uniquely human response; gratitude involves memory of the past, awareness of the present, and trust for the future; it is undeniably and preeminently a human response.

Better said by playwright and human rights activist, Victor Hugo, "To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do."

I think that’s it. I think that THIS is the essence of what Thanksgiving has always been about in our history of endless struggle, our perpetual ‘work in progress’ status, and what has been quintessentially American about it. More so, why we need to especially remember these things right, today and from this moment going forward.

The act of thanksgiving doesn't discriminate or discount or divide. Whatever or whomever the people, whatever the belief or the name used for God, whatever the origin of one's mother or father, Thanksgiving has been the one day in America when we forget the madness that whips us up into a froth; be it our financial situation, familial stresses, our political, racial, religious or sexual proclivity; we have since the very beginnings of our nation, paused for a day of thanksgiving, gathered together and enjoyed our blessings; large and small; enjoyed 'the bountiful harvest' from our toil of the year past.

It is 'give us your tired, your hungry, your poor, your huddled masses" in practice; it is the secular equivalent of the sacrament for Americans; by its practice, you BECOME American.

Thanksgiving Day is and has always been a joyous family festival during which, almost unconsciously, we migrate, no matter where we are, to be with friends and family and we take a moment to be awash in the love of those we love and share ours with them and those we see too seldom. We need this moment, now more than ever, when we find ourselves in a time in the history of our society, that it feels, less than ever, there is accordance or any clear answers to anything

Amidst the woes of unemployment, diminished resources, loved ones far away or lost to us forever, you can still hear the faint chatter of native sons and immigrants, talking about their discoveries of life this year and the living that made those discoveries clear.

Thanksgiving in America is when we examine what we have, ourselves and each other and the whole upon our lives, as well we should. Less than before, but there is food on the table; increasingly and oddly parenthetical at times, we have friends and people we really do care about who really do care about us; far flung, estranged and (charmingly or otherwise) dysfunctional, we are, on Thanksgiving Day, a family. A day when all of us pause and ponder, no matter how small we see it, if we see it all during the year, the abundance of our blessings in America. We are possibly at this one moment as a people, on the brink of re discovering the true pleasures and freedoms of life here in America; just then, Thanksgiving re affirms its powerful hold on the collective American consciousness.

Thanksgiving has, to say the least, evolved; from the original, mythic celebration of the Pilgrim fathers as well as other early ‘harvest festivals’; no matter the meanings, patriotic, ideological or political intentions, global-societal distractions, proliferation of football games, “Black Friday” shopping mall insanity; every year on Thanksgiving Day, we some how manage to continue to extract a new poignant chapter in the interconnected narrative that is forever electroplated to the 4th Thursday of November, when we feel the tug of an integral annual habit to migrate to a specific GPS coordinate, to collectively express gratitude for the small blessings we have in our lives.

Before we even knew what was going on, Thanksgiving has been engrained in the DNA of who we are; offering us an opportunity to not just to remember, but reflect on the history of how far America has come, since before we were cognizant or contributing members of society. From that collective history, recent and traditional, we examine and extract by osmosis the inimitability and inclusiveness of what it is to be American.

Its interesting (to me) how we Americans, throughout our history, find and re sanctify the ‘better angles of our nature’ in our darkest hours; through the cycles of years, events, proclamations and changes; through the various incarnations; we find ourselves tumbling through history; picking up pieces of our collective thought along the way; and become the fulcrum of balance for everything we have been and everything we are going to be in ‘this American Life’.

In 1789, the perennial First American, George Washington, proclaimed a National Day of Thanksgiving with these words:

“Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God,…both Houses of Congress have requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed… that we may then all unite in … humble thanks for …for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; and particularly…the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed…"

In contrast to the current Queen of Thanksgiving, Martha Stewart, Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of then popular Godey's Lady's Book deserves over due recognition as the Mother of the American Thanksgiving and really deserves a special Thanksgiving Day postage stamp (while stamps still exist).

After a long and tenacious letter writing and editorial campaign by Mrs. Hale, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November of thanksgiving in the year 1863; one of the nation's darkest and divisive times in American history; strangely and fittingly reminiscent in ways to our national posture today.

The following editor's column was part of the long campaign by Sarah Josepha Hale to get Thanksgiving accepted as a national holiday in the United States.

"We are most happy to agree with the large majority of the governors of the different States -- as shown in their unanimity of action for several past years, and which, we hope, will this year be adopted by all -- that the LAST THURSDAY IN NOVEMBER shall be the DAY Of NATIONAL THANKSGIVING for the American people.

"… when the noise and tumult of wordiness may be exchanged for the laugh of happy children, the glad greetings of family reunion, and the humble gratitude of the Christian heart….

"…drink, in the sweet draught of joy and gratitude to the Divine giver of all our blessings, the pledge of renewed love to the Union, and to each other; and of peace and good-will to all men".

In 1850, amid a deluge of forces that culminated into the Civil War, the poet and Atlantic Monthly founder, John Greenleaf Whittier, published the poem "The Pumpkin" in which the tradition of Thanksgiving is described in rich and familiar symbolism; as a time of remembrance and return; a celebration of abundance, both of sustenance, of love, of the family gathering.

Oh! On Thanksgiving day, when from East and from West,
From North and from South comes the pilgrim and guest;
When the gray-haired New Englander sees round his board
The old broken links of affection restored,
When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more,
And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before,
What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye?
What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin pie?

Oh, fruit loved of boyhood! The old days recalling,
When wood-grapes were purpling and brown nuts were falling!
When wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin,
Glaring out through the dark with a candle within!
When we laughed round the corn-heap, with hearts all in tune,
Our chair a broad pumpkin,—our lantern the moon,
Telling tales of the fairy who travelled like steam
In a pumpkin-shell coach, with two rats for her team!

Then thanks for thy present! None sweeter or better
E'er smoked from an oven or circled a platter!
Fairer hands never wrought at a pastry more fine,
Brighter eyes never watched o'er its baking, than thine!
And the prayer, which my mouth is too full to express,
Swells my heart that thy shadow may never be less,
That the days of thy lot may be lengthened below,
And the fame of thy worth like a pumpkin-vine grow,
And thy life be as sweet, and its last sunset sky
Golden-tinted and fair as thy own Pumpkin pie!

WAIT! Take a moment…read it again but let go and let the traditional, sing song charm of this poem’s character transport you to Thanksgiving Days past and hoped for.

Wow…ok we can continue…

So, after what seems like a never-ending storm in American society, it seems to me that this year, in our moment of Thanksgiving of our collective blessings, we should search our selves and find renewed in the hope and faith in the ideal that is the best of America. Lets approach the coming year of inevitable, uneasy transition, un-navigated political and economic futures, and remember how lucky we are as a society and a culture and who we are as Americans.

Really? Nothing? OK here is a primer…a ‘mantra’ to get you there this Thursday.

Think of how many times it seemed America seemed irretrievably close so close to losing the best of us as Americans. Place that in the larger context of infinite history; how much longer we could possibly go on.

Now, hear the words of President Lincoln's Thanksgiving Day proclamation of 1863; picture his humble beginnings, son of uneducated farmer pioneers; Lincoln’s life is an irrefutable demonstration of just how much is possible in America; his words articulate and epitomize the truest meaning of hope and peace and gratefulness of blessings received; all the things of Thanksgiving in America are.

Like a psalm or incantation, it transports you to a time of rebirth and transition; at the heart of a spirit that is rapidly becoming extinct; a spirit that Abraham Lincoln used to characterize and embody America and, "the better angels of our nature."

"The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

"In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

"Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom".

"No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy". "It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole
American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day ofThanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union".

That one part really gets me: “…and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union".

Take this moment, with the future ahead in mind; this one moment when an entire nation, now so divided, so in need, will for one day, pause for a long breath and be thankful together; set aside that which divides us and take advantage of this one special moment in America and BE more fundamentally thankful for the simple and proverbial "small blessings" in your life; be more thankful for the people and neighbors and society that make “our” life as a whole as well as those that make it better; take this moment to render a remembrance that will stay with you and, through habit, make you more readily grateful to and for the people around you; remember that harmony makes small things grow; lack of it makes great things decay.

Small things. Small blessings. Easy things. Affordable, yet priceless offerings to the intricate web of our society.

Set gratitude as the cornerstone of your being and viscerally you will find yourself giving a regular heartfelt "Thank you"...and thus start the cycle. In re-learning the practice of thanking people we recognize our dependence on them and them on us; we develop a keener sense of just how closely tied our fates are on "this green and muddy stone".

The all but extinct "Thank You" to a brother, a sister, a spouse, a parent, a child, a neighbor; the clerk at the store you’ve been to a thousand times; that person you pass in the hall or the street everyday.

Thanksgiving Day! Awesome! Yes, let's absolutely give thanks…to everyone and for everything. Is it too easy and simplistic to say that thoughts of Thanksgiving are the kind of thoughts that we should have all year long, you say? Of course it is, but that doesn’t make it a bad idea or mean we shouldn’t TRY and get there. How do we do that?

Ancient Buddhist teachings say…

“A jug fills drop by drop.” …and…

“The mind is everything. What you think you become.”

We do what know and do that until it is not just what we do but who we are. Implement in our daily lives, that there is always time for kindness, even if the moment passes and it dawns on you that “THAT” was one of those moments, go back and act on that kindness.

Extend kindness to others through the year with out judgment or assumption of their situation or how they got there and you will find that your life is overflowing with a overpowering Thanksgiving Peace that lasts the your entire year!

…and this is how we change the world.

Tick...tick...tick. The Government Shutdown LOOMS! SO SHUT IT DOWN!

2011-04-08T15:52:00.000-07:00

I have been reading and ranting about this "Government Shutdown" all day (ya know cuz it's Friday and NAB is this weekend and I'm ALREADY in Vegas).

I've been making this comment all day and the positve feed back It' NOT about money or jobs or abortion or budget.

The REAL problem here, and the dangerous thing; the thing we should all be scared of is that We The People are missing the bigger picture in what they're talking about.

This shut down is NOT about money or jobs or abortion or budget. That's all coded language.

This fight is about POWER; who is gonna get it and what they're gonna do with it.

The GOP has HAD IT and is tired of "science" and "technology" and "progress" and liberal way of thinking (e.g. that everybody is equal and there is room for compromise, etc) because in their greedy and twisted minds that train of thought ONLY works for the poor and down trodden and the old and those that can't help themselves, or in GOP speak those are the lazy drug addicted welfare mothers smoking crack and the Jose Jimenez the illegal immigrant who is stealing the McDonalds and strawberry picking jobs...but I digress.

This is about the GOP and Tea Party and the people who line up with them shoving down the throats of the American people a regressive ideology that seeks to permanently divide the country in to upper and lower classes, with the former in control of the later.

Look at what they're targeting - education, privacy, the internet, banking and finance, labor and commerce and unions, communications, public information, healthcare, etc. All the building blocks you need to keep one 'class' of people stupid and poor enough so that they'll BEG for jobs that pay $5 a bushel of strawberry picked or a job that pays a ridiculously impossible to live on minimum wage.

Reduce people's access to ways to better themselves and you build a class of semi-slave labor.

Anybody's father or mother a Teamster? Ask THEM what they think of all this.

Education has already been stripped to basic math and reading (and is failing at that). There is no critical thinking or ethics being taught any more, so the 'general public' isn't able to recognize the historical significance of what is happening right now to our country, in the context of the great societies and governments that have fallen before us.

The conservative mind lives in an Ozzie and Harriet fantasy and they can NOT deal with the fact that those days are over.

They can not deal with that fact that this is a complex and ever and rapidly changing modern world we live in and that their myopic and under educated minds can NOT figure out how to deal with that change...and that is NOT not my fault or your fault.

I refuse to let the guys who MADE them myopic and under educated to take over the rest of the country and turn this in to a Feudal State run by an aristocracy of 'connected' interbred douchebags...pardon my French.

I lived in a Third World Country where the public peace was kept by military police and people were afraid to speak their minds for fear of being disappeared.

I have STAYED educated and informed.

I have STAYED abreast of who the world was changing and leaned how to rock and/or roll with it

I have STAYED open minded and didn't let my fear of change or the fear that the political right was trying to feed me pull me off the track of logical thought.

…and I have been ostracized for my efforts.

When did being smart and engaged make one the freak of society?

When did that happen and why are you and I the only guy's that are OUTRAGED at what's going on?

Thanksgiving? What’s all this then?

2010-11-22T15:22:00.000-08:00

Yes, once again, I have neglected my blog all year only to remember that it exists when I remember its time for the re hack of my annual ….

“What’s all this then about Thanksgiving” posting…..

William Sydney “O. Henry” Porter, author of ”The Gift of The Magi” believed that, “There is one day that is ours. Thanksgiving Day is the one-day that is purely American.”

Me and other amateur hacks and pundits, have always felt compelled to write FOR and ABOUT Thanksgiving, which I think, is kind of the testimony of its uniqueness, more than any other day, in the American psyche. A time when, timely as the autumn leaves, I easily can pull from the recesses of my mind, thoughts and remembrances and ponder Thanksgiving in my life.

Year in and year out, I am moved by the sublime, prolific and axiomatic iconography of what it is to be an American in the Thanksgiving celebration.

Whether for financial or atheistical reasons most of us trying to ignore the ‘crazed consumerism’, with its almost entirely molested, synthetic marketing sheen; so quickly some of us are already sick of Christmas….but Thanksgiving ~ I mean com'on!

Thanksgiving, in its origins, traditions and celebration here in America, conjures the specter of togetherness and the act of rendering thanks, expressing gratitude, depending on what or who you believe, to fate or to God or to the grand wheel of life for its favors, mercies and blessings and for our lives, in whatever state of affairs we find them in during this time of year…and seemingly, most especially this year.

This time, every year, for centuries, there is mysterious and simultaneous pulse; we pause to preserve a moment with a pure, still heart, and let there be a celebration of thankfulness; the actualization of expressing our inner gratitude for the blessings and the kindnesses we’ve received.

It's noted by the American poet, John Clayton, that, "Christians were instructed to serve others, and the thanksgiving was for the grace of God and the fact that God offered a way for man to return to a positive relationship with Him".

This moment in the America calendar is the quintessence of thanksgiving, and, in its expression, regardless of how jaded and hardened we have become, is the very antithesis of what goes on at Christmas.

Just so we are all on the same page here, for a moment, lets get rid of the turkey and pumpkin pie and any traditional holiday trappings and their American inferences; leave only the state of and the gift of thankfulness.

Thankfulness is a uniquely human response; gratitude involves memory of the past, awareness of the present, and trust for the future; it is undeniably and preeminently a human response.

Better said by playwright and human rights activist, Victor Hugo, "To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do."

I think that’s it. I think that THIS is the essence of what Thanksgiving has always been about in our history of endless struggle, our perpetual ‘work in progress’ status, and what has been quintessentially American about it. More so, why we need to especially remember these things right, today and from this moment going forward.

The act of thanksgiving doesn't discriminate or discount or divide. Whatever or whomever the people, whatever the belief or the name used for God, whatever the origin of one's mother or father, Thanksgiving has been the one day in America when we forget the madness that whips us up into a froth; be it our financial situation, familial stresses, our political, racial, religious or sexual proclivity; we have since the very beginnings of our nation, paused for a day of thanksgiving, gathered together and enjoyed our blessings; large and small; enjoyed 'the bountiful harvest' from our toil of the year past.

It is 'give us your tired, your hungry, your poor, your huddled masses" in practice; it is the secular equivalent of the sacrament for Americans; by its practice, you BECOME American.

Thanksgiving Day is and has always been a joyous family festival during which, almost unconsciously, we migrate, no matter where we are, to be with friends and family and we take a moment to be awash in the love of those we love and share ours with them and those we see too seldom. We need this moment, now more than ever, when we find ourselves in a time in the history of our society, that it feels, less than ever, there is accordance or any clear answers to anything

Amidst the woes of unemployment, diminished resources, loved ones far away or lost to us forever, you can still hear the faint chatter of native sons and immigrants, talking about their discoveries of life this year and the living that made those discoveries clear.

Thanksgiving in America is when we examine what we have, ourselves and each other and the whole upon our lives, as well we should. Less than before, but there is food on the table; increasingly and oddly parenthetical at times, we have friends and people we really do care about who really do care about us; far flung, estranged and (charmingly or otherwise) dysfunctional, we are, on Thanksgiving Day, a family. A day when all of us pause and ponder, no matter how small we see it, if we see it all during the year, the abundance of our blessings in America. We are possibly at this one moment as a people, on the brink of re discovering the true pleasures and freedoms of life here in America; just then, Thanksgiving re affirms its powerful hold on the collective American consciousness.

Thanksgiving has, to say the least, evolved; from the original, mythic celebration of the Pilgrim fathers as well as other early ‘harvest festivals’; no matter the meanings, patriotic, ideological or political intentions, global-societal distractions, proliferation of football games, “Black Friday” shopping mall insanity; every year on Thanksgiving Day, we some how manage to continue to extract a new poignant chapter in the interconnected narrative that is forever electroplated to the 4th Thursday of November, when we feel the tug of an integral annual habit to migrate to a specific GPS coordinate, to collectively express gratitude for the small blessings we have in our lives.

Before we even knew what was going on, Thanksgiving has been engrained in the DNA of who we are; offering us an opportunity to not just to remember, but reflect on the history of how far America has come, since before we were cognizant or contributing members of society. From that collective history, recent and traditional, we examine and extract by osmosis the inimitability and inclusiveness of what it is to be American.

Its interesting (to me) how we Americans, throughout our history, find and re sanctify the ‘better angles of our nature’ in our darkest hours; through the cycles of years, events, proclamations and changes; through the various incarnations; we find ourselves tumbling through history; picking up pieces of our collective thought along the way; and become the fulcrum of balance for everything we have been and everything we are going to be in ‘this American Life’.

In 1789, the perennial First American, George Washington, proclaimed a National Day of Thanksgiving with these words:

“Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God,…both Houses of Congress have requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed… that we may then all unite in … humble thanks for …for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; and particularly…the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed…"

In contrast to the current Queen of Thanksgiving, Martha Stewart, Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of then popular Godey's Lady's Book deserves over due recognition as the Mother of the American Thanksgiving and really deserves a special Thanksgiving Day postage stamp (while stamps still exist).

After a long and tenacious letter writing and editorial campaign by Mrs. Hale, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November of thanksgiving in the year 1863; one of the nation's darkest and divisive times in American history; strangely and fittingly reminiscent in ways to our national posture today.

The following editor's column was part of the long campaign by Sarah Josepha Hale to get Thanksgiving accepted as a national holiday in the United States.

"We are most happy to agree with the large majority of the governors of the different States -- as shown in their unanimity of action for several past years, and which, we hope, will this year be adopted by all -- that the LAST THURSDAY IN NOVEMBER shall be the DAY Of NATIONAL THANKSGIVING for the American people.

"… when the noise and tumult of wordiness may be exchanged for the laugh of happy children, the glad greetings of family reunion, and the humble gratitude of the Christian heart….

"…drink, in the sweet draught of joy and gratitude to the Divine giver of all our blessings, the pledge of renewed love to the Union, and to each other; and of peace and good-will to all men".

In 1850, amid a deluge of forces that culminated into the Civil War, the poet and Atlantic Monthly founder, John Greenleaf Whittier, published the poem "The Pumpkin" in which the tradition of Thanksgiving is described in rich and familiar symbolism; as a time of remembrance and return; a celebration of abundance, both of sustenance, of love, of the family gathering.

Oh! On Thanksgiving day, when from East and from West,
From North and from South comes the pilgrim and guest;
When the gray-haired New Englander sees round his board
The old broken links of affection restored,
When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more,
And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before,
What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye?
What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin pie?

Oh, fruit loved of boyhood! The old days recalling,
When wood-grapes were purpling and brown nuts were falling!
When wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin,
Glaring out through the dark with a candle within!
When we laughed round the corn-heap, with hearts all in tune,
Our chair a broad pumpkin,—our lantern the moon,
Telling tales of the fairy who travelled like steam
In a pumpkin-shell coach, with two rats for her team!

Then thanks for thy present! None sweeter or better
E'er smoked from an oven or circled a platter!
Fairer hands never wrought at a pastry more fine,
Brighter eyes never watched o'er its baking, than thine!
And the prayer, which my mouth is too full to express,
Swells my heart that thy shadow may never be less,
That the days of thy lot may be lengthened below,
And the fame of thy worth like a pumpkin-vine grow,
And thy life be as sweet, and its last sunset sky
Golden-tinted and fair as thy own Pumpkin pie!

WAIT! Take a moment…read it again but let go and let the traditional, sing song charm of this poem’s character transport you to Thanksgiving Days past and hoped for.

Wow…ok we can continue…

So, after what seems like a never-ending storm in American society, it seems to me that this year, in our moment of Thanksgiving of our collective blessings, we should search our selves and find renewed in the hope and faith in the ideal that is the best of America. Lets approach the coming year of inevitable, uneasy transition, un-navigated political and economic futures, and remember how lucky we are as a society and a culture and who we are as Americans.

Really? Nothing? OK here is a primer…a ‘mantra’ to get you there this Thursday.

Think of how many times it seemed America seemed irretrievably close so close to losing the best of us as Americans. Place that in the larger context of infinite history; how much longer we could possibly go on.

Now, hear the words of President Lincoln's Thanksgiving Day proclamation of 1863; picture his humble beginnings, son of uneducated farmer pioneers; Lincoln’s life is an irrefutable demonstration of just how much is possible in America; his words articulate and epitomize the truest meaning of hope and peace and gratefulness of blessings received; all the things of Thanksgiving in America are.

Like a psalm or incantation, it transports you to a time of rebirth and transition; at the heart of a spirit that is rapidly becoming extinct; a spirit that Abraham Lincoln used to characterize and embody America and, "the better angels of our nature."

"The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

"In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

"Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom".

"No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy". "It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole
American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union".

That one part really gets me: “…and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union".

Take this moment, with the future ahead in mind; this one moment when an entire nation, now so divided, so in need, will for one day, pause for a long breath and be thankful together; set aside that which divides us and take advantage of this one special moment in America and BE more fundamentally thankful for the simple and proverbial "small blessings" in your life; be more thankful for the people and neighbors and society that make “our” life as a whole as well as those that make it better; take this moment to render a remembrance that will stay with you and, through habit, make you more readily grateful to and for the people around you; remember that harmony makes small things grow; lack of it makes great things decay.

Small things. Small blessings. Easy things. Affordable, yet priceless offerings to the intricate web of our society.

Set gratitude as the cornerstone of your being and viscerally you will find yourself giving a regular heartfelt "Thank you"...and thus start the cycle. In re-learning the practice of thanking people we recognize our dependence on them and them on us; we develop a keener sense of just how closely tied our fates are on "this green and muddy stone".

The all but extinct "Thank You" to a brother, a sister, a spouse, a parent, a child, a neighbor; the clerk at the store you’ve been to a thousand times; that person you pass in the hall or the street everyday.

Thanksgiving Day! Awesome! Yes, let's absolutely give thanks…to everyone and for everything. Is it too easy and simplistic to say that thoughts of Thanksgiving are the kind of thoughts that we should have all year long, you say? Of course it is, but that doesn’t make it a bad idea or mean we shouldn’t TRY and get there. How do we do that?

Ancient Buddhist teachings say…

“A jug fills drop by drop.” …and…

“The mind is everything. What you think you become.”

We do what know and do that until it is not just what we do but who we are. Implement in our daily lives, that there is always time for kindness, even if the moment passes and it dawns on you that “THAT” was one of those moments, go back and act on that kindness.

Extend kindness to others through the year with out judgment or assumption of their situation or how they got there and you will find that your life is overflowing with a overpowering Thanksgiving Peace that lasts the your entire year!

…and this is how we change the world.

What is it about Thanksgiving that just rings a bell?

2009-11-24T19:34:00.000-08:00

It's so funny that I forget all about this thing until its Thanksgiving and then around the holidays and I always feel SO compelled to write. I have said it year after year and for me, there are few things that are so utterly expressive and filled with so many of the totems of what it is to be an American as there are in the Thanksgiving celebration.

I mean really, Christmas is almost entirely man made and, at the least mistreated, but Thanksgiving ~ com'on!....

Thanksgiving is the antithesis of Christmas. It is in its original spirit and celebration, depending on what you believe, the act of rending thanks, or expressing gratitude for life, fate or God's or the grand wheel of life's favors and mercies.

For all the inner gratitude we feel for our blessings and kindnesses received, the celebration of Thankfulness, the natural impulse to express that feeling. Thanksgiving is the apotheosis of our following that impulse.

Victor Hugo said, "To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do."

OK, so what does it mean to be thankful?

Strip out the traditional holiday and its implications for America, leaving only the the state of, the gift of thankfulness ~ regardless of how jaded and hardened we have become ~ thankfulness is a uniquely human response. Gratitude involves memory of the past, awareness of the present, and trust for the future, it must be preeminently a human response.

That's the true Thanksgiving gift and what's hyper-American about it. It doesn't discriminate or discount or divide. Whatever the people, whatever the belief or the name used for God, whatever the origin of one's mother or father ~ Thanksgiving is the day in America when we stop the madness of 'making it', gather together and enjoy the blessings; large and small; and enjoy 'the harvest' of our toil of the past year. It is 'give us your tired, your hungry, your poor, your huddled masses" in practice; and by practicing it, you BECOME American. In practice, it is the secular equivalent of the sacrament for Americans.

In this moment in time, with society feeling less and less like there are any clear answers to anything, Thanksgiving Day is a joyous family festival during which, almost unconsciously, we gather, no matter where we are, with friends and family and take a moment to just “BE” within the love of those we love and share ours with those we see too seldom.

Thanksgiving has lots of meaning to people in America and, born here or not, it retains a powerful hold on our collective psyche. Amidst the woes of unemployment, diminished resources, loved ones far away and lost to us forever, I still hear people talking in amazement about the discoveries they have made this year, whilst searching for the metaphoric change in the cushions and living within a new set of circumstances, they have re discovered themselves this year. People are looking at what they have. We have food on the table, We have friends and people we care about who care about us, We have family. Thanksgiving makes us pause and say we're lucky to have this. We are possibly, as a people, on the brink of re discovering that those are the true pleasures of life.

Thanksgiving has ceaselessly evolved since the Pilgrim's mythic celebration and other early harvest festivals, and yet no matter the meanings, patriotic or political intentions or global-societal distractions, emphasis on football games or “Black Friday” shopping insanity, on Thanksgiving, we manage to continue to distill a unique, cohesive narrative that is seemingly eternally emotionally electroplated to the 4th Thursday of November, when we express gratitude for the small blessings; an integral our annual habit. Since the Nation’s founding, Thanksgiving has been engrained in who we are, offering us an opportunity to not just to remember, but reflect on our history, and examine what it means to be American.

George Washington proclaimed a National Day of Thanksgiving in 1789 with these words:

“Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God,…both Houses of Congress have requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed… that we may then all unite in … humble thanks for …for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; and particularly…the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed…"

After years of tumbling through our lives, in various incarnations, picking up pieces of our collective thought, through a number of historical events, proclamations and changes, President Lincoln. in one of the nation's darkest hours, proclaimed the last Thursday in November of thanksgiving in the year 1863; after the continuous prodding of Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of then popular Godey's Lady's Book; who deserves recognition as the Mother of the American Thanksgiving. The following editor's column was part of the long campaign by Sarah Josepha Hale to get Thanksgiving accepted as a national holiday in the United States.

"We are most happy to agree with the large majority of the governors of the different States -- as shown in their unanimity of action for several past years, and which, we hope, will this year be adopted by all -- that the LAST THURSDAY IN NOVEMBER shall be the DAY Of NATIONAL THANKSGIVING for the American people.

"… when the noise and tumult of wordliness may be exchanged for the laugh of happy children, the glad greetings of family reunion, and the humble gratitude of the Christian heart….

"…drink, in the sweet draught of joy and gratitude to the Divine giver of all our blessings, the pledge of renewed love to the Union, and to each other; and of peace and good-will to all men".

In the poem "The Pumpkin" by 19th century poet John Greenleaf Whittier, the tradition of Thanksgiving is described in rich symbolism, as a time of remembrance and return, a celebration of abundance, both of sustenance and of love, of the family gathering.

And the prayer, which my mouth is too full to express,
Swells my heart that thy shadow may never be less,
That the days of thy lot may be lengthened below,
And the fame of thy worth like a pumpkin-vine grow...

After what has seemed like a prolonged storm in America, many of us are filled and renewed with hope and faith in the idea of America and who we are. Yet we approach days that are sure to see uneasy transition to our society, our culture, as well as political and economic futures.

Thinking on how many times it seemed we were so close to losing the best of ourselves as Americans, I hear the words of President Lincoln's Thanksgiving Day proclamation of 1863. A few words, eloquent like a prayer or incantation that washes over you and draws you back to another time of rebirth and transition. It is at the heart of a spirit that is disappearing with frightening rapidity. A spirit that used to characterize and embody what Abraham Lincoln called, "the better angels of our nature."

From humble beginnings, this son of uneducated farmer pioneers, Lincoln’s life is an irrefutable demonstration of our dreams and of what is possible in America and his words articulate and epitomize the truest meaning of hope and peace and gratefulness of blessings received; all the things of Thanksgiving in America.

"The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

"In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

"Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom".

"No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy". "It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union".

Never in our history have those words been more true.

So, we can take advantage of this moment with the future ahead, to be more innately thankful for the simple and proverbial "small blessings" in life will, out of habit, make us more readily grateful to and for the people around us.

A sincere "Thank you" to a brother, a sister, a spouse, a parent, a child, a neighbor, a clerk at the store, a person on the street. Then, because we set gratitude at the core of our character, we instinctively remember to give a heartfelt "Thank you"...and round it goes. As we learn the habit of thanking people we are acknowledging our dependence on them, and we develop a keener sense of just how closely tied we all are on what a friend of mine calls "this green and muddy stone".

So, as we come to Thanksgiving Day, let's absolutely give thanks....to everyone and for everything. It's too naive and simple to say that Thanksgiving thoughts are the kind of thoughts that we should have all year long. Of course, they are. It is the folks with thankful hearts whose lives are filled with song, right? So, how do we do that? DO we sing all day long? (you know I do, but we all know what my problem is). No, what is easier to implement in our lives, is to take time for kindness, even if it dawns on you after the fact, go back and act on that kindness.

Extend kindness to others through the year with out judgment or assumption of their situation or how they got there and fill your life with a Thanksgiving Peace that lasts the whole year through!

A uniquely American holiday!

2006-11-22T15:56:00.000-08:00

Having been absent and not able to post as often as I like, I feel like the wayward child returing home for this Thanksgiving message.

For me there are few things that are so utterly expressive and filled with so many of the totems of what it is the be an American as there are in the Thanksgiving celebration.

To so many people, no matter where they are, Thanksgiving Day is a joyous family festival when we gather with friends and family and take a moment to just “BE” with in the love of those in our lives and those we too seldom.

Thanksgiving's purpose has evolved countless times since the Pilgrims mythic celebration and other early harvest festivals, and yet no matter the evolving meanings or patriotic intentions or global-societal distractions or emphasis on football games or “the day-after” shopping stimuli, on Thanksgiving, we manage to continue to cull a singular, cohesive narrative that is forever emotionally electroplated to the holiday.

One of its unassailable qualities; the power to draw people together as among one of Thanksgivings most sustaining and endearing characteristics. Whether we are strangers sharing a meal or scattered relatives gathering together, spiritually minded and secular Americans alike on Thanksgiving continue to feel a lasting sentiment message of peace and togetherness, unlike on any other day.

On Thanksgiving Day, expressing gratitude for the small blessings and feasting with family is an integral our annual habit. Since the Nation’s founding, Thanksgiving has been a uniquely American holiday, engrained in who we are. Offering us an opportunity to not just to remember, but reflect on our history, and examine what it means to be American.

George Washington proclaimed a National Day of Thanksgiving in 1789 with these words:

“Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God,…both Houses of Congress have requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed… that we may then all unite in … humble thanks for …for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; and particularly…the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed…

After a number of events and changes, President Lincoln proclaimed last Thursday in November of thanksgiving in the year 1863, due chiefly to the continuous efforts of Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of then popular Godey's Lady's Book, who deserves recognition as the Mother of the American Thanksgiving. The following editor's column was part of the long campaign by Sarah Josepha Hale to get Thanksgiving accepted as a national holiday in the United States.

We are most happy to agree with the large majority of the governors of the different States -- as shown in their unanimity of action for several past years, and which, we hope, will this year be adopted by all -- that the LAST THURSDAY IN NOVEMBER shall be the DAY Of NATIONAL THANKSGIVING for the American people.

… when the noise and tumult of wordliness may be exchanged for the laugh of happy children, the glad greetings of family reunion, and the humble gratitude of the Christian heart….

…drink, in the sweet draught of joy and gratitude to the Divine giver of all our blessings, the pledge of renewed love to the Union, and to each other; and of peace and good-will to all men.

In the poem "The Pumpkin" by 19th century poet John Greenleaf Whittier, the tradition of Thanksgiving is described in rich symbolism, as a time of remembrance and return, a celebration of abundance, both of sustenance and of love, of the family gathering.

And the prayer, which my mouth is too full to express,
Swells my heart that thy shadow may never be less,
That the days of thy lot may be lengthened below,
And the fame of thy worth like a pumpkin-vine grow...

As we draw towards the close of the year and we gather with family and friends, let's reflect on these thoughts, appreciate the bounty of the harvest of our lives, and in whatever capacity we do, take count of our "blessings"

After what has seemed like a prolonged winter, many of us are filled and renewed with hope and faith in the idea of America and who we are. Yet we approach days that are sure to see uneasy transition to our society, our culture, as well as political and economic futures.

Thinking on how many times it seemed we were so close to losing the best of ourselves as Americans, I am again reminded of President Lincoln's Thanksgiving Day proclamation of 1863. These few words, so eloquent, like a prayer or incantation that draws us back to another tiem of rebirth and transition. It is at the heart of a spirit that is disappearing with frightening rapidity. A spirit that used to characterize and embody what Abraham Lincoln called, "the better angels of our nature."

From humble beginnings, this son of uneducated farmer pioneers, Lincoln’s life is an irrefutable demonstration of our dreams and of what is possible in America and his words articulate and epitomize the truest meaning of hope and peace and gratefulness of blessings received; all the things of Thanksgiving in America.

"The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

"Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom".

"No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy".

"It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union".

There is a reason a horse has never been President.

2006-07-19T16:46:00.000-07:00

There is a reason a horse has never been President. You can't run a country on horse sense.

In keeping with the theme of this piece, I will try and keep this little rambling in quasi-regular guy American Speak, so that the hate mail that normally accompanies these postings can be focused on the true points and not the ones that those sub-geniuses invent in their Budweiser soaked brains.

OK, so think back.

Do you remember WAY BACK WHEN, when the Red Neck now squatting in the White House, first became a blip on the national radar? Remember when everyone in the known universe thought that George W. Bush might be too dumb to be The President of the United States?

Wha Hapin!?

Has that much time passed that the questions about Bush's intellectual aptitude faded into the recesses of our collective minds?

Remember right after 9/11, when seemingly every man, woman and child in the nation, liek they all took some kind’a STUPID DRUG, actually thought that his intuitive rather than critical outlook on the world, its history and its potential future seemed to be just what we needed and they were seemingly anxious to blow INTO proportion something resembling heroic qualities in the President? (QUTOE: "George Bush is the president; he makes the decisions; and, you know, as just one American, wherever he wants me to line up, just tell me where." - Dan Rather)

Then, as if on cue, the Democrats decided to roll over and let up on Bush, fearing as they are becoming famous for doing, that it was politically counterproductive to attack the President’s intelligence (QUTOE: “Calling Bush dumb plays directly into Bush's strength, which is that he comes across as a regular guy." - Bruce Reed of the Democratic Leadership Council - 2002)

So, with no one with the guts to yell out that the Emperor Wears no Clothes, for most of the last six years, the questionability of the intelligence, of lack there of, of the most powerful man in the world, has remained and open, dirty little secret and a taboo subject.

Yeah, of course there have always seen people like me that have been screaming form the balcony, “Are you blind!? This guy a retard!” but we have been, as always, dismissed as out of hand, disrespectful and conspiracy theory spinning, liberal, wacky Bush-haters (GUILTY AS CHARGED!). What made matters MORE infuriating, was that by the 2004 election, the question completely turned around. Democrats were painfully silent about Bush's lack of intellect, and Republicans couldn’t say two words without gleefully attacking John Kerry as an egghead.

Being dumb was as American as Apple Pie and Anti-intellectualism was triumphant.

FINALY it is becoming exponentially clear that Bush's status as a 'non-rocket scientist' is not just ‘a serious problem’ but dangerous. Now I’m not talking about his often ridiculed problem — and fodder for late-night comedians — of being incapable of enunciating the most basic multi-syllabic words, but what I AM pointing at is Mr. Bush’s shocking lack of intellectual curiosity about ANY complex geo-political / geo-societal problem that is facing the world today.

In the book, "The One Percent Doctrine," the author, Ron Suskind sketches out and connects the dots (for all you non-intellectual gut feelers) of what exactly The President of the United States’ intellectual limits are.

“Bush”, writes Suskind, "is not much of a reader. He prefers verbal briefings and often makes a horse-sense judgment based on how confident his briefer seems in what he's saying”.

One of countless examples of this happened in August of 2001, when the CIA was in a hot panic about growing intelligence that pointed 'an impending, soon to happen terrorist attack on the United States' and they drafted a detailed a report, entitled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." for the president.

A briefing followed and the CIA staffer selected to download this information to the President in a face-to-face meeting with Bush was found by the president to be “insufficiently confident” and was insignificantly dismissed by the president saying, According to Ron Suskind’s book, "All right, you've covered your ass, now" That, as we all know now, turned out to be a fairly disastrous judgment. If you ever wondered what the president of the Untied States was thinking and what that seemingly bewildered and stunned, deer in the headlights look on his face meant, when he was told about the attack on the World Trade, that we ALL SAW on national television, it is easy to figure out.

DOH!

Yes “The Bushes” are easy to dismiss Suskind's reporting, but it connects and fills in SO MUCH OF THE PICUTRE that has emerged from OTHER sources, like a loyal Bushie L. Paul Bremer III's account of his term as the head of Iraq's Coalition Provisional Authority, when he depicted the president as uninterested in the KEY, CENTRAL questions surrounding the rebuilding and occupying the country after the war.

Any tacit look at the video of a presidential during the meeting that came to light this year of Bush being briefed on the budding Hurricane named Katrina and its potential impact, makes clear the distinctions of who is present at that meeting and who is not.

The president’s subordinates look sincerely, deeply concerned about the impending, potential catastrophe, where as Bush appears blasé, not even engaged enough to muster a single question. And then, of course there was one my fav; in 2001 when Russian President Vladimir Putin shared with Bush the story of being given a cross by his mother, which the president invested profound significance in, telling reporters later that he had found the Russian President, “to be very straightforward and trustworthy….I was able to get a sense of his soul."

(Insert spooky music here and deal the tarot cards)

Liberal ridicule of the president's intelligence has been adamantly blasted as cultural snobbery by “The Bushies” over the last six years. We don't like his pickup or his accent, so, the accusation goes, so we conceal our blue-state intolerance behind a mask of intellectual arrogance.

YES! That’s IT! Everyone run to your windows right now, throw them open and shout out:

I’M SMARTER THAN GEORGE W BUSH AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANY MORE!

Isn’t it clear now, albeit late, that the more we see how Bush operates, the more we can see we were DAMN RIGHT from the beginning?

YES! Yes it does matter that the president values his GUT reaction over and DISDAINS them that’s got dat book learnin', which is FAR from Bush Simplistic as being JUST a question of cultural style.

Si, Si, Si!

The president's narrow intellectual perspective has serious and real consequences, sometimes cataclysmic ones, as we are seeing play out ALL OVER THE WORLD RIGHT NOW!

I won’t say that it is impossible for presidents to succeed without being intellectuals themselves. We have seen proof of the opposite throughout jhistory that THAT just ain’t so.

No. It isn’t that Bush isn’t intellectual…HELL NO…it’s that he is NON and ANTI - INTELLECTUAL!

The president of the United States, our supposed leader and example of what all Americans, especially children, should be able to look to as a model of what an American should be, viscerally despises intellectuals.

The president said, "What angered me was the way such people at Yale felt so intellectually superior and so righteous," during an interview with a Texas Monthly reporter in 1994.

In a true showing of the president’s intellectual process, related to the matter of intelligence, the president, went on to say in the same interview, “When I went to college at Michigan, I occasionally played pickup basketball with varsity football players. They obviously felt athletically superior to me. I didn't resent them for it — because they were.”

Yes, my friends, George W Bush is not so smart, and what’s more, he knows it.

I couldn't have said it better myself

2006-07-13T17:35:00.000-07:00

I know I have been absent for a few months (production has been hell)...BUT...I read this today at lunch and..well..it needs to be mass distributed to someone other than the Rolling Stoner Crowd who don't vote anyway.

I challenge you to NOT be pissed about this. if you are PLEASE forward it to your congreeman (the links as always are at the bottom of this article) and newspaper editor and NPR commentator and ask them why this is NOT being invvestigated.

Was the 2004 Election Stolen?
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Rolling Stone - Thursday 01 June 2006

Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted - enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.
The complete article, with Web-only citations, follows.

For more, see exclusive documents, sources, charts and commentary.

Like many Americans, I spent the evening of the 2004 election watching the returns on television and wondering how the exit polls, which predicted an overwhelming victory for John Kerry, had gotten it so wrong. By midnight, the official tallies showed a decisive lead for George Bush - and the next day, lacking enough legal evidence to contest the results, Kerry conceded. Republicans derided anyone who expressed doubts about Bush's victory as nut cases in "tinfoil hats," while the national media, with few exceptions, did little to question the validity of the election. The Washington Post immediately dismissed allegations of fraud as "conspiracy theories," [1] and The New York Times declared that "there is no evidence of vote theft or errors on a large scale." [2]

But despite the media blackout, indications continued to emerge that something deeply troubling had taken place in 2004. Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad [3] never received their ballots - or received them too late to vote [4] - after the Pentagon unaccountably shut down a state-of-the-art Web site used to file overseas registrations. [5] A consulting firm called Sproul & Associates, which was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six battleground states, [6] was discovered shredding Democratic registrations. [7] In New Mexico, which was decided by 5,988 votes, [8] malfunctioning machines mysteriously failed to properly register a presidential vote on more than 20,000 ballots. [9] Nationwide, according to the federal commission charged with implementing election reforms, as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled by faulty voting equipment - roughly one for every 100 cast. [10]

The reports were especially disturbing in Ohio, the critical battleground state that clinched Bush's victory in the electoral college. Officials there purged tens of thousands of eligible voters from the rolls, neglected to process registration cards generated by Democratic voter drives, shortchanged Democratic precincts when they allocated voting machines and illegally derailed a recount that could have given Kerry the presidency. A precinct in an evangelical church in Miami County recorded an impossibly high turnout of ninety-eight percent, while a polling place in inner-city Cleveland recorded an equally impossible turnout of only seven percent. In Warren County, GOP election officials even invented a nonexistent terrorist threat to bar the media from monitoring the official vote count. [11]

Any election, of course, will have anomalies. America's voting system is a messy patchwork of polling rules run mostly by county and city officials. "We didn't have one election for president in 2004," says Robert Pastor, who directs the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University. "We didn't have fifty elections. We actually had 13,000 elections run by 13,000 independent, quasi-sovereign counties and municipalities."

But what is most anomalous about the irregularities in 2004 was their decidedly partisan bent: Almost without exception they hurt John Kerry and benefited George Bush. After carefully examining the evidence, I've become convinced that the president's party mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people in 2004. Across the country, Republican election officials and party stalwarts employed a wide range of illegal and unethical tactics to fix the election. A review of the available data reveals that in Ohio alone, at least 357,000 voters, the overwhelming majority of them Democratic, were prevented from casting ballots or did not have their votes counted in 2004 [12] - more than enough to shift the results of an election decided by 118,601 votes. [13] (See Ohio's Missing Votes) In what may be the single most astounding fact from the election, one in every four Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots. [14] And that doesn't even take into account the troubling evidence of outright fraud, which indicates that upwards of 80,000 votes for Kerry were counted instead for Bush. That alone is a swing of more than 160,000 votes - enough to have put John Kerry in the White House. [15]

"It was terrible," says Sen. Christopher Dodd, who helped craft reforms in 2002 that were supposed to prevent such electoral abuses. "People waiting in line for twelve hours to cast their ballots, people not being allowed to vote because they were in the wrong precinct - it was an outrage. In Ohio, you had a secretary of state who was determined to guarantee a Republican outcome. I'm terribly disheartened."

Indeed, the extent of the GOP's effort to rig the vote shocked even the most experienced observers of American elections. "Ohio was as dirty an election as America has ever seen," Lou Harris, the father of modern political polling, told me. "You look at the turnout and votes in individual precincts, compared to the historic patterns in those counties, and you can tell where the discrepancies are. They stand out like a sore thumb."

I. The Exit Polls

The first indication that something was gravely amiss on November 2nd, 2004, was the inexplicable discrepancies between exit polls and actual vote counts. Polls in thirty states weren't just off the mark - they deviated to an extent that cannot be accounted for by their margin of error. In all but four states, the discrepancy favored President Bush. [16]

Over the past decades, exit polling has evolved into an exact science. Indeed, among pollsters and statisticians, such surveys are thought to be the most reliable. Unlike pre-election polls, in which voters are asked to predict their own behavior at some point in the future, exit polls ask voters leaving the voting booth to report an action they just executed. The results are exquisitely accurate: Exit polls in Germany, for example, have never missed the mark by more than three-tenths of one percent. [17] "Exit polls are almost never wrong," Dick Morris, a political consultant who has worked for both Republicans and Democrats, noted after the 2004 vote. Such surveys are "so reliable," he added, "that they are used as guides to the relative honesty of elections in Third World countries." [18] In 2003, vote tampering revealed by exit polling in the Republic of Georgia forced Eduard Shevardnadze to step down. [19] And in November 2004, exit polling in the Ukraine - paid for by the Bush administration - exposed election fraud that denied Viktor Yushchenko the presidency. [20]

But that same month, when exit polls revealed disturbing disparities in the U.S. election, the six media organizations that had commissioned the survey treated its very existence as an embarrassment. Instead of treating the discrepancies as a story meriting investigation, the networks scrubbed the offending results from their Web sites and substituted them with "corrected" numbers that had been weighted, retroactively, to match the official vote count. Rather than finding fault with the election results, the mainstream media preferred to dismiss the polls as flawed. [21]

"The people who ran the exit polling, and all those of us who were their clients, recognized that it was deeply flawed," says Tom Brokaw, who served as anchor for NBC News during the 2004 election. "They were really screwed up - the old models just don't work anymore. I would not go on the air with them again."

In fact, the exit poll created for the 2004 election was designed to be the most reliable voter survey in history. The six news organizations - running the ideological gamut from CBS to Fox News - retained Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International, [22] whose principal, Warren Mitofsky, pioneered the exit poll for CBS in 1967 [23] and is widely credited with assuring the credibility of Mexico's elections in 1994. [24] For its nationwide poll, Edison/Mitofsky selected a random subsample of 12,219 voters [25] - approximately six times larger than those normally used in national polls [26] - driving the margin of error down to approximately plus or minus one percent. [27]

On the evening of the vote, reporters at each of the major networks were briefed by pollsters at 7:54 p.m. Kerry, they were informed, had an insurmountable lead and would win by a rout: at least 309 electoral votes to Bush's 174, with fifty-five too close to call. [28] In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair went to bed contemplating his relationship with President-elect Kerry. [29]

As the last polling stations closed on the West Coast, exit polls showed Kerry ahead in ten of eleven battleground states - including commanding leads in Ohio and Florida - and winning by a million and a half votes nationally. The exit polls even showed Kerry breathing down Bush's neck in supposed GOP strongholds Virginia and North Carolina. [30] Against these numbers, the statistical likelihood of Bush winning was less than one in 450,000. [31] "Either the exit polls, by and large, are completely wrong," a Fox News analyst declared, "or George Bush loses." [32]

But as the evening progressed, official tallies began to show implausible disparities - as much as 9.5 percent - with the exit polls. In ten of the eleven battleground states, the tallied margins departed from what the polls had predicted. In every case, the shift favored Bush. Based on exit polls, CNN had predicted Kerry defeating Bush in Ohio by a margin of 4.2 percentage points. Instead, election results showed Bush winning the state by 2.5 percent. Bush also tallied 6.5 percent more than the polls had predicted in Pennsylvania, and 4.9 percent more in Florida. [33]

According to Steven F. Freeman, a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in research methodology, the odds against all three of those shifts occurring in concert are one in 660,000. "As much as we can say in sound science that something is impossible," he says, "it is impossible that the discrepancies between predicted and actual vote count in the three critical battleground states of the 2004 election could have been due to chance or random error." (See The Tale of the Exit Polls)

Puzzled by the discrepancies, Freeman laboriously examined the raw polling data released by Edison/Mitofsky in January 2005. "I'm not even political - I despise the Democrats," he says. "I'm a survey expert. I got into this because I was mystified about how the exit polls could have been so wrong." In his forthcoming book, Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count, Freeman lays out a statistical analysis of the polls that is deeply troubling.

In its official postmortem report issued two months after the election, Edison/Mitofsky was unable to identify any flaw in its methodology - so the pollsters, in essence, invented one for the electorate. According to Mitofsky, Bush partisans were simply disinclined to talk to exit pollsters on November 2nd [34] - displaying a heretofore unknown and undocumented aversion that skewed the polls in Kerry's favor by a margin of 6.5 percent nationwide. [35]

Industry peers didn't buy it. John Zogby, one of the nation's leading pollsters, told me that Mitofsky's "reluctant responder" hypothesis is "preposterous." [36] Even Mitofsky, in his official report, underscored the hollowness of his theory: "It is difficult to pinpoint precisely the reasons that, in general, Kerry voters were more likely to participate in the exit polls than Bush voters." [37]

Now, thanks to careful examination of Mitofsky's own data by Freeman and a team of eight researchers, we can say conclusively that the theory is dead wrong. In fact it was Democrats, not Republicans, who were more disinclined to answer pollsters' questions on Election Day. In Bush strongholds, Freeman and the other researchers found that fifty-six percent of voters completed the exit survey - compared to only fifty-three percent in Kerry strongholds. [38] "The data presented to support the claim not only fails to substantiate it," observes Freeman, "but actually contradicts it."

What's more, Freeman found, the greatest disparities between exit polls and the official vote count came in Republican strongholds. In precincts where Bush received at least eighty percent of the vote, the exit polls were off by an average of ten percent. By contrast, in precincts where Kerry dominated by eighty percent or more, the exit polls were accurate to within three tenths of one percent - a pattern that suggests Republican election officials stuffed the ballot box in Bush country. [39]

"When you look at the numbers, there is a tremendous amount of data that supports the supposition of election fraud," concludes Freeman. "The discrepancies are higher in battleground states, higher where there were Republican governors, higher in states with greater proportions of African-American communities and higher in states where there were the most Election Day complaints. All these are strong indicators of fraud - and yet this supposition has been utterly ignored by the press and, oddly, by the Democratic Party."

The evidence is especially strong in Ohio. In January, a team of mathematicians from the National Election Data Archive, a nonpartisan watchdog group, compared the state's exit polls against the certified vote count in each of the forty-nine precincts polled by Edison/Mitofsky. In twenty-two of those precincts - nearly half of those polled - they discovered results that differed widely from the official tally. Once again - against all odds - the widespread discrepancies were stacked massively in Bush's favor: In only two of the suspect twenty-two precincts did the disparity benefit Kerry. The wildest discrepancy came from the precinct Mitofsky numbered "27," in order to protect the anonymity of those surveyed. According to the exit poll, Kerry should have received sixty-seven percent of the vote in this precinct. Yet the certified tally gave him only thirty-eight percent. The statistical odds against such a variance are just shy of one in 3 billion. [40]

Such results, according to the archive, provide "virtually irrefutable evidence of vote miscount." The discrepancies, the experts add, "are consistent with the hypothesis that Kerry would have won Ohio's electoral votes if Ohio's official vote counts had accurately reflected voter intent." [41] According to Ron Baiman, vice president of the archive and a public policy analyst at Loyola University in Chicago, "No rigorous statistical explanation" can explain the "completely nonrandom" disparities that almost uniformly benefited Bush. The final results, he adds, are "completely consistent with election fraud - specifically vote shifting."

II. The Partisan Official

No state was more important in the 2004 election than Ohio. The state has been key to every Republican presidential victory since Abraham Lincoln's, and both parties overwhelmed the state with television ads, field organizers and volunteers in an effort to register new voters and energize old ones. Bush and Kerry traveled to Ohio a total of forty-nine times during the campaign - more than to any other state. [42]

But in the battle for Ohio, Republicans had a distinct advantage: The man in charge of the counting was Kenneth Blackwell, the co-chair of President Bush's re-election committee. [43] As Ohio's secretary of state, Blackwell had broad powers to interpret and implement state and federal election laws - setting standards for everything from the processing of voter registration to the conduct of official recounts. [44] And as Bush's re-election chair in Ohio, he had a powerful motivation to rig the rules for his candidate. Blackwell, in fact, served as the "principal electoral system adviser" for Bush during the 2000 recount in Florida, [45] where he witnessed firsthand the success of his counterpart Katherine Harris, the Florida secretary of state who co-chaired Bush's campaign there. [46]

Blackwell - now the Republican candidate for governor of Ohio [47] - is well-known in the state as a fierce partisan eager to rise in the GOP. An outspoken leader of Ohio's right-wing fundamentalists, he opposes abortion even in cases of rape [48] and was the chief cheerleader for the anti-gay-marriage amendment that Republicans employed to spark turnout in rural counties. [49] He has openly denounced Kerry as "an unapologetic liberal Democrat," [50] and during the 2004 election he used his official powers to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Ohio citizens in Democratic strongholds. In a ruling issued two weeks before the election, a federal judge rebuked Blackwell for seeking to "accomplish the same result in Ohio in 2004 that occurred in Florida in 2000." [51]

"The secretary of state is supposed to administer elections - not throw them," says Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat from Cleveland who has dealt with Blackwell for years. "The election in Ohio in 2004 stands out as an example of how, under color of law, a state election official can frustrate the exercise of the right to vote."

The most extensive investigation of what happened in Ohio was conducted by Rep. John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. [52] Frustrated by his party's failure to follow up on the widespread evidence of voter intimidation and fraud, Conyers and the committee's minority staff held public hearings in Ohio, where they looked into more than 50,000 complaints from voters. [53] In January 2005, Conyers issued a detailed report that outlined "massive and unprecedented voter irregularities and anomalies in Ohio." The problems, the report concludes, were "caused by intentional misconduct and illegal behavior, much of it involving Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell." [54]

"Blackwell made Katherine Harris look like a cupcake," Conyers told me. "He saw his role as limiting the participation of Democratic voters. We had hearings in Columbus for two days. We could have stayed two weeks, the level of fury was so high. Thousands of people wanted to testify. Nothing like this had ever happened to them before."

When ROLLING STONE confronted Blackwell about his overtly partisan attempts to subvert the election, he dismissed any such claim as "silly on its face." Ohio, he insisted in a telephone interview, set a "gold standard" for electoral fairness. In fact, his campaign to subvert the will of the voters had begun long before Election Day. Instead of welcoming the avalanche of citizen involvement sparked by the campaign, Blackwell permitted election officials in Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo to conduct a massive purge of their voter rolls, summarily expunging the names of more than 300,000 voters who had failed to cast ballots in the previous two national elections. [55] In Cleveland, which went five-to-one for Kerry, nearly one in four voters were wiped from the rolls between 2000 and 2004. [56]

There were legitimate reasons to clean up voting lists: Many of the names undoubtedly belonged to people who had moved or died. But thousands more were duly registered voters who were deprived of their constitutional right to vote - often without any notification - simply because they had decided not to go to the polls in prior elections. [57] In Cleveland's precinct 6C, where more than half the voters on the rolls were deleted, [58] turnout was only 7.1 percent [59] - the lowest in the state.

According to the Conyers report, improper purging "likely disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters statewide." [60] If only one in ten of the 300,000 purged voters showed up on Election Day - a conservative estimate, according to election scholars - that is 30,000 citizens who were unfairly denied the opportunity to cast ballots.

III. The Strike Force

In the months leading up to the election, Ohio was in the midst of the biggest registration drive in its history. Tens of thousands of volunteers and paid political operatives from both parties canvassed the state, racing to register new voters in advance of the October 4th deadline. To those on the ground, it was clear that Democrats were outpacing their Republican counterparts: A New York Times analysis before the election found that new registrations in traditional Democratic strongholds were up 250 percent, compared to only twenty-five percent in Republican-leaning counties. [61] "The Democrats have been beating the pants off us in the air and on the ground," a GOP county official in Columbus confessed to The Washington Times. [62]

To stem the tide of new registrations, the Republican National Committee and the Ohio Republican Party attempted to knock tens of thousands of predominantly minority and urban voters off the rolls through illegal mailings known in electioneering jargon as "caging." During the Eighties, after the GOP used such mailings to disenfranchise nearly 76,000 black voters in New Jersey and Louisiana, it was forced to sign two separate court orders agreeing to abstain from caging. [63] But during the summer of 2004, the GOP targeted minority voters in Ohio by zip code, sending registered letters to more than 200,000 newly registered voters [64] in sixty-five counties. [65] On October 22nd, a mere eleven days before the election, Ohio Republican Party Chairman Bob Bennett - who also chairs the board of elections in Cuyahoga County - sought to invalidate the registrations of 35,427 voters who had refused to sign for the letters or whose mail came back as undeliverable. [66] Almost half of the challenged voters were from Democratic strongholds in and around Cleveland. [67]

There were plenty of valid reasons that voters had failed to respond to the mailings: The list included people who couldn't sign for the letters because they were serving in the U.S. military, college students whose school and home addresses differed, [68] and more than 1,000 homeless people who had no permanent mailing address. [69] But the undeliverable mail, Bennett claimed, proved the new registrations were fraudulent.

By law, each voter was supposed to receive a hearing before being stricken from the rolls. [70] Instead, in the week before the election, kangaroo courts were rapidly set up across the state at Blackwell's direction that would inevitably disenfranchise thousands of voters at a time [71] - a process that one Democratic election official in Toledo likened to an "inquisition." [72] Not that anyone was given a chance to actually show up and defend their right to vote: Notices to challenged voters were not only sent out impossibly late in the process, they were mailed to the very addresses that the Republicans contended were faulty. [73] Adding to the atmosphere of intimidation, sheriff's detectives in Sandusky County were dispatched to the homes of challenged voters to investigate the GOP's claims of fraud. [74]

"I'm afraid this is going to scare these people half to death, and they are never going to show up on Election Day," Barb Tuckerman, director of the Sandusky Board of Elections, told local reporters. "Many of them are young people who have registered for the first time. I've called some of these people, and they are perfectly legitimate." [75]

On October 27th, ruling that the effort likely violated both the "constitutional right to due process and constitutional right to vote," U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott put a halt to the GOP challenge [76] - but not before tens of thousands of new voters received notices claiming they were improperly registered. Some election officials in the state illegally ignored Dlott's ruling, stripping hundreds of voters from the rolls. [77] In Columbus and elsewhere, challenged registrants were never notified that the court had cleared them to vote.

On October 29th, a federal judge found that the Republican Party had violated the court orders from the Eighties that barred it from caging. "The return of mail does not implicate fraud," the court affirmed, [78] and the disenfranchisement effort illegally targeted "precincts where minority voters predominate, interfering with and discouraging voters from voting in those districts." [79] Nor were such caging efforts limited to Ohio: The GOP also targeted hundreds of thousands of urban voters in the battleground states of Florida, [80] Pennsylvania [81] and Wisconsin. [82]

Republicans in Ohio also worked to deny the vote to citizens who had served jail time for felonies. Although rehabilitated prisoners are entitled to vote in Ohio, election officials in Cincinnati demanded that former convicts get a judge to sign off before they could register to vote. [83] In case they didn't get the message, Republican operatives turned to intimidation. According to the Conyers report, a team of twenty-five GOP volunteers calling themselves the Mighty Texas Strike Force holed up at the Holiday Inn in Columbus a day before the election, around the corner from the headquarters of the Ohio Republican Party - which paid for their hotel rooms. The men were overheard by a hotel worker "using pay phones to make intimidating calls to likely voters" and threatening former convicts with jail time if they tried to cast ballots. [84]

This was no freelance operation. The Strike Force - an offshoot of the Republican National Committee [85] - was part of a team of more than 1,500 volunteers from Texas who were deployed to battleground states, usually in teams of ten. Their leader was Pat Oxford, [86] a Houston lawyer who managed Bush's legal defense team in 2000 in Florida, [87] where he warmly praised the efforts of a mob that stormed the Miami-Dade County election offices and halted the recount. It was later revealed that those involved in the "Brooks Brothers Riot" were not angry Floridians but paid GOP staffers, many of them flown in from out of state. [88] Photos of the protest show that one of the "rioters" was Joel Kaplan, who has just taken the place of Karl Rove at the White House, where he now directs the president's policy operations. [89]

IV. Barriers to Registration

To further monkey-wrench the process he was bound by law to safeguard, Blackwell cited an arcane elections regulation to make it harder to register new voters. In a now-infamous decree, Blackwell announced on September 7th - less than a month before the filing deadline - that election officials would process registration forms only if they were printed on eighty-pound unwaxed white paper stock, similar to a typical postcard. Justifying his decision to ROLLING STONE, Blackwell portrayed it as an attempt to protect voters: "The postal service had recommended to us that we establish a heavy enough paper-weight standard that we not disenfranchise voters by having their registration form damaged by postal equipment." Yet Blackwell's order also applied to registrations delivered in person to election offices. He further specified that any valid registration cards printed on lesser paper stock that miraculously survived the shredding gauntlet at the post office were not to be processed; instead, they were to be treated as applications for a registration form, requiring election boards to send out a brand-new card. [90]

Blackwell's directive clearly violated the Voting Rights Act, which stipulates that no one may be denied the right to vote because of a registration error that "is not material in determining whether such individual is qualified under state law to vote." [91] The decision immediately threw registration efforts into chaos. Local newspapers that had printed registration forms in their pages saw their efforts invalidated. [92] Delaware County posted a notice online saying it could no longer accept its own registration forms. [93] Even Blackwell couldn't follow the protocol: The Columbus Dispatch reported that his own staff distributed registration forms on lighter-weight paper that was illegal under his rule. Under the threat of court action, Blackwell ultimately revoked his order on September 28th - six days before the registration deadline. [94]
But by then, the damage was done. Election boards across the state, already understaffed and backlogged with registration forms, were unable to process them all in time. According to a statistical analysis conducted in May by the nonpartisan Greater Cleveland Voter Coalition, 16,000 voters in and around the city were disenfranchised because of data-entry errors by election officials, [95] and another 15,000 lost the right to vote due to largely inconsequential omissions on their registration cards. [96] Statewide, the study concludes, a total of 72,000 voters were disenfranchised through avoidable registration errors - one percent of all voters in an election decided by barely two percent. [97]

Despite the widespread problems, Blackwell authorized only one investigation of registration errors after the election - in Toledo - but the report by his own inspectors offers a disturbing snapshot of the malfeasance and incompetence that plagued the entire state. [98] The top elections official in Toledo was a partisan in the Blackwell mold: Bernadette Noe, who chaired both the county board of elections and the county Republican Party. [99] The GOP post was previously held by her husband, Tom Noe, [100] who currently faces felony charges for embezzling state funds and illegally laundering $45,400 of his own money through intermediaries to the Bush campaign. [101]

State inspectors who investigated the elections operation in Toledo discovered "areas of grave concern." [102] With less than a month to go before the election, Bernadette Noe and her board had yet to process 20,000 voter registration cards. [103] Board officials arbitrarily decided that mail-in cards (mostly from the Republican suburbs) would be processed first, while registrations dropped off at the board's office (the fruit of intensive Democratic registration drives in the city) would be processed last. [104] When a grass-roots group called Project Vote delivered a batch of nearly 10,000 cards just before the October 4th deadline, an elections official casually
remarked, "We may not get to them." [105] The same official then instructed employees to date-stamp an entire box containing thousands of forms, rather than marking each individual card, as required by law. [106] When the box was opened, officials had no way of confirming that the forms were filed prior to the deadline - an error, state inspectors concluded, that could have disenfranchised "several thousand" voters from Democratic strongholds. [107]

The most troubling incident uncovered by the investigation was Noe's decision to allow Republican partisans behind the counter in the board of elections office to make photocopies of postcards sent to confirm voter registrations [108] - records that could have been used in the GOP's caging efforts. On their second day in the office, the operatives were caught by an elections official tampering with the documents. [109] Investigators slammed the elections board for "a series of egregious blunders" that caused "the destruction, mutilation and damage of public records." [110]

On Election Day, Noe sent a team of Republican volunteers to the county warehouse where blank ballots were kept out in the open, "with no security measures in place." [111] The state's assistant director of elections, who just happened to be observing the ballot distribution, demanded they leave. The GOP operatives refused and ultimately had to be turned away by police. [112]

In April 2005, Noe and the entire Board of Elections were forced to resign. But once again, the damage was done. At a "Victory 2004" rally held in Toledo four days before the election, President Bush himself singled out a pair of "grass-roots" activists for special praise: "I want to thank my friends Bernadette Noe and Tom Noe for their leadership in Lucas County." [113]

V. "The Wrong Pew"

In one of his most effective maneuvers, Blackwell prevented thousands of voters from receiving provisional ballots on Election Day. The fail-safe ballots were mandated in 2002, when Congress passed a package of reforms called the Help America Vote Act. This would prevent a repeat of the most egregious injustice in the 2000 election, when officials in Florida barred thousands of lawfully registered minority voters from the polls because their names didn't appear on flawed precinct rolls. Under the law, would-be voters whose registration is questioned at the polls must be allowed to cast provisional ballots that can be counted after the election if the voter's registration proves valid. [114]

"Provisional ballots were supposed to be this great movement forward," says Tova Andrea Wang, an elections expert who served with ex-presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford on the commission that laid the groundwork for the Help America Vote Act. "But then different states erected barriers, and this new right became totally eviscerated."

In Ohio, Blackwell worked from the beginning to curtail the availability of provisional ballots. (The ballots are most often used to protect voters in heavily Democratic urban areas who move often, creating more opportunities for data-entry errors by election boards.) Six weeks before the vote, Blackwell illegally decreed that poll workers should make on-the-spot judgments as to whether or not a voter lived in the precinct, and provide provisional ballots only to those deemed eligible. [115] When the ruling was challenged in federal court, Judge James Carr could barely contain his anger. The very purpose of the Help America Vote Act, he ruled, was to make provisional ballots available to voters told by precinct workers that they were ineligible: "By not even mentioning this group - the primary beneficiaries of HAVA's provisional-voting provisions - Blackwell apparently seeks to accomplish the same result in Ohio in 2004 that occurred in Florida in 2000." [116]

But instead of complying with the judge's order to expand provisional balloting, Blackwell insisted that Carr was usurping his power as secretary of state and made a speech in which he compared himself to Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and the apostle Paul - saying that he'd rather go to jail than follow federal law. [117] The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Carr's ruling on October 23rd - but the confusion over the issue still caused untold numbers of voters across the state to be illegally turned away at the polls on Election Day without being offered provisional ballots. [118] A federal judge also invalidated a decree by Blackwell that denied provisional ballots to absentee voters who were never sent their ballots in the mail. But that ruling did not come down until after 3 p.m. on the day of the election, and likely failed to filter down to the precinct level at all - denying the franchise to even more eligible voters. [119]

We will never know for certain how many voters in Ohio were denied ballots by Blackwell's two illegal orders. But it is possible to put a fairly precise number on those turned away by his most disastrous directive. Traditionally, anyone in Ohio who reported to a polling station in their county could obtain a provisional ballot. But Blackwell decided to toss out the ballots of anyone who showed up at the wrong precinct - a move guaranteed to disenfranchise Democrats who live in urban areas crowded with multiple polling places. On October 14th, Judge Carr overruled the order, but Blackwell appealed. [120] In court, he was supported by his friend and campaign contributor Tom Noe, who joined the case as an intervenor on behalf of the secretary of state. [121] He also enjoyed the backing of Attorney General John Ashcroft, who filed an amicus brief in support of Blackwell's position - marking the first time in American history that the Justice Department had gone to court to block the right of voters to vote. [122] The Sixth Circuit, stacked with four judges appointed by George W. Bush, sided with Blackwell. [123]

Blackwell insists that his decision kept the election clean. "If we had allowed this notion of 'voters without borders' to exist," he says, "it would have opened the door to massive fraud." But even Republicans were shocked by the move. DeForest Soaries, the GOP chairman of the Election Assistance Commission - the federal agency set up to implement the Help America Vote Act - upbraided Blackwell, saying that the commission disagreed with his decision to deny ballots to voters who showed up at the wrong precinct. "The purpose of provisional ballots is to not turn anyone away from the polls," Soaries explained. "We want as many votes to count as possible." [124]

The decision left hundreds of thousands of voters in predominantly Democratic counties to navigate the state's bewildering array of 11,366 precincts, whose boundaries had been redrawn just prior to the election. [125] To further compound their confusion, the new precinct lines were misidentified on the secretary of state's own Web site, which was months out of date on Election Day. Many voters, out of habit, reported to polling locations that were no longer theirs. Some were mistakenly assured by poll workers on the grounds that they were entitled to cast a provisional ballot at that precinct. Instead, thanks to Blackwell's ruling, at least 10,000 provisional votes were tossed out after Election Day simply because citizens wound up in the wrong line. [126]

In Toledo, Brandi and Brittany Stenson each got in a different line to vote in the gym at St. Elizabeth Seton School. Both of the sisters were registered to vote at the polling place on the city's north side, in the shadow of the giant DaimlerChrysler plant. Both cast ballots. But when the tallies were added up later, the family resemblance came to an abrupt end. Brittany's vote was counted - but Brandi's wasn't. It wasn't enough that she had voted in the right building. If she wanted her vote to count, according to Blackwell's ruling, she had to choose the line that led to her assigned table. Her ballot - along with those of her mother, her brother and thirty-seven other voters in the same precinct - were thrown out [127] simply because they were, in the words of Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio), "in the right church but the wrong pew." [128]

All told, the deliberate chaos that resulted from Blackwell's registration barriers did the trick. Black voters in the state - who went overwhelmingly for Kerry - were twenty percent more likely than whites to be forced to cast a provisional ballot. [129] In the end, nearly three percent of all voters in Ohio were forced to vote provisionally [130] - and more than 35,000 of their ballots were ultimately rejected. [131]

VI. Long Lines

When Election Day dawned on November 2nd, tens of thousands of Ohio voters who had managed to overcome all the obstacles to registration erected by Blackwell discovered that it didn't matter whether they were properly listed on the voting rolls - because long lines at their precincts prevented them from ever making it to the ballot box. Would-be voters in Dayton and Cincinnati routinely faced waits as long as three hours. Those in inner-city precincts in Columbus, Cleveland and Toledo - which were voting for Kerry by margins of ninety percent or more - often waited up to seven hours. At Kenyon College, students were forced to stand in line for eleven hours before being allowed to vote, with the last voters casting their ballots after three in the morning. [132]

A five-month analysis of the Ohio vote conducted by the Democratic National Committee concluded in June 2005 that three percent of all Ohio voters who showed up to vote on Election Day were forced to leave without casting a ballot. [133] That's more than 174,000 voters. "The vast majority of this lost vote," concluded the Conyers report, "was concentrated in urban, minority and Democratic-leaning areas." [134] Statewide, African-Americans waited an average of fifty-two minutes to vote, compared to only eighteen minutes for whites. [135]
The long lines were not only foreseeable - they were actually created by GOP efforts. Republicans in the state legislature, citing new electronic voting machines that were supposed to speed voting, authorized local election boards to reduce the number of precincts across Ohio. In most cases, the new machines never materialized - but that didn't stop officials in twenty of the state's eighty-eight counties, all of them favorable to Democrats, from slashing the number of precincts by at least twenty percent. [136]

Republican officials also created long lines by failing to distribute enough voting machines to inner-city precincts. After the Florida disaster in 2000, such problems with machines were supposed to be a thing of the past. Under the Help America Vote Act, Ohio received more than $30 million in federal funds to replace its faulty punch-card machines with more reliable systems. [137] But on Election Day, that money was sitting in the bank. Why? Because Ken Blackwell had applied for an extension until 2006, insisting that there was no point in buying electronic machines that would later have to be retrofitted under Ohio law to generate paper ballots. [138]

"No one has ever accused our secretary of state of lacking in ability," says Rep. Kucinich. "He's a rather bright fellow, and he's involved in the most minute details of his office. There's no doubt that he knew the effect of not having enough voting machines in some areas."

At liberal Kenyon College, where students had registered in record numbers, local election officials provided only two voting machines to handle the anticipated surge of up to 1,300 voters. Meanwhile, fundamentalist students at nearby Mount Vernon Nazarene University had one machine for 100 voters and faced no lines at all. [139] Citing the lines at Kenyon, the Conyers report concluded that the "misallocation of machines went beyond urban/suburban discrepancies to specifically target Democratic areas." [140]

In Columbus, which had registered 125,000 new voters [141] - more than half of them black [142] - the board of elections estimated that it would need 5,000 machines to handle the huge surge. [143] "On Election Day, the county experienced an unprecedented turnout that could only be compared to a 500-year flood," says Matt Damschroder, [144] chairman of the Franklin County Board of Elections and the former head of the Republican Party in Columbus. [145] But instead of buying more equipment, the Conyers investigation found, Damschroder decided to "make do" with 2,741 machines. [146] And to make matters worse, he favored his own party in distributing the equipment. According to The Columbus Dispatch, precincts that had gone seventy percent or more for Al Gore in 2000 were allocated seventeen fewer machines in 2004, while strong GOP precincts received eight additional machines. [147] An analysis by voter advocates found that all but three of the thirty wards with the best voter-to-machine ratios were in Bush strongholds; all but one of the seven with the worst ratios were in Kerry country. [148]

The result was utterly predictable. According to an investigation by the Columbus Free Press, white Republican suburbanites, blessed with a surplus of machines, averaged waits of only twenty-two minutes; black urban Democrats averaged three hours and fifteen minutes. [149] "The allocation of voting machines in Franklin County was clearly biased against voters in precincts with high proportions of African-Americans," concluded Walter Mebane Jr., a government professor at Cornell University who conducted a statistical analysis of the vote in and around Columbus. [150]

By midmorning, when it became clear that voters were dropping out of line rather than braving the wait, precincts appealed for the right to distribute paper ballots to speed the process. Blackwell denied the request, saying it was an invitation to fraud. [151] A lawsuit ensued, and the handwritten affidavits submitted by voters and election officials offer a heart-rending snapshot of an electoral catastrophe in the offing: [152]

From Columbus Precinct 44D: "There are three voting machines at this precinct. I have been informed that in prior elections there were normally four voting machines. At 1:45 p.m. there are approximately eighty-five voters in line. At this time, the line to vote is approximately three hours long. This precinct is largely African-American. I have personally witnessed voters leaving the polling place without voting due to the length of the line."

From Precinct 40: "I am serving as a presiding judge, a position I have held for some 15+ years in precinct 40. In all my years of service, the lines are by far the longest I have seen, with some waiting as long as four to five hours. I expect the situation to only worsen as the early evening heavy turnout approaches. I have requested additional machines since 6:40 a.m. and no assistance has been offered."

Precinct 65H: "I observed a broken voting machine that was not in use for approximately two hours. The precinct judge was very diligent but could not get through to the BOE."

Precinct 18A: "At 4 p.m. the average wait time is about 4.5 hours and continuing to increase. Voters are continuing to leave without voting."

As day stretched into evening, U.S. District Judge Algernon Marbley issued a temporary restraining order requiring that voters be offered paper ballots. [153] But it was too late: According to bipartisan estimates published in The Washington Post, as many as 15,000 voters in Columbus had already given up and gone home. [154] When closing time came at the polls, according to the Conyers report, some precinct workers illegally dismissed citizens who had waited for hours in the rain - in direct violation of Ohio law, which stipulates that those in line at closing time are allowed to remain and vote. [155]

The voters disenfranchised by long lines were overwhelmingly Democrats. Because of the unequal distribution of voting equipment, the median turnout in Franklin County precincts won by Kerry was fifty-one percent, compared to sixty-one percent in those won by Bush. Assuming sixty percent turnout under more equitable conditions, Kerry would have gained an additional 17,000 votes in the county. [156]

In another move certain to add to the traffic jam at the polls, the GOP deployed 3,600 operatives on Election Day to challenge voters in thirty-one counties - most of them in predominantly black and urban areas. [157] Although it was billed as a means to "ensure that voters are not disenfranchised by fraud," [158] Republicans knew that the challengers would inevitably create delays for eligible voters. Even Mark Weaver, the GOP's attorney in Ohio, predicted in late October that the move would "create chaos, longer lines and frustration." [159]
The day before the election, Judge Dlott attempted to halt the challengers, ruling that "there exists an enormous risk of chaos, delay, intimidation and pandemonium inside the polls and in the lines out the doors." Dlott was also troubled by the placement of Republican challengers: In Hamilton County, fourteen percent of new voters in white areas would be confronted at the polls, compared to ninety-seven percent of new voters in black areas. [160] But when the case was appealed to the Supreme Court on Election Day, Justice John Paul Stevens allowed the challenges to go forward. "I have faith," he ruled, "that the elected officials and numerous election volunteers on the ground will carry out their responsibilities in a way that will enable qualified voters to cast their ballots." [161]

In fact, Blackwell gave Republican challengers unprecedented access to polling stations, where they intimidated voters, worsening delays in Democratic precincts. By the end of the day, thanks to a whirlwind of legal wrangling, the GOP had even gotten permission to use the discredited list of 35,000 names from its illegal caging effort to challenge would-be voters. [162] According to the survey by the DNC, nearly 5,000 voters across the state were turned away at the polls because of registration challenges - even though federal law required that they be provided with provisional ballots. [163]

VII. Faulty Machines

Voters who managed to make it past the array of hurdles erected by Republican officials found themselves confronted by voting machines that didn't work. Only 800,000 out of the 5.6 million votes in Ohio were cast on electronic voting machines, but they were plagued with errors. [164] In heavily Democratic areas around Youngstown, where nearly 100 voters reported entering "Kerry" on the touch screen and watching "Bush" light up, at least twenty machines had to be recalibrated in the middle of the voting process for chronically flipping Kerry votes to Bush. [165] (Similar "vote hopping" from Kerry to Bush was reported by voters and election officials in other states.) [166] Elsewhere, voters complained in sworn affidavits that they touched Kerry's name on the screen and it lit up, but that the light had gone out by the time they finished their ballot; the Kerry vote faded away. [167] In the state's most notorious incident, an electronic machine at a fundamentalist church in the town of Gahanna recorded a total of 4,258 votes for Bush and 260 votes for Kerry. [168] In that precinct, however, there were only 800 registered voters, of whom 638 showed up. [169] (The error, which was later blamed on a glitchy memory card, was corrected before the certified vote count.)

In addition to problems with electronic machines, Ohio's vote was skewed by old-fashioned punch-card equipment that posed what even Blackwell acknowledged was the risk of a "Florida-like calamity." [170] All but twenty of the state's counties relied on antiquated machines that were virtually guaranteed to destroy votes [171] - many of which were counted by automatic tabulators manufactured by Triad Governmental Systems, [172] the same company that supplied Florida's notorious butterfly ballot in 2000. In fact, some 95,000 ballots in Ohio recorded no vote for president at all - most of them on punch-card machines. Even accounting for the tiny fraction of voters in each election who decide not to cast votes for president - generally in the range of half a percent, according to Ohio State law professor and respected elections scholar Dan Tokaji - that would mean that at least 66,000 votes were invalidated by faulty voting equipment. [173] If counted by hand instead of by automated tabulator, the vast majority of these votes would have been discernable. But thanks to a corrupt recount process, only one county hand-counted its ballots. [174]

Most of the uncounted ballots occurred in Ohio's big cities. In Cleveland, where nearly 13,000 votes were ruined, a New York Times analysis found that black precincts suffered more than twice the rate of spoiled ballots than white districts. [175] In Dayton, Kerry-leaning precincts had nearly twice the number of spoiled ballots as Bush-leaning precincts. [176] Last April, a federal court ruled that Ohio's use of punch-card balloting violated the equal-protection rights of the citizens who voted on them. [177]

In addition to spoiling ballots, the punch-card machines also created bizarre miscounts known as "ballot crawl." In Cleveland Precinct 4F, a heavily African-American precinct, Constitution Party candidate Michael Peroutka was credited with an impressive forty-one percent of the vote. In Precinct 4N, where Al Gore won ninety-eight percent of the vote in 2000, Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik was credited with thirty-three percent of the vote. Badnarik and Peroutka also picked up a sizable portion of the vote in precincts across Cleveland - 11M, 3B, 8G, 8I, 3I. [178] "It appears that hundreds, if not thousands, of votes intended to be cast for Senator Kerry were recorded as being for a third-party candidate," the Conyers report concludes. [179]

But it's not just third-party candidates: Ballot crawl in Cleveland also shifted votes from Kerry to Bush. In Precinct 13B, where Bush received only six votes in 2000, he was credited with twenty percent of the total in 2004. Same story in 9P, where Bush recorded eighty-seven votes in 2004, compared to his grand total of one in 2000. [180]

VIII. Rural Counties

Despite the well-documented effort that prevented hundreds of thousands of voters in urban and minority precincts from casting ballots, the worst theft in Ohio may have quietly taken place in rural counties. An examination of election data suggests widespread fraud - and even good old-fashioned stuffing of ballot boxes - in twelve sparsely populated counties scattered across southern and western Ohio: Auglaize, Brown, Butler, Clermont, Darke, Highland, Mercer, Miami, Putnam, Shelby, Van Wert and Warren. (See The Twelve Suspect Counties) One key indicator of fraud is to look at counties where the presidential vote departs radically from other races on the ballot. By this measure, John Kerry's numbers were suspiciously low in each of the twelve counties - and George Bush's were unusually high.

Take the case of Ellen Connally, a Democrat who lost her race for chief justice of the state Supreme Court. When the ballots were counted, Kerry should have drawn far more votes than Connally - a liberal black judge who supports gay rights and campaigned on a shoestring budget. And that's exactly what happened statewide: Kerry tallied 667,000 more votes for president than Connally did for chief justice, outpolling her by a margin of thirty-two percent. Yet in these twelve off-the-radar counties, Connally somehow managed to outperform the best-funded Democrat in history, thumping Kerry by a grand total of 19,621 votes - a margin of ten percent. [181] The Conyers report - recognizing that thousands of rural Bush voters were unlikely to have backed a gay-friendly black judge roundly rejected in Democratic precincts - suggests that "thousands of votes for Senator Kerry were lost." [182]

Kucinich, a veteran of elections in the state, puts it even more bluntly. "Down-ticket candidates shouldn't outperform presidential candidates like that," he says. "That just doesn't happen. The question is: Where did the votes for Kerry go?"

They certainly weren't invalidated by faulty voting equipment: a trifling one percent of presidential ballots in the twelve suspect counties were spoiled. The more likely explanation is that they were fraudulently shifted to Bush. Statewide, the president outpolled Thomas Moyer, the Republican judge who defeated Connally, by twenty-one percent. Yet in the twelve questionable counties, Bush's margin over Moyer was fifty percent - a strong indication that the president's certified vote total was inflated. If Kerry had maintained his statewide margin over Connally in the twelve suspect counties, as he almost assuredly would have done in a clean election, he would have bested her by 81,260 ballots. That's a swing of 162,520 votes from Kerry to Bush - more than enough to alter the outcome. [183]

"This is very strong evidence that the count is off in those counties," says Freeman, the poll analyst. "By itself, without anything else, what happened in these twelve counties turns Ohio into a Kerry state. To me, this provides every indication of fraud."

How might this fraud have been carried out? One way to steal votes is to tamper with individual ballots - and there is evidence that Republicans did just that. In Clermont County, where optical scanners were used to tabulate votes, sworn affidavits by election observers given to the House Judiciary Committee describe ballots on which marks for Kerry were covered up with white stickers, while marks for Bush were filled in to replace them. Rep. Conyers, in a letter to the FBI, described the testimony as "strong evidence of vote tampering if not outright fraud." [184] In Miami County, where Connally outpaced Kerry, one precinct registered a turnout of 98.55 percent [185] - meaning that all but ten eligible voters went to the polls on Election Day. An investigation by the Columbus Free Press, however, collected affidavits from twenty-five people who swear they didn't vote. [186]

In addition to altering individual ballots, evidence suggests that Republicans tampered with the software used to tabulate votes. In Auglaize County, where Kerry lost not only to Connally but to two other defeated Democratic judicial candidates, voters cast their ballots on touch-screen machines. [187] Two weeks before the election, an employee of ES&S, the company that manufactures the machines, was observed by a local election official making an unauthorized log-in to the central computer used to compile election results. [188] In Miami County, after 100 percent of precincts had already reported their official results, an additional 18,615 votes were inexplicably added to the final tally. The last-minute alteration awarded 12,000 of the votes to Bush, boosting his margin of victory in the county by nearly 6,000. [189]

The most transparently crooked incident took place in Warren County. In the leadup to the election, Blackwell had illegally sought to keep reporters and election observers at least 100 feet away from the polls. [190] The Sixth Circuit, ruling that the decree represented an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment, noted ominously that "democracies die behind closed doors." But the decision didn't stop officials in Warren County from devising a way to count the vote in secret. Immediately after the polls closed on Election Day, GOP officials - citing the FBI - declared that the county was facing a terrorist threat that ranked ten on a scale of one to ten. The county administration building was hastily locked down, allowing election officials to tabulate the results without any reporters present.

In fact, there was no terrorist threat. The FBI declared that it had issued no such warning, and an investigation by The Cincinnati Enquirer unearthed e-mails showing that the Republican plan to declare a terrorist alert had been in the works for eight days prior to the election. Officials had even refined the plot down to the language they used on signs notifying the public of a lockdown. (When ROLLING STONE requested copies of the same e-mails from the county, officials responded that the documents have been destroyed.) [191]

The late-night secrecy in Warren County recalls a classic trick: Results are held back until it's determined how many votes the favored candidate needs to win, and the totals are then adjusted accordingly. When Warren County finally announced its official results - one of the last counties in the state to do so [192] - the results departed wildly from statewide patterns. John Kerry received 2,426 fewer votes for president than Ellen Connally, the poorly funded black judge, did for chief justice. A name="193a" href="#a193">[193] As the Conyers report concluded, "It is impossible to rule out the possibility that some sort of manipulation of the tallies occurred on election night in the locked-down facility." [194]

Nor does the electoral tampering appear to have been isolated to these dozen counties. Ohio, like several other states, had an initiative on the ballot in 2004 to outlaw gay marriage. Statewide, the measure proved far more popular than Bush, besting the president by 470,000 votes. But in six of the twelve suspect counties - as well as in six other small counties in central Ohio - Bush outpolled the ban on same-sex unions by 16,132 votes. To trust the official tally, in other words, you must believe that thousands of rural Ohioans voted for both President Bush and gay marriage. [195]

IX. Rigging the Recount

After Kerry conceded the election, his campaign helped the Libertarian and Green parties pay for a recount of all eighty-eight counties in Ohio. Under state law, county boards of election were required to randomly select three percent of their precincts and recount the ballots both by hand and by machine. If the two totals reconciled exactly, a costly hand recount of the remaining votes could be avoided; machines could be used to tally the rest.

But election officials in Ohio worked outside the law to avoid hand recounts. According to charges brought by a special prosecutor in April, election officials in Cleveland fraudulently and secretly pre-counted precincts by hand to identify ones that would match the machine count. They then used these pre-screened precincts to select the "random" sample of three percent used for the recount.

"If it didn't balance, they excluded those precincts," said the prosecutor, Kevin Baxter, who has filed felony indictments against three election workers in Cleveland. "They screwed with the process and increased the probability, if not the certainty, that there would not be a full, countywide hand count." [196]

Voting machines were also tinkered with prior to the recount. In Hocking County, deputy elections director Sherole Eaton caught an employee of Triad - which provided the software used to count punch-card ballots in nearly half of Ohio's counties [197] - making unauthorized modifications to the tabulating computer before the recount. Eaton told the Conyers committee that the same employee also provided county officials with a "cheat sheet" so that "the count would come out perfect and we wouldn't have to do a full hand-recount of the county." [198] After Eaton blew the whistle on the illegal tampering, she was fired.

[199] The same Triad employee was dispatched to do the same work in at least five other counties. [200] Company president Tod Rapp - who contributed to Bush's campaign [201] - has confirmed that Triad routinely makes such tabulator adjustments to help election officials avoid hand recounts. In the end, every county serviced by Triad failed to conduct full recounts by hand. [202]

Even more troubling, in at least two counties, Fulton and Henry, Triad was able to connect to tabulating computers remotely via a dial-up connection, and reprogram them to recount only the presidential ballots. [203] If that kind of remote tabulator modification is possible for the purposes of the recount, it's no great leap to wonder if such modifications might have helped skew the original vote count. But the window for settling such questions is closing rapidly: On November 2nd of this year, on the second anniversary of the election, state officials will be permitted under Ohio law to shred all ballots from the 2004 election. [204]

X. What's at Stake

The mounting evidence that Republicans employed broad, methodical and illegal tactics in the 2004 election should raise serious alarms among news organizations. But instead of investigating allegations of wrongdoing, the press has simply accepted the result as valid. "We're in a terrible fix," Rep. Conyers told me. "We've got a media that uses its bullhorn in reverse - to turn down the volume on this outrage rather than turning it up. That's why our citizens are not up in arms."

The lone news anchor who seriously questioned the integrity of the 2004 election was Keith Olbermann of MSNBC. I asked him why he stood against the tide. "I was a sports reporter, so I was used to dealing with numbers," he said. "And the numbers made no sense. Kerry had an insurmountable lead in the exit polls on Election Night - and then everything flipped." Olbermann believes that his journalistic colleagues fell down on the job. "I was stunned by the lack of interest by investigative reporters," he said. "The Republicans shut down Warren County, allegedly for national security purposes - and no one covered it. Shouldn't someone have sent a camera and a few reporters out there?"

Olbermann attributes the lack of coverage to self-censorship by journalists. "You can rock the boat, but you can never say that the entire ocean is in trouble," he said. "You cannot say: By the way, there's something wrong with our electoral system."

Federal officials charged with safeguarding the vote have also failed to contest the election. "Congress hasn't investigated this at all," says Kucinich. "There has been no oversight over our nation's most basic right: the right to vote. How can we call ourselves a beacon of democracy abroad when the right to vote hasn't been secured in free and fair elections at home?"

Sen. John Kerry - in a wide-ranging discussion of ROLLING STONE's investigation - expressed concern about Republican tactics in 2004, but stopped short of saying the election was stolen. "Can I draw a conclusion that they played tough games and clearly had an intent to reduce the level of our vote? Yes, absolutely. Can I tell you to a certainty that it made the difference in the election? I can't. There's no way for me to do that. If I could have done that, then obviously I would have found some legal recourse."

Kerry conceded, however, that the widespread irregularities make it impossible to know for certain that the outcome reflected the will of the voters. "I think there are clearly states where it is questionable whether everybody's vote is being counted, whether everybody is being given the opportunity to register and to vote," he said. "There are clearly barriers in too many places to the ability of people to exercise their full franchise. For that to be happening in the United States of America today is disgraceful."

Kerry's comments were echoed by Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. "I'm not confident that the election in Ohio was fairly decided," Dean says. "We know that there was substantial voter suppression, and the machines were not reliable. It should not be a surprise that the Republicans are willing to do things that are unethical to manipulate elections. That's what we suspect has happened, and we'd like to safeguard our elections so that democracy can still be counted on to work."

To help prevent a repeat of 2004, Kerry has co-sponsored a package of election reforms called the Count Every Vote Act. The measure would increase turnout by allowing voters to register at the polls on Election Day, provide provisional ballots to voters who inadvertently show up at the wrong precinct, require electronic voting machines to produce paper receipts verified by voters, and force election officials like Blackwell to step down if they want to join a campaign. [205] But Kerry says his fellow Democrats have been reluctant to push the reforms, fearing that Republicans would use their majority in Congress to create even more obstacles to voting. "The real reason there is no appetite up here is that people are afraid the Republicans will amend HAVA and shove something far worse down our throats," he told me.

On May 24th, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) tried unsuccessfully to amend the immigration bill to bar anyone who lacks a government-issued photo ID from voting [206] - a rule that would disenfranchise at least six percent of Americans, the majority of them urban and poor, who lack such identification. [207] The GOP-controlled state legislature in Indiana passed a similar measure, and an ID rule in Georgia was recently struck down as unconstitutional. [208]

"Why erect those kinds of hurdles unless you're afraid of voters?" asks Ralph Neas, director of People for the American Way. "The country will be better off if everyone votes - Democrats and Republicans. But that is not the Blackwell philosophy, that is not the George W. Bush or Jeb Bush philosophy. They want to limit the franchise and go to extraordinary lengths to make it more difficult to vote."

The issue of what happened in 2004 is not an academic one. For the second election in a row, the president of the United States was selected not by the uncontested will of the people but under a cloud of dirty tricks. Given the scope of the GOP machinations, we simply cannot be certain that the right man now occupies the Oval Office - which means, in effect, that we have been deprived of our faith in democracy itself.

American history is littered with vote fraud - but rather than learning from our shameful past and cleaning up the system, we have allowed the problem to grow even worse. If the last two elections have taught us anything, it is this: The single greatest threat to our democracy is the insecurity of our voting system. If people lose faith that their votes are accurately and faithfully recorded, they will abandon the ballot box. Nothing less is at stake here than the entire idea of a government by the people.

Voting, as Thomas Paine said, "is the right upon which all other rights depend." Unless we ensure that right, everything else we hold dear is in jeopardy.

P.S. From Gaston: And remember, If we all end up in a concentration camp next winter, it'll be all your fault!

First, educate yourself:

Federal Election Commission - http://www.fec.gov
Norma Robbins, "Facts to Ponder About the 2004 General Election," May 10, 2006. http://www.clevelandvotes.org/news/reports/Facts_to_Ponder.pdf
Fritz Wenzel, "Purging of Rolls, Confusion Anger Voters; 41% of November 2nd Provisional Ballots Axed in Lucas County," Toledo Blade, January 9, 2005. http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050109/NEWS09/501090334/-1/NEWS
Christopher Hitchens, "Ohio's Odd Numbers," Vanity Fair. http://www.vanityfair.com/commentary/content/printables/050214roco05?print=true
Analysis completed by using official tallies on the Ohio Secretary of State Web site. Official tallies for Kerry: http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/ElectionsVoter/results2004.aspx?Section=135
Now do this…and ask the world why this kind of knucklehead stuff continues to happen?

Contact your elected representatives : http://www.congress.org/congressorg/homeLeague of Women Voters Media email database: Http://www.capwiz.com/lwv/dbq/mediaTV news addresses: http://digbig.com/4bqmqAddresses for major U.S. daily publications/wire services/weekly publications: http://digbig.com/4cqgeMajor publication addresses by state: http://digbig.com/4bwxw

Tookie is dead, we plunge further in to the abyss and the chain is unbroken.

2005-12-13T12:36:00.000-08:00

Tookie was a thug and a gangster of the most violent type.

There are dozen’s like him on the streets and hundreds more being produced everyday.
His death changes nothing.

Tookie spread violence and mayhem all over the city and throughout his neighborhood.

Violence and mayhem are out of control all over the city, in every neighborhood.

His death changes nothing.

Tookie helped to perpetuate hopelessness and despair on the streets where he lived.

Hopelessness and despair have always lived on the streets of our cities and will continue to until the issues of hopelessness and despair are addressed for what they are: Hopelessness and Despair.

His death changes nothing.

Tookie probably directly, and without question indirectly through his actions, was responsible for countless deaths.

There have been and continue to be, countless deaths caused by gang violence and criminal activity. People who will never exist again.

His death changes nothing.

Tookie was a symbol of viciousness and cruelty for anyone touched by violence, the blight of criminality and urban ruin and to everyone who fears such symbols, no matter imagined or real.

“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.... The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.”

His death changes nothing….

I recently read that in 1990, as murderer Robert Alton Harris faced his execution date, an editorial appeared that shapes the death penalty debate with these words:

"There is no absolute right answer on capital punishment. ... It all comes down to the kind of society we want - one based on humane values or one based on violence ... Don't retain a penalty that is as ineffectual as it is unfair and expensive."

Harris was executed in 1992 in the gas chamber at San Quentin's

It appears that things have not changed, despite the executions we have carried out in the name of justice. The question is still exactly the same:

Do we as a society want to allow for hope and redemption, or do we demand revenge and retribution?

Life in prison without any possibility of parole, working for the state, in an effort to do something useful with what’s left of their life, offers the convicted and us the victims elements of both. It allows people - even the worst among us - to change while it condemns the guilty to a life none of us would choose.

Tookie is dead, we plunge further in to the abyss and the chain is unbroken.

We have learned nothing.

As always my friends, this is SPAM friendly. I leave open the option for you to email this to everyone in your address book. The way it is situated, if you have your Rich Text editor on you can cut and past it with all the pictures and links in tact as well.

First, educate yourself:

By a few books (for and against) and read them: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/ref=br_ss_hs/002-4528389-8658426?platform=gurupa&url=index%3Dstripbooks%3Arelevance-above%26dispatch%3Dsearch%26results-process%3Dbin&field-keywords=death+penalty&Go.x=13&Go.y=13

Gallup: Public support for the death penalty has held steady in the past few years, but Gallup's long-term trend indicates that support is significantly lower today than it was through the 1980s and 1990s. The recent debate about the number of innocent people on death row may have been responsible for the slight decline in support in 2000, but it is unclear whether that issue retains as much oomph with the public today. http://poll.gallup.com/content/default.aspx?ci=20350&pg=1

Contra Costa Ties.com: "Watching Williams Die.": SAN QUENTIN STATE PRISON - Stanley "Tookie" Williams walked in chains and cuffs through the oval door of the execution chamber. Four uniformed men entered with him. Midnight remained a minute away.http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/13396886.htm

Now do this…and ask the world when this madness will end?

Contact your elected representatives : http://www.congress.org/congressorg/home
League of Women Voters Media email database: Http://www.capwiz.com/lwv/dbq/media
TV news addresses: http://digbig.com/4bqmq
Addresses for major U.S. daily publications/wire services/weekly pub: http://digbig.com/4cqge
Major publication addresses by state: http://digbig.com/4bwxw

How Afghanistan's Opium can save the world - and itself !

2005-12-09T17:33:00.000-08:00

In researching Funding Access-vs.-Prevention at 14th ICASA AIDS Conference in Nigeria there was this other topic, indirectly effecting the global HIV/AIDS pandemic. Its wider effects on the world stage are equally staggering, and it effects every person on every continent to some extent.

The issue is the fledgling democracy of Afghanistan and threat that the illicit opium trade poses in destabilizing the democratic process and stability in the entire region. Opium is bleeding Afghanistan of its chances of democracy.

Go anywhere in southern Kandahar, Afghanistan (the former spiritual stronghold of the Taliban) and you’ll run in to poppy fields. Drive 20 minutes in any direction and you’ll find farmers busy harvesting their crop, in spite of the Interim Authority's January 2002 ban in on poppy cultivation. An estimated 1.7 million people are directly involved in opium production, as widespread and family-based poppy cultivation proliferates in 28 of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan.

Most farmers in Afghanistan will tell you openly that they will not stop growing poppies unless alternative crops can be offered to them to grow, that will reap the same amount of money.
In a country trying to rebuild itself, after the fall of the Taliban regime, Afghanistan’s poppy cultivation continues to demonstrate a significant impediment in the country's quest for peace and stability. Leaders in global counter-narcotics warn that Afghanistan is on the brink of (again) descending into lawless chaos if opium stays its single largest economic ingredient, with a high risk of it rivaling Columbia as a ‘narco-state’ on the world stage.

More threatening is that the opium business provides a lucrative and virtually risk-free resource base for warlords and provincial commanders who want to resist central control and continue to see Afghanistan under the rule of the gun instead of the rule of law. This danger is perhaps the greatest threat to Afghanistan, for it undermines all the processes currently guiding the country towards democracy and the development of civil society. The long feared boogieman, The Taliban, regarded as terrorists by the government and the international community, are ALSO reportedly being funded by the illicit opium economy. This represents not only long term problem for Afghanistan, but a clear and present danger to the entire region and the rest of the world.

With its share of world illegal heroin growing to over 90%, this blob of a problem’s scope extends well beyond Afghanistan’s borders and is a virtual global emergency, feeding hostile and destructive trends and having an effect on peoples and societies throughout the world. Russia and Eastern Europe’s growing heroin use fuels an expanding new front in the HIV/AIDS epidemic (70% of cases in Russia related to injecting heroin use) and Western Europe represents the biggest market in monetary terms for Afghan illegal heroin (approximately $65bn).

A vicious circle to say the least. Driving supply, the worlds consuming countries have a special responsibility to respond to the opium crisis in Afghanistan. But never underestimate the Untied States’ ability to stick to a failed foreign policy.

The US State Department’s current fav “If you can’t beat’um…ya ain’t beatin’ uhm hard enough” foreign policy, says it this threat, supports and is driving it’s policy of rapid eradication of poppy production. Strictly implemented, eradication campaigns in Iran and Pakistan have left Afghanistan today as the main producer, supplying over 75 percent of opiates globally. In 2004, the estimated quantity of opium produced within Afghanistan is expected to be at least 4,000 metric tons, representing a rising trend, which, according to statistics, looks to outstrip any reduction achieved through eradication efforts.

So now, Afghanistan produces 87 per cent of the world's opium. Now, Afghanistan is the leading world producer of opium, replacing the 'Golden Triangle' of Laos, Myanmar and Thailand, which led global production in the 1960s and 1970s. The harder the beat in t the skulls of these nations, their eradication policy, opium production increased EXPONENTIALLY in the 'Golden Crescent', which is comprised of Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan in the 1980s.

OK, now for the pharmacological aspects of the global opium market

Sap from poppies is ALSO manufactured into opium which is a class-A drug sold for millions upon millions of US dollars is the ONLY commercially available source of the pain relief drugs morphine and codeine. Opium-based medicines play a fundamental role in the global treatment of pain in four key clinical settings: cancer pain, HIV/Aids-related pain, acute post-operative pain and general chronic pain. Currently, only a few of the 80 chemical elements found in the opium poppy are considered important for medicinal purposes, however new pharmaceutically important chemical elements have been being researched and developed for decades for use as specialized pain relief elements for legal medicinal purposes. The opium poppy, dates back to the ancient Sumerians in 4000 B.C., and is an essential part of modern pain relieving medicines around the world.

Global consumption of available morphine is increasing quickly and the need for adequate and sustained pain relief in clinical settings around the world is being exacerbated by changes in global demographics and, more critical, the ever rising global levels of HIV/AIDS and cancer. This is particularly alarming when you consider that the rates for HIV and cancer in Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Asia are the fastest growing in the world and the unmet morphine needs for HIV/AIDS and cancer treatment in these regions are in the hundreds of tons (a ton = about 2000 pounds).

Opium based pain medicine consumption remains dominated by seven major cash rich markets, which accounts for only 24 percent of need for opium-based pain killers being met. Who are these well opiated wealthy countries, you ask? That’s right you guessed it: Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Spain. the UK and the good ole U.S. of A. Western European countries ALONE account for close to 90 percent of all current medical morphine consumption.

As with non-FDA retrovirals (see http://bdgstone.blogspot.com/2005/12/outrageous-scandalous-shameful.html ), the shortage of poppy/opium based medicines is basically due to exceedingly regulated and fixed market structures, imposed on the world by the U.S. Pharma Machine, which works with it’s allies in Washington to keep prices for these and other medicines high, and a low proportion of health spending on pharmaceuticals in developing countries, who denied access for failing to knuckle under to their extreme conservative ideological agenda (or greedy profiteering, if you’re the Pharma Companies – as you have to have a soul to be concerned with saving it).

Legally licensed opium production for use in the manufacture of codeine and morphine, is in critically short supply around the world. The global shortage of opium-based raw material exists due to a significantly unmet demand for opium-based medicine such as morphine and codeine in patients with moderate to severe pain.

In response to the urgent need to significantly reduce Afghanistan’s illegal opium trade – the key issue in the reconstruction of the country - The Senlis Council, a Paris-based NGO international drug policy think tank, which gathers knowledge and facilitates new ideas on global drug policy, launched a feasibility study on Opium Licensing in Afghanistan for the Production of Morphine and Other Essential Medicines.

Their study calls for the expedited and immediate legalization of Afghanistan's opium industry to turn the insolvent country from the illegal heroin trade and towards the production and supplying of legal pain medicines such as morphine and codeine.

Let’s talk dollars first. According to an Economist Intelligence Unit report from May 2004, the aggregate value of opium production in 2003 was $2.3 billion, representing more than 50 percent of Afghanistan's legal gross domestic product, and with raw opium prices estimated at $280 per kg, the per capita income from poppy cultivation for individual farming families is several times higher than the average for non-poppy cultivating farmers.

Its not rocket science people. In a country as poverty-stricken as Afghanistan, the world's second poorest according to the UN Development Program (UNDP), there is a enormous enticement to go on growing poppy. For most Afghan farmers it can mean the difference between life and death for him and his family.

So, by re-directing such a well imbedded wealth-generating commodity like opium poppy in to a formal rural economy, opium licensing can and will liberate the social and economic forces which currently have their hooks in the illegal opium economy. Legally, licensed opium could provide a reliable income to small farmers in an area where they have the expertise and experience and could also help to address the concerns over rural depopulation (large numbers of Afghans are moving to urban centers looking for work)

Better still, tax revenues generated from licensed opium production could also provide Afghanistan with funds necessary to re-establish the rule of law and building security and re-allocation of ‘eradication funds’ could be better use supporting the development of an effective system to control and monitor licensed opium.

Additionally, having a legal, taxable mechanism for opium, Afghanistan would, improve local perceptions of the Central government’s global influence and ability to provide for the general welfare, while achieving a reasonable degree of harmony in its management of authority.

It is a fact that there is an insufficient opium supply for medicine production and the world is in a global pain crisis.

It is also a fact that the illegal opium business is a cash cow for warlords and provincial commanders, as well as the Taliban, all of whom want to resist central control, making them a global long term danger to the worldwide community.

Judging by the multi-billion dollar aid package contributed every year and the military commitment of the US lead coalition, the international community obviously shares this sense of urgency for a stable Afghanistan.

It is, however, the drug policy response led by the United States, the United Kingdom and the Afghan Central Government that is SOLEY based on a combination of interdiction, eradication instead of VIABLE and REALISTIC and EQUITABLE alternative livelihood strategies that provide more than just short term returns to the Afghan Government and its people.

The legalization and licensing of opium in Afghanistan for the production ad distribution to the international pharmaceutical industry is the OBVIOUS missing link!

Call me simple, but It appears that we could kill two birds with one stone here. It would provide an economically practical and controllable response to the extraordinary nature and reach of the illegal opium economy in Afghanistan.

As always my friends, this is SPAM friendly. I leave open the option for you to email this to everyone in your address book. The way it is situated, if you have your Rich Text editor on you can cut and past it with all the pictures and links in tact as well.

First, educate yourself:
The Senlis Council : http://www.drug-policy.org/ The Senlis Council, established in 2002, is an international drug policy think tank which gathers expertise and facilitates new initiatives on global drug policy.
DrugSense-MAP - http://www.drugsense.org DrugSense exists to provide accurate information relevant to drug policy in order to heighten awareness of the extreme damage being caused to our nation and the world by our current flawed and failed "War on Drugs" and aim to inform the public of the existence of rational alternatives to the drug war.

Now do this…and ask the world why this kind of knucklehead stuff continues to happen?

Contact your elected representatives : http://www.congress.org/congressorg/home
League of Women Voters Media email database: Http://www.capwiz.com/lwv/dbq/media
TV news addresses: http://digbig.com/4bqmq
Addresses for major U.S. daily publications/wire services/weekly publications: http://digbig.com/4cqge
Major publication addresses by state: http://digbig.com/4bwxw

OUTRAGEOUS! SCANDALOUS! SHAMEFUL! UNCONSCIONABLE!

2005-12-07T18:50:00.000-08:00

Funding Access-vs.-Prevention at 14th ICASA AIDS Conference in Nigeria

I was talking with a friend last night and discussing the current state of engagement (or lack there of) of the world in addressing the AIDS pandemic that is brutalizing a third of the worlds population either directly through infection or indirectly through the suffering of those who love them.

It was time to look in to this. What the heck is going on? Where are the millions that are promised?

This was a day of days to ask that question. December 7 can be known again as a day that will live in infamy for a more recent, but as shameless act.

With all its pseudo- compassion and promises the “help is on the way” The Bush Administration is again showing it’s true colors.

In Abuja, Nigeria this week, a six-day conference known as the 14th International Conference on AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections in Africa, is being attended by about 7,500 representatives from around the world, a majority of them from African nations. The theme of this conference is "HIV/AIDS and the Family."

With the world, and Africa in particular, at the center of a worldwide AIDS pandemic, it was shocking to hear that these developing countries are still having to beg for HIV/AIDS-related funding and access to treatment that is being held up and denied on over the argument of the value of emphasizing abstinence over condom use in prevention programs as well as a generic vs banded drugs issue.

At the conference, Assistant U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Jimmy Kolker was berated by many heath groups on the ground in Africa who have not been able to receive funding from the five-year, $15 billion President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief because they work with health care providers who offer abortion services or refuse to denounce commercial sex work as U.S. policy requires.

YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!

You are going dangle basic medical care and hospice relief in the face of already suffering, poor and impoverished people for the sake and promotion of extreme conservative policies of extreme conservative ideological agenda of the current administration of the United States of America?

That is shameless and sadistic!

In his State of the Union address on January 28, 2003, President Bush announced the $15 billion President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR/Emergency Plan), the largest commitment ever by a single nation toward an international health initiative—a 5-year, $15 billion, multifaceted approach to combating the disease in more than 120 countries around the world, placing a special emphasis on 15 focus nations (Botswana • Cote d’Ivoire • Ethiopia • Guyana • Haiti • Kenya • Mozambique • Namibia • Nigeria • Rwanda •South Africa • Tanzania • Uganda • Vietnam • Zambia) in Africa, the Caribbean, and Asia, which represent approximately half of the world’s infections.

What is buried in the fine print, and not spoken aloud expect in trusted company, is that PEPFAR contains policies on prevention driven, by ideological motivations, which utterly disregard scientifically established beliefs and tried and true successful methods.

Examples of the overbearingly strict requirements that the Bush administration has tied to PEPFAR funding include mandating that 33% of prevention funds be spent on abstinence-until-marriage programs, and limiting condom distribution to narrowly-defined "high risk" groups, as well as demanding that grantees explicitly condemn sex workers.

It is abhorrent and unconscionable that any country with the overwhelming capacity and ability to strike a major blow in the fight against this devastating disease, would strong arm their personal and ideological beliefs, mindless of the counter productivity that digging their heels in the mud on these issues does to the establishment and prolongation of comprehensive prevention programs that have demonstrated their effectiveness in slowing the spread of HIV for years now.

Cited countless times as a blatant example in the news and all over the internet recently, is the situation in Uganda.

In Uganda comprehensive prevention efforts have been credited with dramatically reducing HIV incidence over the last 10 years. However, because of recent pressures from the Bush Administration and fear of not meeting the PEPFAR funding requirements, a noticeable shift in prevention approaches has been taking place in Uganda.

Ugandan President Museveni, and other leaders, have suddenly, without rhyme or reason, begun to vehemently endorse abstinence-only programs and increased anti-condom rhetoric in public announcements and state driven media. More surreal is that the Ugandan government has IMPOUNDED 32 million, WHO quality-approved, condoms in government warehouses. All this while the U.S. government hurriedly ramps up financing for their own pet abstinence-only approaches to HIV prevention.

It gets worse.

As sickening as it might seem, there seems to be a stacking of the deck for no other apparent purpose than to insist that AIDS drugs are produced in one place whose ONLY beneficiary can be the already powerful and über-wealthy U.S. Pharmaceutical industry.

Before you scream conspiracy theorist and log off, read on. These are undisputable facts. You make your own conclusion.

Although President Bush has already publicly acknowledged (State of the Union 2003) that lower-cost antiretrovirals (ARVs) would create an massive opportunity to extend the reach of treatment access to more people now living with AIDS, the prices that he cited as examples of lower-cost ARVs are available at those prices ONLY from generic manufactures.

It’s been nearly three years after that speech and well over two years after the official launch of the PEPFAR and there is little if any evidence that the Bush administration has begun to think about making the phone calls to set up the meetings to arrange for the opportunity for it to avail itself of these lower prices offered by generic producers or even the slightest bit of movement in the direction of procuring generic ARVs…..not even those ALREADY APPROVED FOR USE by the WHO with US government dollars.

WHY ! ?

The department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been quite clear, very early on, that it would NOT purchase WHO pre-qualified generic ARVs, arguing that the WHO's process was not “as rigorous” as that of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in how it assesses the quality of drugs. HHS makes special note to point out the example of existing pre-qualified WHO treatments where up to 3 different drugs have been combined in a single pill.

So, rather than procuring affordable, bio-equivalent generics, that are already pre-qualified by the WHO and being used to treat hundreds of thousands of people living with HIV/AIDS, the United States Department of Health and Human Services is going to have an ideological argument about whose drug testing and qualifying process is better, while hundreds of thousands of people are dying horrific deaths?

THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS! SCANDALOUS! SHAMEFUL! UNCONSCIONABLE!

The most superficial research, readily available on the internet, seems pretty clear that argument has NO BASIS IN REALITY!

COUNTLESS national governments, international organizations who provide treatment (i.e. Doctors Without Borders) and known global initiatives (i.e. Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria, the Clinton Foundation, etc) rely on the WHO’s Pre-qualification Project to certify the quality and efficacy of both generic and brand-named drugs that they recommend and purchase for their programs.

Herein lies the rub. This is where the American Pharmaceutical companies get their noses bent out of shape….and it’s all about marketing and money.

Ready?..OK here goes…..

The WHO's guidelines for ARV therapy RECOMMENDS 3-in-1 fixed-dose combinations for first-line therapy for the very basic reason that 3-in-1 fixed-dose combinations are easier to take and manage, especially in under developed countries.

OK, so let’s buy or make 3-in-1 fixed-dose combinations, right? Well, you see, the the thing you need to know is that these 3-in-1 fixed-doses are ONLY available from generic producers.

Get it? The large American Pharma Corporation DO NOT produce them.

Why?

Marketing and Money: Why make an all inclusive dosage at one price when you can charge three times that amount by marketing the same solution as three separate drugs?

In May of 2004, in their usual style and in an obvious attempt to deflect the ensuing international criticism challenging the refusal to purchase generic AIDS drugs and fixed-dose combination (FDCs), HHS announced a new FDA "Fast Track" process for reviewing generic and brand-name AIDS drugs whether FDC, co-packages, and a new process for single doses. This new FDA approval clears the product, albeit tentatively, "for consideration for purchase and use outside the United States, “ under PEPFAR guidelines.

Of course, these products are not allowed to be marketed in the U.S due to existing patents (ah here’s more $$$$) and/or data or marketing exclusivity (oh look…Mo Money!).

You’re seeing it right?

The Bush Administration’s insistence on abstinence-only programs to prevent AIDS is hobbling the developing world’s battle against the AIDS pandemic by ignoring and downplaying the role of condoms and other ‘non- abstinence-only’ efforts. The immeasurably destructive consequences that this policy is having on the people in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and other developing nations of the world is nothing less than scandalous.

The FDA approval system for generic AIDS drugs has created an absolutely needless and pointless duplication of the WHO pre-qualification project, that brings with it new regulatory obstacles in accessing generic drugs, whose sole beneficiary is the US Pharmaceutical industry. While the impression is that the U.S. uses "more stringent" standards than WHO it is, in reality, is the standards of testing efficacy. The bottom line is that people are dying in places that don’t have electricity. They don’t care whose system is more stringent. They just need medical relief and help.

Both policies are inhumane in the fact that they deny BASIC treatment and the opportunity to live tox millions of people all over the world, which in turn denies human being the basic right to dignity and the natural rights of life and the pursuit of happiness, ideals President Bush claims were good enough to go to war over to give to the people in the middle east.

As always Brothers and Sisters, this is SPAM friendly. I leave open the option for you to email this to everyone in your address book. The way it is situated, if you have your Rich Text editor on you can cut and past it with all the pictures and links in tact as well.

This is beyond partisan politics. This about saving the world and this IS something that you CAN do something about.

First, educate yourself:

http://www.ansafrica.org/ ANSA Africa do not accept contributions from government agencies or corporate companies whose values compromise our work or the work of our partners. It is because of the support of dedicated and caring individuals like yourself that ANSA can effectively stand apart from bigger organizations that need to place diplomacy and political loyalties above making a difference.

http://www.healthgap.org/ HealthGAP is an organization of U.S.-based AIDS and human rights activists, people living with HIV/AIDS, public health experts, fair trade advocates and concerned individuals who campaign against policies of neglect and avarice that deny treatment to millions and fuel the spread of HIV

http://www.who.int/en/ The World Health Organization is the United Nations specialized agency for health. It was established on 7 April 1948 and it’s stated goal is the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health

Now do this…and tell the world that is unacceptable!

Contact your elected representatives :http://www.congress.org/congressorg/homeLeague of Women Voters Media email database:Http://www.capwiz.com/lwv/dbq/mediaTV news addresses:http://digbig.com/4bqmqAddresses for major U.S. daily publications/wire services/weekly publications: http://digbig.com/4cqgeMajor publication addresses by state:http://digbig.com/4bwxw

EXTRA Guilty or Not Guilty: Tookie Williams vs the Politicization of the death penalty EXTRA

2005-11-29T18:10:00.000-08:00

Execution date: Dec. 13
Conviction: Stanley Tookie Williams 51, a co-founder of the Crips gang in Los Angeles, was found guilty in 1981 and sentenced to death for murdering a convenience store clerk, Albert Owens, in Whittier (Los Angeles County) and two motel owners, Yen-I Yang, Tsai-Shai Yang and their daughter Yee-Chen Lin during two separate robberies in 1979.

His final appeal, to the U.S. Supreme Court, was denied in October.

Williams' claims innocence and his petition for clemency briefly alleges that evidence against him was circumstantial and as well as racial bias in the convening of an all-white jury (Williams is black). With court appeals nearly exhausted, Williams has pointed to the children's books and gang-peace initiatives he has produced from behind prison walls as proof he is a reformed man and worthy of clemency. Williams has never admitted guilt for any of the murders he was convicted of.

Williams, 51, the co-founder of the Crips gang and the four-time convicted murderer, has become an anti-gang crusader and Nobel Peace Prize nominee while on death row.

What's next: With the world watching, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger must decide in the next few weeks whether Williams will live or die.

At Issue: After a year of plummeting popularity and squabbles with Democrats and labor unions over sometimes-arcane ideas about just how to change government, Schwarzenegger now turns to one of the more basic, weighty and far more gut-wrenching tasks of his office. Gov. Schwarzenegger must contemplate crime and punishment, redemption and race.

There is a strong national trend that has turned clemency based on atonement a new political third rail for political chief executives, flying hard and fast in the face of the conservative right’s schizophrenic and hypocritical ideas about the right to life, punishment, atonement and grace.

In the few weeks since a special election in California, marking a new low point of Schwarzenegger's tenure as governor, he is faced with a decision he admitted this week that he dreads.

As ridiculous and preposterous as infusion of the death penalty into political races actually is, it is rising to new extremes and warping the ability of our criminal justice system to hand down fair sentences based on crime and severity. While using the death penalty to gain political leverage is far from a novel concept, the morose demagoguery aimed at electorate, ghoulishly promising more executions is far beyond insidious and invasive.

The politicization of the death penalty results in a significant and horrifying defeat for the natural right, legal and personal freedoms which the American people so take for granted.

Candidates campaigning for legislative office loudly proclaim with a Gomez Addams ferver “Hang’uhm High” or “Let’uhm Fry” when asked about the death penalty. More ghoulish still are the judges and local prosecutors who, with a morbid pride more akin to Jeffery Domer than a public servant, cite the numbers of people they have succesfully sent to death row in their campaigns for political office.

The political promotion of capital punishment by those accountable for reading and executing the law is heinous, despicable, dangerous and in direct conflict with the basic judicial right of EVERY American Citizen to a fair and impartial hearing. This during an era of scores of commutations reaffirming the recent revelations that politicization of this issue increases EXPONENTIALLY the prospect that innocent people are going to be executed.

The anti-crime/pro- capital punishment advocates are in a constant foot race these days, in a morose, ‘one up man ship’ to out-do each other in expanding the death penalty to new crimes, curtailing the appeals process, lessening the burden of standards necessary to kill someone for a crime and, through increased pressure on their political representatives, are accelerating withdrawal of resources ESSENTIAL to defending those whose very life is on trail for the crimes there are accused of committing.

At the mercy of anti-crime zealots, in scewing blind justice, the very judges who regularly make the final decision on whether a defendant lives or dies, are more than not, subject to elections, appointments or confirmation proceedings, during which the ‘Hang’uhm High Crowd’ attacks as softness on crime, ANY judicial ruling short of execution. More dissolute still, is that it's in capital punishment cases where Prosecutors, who in most cases are the initial impetus with almost unlimited prudence as to when to pursue the death penalty, are repeatedly presented with occasion to transmit their blood thirsty "toughness" to the electorate by seeking a death sentence in a case.

Even mature, sagacious, respected jurists who dare to believe that capital punishment is arcane, inhumane and ineffective get voted out of office after correctly holding certain capital procedures unconstitutional. More unbelievable and terrifying is that there are candidates that are of such weak character that they afraid to speak out for fear of losing their job. (NOTE: Since 1973, 122 death row inmates have been released after being declared innocent after new evidence presented itself or the real criminals were caught).

LOSING THEIR JOB!!!!!! GIVE ME A BREAK!

Death row inmates, guilty and innocent alike, who would never have been given a death sentence if afforded a fair trial, have JOhnny Cochran or some alternate superior legal representation, are denied hearings or lawyers because, frankly, an evenhanded appeals process makes for a very unsexy sound bite.

NOW HERE THIS: The use of the death penalty, on the books in 38 of 50 US states, has declined since 1999, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. That year, 98 people were executed nationwide. Last year the number was 59 and is expected to be similar or LESS in 2005.

OK. Not enough? Dig this: No matter what it says on the box there is no such thing as a humane way to put a human being to death. If passing in ones sleep is the preferred way to die, when one must, then not one of the current forms of execution passes anywhere near this solar system of humane execution. The only humane thing is not to do it.

And yes kids, I did find and detail oout the Top 3 fcurrent forms of legal execution.

Lethal Injection: the condemned person is usually bound to a gurney and a member of the execution team positions several heart monitors on this skin. Two needles (one is a back-up) are then inserted into usable veins, usually in the inmates arms. Long tubes connect the needle through a hole in a cement block wall to several intravenous drips. At the warden's signal, a curtain is raised exposing the inmate to the witnesses in an adjoining room and the inmate is injected with sodium thiopental, pavulon or pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes the entire muscle system and stops the inmate's breathing. Finally, the flow of potassium chloride stops the heart. Death results from anesthetic overdose and respiratory and cardiac arrest

Electrocution: The person is usually shaved and strapped to a chair with belts that cross his chest, groin, legs, and arms. A metal skullcap-shaped electrode is attached to the scalp and forehead over a sponge moistened with saline. An additional electrode is moistened with conductive jelly (Electro-Creme) and attached to a portion of the prisoner's leg that has been shaved to reduce resistance to electricity. The warden signals the executioner, who pulls a handle to connect the power supply and a jolt of between 500 and 2000 volts, lasting for about 30 seconds, is given. Doctors check to see if the inmate's heart is still beating and if it is another jolt is applied, again and again until the prisoner is dead.

Gas Chamber: the condemned person is strapped to a chair in an airtight chamber. Below the chair rests a pail of sulfuric acid. A long stethoscope is typically affixed to the inmate so that a doctor outside the chamber can pronounce death. The warden then gives a signal to the executioner who flicks a lever that releases crystals of sodium cyanide into the pail. This causes a chemical reaction that releases hydrogen cyanide gas. The prisoner is instructed to breathe deeply to speed up the process. According to former San Quenton, California, Penitentiary warden, Clifton Duffy, "At first there is evidence of extreme horror, pain, and strangling. The eyes pop. The skin turns purple and the victim begins to drool." ….unquestionably experiencing pain and extreme anxiety...a sensation similar to the pain felt by a person during a heart attack, where essentially the heart is being deprived of oxygen." The inmate dies from hypoxia, the cutting-off of oxygen to the brain. At postmortem, an exhaust fan sucks the poison air out of the chamber, and the corpse is sprayed with ammonia to neutralize any remaining traces of cyanide. About a half an hour later, oderlies enter the chamber, wearing gas masks and rubber gloves. Their training manual advises them to ruffle the victim's hair to release any trapped cyanide gas before removing the deceased.

OH MY GOD! WHAT HAVE WE BECOME?

How can these be the actions of one the most free people in the world? We are on par with countries the likes of which are North Korea, Iran, Vietnam, the Peoples Republic of China who still practice the death penalty as a regular part of their judicial sentencing.

PLEASE STOP THE INSANITY!

To contact your elected representatives:http://www.congress.org/congressorg/home

League of Women Voters Media email database:Http://www.capwiz.com/lwv/dbq/media

TV news addresses:http://digbig.com/4bqmq

Addresses for major U.S. daily publications/wire services/weekly publications: http://digbig.com/4cqge

Major publication addresses by state:http://digbig.com/4bwxw

Political intrigue and scandal to rival the Fall of the Roman Empire

2005-11-29T14:04:00.000-08:00

In yet another bit of bad news for the Republicans, Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham resigned his office today after pleading guilty to fraud, conspiracy to commit bribery and tax evasion in a political corruption case.

While it’s my first reaction to chalk another one up on the board, it just struck me that the opposition probably has just a many bad eggs as the GOP does. It’s just they haven’t been caught....yet.

I mean we had a Rhodes Scholar in office the last time a Democrat was in the White House and he couldn’t seem to keep himself out of trouble, so who’s to say what troubles are a brewing if and when the DNC takes over again.

Most troubling and the bigger question is: What happens to a man like Duke Cunningham, with his Happy Days Americana name? The Duke was pretty blatant about his dealings and didn’t seem to trouble to cover it up much, at first. I mean com’on, you’re there because you took an oath to faithfully defend and protect the constitution of the United States and the values and peoples that it protects.

And this is no ordinary American guy here, this guy is like an actual hero. He was, at the age of 25, one of the most highly decorated pilots in the Vietnam War and the first fighter ace of the war. He was nominated for the Medal of Honor, received the Navy Cross, two Silver Stars, fifteen Air Medals, the Purple Heart, and several other decorations and THEN went on to TEACH at the Top Gun Naval Aviation flight school at Miramar. The people of California's 50th Congressional District saw fit to re elect Duke Cunningham to eight terms in the House of Representatives where his sits on the PERMANENT Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Appropriations Committee, which is where he got in to trouble.

Even if you are arrogant enough to think you COULD get away with it, if not the shame of getting caught and what it might mean to the people who trusted you and what that kind of scandal would bring down upon you colleagues and family, I am dumbfounded as to how a man of SUCH character…A bona fided, dyed in wool, walking talking HERO, like you see in the movies god sakes….how does such a man get to the point of taking brides worth millions of dollars? I just can’t do the math! Someone, please help me!

According to the court papers, Cunningham "DEMANDED” and received at least one bribe from a defense contractor who paid an inflated price for Cunningham's home in exchange for official favors and in another he lived aboard a 42-foot boat, renamed the Duke Stir, while he was in Washington.

He DEMNDED! Holy Power Crazed Politician Batman!

He didn’t even TRY to hide it. And, because his wife, Nancy, took the illegal gains from the sale of their previous home in Del Mar Heights and used them to buy their current house, their NEW home is going to be forfeited, much as the government seizes property from drug dealers and other criminals.

So you're going to jail and your wife and kids are now gong to be homeless. This is another fine mess you've gotten yourself in to.

What happened to that noble heroic character and why did it fail him when he really needed it to keep him FROM ever getting involved in this sort of thing? Why didn’t he roll over on the people offering the bribes when they did and end it all then? I mean I had a bandit tow company hijack my car in a scam recently and I knew the CELL NUMBER of the City Attorney who was investigating those crooks and I'm a nobody. I don’t get it! Has the political beast started to eat its own? Was it like a crack addicction? Once you've taken one bride you can't stop taking them? How did you end up taking the first one (no addict ever really remembers)?

Now go here: Who were the GOP power brokers who thought Duke was worthy to sit on two of the most powerful, influencial committees in Congress? Are they guilty of sending the defense contractors to Representative Cunningham? Can they be indicted, too? THE TRUE CONSPIRACY THEORIST REARS HIS UGLY HEAD!

Mr. Cunnningham must be just as mystified, because in his press conference on the jail house steps, right before the perp walk, he says straight out "I misled my friends, family and myself. The truth is, I broke the law and disgraced my office and myself…..and now I know great shame…"

He knows what he did and could'a just did the perp walk and said, 'Hey I'm going to jail as an old man' and been done with it. If you don’t think that took character, courage and strength to stand up and admit it, think back to the last time you had to admit to a minor office mistake and how you were in knots trying to think of how you were going to tell someone. THIS GUYS IS GOING TO JAIL FOR A FEDERAL FELONY!

It made me further think about the other societal issues like AIDS in Africa, the looming 1000th Federal Execution, the homeless, working mothers, public education, healthcare for the poor and the elderly and all the other issues that are rampant because of the lack of character and heart in our country.

What has happened to our personal values? Where have were gone SO wrong and gotten so heartless and SO corrupt and that a man of PROVEN strength, courage and character...a fighter pilot…an ACE….a WAR HERO, faced and beat death on a daily basis...not even HE could withstand the temptation to enrich himself at the risk of his reputation?

Furthermore, how is it that we could have elected a convicted DUI, recovering cocaine addict, air force reserve deserter, Yale C student (which ask any Ivy Leaguer, there is no C....anything below a B is a fail) to the presidency? How can guys like Joe Biden still not be considered worthy becaseu of faux pas in his college final paper (plagiarism I think it was). How can our tales of political intrigue and scandal rival those of the Roman Empire (before it’s fall)?

It won’t be enough to win back the White House, friends. We need to win it back and do what the Republicans arrogantly shouted they would do: bring integrity back to the White House and to government as a whole. Not with speeches and grandstanding, or 'look at thems' but with determined, focused action.

As we always do at the end of each of these rants, we practice what we preach. What is your action here? What do you need to do?

Your message to your representatives and senators and news media moguls is to listen and learn from this. Let them know you are watching with a keen eye to their actions and the results, personally and professionally, of those actions.

Let them know Little Brother is watching too, and he ain’t have’in none of THAT!

To contact your elected representatives:
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/home

League of Women Voters Media email database:
Http://www.capwiz.com/lwv/dbq/media

TV news addresses:
http://digbig.com/4bqmq

Addresses for major U.S. daily publications/wire services/weekly publications: http://digbig.com/4cqge

Major publication addresses by state:
http://digbig.com/4bwxw

Day of Thanksgiving Proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln

2005-11-25T10:15:00.000-08:00

By Presidential Proclamation on October 3 1863, a national day of Thanksgiving has been observed annually in the United States.

This was the the middle of the Civil War, and, in response to a series of editorials written by Sarah Josepha Hale (the last of which appeared in the September 1863) President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day, to be celebrated on the final Thursday in November 1863.

Or current state of affairs as a society, a culture, politically and economically; made me think of President Lincoln's proclamation. As you read this, keep in your mind the humble beginnings of this son of uneducated farmer pioneers. The eloquence and prose leap off the page.

Almost a prayer, this Presidential Proclamation hits at the very heart of a spirit that seems to be dissapearing with increasing speed, that used to typify, to quote Linclon again, "the better angels of our nature." A man whose life and career typifies our dreams of what is possible.

As we draw towards the close of the year and we gather with family and friends, let's reflect on these thoughts, appreciate the bounty of the harvest of our lives, and in whatever capcaity we do, take count of our "blessings"

"The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom".

"No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy".

"It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union".

"Dishonest and reprehensible" and "corrupt and shameless" Dick Cheney to Headline DeLay Fundraiser

2005-11-23T15:37:00.000-08:00

Vice President Dick Cheney is out there now throwing words around like "Dishonest and reprehensible" and "corrupt and shameless" in such a condescending tone (cuz ya know he wants to cus and kick something right now) at anyReprehensible one who dares suggest that President Bush or anyone else in the administration had exaggerated or twisted pre-war intelligence to build the case for invading Iraq is now, with no shame, attending a campaign fundraiser for embattled Rep. Tom DeLay as the headliner.
Reprehensible

EXPLAINER: Tom DeLay is the Texas Republican Congressman who was indicted earlier this year on campaign finance-related charges, an action that forced him to step down at least temporarily as House majority leader.

This from the same Dick Cheney who said once, “"When I was Secretary of Defense, my biggest problem was with the Congress of the United States”. How quickly we're delirious with power and fotune and the bucks are rolling in for me and my friend eh, Dickie boy?

Gather round children and let's just see The Veep means by the words "Dishonest and reprehensible" and "corrupt and shameless". Let's look at his career:

Cheney's rule as the CEO of Halliburton was characterized by a ruthless geopolitical strategy that put aside political beliefs whenever they were inconvenient. In a number of cases, Halliburton and its subsidiaries supported or even ordered human rights violations and broke international laws.
Libyan dictator and suspected anti-U.S. terrorist Moammar Gadhafi engaged a foreign subsidiary of Halliburton company Brown & Root to perform millions of dollars worth of work. According to the Baltimore Sun, Brown & Root was fined $3.8 million for violating Libyan sanctions. (Although, fair to say, Cheney was not leading Halliburton at the time that the those sales were started, however, subsidiaries' sales to Libya continued throughout his tenure, unabated.)

Cheney has also claimed that he supported the U.S. sanctions on Iraq. However, through foreign subsidiaries and affiliates, Halliburton became the biggest (as in there ain’t none bigger) oil contractor for Iraq, selling more than $73 million in goods and services to Saddam Hussein's regime. (See http://gwbush.com/spots/postpage.html for a Washington Post article on the matter.)

Other Halliburton Highlights include such hits as:

Cheney's 2000 income from Halliburton: $36,086,635 • Increase in government contracts to Halliburton under Cheney leadership by 91%
The SMALLEST (as in there ain’t none smaller) size "accounting irregularity" that occurred while Cheney was CEO: $100,000,000 (spelled out – if all those zeros are making you dizzy - One hundred MILLION dollars).
Number of "State Sponsors of Terror" out of the seven, per the official US list, that Halliburton contracted with: 2 out of 7
Pages of Energy Plan documents Cheney refused to give congressional investigators: 13,500
Presidential campaign contributions that energy companies gave to the Bush/Cheney: $1,800,000 (UPDATE: Believe it or not, Halliburton is being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for Enron-style accounting practices that took place while Cheney was CEO. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/30/business/30HALL.html

So I guess it’s true; birds of feather DO flock together.

OK, which one of you guys thought it was OK to elect a ticket whose #2 guy was OBVIOSULY going to benefit by having ‘their man’ on the inside track?

Let me bore you with a little more EXPLAINER and let’s look at the definitions of the words "Dishonest and reprehensible", "corrupt and shameless."

Dishonest : Pronunciation: (")di-'sä-n&st also -'zä- Function: adjectiveEtymology: Middle English, from Middle French deshoneste, from des- dis- + honeste honest1 obsolete : SHAMEFUL, UNCHASTE 2 : characterized by lack of truth, honesty, or trustworthiness : UNFAIR, DECEPTIVE - dis·hon·est·ly adverbsynonyms DISHONEST, DECEITFUL, MENDACIOUS, UNTRUTHFUL
Reprehensible: Pronunciation: "re-pri-'hen(t)-s&-b&lFunction: adjective : worthy of or deserving reprehension 1 : worthy of or deserving judgment involving condemnation2 archaic : worthy of or deserving OPINION, JUDGMENT3 : worthy of or deserving blame or stern condemnation4 : worthy of or deserving an official reprimand
Corrupt: Pronunciation: k&-'r&ptFunction: verb Etymology: Middle English, from Latin corruptus, past participle of corrumpere, from com- + rumpere to break -- more at REAVE transitive senses1 a : to change from good to bad in morals, manners, or actions; also : BRIBE b : to degrade with unsound principles or moral values2 : ROT, SPOIL3 : to subject (a person) to corruption of blood4 : to alter from the original or correct form or version intransitive senses5 a : to become tainted or rotten b : to become morally debased6 : to cause disintegration or ruin
Shameless: Pronunciation: 'shAm-l&sFunction: adjective1 : having no shame : insensible to disgrace2 : showing lack of shame : DISGRACEFUL

Becareful, Señor Dick. Make your words soft and sweet as they may be the ones, someday you'll eat....and no one wants to eat...well...you know....

As always, my friends (and apparently I have more than I knew - thanks again for readiing folks)…
ranting with out action is treason to the truth. I have done all the hard work for you, all yoou need to do is act.

Please join me in SPAMMING the following people.

Send a letter to your local and national newspaper editors, news producers and news desks and ask them WHY you had to read this on a blog? A very well researched, factual and articulate blog, but a blog just the same.

This is SPAM appropriate friends. Send it to your entire address book. Begin and end each broadcast with Justice O’Connor’s words "a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens."

To contact your elected representatives:

http://www.congress.org/congressorg/home

League of Women Voters Media email database: Http://www.capwiz.com/lwv/dbq/media

TV news addresses: http://digbig.com/4bqmq

Addresses for major U.S. daily publications/wire services/weekly publications: http://digbig.com/4cqge

Major publication addresses by state: http://digbig.com/4bwxw

P.S. Kudos to the www.MoveOn.org website for the heads up on this information. I did double check it against other sources, but it was their site that lead me to it. Thanks guys!

Free air time on television - THE ONLY WAY to reconcile and create a fair system.

2005-11-22T06:13:00.000-08:00

I got an interesting email from someone I never heard of asking that I re post this old entry.

I didn't know anyone but me read this. Thanks! Enjoy!

In American democracy, speech is free but communicating is gonna cost ya! – especially if you’re trying to run for office. This is the #1 reason we have the “leaders” we have.

As the cost of getting elected keeps up with the cost of gas, the candidates we end up with are the wealthy and well-financed and they don’t give voters a choice at all. The typical winner outspends the typical loser by nearly three to one during the campaign. 98.5 percent of all incumbents seeking reelection were successful (i.e.: If you can’t write a big check to your local television station to pay for a nightly salvo of punch-ads, you’ll still have your freedom of speech, you just won’t be heard or elected).

Elections are supposed to be about when the “OUT’S” clash with the “IN’S” over bettering society, and letting US decide which is best, if either, allowing us to grow as a society.

Elections should allow for disagreements to be aired, fresh starts to be kicked off, and/or the “devil we know” to be re-affirmed.

Elections build mandates and provide accountability to those who “promise” X, Y, Z changes on A, B, C issues.

Elections transform the population into a citizenry and the citizenry into the sovereign.

When we let money become the ruling authority over who gets heard and elected, we are short changing ourselves out of a contest of ideas and range of choices that are SUPPOSED to be what elections are all about. WORSE: After the election, the public gets stuck with officials who are more in debt to their financial contributors and not their constituents. Ask now, why there is such cynicism driving people away from their responsibility to vote, starting the vicious circle of politicians thinking they need to communicate MORE on mass, pushing the cost of communicating to them even higher (and supply and demand kicks in) over and over the vicious cycle churns.

Free air time on television, as is done in virtually all of the world’s other democracies, it is THE ONLY WAY to reconcile and create a fair system.

Two separate mandates should be imposed on the broadcast industry in developing a free air time system (which by the way, the people, via the FCC own):

First: It should be required that television and radio stations to devote a reasonable amount of air time during the campaign season to issue-based candidate forums (debates, interviews, town hall meetings, etc).

Second: It should be required of stations to provide qualifying candidates and parties with vouchers to run a reasonable number of free ads in the period before an election.

Free air time is not a silver bullet, by any means. It will not drive money out of politics altogether, but it will provide communication opportunities to ALL candidates regardless of their financial circumstances. It WILL would open up the political process to many talented, visionary, people, that WE NEED to run, but who are currently priced out of the market.That, at LEAST, will allow for a free-ER exchange of ideas among competing candidates and reduce the relative importance of deep pocket groups with ancillary objectives and interests.

More information = More choice = More power.

This is all our fault. We allowed the process to govern itself and restrict our access to the political process. Shame on us! We let the “Boob Tube” people (who brought you reality TV, American Idol, Soap Operas, ‘The Simpsons’ and ‘Friends’, which while entertaining does nothing to empower you, by the way) to make MONEY on our airwaves from power crazed politicians, at the expense of who runs our society.

Banning “soft money,” (large donations that go to political parties) is a good first step, but ONLY a first step. It’s time for a next step that speaks to reducing the DEMAND for political money (eliminating PAY to PLAY).

Free air time is the most cutting, deepest slashing, tangible (again we own the airwaves), practical and equitable way to get back to a more even playing field

Democrats Seek Documents on Lobbyist and Bush Meeting

2005-11-12T12:12:00.000-08:00

Oh No George...not ANOTHER one....?

By PHILIP SHENON
Published: November 12, 2005 – The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/12/politics/12lobby.html

WASHINGTON, Nov. 11 - House Democratic leaders called on the White House on Friday to release documents showing whether a powerful Republican lobbyist had a role in arranging an Oval Office meeting last year between President Bush and the president of the West African nation of Gabon, whose government had been asked by the lobbyist to pay $9 million to help arrange such a meeting.

The White House and the State Department have said that the meeting with President Omar Bongo of Gabon on May 26, 2004,
was routine and that there was no evidence of any involvement by Mr. Abramoff.

Wow will the Nixon parallels never end for Georgie Porgie? Isn’t this exactly how Watergate came about? Little pieces of the fabric unraveling here and there and a couple of hungry writers sunk their teeth in to it and RRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIP…is was over for Ticky Dick lickety split!

So the Bush administration didn’t have enough sense to keep arms distance, or they were arrogant enough to believe they could get away with it, but they let Mr Abramoff IN THE WHITE HOUSE and treated him as an INLFUENCE BROKER (for money) to the President of the United States, if the current accusations can be believed.

In the latest of political mudslides for the Bush administration, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California (the House Democratic leader) and Representative Henry A. Waxman of California (Senior Democrat on the Government Reform Committee,), requested in a formal letter to the White House counsel's office (the presidents lawyer), copies of "all records relating to any connections between White House staff" and the lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, specifically "regarding a visit by representatives of Gabon."

ruh roh….

This new information came about Mr. Abramoff's contacts with Gabon came to light when the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, which is investigating his lobbying for Indian tribes and their gambling operations, released hundreds of pages of documents from his files, wherein existed a July 2003 letter from Abramoff to President Bongo, urging Gabon to hire him as a lobbyist.

The New York Times also claims to have “other documents”, possibly a “draft contract” that Mr. Abramoff and his colleagues drew up in August ‘03 that detailing that Mr. Gabon pay $9 million for a "public relations effort related to promoting Gabon and securing a visit for President Bongo with the president of the United States."

RUH ROH!

Let’s be fair and say that other than this article and as of yet, unseen records in the possession of the New York Times, there is no evidence confirming or denying whether Mr. Abramoff completed a contract with Gabon and/or received any money from it.

Mr. Abramoff is currently under indictment in Florida and under investigation by a federal grand jury in Washington D.C. A spokeswoman for Mr Abramoff would not discuss the lobbyist's approach to President Bongo.

Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, said, "President Bush met with President Bongo because he believes in good U.S.-Africa relations, and if Democrats question that, that's their business." The White House had no comment , however, on whether it would release documents to the House Democrats, who also requested material from the State Department about President Bongo's meeting.

Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Waxman have stated that "...it is impossible for Congress and the public to assess this assertion without further documentation from the White House."

"a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens."

2005-11-07T10:44:00.000-08:00

Supreme Court to Hear Tribunals Challenge By GINA HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 1 minute ago

THE NEWS:

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court agreed Monday to consider a challenge to the Bush administration's military tribunals for foreign terror suspects, a major test of the government's wartime powers. Justices will decide whether Osama bin Laden's former, driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, can be tried for war crimes before military officers in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

THE ISSUE: Just in case you need some talking points for when you are embattled with neo-patriots created by the fear mongering that the Bush Administration has stirred up; THIS is why a balanced court is ESSENTIAL and why Judge Alito can NOT be allowed to sit on the bench.

As the article states, the Supreme is going to hear a challenge to the Bush administration's military tribunals for foreign terror suspects, which is not only a major check of the government's wartime powers, but will put Chief Justice Roberts (who as an appeals court judge, ruled against Hamdan this summer) in the difficult situation of sitting in judgment of one of his own rulings.

In contrast when the Supreme Court first took up cases involving or as a result of the government's war on terrorism, the well known swing vote, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, in one case, found and wrote that "a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens."

ACTIONS: Also send it your local, state, and congressional representatives. Send it to your local and national newspaper editors. Send it to the local news producers and news desks. This is SPAM appropriate. Send it to your entire address book. Begin and end each broadcast with Justice O’Connor’s words "a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens."

To contact your elected representatives: http://www.congress.org/congressorg/home/

League of Women Voters Media email database: Http://www.capwiz.com/lwv/dbq/media

TV news addresses: http://digbig.com/4bqmq

Addresses for major U.S. daily publications/wire services/weekly publications: http://digbig.com/4cqge

Major publication addresses by state: http://digbig.com/4bwxw

Bush sets short list for court - Sources name 2 conservative appeals judges

2005-10-30T10:52:00.000-08:00

In the immortal words of Ronnie Ray-Gun, “Mr. Bush, there you go again.”

I can't believe I saw this Chicago Tribune headline:

Bush sets short list for court
Sources name 2 conservative appeals judges
Published October 30, 2005 - Chicago Tribune Washington Bureau
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0510300283oct30,1,2576545.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

Hoping to use the smoke from the own prairie fire of bad news for his administration lately, Mr Bush holds fast to the ‘holier than thou/superior’ posture of the Republican party and has released a short list of Super Conservatives as potential next picks for the Supreme Court. Mr Bush is expected to announce today or Monday, that he has narrowed the focus to Judges Samuel Alito of New Jersey and J. Michael Luttig of Virginia. But don't rule out Priscilla Owens. Mr Bush hasn;t met a judicila appointment he didn;t like her for, and doesn't know the meaning of the word, DENIED!

Let’s examine shall we:

J. Michael Luttig

On first look you could say that Judge J. Michael Luttig, a conservative with a legal pedigree that includes clerkships for Judge Antonin Scalia, on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1982-83 and for Chief Justice Warren E. Burger in 1983-84 was the most Roberts like nominee. You have to dig deeper…oh and read his blog…(don’t these guys know those tings are public?) Luttig is regarded as a staunch federalist in the mold of Justices Scalia and Thomas.

Judge Luttig, a George H.W. Bush nominated judge, has long been a prominent player in national legal circles and a rising star among conservatives during his decade-long seat on the appeals court.

"His reputation is one of an extremely smart, hard-line conservative," said Heather Gerken, an assistant professor at Harvard Law School. Gerken also says that Judge Luttig, “is recognized as one of the nation's most prominent "feeder" judges, whose clerks go on to be law clerks at the Supreme Court” who are reputed to be among the most conservative clerks in the high court (and if they follow in his footsteps, potential conservative Supreme Court nominees themselves).

Two years ago, Judge Luttig wrote an opinion striking down the Violence Against Women Act that would have allowed women to sue their attackers for monetary damages, In 1998, he reversed a lower court ruling and upheld a Virginia ban on partial birth abortion. A year earlier he issued a ruling allowing the state to require parental notification before a teen-ager could obtain an abortion.

Judge Luttig has accorded deference to the basic principles of abortion rights, which might wrongly turn some political conservatives against him, approvingly cited statements from Casey and Stenberg that Roe v. Wade should be upheld, stating that judges should not inject personal affinities into decisions of law, and that, “abortion, as a right granted by the Supreme Court, is unassailable as precedent unless or until overturned by the Supreme Court’.

Judge Luttig spoke in a panel discussion during the 2003 convention of the American Constitution Society (FYI - a liberal policy organization whose arch enemy is The Federalist Society) on judicial activism. In which Judge Luttig defined activism as "the substitution of a judge's personal predelictions for law, whatever form that substitution takes." He then spoke out strongly against "activism" by judges of all stripes: "...it should not matter to either jurist [conservative or liberal], that his activism is employed in moderation. The conservative and liberal jurist alike should regard activism in moderation as no more defensible than activism in excess, the attempted defense of such as folly." He closed by saying, “I think we risk that when, after vicious confirmation hearings in which these labels are thrown around without definition, we risk that the judicial employee, regardless of their conscientiousness, will fall into the belief that he or she should vote a particular way, because that is the political platform of the appointing president. And when that occurs, there will, indeed, be no difference... between politics and law."

A hint at Judge Luttig’s independent streak that, consistent with his judicial philosophy, might not make him attractive to any hyper-politicized folks in the Bush administration, and subject to a venomous and acerbic confirmation fight to the post of Supreme Court Justice. Here, he's hoping get that chance. I can’t believe they actually say these things.
http://jmluttig.blogspot.com/
Monday, October 03, 2005
HAIRY-ETTE: ALL EYELINER, NO JURISPRUDENCE

Every hour that goes by, the more depressed I get. It's not that I'm mad about not being appointed to the Supreme Court. (I mean, I am, but this is much bigger than that.) It's that the President of the United States, whom at this point I wouldn't allow one of my clerks to hire as a manual laborer, had to choose such a sycophantic lightweight to fill what would have been my seat. The only possible distinction that Hairy-Ette might hold is she's the first Supreme Court nominee whose eyeliner is thicker than her curriculum vitae.

Samuel Alito

Judge Alito was the sole dissenter on the Third Circuit in “Planned Parenthood v. Casey”, wisely struck down a Pennsylvania law that required women seeking abortions to consult their husbands. His case: That a majority of probable reasons for an abortion (economic constraints, future plans, the husbands' previously expressed opposition, etc) may prevent and “make unnecessary” through ‘talking it out” an abortion." What if SHE decided she didn’t want the bay? What if the husband was abusive and was using a ‘forced’ pregnancy to keep the wife a salve and victim of that marriage. The case went on to the Supreme Court, and the lower upheld the court's decision 6 to 3.

Lawrence Lustberg, a New Jersey criminal defense lawyer who has tried numerous cases before Judge Alito on the Third Circuit since 1981, describes him as "an activist conservatist judge" who narrowly construes prisoners' and criminals' rights and is "very prosecutorial from the bench.” “He has looked to be creative in his conservatism, which is, I think, as much a Rehnquist as a Scalia trait," Lustberg says.

"Scalito" as he is regarded, for his views resembling those of conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Judge Samuel Alito Jr. also appears to not know what is appropriate behavior for a Federal Judge, much less Supreme Court Associate Justice. Lucky for us he writes a regular blog. http://samuelalito.blogspot.com/ You have to read this. It is frightening, his lack of discretion or apparent lack of concern for perception of his personal judgment.

A favorite son of the political right, weith strong ties to former Republican administrations, Judge Alito was appointed in 1990 by George H.W. Bush to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Alito has been in frequent, vocal dissent in a court that has been historically liberal.

Priscilla Owen

Judge Owen’s steadfast conservative legal opinions mirror her, inarguable judicial activism (even by Judge Owen herself, on numerous occasions) that falls outside the mainstream and out at grave risk the continued vigorous enforcement of constitutional and legal rights in the areas of civil rights and civil liberties. Owen too often used the power of the bench to promote her own ultra-conservative, pro-corporate views. Owen was out of the mainstream, even by Texas standards

Supporters called Judge Owen a no-nonsense, "consistent conservative" with long experience as a state-court judge. Opponents criticize her conservative positions on red hot social and economic issues, her pro-corporate and her pro-life posture.

On July 23, 2002, the Senate Judiciary Committee held its first hearing on Priscilla Owen. Attended by most members of the Committee, this day-long hearing allowed for an exhaustive review Judge Owen’s record and allowed her numerous opportunities to clarify her record and/or opportunity to rebut the allegations being made about her judicial activism. Unable to satisfy the Committee that she would not be a judicial activist, and her nomination was voted down by the Committee on September 5, 2002

Senators rejected Owen for appointment to the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit because of her record as an activist Texas Supreme Court justice who repeatedly ruled against reproductive rights, open government, environmental protection and workers and consumers.

In a series of cases beginning in 2000, Justice Owen and the Texas Supreme Court had to interpret a Texas statute that allowed young women to obtain a judicial bypass rather than notifying their parents that they intended to exercise their right to choose legal abortion. In these “Jane Doe” cases, repeatedly the Texas high court rejected one of many attempts by Owen to prevent a young woman from obtaining an abortion by placing insurmountable hurdles between young women and their constitutional right to choose, hurdles that could not and cannot be justified, causing one of the justices, who formed the majority, to explicitly denounce Owen's effort to thwart the clear intent of the law, declaring (in a very Owen-esque tone) her actions as "an unconscionable act of judicial activism."

The Texas justice who identified Owen as a radical jurist, US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales finds himself. Gonzales argued, in another example, that one of Owen's positions taken in dissent would "judicially amend" a statute for the benefit of manufacturers selling defective products. On abortion, Democrats criticized Owen for consistenly voting against judicial overrides of Texas's parental-notification abortion law. On a court with nine Republican appointees,

Although Owen has not had occasion as a judge to interpret Roe or Casey, her judicial activism in the Jane Doe cases is strongly predictive of a judge who would draw sharp limits on the protection to the right to choose afforded by Roe as reaffirmed in Casey. The Casey "undue burden" standard allows significant discretion from lower court judges in determining when a restriction on access to abortion is constitutional. It is clear from the Jane Doe cases that Owen would use this discretion to continue to chip away at women's reproductive rights

Owen's parental notification opinions show a willingness to use judicial activism to rewrite statutes she finds unappealing. Her abortion dissents have been characterized as "inflammatory and irresponsible rhetoric" and she has been chastised by her own colleagues on the conservative Texas Supreme Court for "impos[ing her] own personal convictions into what must be a strictly legal inquiry." Her nomination must continue to be rejected by the Senate.

When was the last time you heard any good news?

2005-10-28T15:03:00.000-07:00

Ladies and Gentlemen –

After the scandalous news for the GOP of the past few weeks and Governor Dean’s wishy washy showing on the Sunday shows lately, it has become apparent that “we the people, in order to” re take our imperfect union and continue it on path where the nation and society can be judged by how well the least in our society is realizing their own American Dream, we MUST, quickly and immediately, get and stay on a message that resounds through out the nation.

If the Democratic Party and its members are the lesser of two evils compared to the outright 3 ring circus that is currently the Bush administration, we have a “clarity of message” problem my friends.

These are days when the Mr. Bush, right before going into his “terrorist boogieman” “evil people” speech has the unmitigated nerve to stand up in front of a crowd of people and actually talk about Rosa Parks as if she had something to do with anything that changed anything in his or his collective family’s life. This from a President who thinks that the Patriot Act is actually in anyway patriotic.

Let’s start simple, shall we…how about something like…

When was the last time you heard any good news?

That’s simple and to the point and leaves the conversation open to start talking about a time when gas near or under $2 a gallon; when the economy was not only growing, but allowing opportunity for ALL Americans to buy to the prosperity; when you weren’t afraid of what might be lurking in the shadows or the color of the nation security threat level. Days when we hoped to see the light and not just the end of a seemingly endless quagmire of a nightmare. Days when we talked about healthcare and top shelf education for all. Days when we found ways to help people from being welfare dependant to self reliant, which in the end gave them a sense of purpose and being, which we all need, rich, poor, white, black, red, yellow or polka-dotted.

When was the last time you thought that there was promise in tomorrow? Hope for the future?

These are the questions wee need to be asking ourselves and the people around us. This is the message we need to drive home if we hope to go back to the days when the welfare roles were being lightened by progressive programs that helped people find their better day.

When was the last time you heard any good news?

When their was a national surplus and not a runaway national debt.

When you little worried what minor civil liberty was next going to be chipped away from your shrinking list rights and freedoms.

When our leaders asked for our participation and help in moving in a direction and not told that we “just gotta understand” this or that.

When was the last time you heard any good news?

Now is also the time for us to write our local Democratic leaders and tell them to put on pads and a helmet and get in to the game. Now is the time to huddle, call the plays and put points on the board. Now is the time to publicly stand together and detail out a stand, for better of worse, what we as Democrats believe and plan on doing once back to steering the ship of state towards an inclusive brighter day for all.

We just can’t be for whatever the Republicans are against. We have to be for SOMETHING. A standard. A belief. An ideal. Things people can look at and say, “Hey, that’s me! I think that way.”

So clear your mind and sincerely ask yourself, when was the last time you heard any good news?

The Red Planet is about to be spectacular!

2005-08-08T19:09:00.000-07:00

This is just TOO amazing...at least read it and ponder....
I wonder how many people on the planet will actually take a moment and go outside and check this out...
And if they do, I wonder if it is one of the few things we could say about oursevlves (via history) about 'these days', with all the fear and terror hanging over us....if we all took a moment to look up at the sky wonder gape in awe at the Mighty Red Giant bearing down on us...would it be one of the rare fly specks of moments in history when we forgot ourselves and stared in wonder at something totally out of our control?
Should we rent a telelscope and throw a part at Griffith Park or the beach or the desert ?...if any one wants to let me know I'm game...
Fw: MARS SPECTACULAR

The Red Planet is about to be spectacular!

This month and next, Earth is catching up with Mars in an encounter that will culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history. The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287. Due to the way Jupiter's gravity tugs on Mars and perturbs its orbit, astronomers can only be certain that Mars has not come this close to Earth in the Last 5,000years, but it may be as long as 60,000 years before it happens again.

The encounter will culminate on August 27th when Mars comes to within 34,649,589 miles of Earth and will be (next to the moon) the brightest object in the night sky. It will attain a magnitude of -2.9 and will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide. At a modest 75-power magnification Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. Mars will be easy to spot. At the beginning of August it will rise in the east at10p.m. and reach its azimuth at about 3 a.m.

By the end of August when the two planets are closest, Mars will rise at nightfall and reach its highest point in the sky at 12:30a.m.! That's pretty convenient to see something that no human being has seen in recorded history. So, mark your calendar at the beginning of August to see Mars grow progressively brighter and brighter throughout the month

Share this with your children and grandchildren.

NO ONE ALIVE TODAYWILL EVER SEE THIS AGAIN

Website Update!

2004-07-03T11:24:00.000-07:00

I finally took the time to begin bringing my website in to the 21st century…and, if I can, drop it in to the same…hummm, how the hell am I going to do that?

I think some of the info is the same but I did update thing as I saw fit and where my tastes changed. What it REALLY is better looking. I stole some code from a cool website and used everything (except colors and content of course).

In looking for new content I discovered a website called ‘EscapeArtist.com’ VERY COOL…I may YET leave America behind for a career as an anonymous jazz pianist in Paris or Geneva.

You know looking back on this thing, it’s amazing how BIG a geek I really am…I mean really…who knew…

OK something for real then...Politics, Money and TV

2004-05-28T14:17:00.000-07:00

In American democracy, speech is free but communicating is gonna cost ya! – especially if you’re trying to run for office. This is the #1 reason we have the “leaders” we have. As the cost of getting elected keeps up with the cost of gas, the candidates we end up with are the wealthy and well-financed and they don’t give voters a choice at all. The typical winner outspends the typical loser by nearly three to one during the campaign. 98.5 percent of all incumbents seeking reelection were successful (i.e.: If you can’t write a big check to your local television station to pay for a nightly salvo of punch-ads, you’ll still have your freedom of speech, you just won’t be heard or elected).

Elections are supposed to be about when the “OUT’S” clash with the “IN’S” over bettering society, and letting US decide which is best, if either, allowing us to grow as a society. Elections should allow for disagreements to be aired, fresh starts to be kicked off, and/or the “devil we know” to be re-affirmed. Elections build mandates and provide accountability to those who “promise” X, Y, Z changes on A, B, C issues. Elections transform the population into a citizenry and the citizenry into the sovereign.

When we let money become the ruling authority over who gets heard and elected, we are short changing ourselves out of a contest of ideas and range of choices that are SUPPOSED to be what elections are all about. WORSE: After the election, the public gets stuck with officials who are more in debt to their financial contributors and not their constituents. Ask now, why there is such cynicism driving people away from their responsibility to vote, starting the vicious circle of politicians thinking they need to communicate MORE on mass, pushing the cost of communicating to them even higher (and supply and demand kicks in) over and over the vicious cycle churns.

Free air time on television, as is done in virtually all of the world’s other democracies, it THE ONLY WAY to reconcile and create a fair system. Two separate mandates should be imposed on the broadcast industry in developing a free air time system (and by the way, the people, via the FCC own the air waves). First, it should be required that television and radio stations to devote a reasonable amount of air time during the campaign season to issue-based candidate forums (debates, interviews, town hall meetings, etc). Second, it should be required of stations to provide qualifying candidates and parties with vouchers to run a reasonable number of free ads in the period before an election.

Free air time is not a silver bullet, by any means. It will not drive money out of politics altogether, but it will provide communication opportunities to ALL candidates regardless of their financial circumstances. It WILL would open up the political process to many talented, visionary, people, that WE NEED to run, but who are currently priced out of the market. That, at LEAST, will allow for a free-ER exchange of ideas among competing candidates and reduce the relative importance of deep pocket groups with ancillary objectives and interests. More information = More choice = More power.

It’s our fault. We allowed the process to govern itself and restrict our access to the political process. Shame on us! We let the “Boob Tube” people (who bring you reality TV, ‘The Simpsons’ and ‘Friends’, by the way) to make MONEY on our airwaves at the expense of who runs our society.

Banning “soft money,” (large donations that go to political parties) is a good first step, but ONLY a first step. It’s time for a next step that speaks to reducing the DEMAND for political money (eliminating PAY to PLAY). Free air time is the most cutting, deepest slashing, tangible (again we own the airwaves), practical and equitable way to get back to a more even playing field.

Here we go...

2004-05-28T13:58:00.000-07:00

All I wanted to do was respond to my friend Scott's first posting and here I am with my own...ee gad...