Tuesday evening's as good a time as any to take action...

If Barack Obama's healthcare plan gets changed to exclude a public option like Medicare, then it is not healthcare reform. Legislation rises and falls on whether the American public is allowed to choose a universally available public option or not. If they are allowed to choose Medicare as an option, this bill will be real healthcare reform. If they're not, we could be back fighting about it for another 20 years before anybody tries again."
Stand with Dr. Dean!

we are still at war- abroad and at home

a few things have occurred to me of late- one of the bigger ones being that the left is doing 'it' again. what is 'it'? screwing ourselves over. yep. the right declared war on 'big government' and 'libruls' decades ago and we just let it roll over us in our yuppie dash to riches, bigger houses, stuff to fill those bigger houses, etc. the war is still declared. we only have to listen to 'the other side' to hear it. it's like the southerners still fighting the civil war. and sadly, no, i am not kidding.

look, our jobs are not over simply because the left won one presidential election and a majority in congress. that's fleeting. the right is mobilizing it's twenty percenters to take back state and local governments again. that means our communities; our school boards; our state representatives; our governors; any elected officials. they are 'crossing over' to vote and they are masquerading as 'blue dog democrats.' and sadly, no, i am not kidding.

and what is the left doing? taking impatient pot shots at a man and his administration who inherited arguably the worst mess in the history of our country- and that is leeching out into the rest of the world. patience and practicality dictates that you allow the man to do his job- and that you direct your frustrations towards the people who deserve it- the congress.

it wasn't barack obama who led the charge and voted for the aig bonuses last september. nope. that would be nancy pelosi and harry reid and their devotees. our job as citizens is to hold their feet to the fire- we directly elect them. we make them hear our voices and represent us truthfully-- or we vote them out. the 2010 elections are next year. very quick. the rethugs are already gearing up to take back ground lost- and sadly, no, i am not kidding. just because you vote them out- or their administrations out- they aren't gone. they are lurking in the background designing more ways to seize power and money. they get it- we on the left are the ones who don't.

my thought is- sure, obama needs to be held accountable. but he hasn't even served 3 months of his first term yet and has done a heluva lotta work in a short time. pelosi, et al, have been in the majority since january, 2007- um... why is she still in office again? oh right. left wing folks in california voted her another term. makes me wonder why.

...ILLUSTRATED...

8 dead in nursing home shooting
-5-
U.S. deploys anti-missile ships before N.Korea launch
-4-
27 Killed as Gunmen Storm Police School in Pakistan
-3-
Key U.S. Allies Face Off in Iraq
-2-
Nixon, Khrushchev And A Story Of Cold War Love
-1-


Video from World War III Illustrated...

HIGH INTO THE MOIST AIR
the thread is now barren, too soon,
waving over the arid ground,
it splits again
and the cotton bleeds with the fallen lists of yon
giant horned butterflies swoop in with their drums
thrum-thrum-thrum, thrum-a-tum-tum
and the pageant fills the air in every city and the sky groans
thrum-thrum-thrum, thrum-a-tum-tum
the solemn horde stand in their mumble-stumble anthem
thrum-thrum-thrum, thrum-a-tum-tum
handkerchiefs are made handy for eyes dropping bombs in the dust
thrum-thrum-thrum, thrum-a-tum-tum
the holy alliance with the soil spilled long ago grows heavier still
thrum-thrum-thrum, thrum-a-tum-tum
soulless worms made of oil inch along in macabre silence
thrum-thrum-thrum, thrum-a-tum-tum
well dressed children stoop in slack-jawed bewilderment
thrum-thrum-thrum, thrum-a-tum-tum
a little boy is told to stop giggling this instant
thrum-thrum-thrum, thrum-a-tum-tum
the young lad won’t see that his laughter is out of order
thrum-thrum-thrum, thrum-a-tum-tum
and he notices all the solemn faces and bleeding cottons
thrum-thrum-thrum, thrum-a-tum-tum
and the giant horned butterflies beating their drums
thrum-thrum-thrum, thrum-a-tum-tum
the loudly torn anthem now stumbles to its horrid close
thrum-thrum-thrum, thrum-a-tum-tum
and the butterflies lift their drums high into the moist air
thrum-thrum-thrum, thrum-a-tum-tum
the sky tumbles down with a tyrant’s ferocity
thrum! thrum! thrum! thrum-a-tum-tum!
the pageantry is quickly called on account of rain
thrum! thrum! thrum! thrum-a-tum-tum!
and the little boy cries as the giant horned butterflies come crashing
THRUM! THRUM! THRUM! THRUM! THRUM!

© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman

AIGee Whiz!

Cancel your $#@!^&% bonuses!

Malaria is the single greatest killer of children in Africa....

And even though this disease is completely curable, one to three million children will still die, because for many families in developing countries, effective treatments and preventative bed nets are too expensive.

Last year, the Clinton Foundation launched a pilot subsidy program in Tanzania--the country with the highest rate of deaths from malaria in southern Africa--to make safe, effective malaria treatment available to those who couldn't normally afford treatment. The initial findings of the pilot showed a drop in price from $10 to $0.50 in pilot areas--a 95 percent decrease.

But they can't do this alone. Please support President Clinton and the Clinton Foundation in their goal to increase access to affordable ACTs to people around the world.

Max Baucus Is A Corporatist Class Warrior

The topic below was originally posted on the Intrepid Liberal Journal, yesterday evening.

A personal friend and avid reader of my blog recently complained that,

“You’re too tough on Democrats and Barack Obama. Since the election you’ve fired more rhetorical bullets at Democrats than Republicans.”

This was in response to my recent critiques of the Obama administration's handling of the banking crisis as well as my March 8th post, entitled “Evan Bayh Is A Corporatist Class Warrior.” To my friend and others like him I say this: just because I worked hard to elect Democrats as well as our current president doesn’t make me an unquestioning Borg drone.

Our conservative counterparts cheered while George W. Bush and his party brought America to its knees with their insipid indecency. Now it’s the Democrats in power and they must also be held accountable. The purpose of my activism as well as the participation of the “netroots” contained three objectives:

1) End predatory conservatism’s reign of indecency.

2) Enable the Democrats to obtain power in exchange for influence.

3) Leverage our influence within the party to pursue policies that facilitate broad prosperity, peace and social justice.

Put simply it’s a business relationship. Democrats are using people like me and we’re using the party. That said, I fully acknowledge the mess President Obama and Democrats have inherited and appreciate how four decades of predatory conservatism can’t be undone in two months.

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I’m patient as long we’re going in the right direction and a strong critique from the left is necessary to keep the party and administration honest. I prefer to think of it as “constructive engagement.” Recently, in a podcast interview with me longtime journalist and author, William Greider referred to it as a “righteous struggle.” Overall, I believe the creative tension has gone reasonably well on some issues and less so on others. Now that Democrats control two of the three branches of government, vigilance is even more imperative.

Entrenched moneyed interests realize the onetime Republican gravy train is irrelevant and instead hope to persuade “Blue Dog” Democrats like Evan Bayh with dollars and even lucrative jobs for their families. Another Democrat beholden to corporate interests is Montana Senator Max Baucus, the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Regrettably, Baucus has been an aggressive apostle of Washington’s rewarding wealth over work culture since his election in 1978. Sadly, as Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Baucus has jurisdiction over any health care legislation that congress passes.

Yesterday, Howard Dean said that unless Americans have the choice of enrolling in a new public health care plan, the system won't be made more efficient. Most Americans would prefer to have a public option for health care. Yet Senator Baucus had the following reaction:

“Let’s see what we come up with. I think we can accomplish the objective [Dean] wants without [a public plan]. We can, we’re going to have to work on it. But we may have to have it, [Dean] may be right. Just don’t know yet.”

Translation, Baucus is willing to offer rhetorical platitudes suggesting he supports expanding health care but is really working to preserve the domain of the medical industrial complex at the expense of regular folks. According to OpenSecrets.org, these are the top five industries contributing to Baucus campaigns between 2003-2008:

• Securities & Investment $832,918

• Lawyers/Law Firms $668,004

• Insurance $590,185

• Health Professionals $537,141

• Pharmaceuticals/Health Products $524,813
  

There you have it. Baucus is beholden to Wall Street financiers at the expense of wage earners and small business entrepreneurs and the lapdog of a health care industry that prioritizes profit over wellness.

His voting record certainly reflects the donations he’s received. For example, Baucus was one of eighteen Democrats to support the 2005 predatory bankruptcy legislation passed by congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush. Baucus also supported the Bush administration's catastrophic tax cuts in 2001 that helped give us the deficits so called moderate Democrats like him claim to worry about today.

Indeed, it seems moderate Democrats like Baucus always promote fiscal responsibility until it gets in the way of redistributing wealth from wage earners living paycheck to paycheck to the super rich. How the hell has this dude managed to maintain a populist image in Montana?

Some may be tempted to rationalize that Baucus is the price for having a Democratic Senator from Montana. Recent evidence however suggests that is ridiculous. In 2006, Jon Tester defeated entrenched conservative Republican incumbent Conrad Burns with a populist campaign for the senate. And Brian Schweitzer has emerged as an effective, popular and progressive governor. Indeed, as a New Yorker I wish we had Schweitzer as our governor instead of the hapless David Paterson.

Democrats such as Max Baucus are the reason I've donated to Accountability Now. Accountability Now was founded by bloggers Glenn Greenwald and Jane Hamsher to provide a needed counterweight to pressure Democrats like Max Baucus. What I wrote about Indiana Senator Evan Bayh on March 8th is doubly true for Max Baucus:

“Nothing concentrates a politician’s mind like the prospect of a primary challenge. Accountability Now is a vehicle to obtain leverage and pressure Democrats such as Evan Bayh that opposing progressive change will put their careers in jeopardy. Delivering power to the Democratic Party in 2006 and 2008 was merely Phase One. Phase Two is transforming the Democratic Party as the people’s party rather than simply existing as the lesser corporatist evil in a two party duopoly.”

When Max Baucus guides his finance committee with respect to the health care debate and President Obama’s budget, it is imperative he hear from us. Baucus must be convinced that failure to act on behalf of the people’s interests will result in his political extinction. That is the only language entrenched power respects.

Even if you’re not a Montana resident, Baucus obviously accepts many contributions outside his state and as Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has disproportionate influence over the economic security of all Americans. It therefore seems reasonable that Americans across the country make it known to Baucus that we’ll be monitoring his actions closely and help end his career just as we helped elect Jon Tester in 2006. I did a lot of phone banking on Tester's behalf in 2006 and would be more than happy to volunteer on behalf of a liberal primary opponent to Max Baucus.

In the meantime, Baucus needs to feel the earth tremble beneath his feet. Click here for the telephone numbers of Baucus’s seven offices and here to email him.

Even with President Barack Obama in the White House, obtaining change we can believe in remains up to us. That means using our leverage to either place more liberal minded senators on that body's powerful finance committee or persuading status quo champions such as Max Baucus not to stand in our way.

Sliding Scale Bake Sale Reveals Plight of World's Women

I attended a local event at the Women's Intercultural Center for Women's History Month/International Women's Day last week that paired a special movie screening with a "sliding scale bake sale." Cupcakes and drinks cost a dollar each. But women got a special deal: those without children paid $.90, married moms paid $.73, and single moms paid $.60 for those same $1.00 items.

A sign explained what was happening:

------------------------------------------------------

"WHY THE DIFFERENT PRICES?

We don't mean to discriminate. But this is a

SLIDING SCALE BAKE SALE

The prices reflect the REAL WAGE GAP

between men, women, and women with children.

Even today, for each dollar that a man earns, a woman can expect to earn $.90, a married mom can expect to earn $.73, and a single mom can expect to earn $.60.

If this seems unfair at a bake sale, imagine how it feels in the real world, WHERE RENT AND FOOD ARE NOT SOLD ON A SLIDING SCALE.

Info source: www.momsrising.org"

-----------------------------------------------------

A question...

You should...

Have you...

...Got Green?

Give America a choice - Stand up with Dr. Dean

Sign the Healthcare Reform Petition!

FRIDAY (3/27/09)

Clinton Says US bears blame for Mexico's Drug War
They scurry from cathedral to slum,
Scuttle from high-rise to house,
Under fences and over walls
Our culpable voice calls us out.

Eric Cantor Went to Brittany Spears Concert

Songless, shiftless, spiritless,

And unreservedly deficient;

Birds that cannot sing flock in concert.

Pope 'distorting condom science'
Because our mind and hearts are human
Someone desires to drive a wooden stake through them
To keep us from breathing even a fragment of truth
That cuddles up now and again next to our naked flesh.

Pakistani and Afghan Taliban Unify in Face of U.S. Influx

Influx certainly means upon our arrival or invasion.

It seems we’ve failed to learn from our recent lessons.

Maybe we’re blind beneath our war-painted faces?

FOX - Five Sci-Fi Ideas That Became Reality
1. Cell Phones 2. Robots 3. Submarines
4. Space travel 5. Home entertainment systems
It seems, in their haste, they forgot about one-
6. Fox News Channel.

Shoddy wiring 'everywhere' on bases in Iraq

It is not only the occupied that are trapped there;

The darkness folds down over the faces of the invader

As the resurrection of bombs rattle their limbs

And screaming gunfire hammers their sleep.

© 2008 mrp/thepoetryman

EPA FYI

Take action to ban Mountain Top Removal Mining

How Many Christians Does it Take to Conquer the World?

Living in liberal western Massachusetts often feels quite like existing in a vacuum of liberalism and humanistic ideals. It's always a wake-up call when reality strikes through the news. backyard.

This morning it struck like a thunderbolt. I was driving to work and heard an NPR piece entitled
In Quiverful Movement, Birth Control is Shunned. The headline itself is not particularly drastic news from Christian fundamentalists but the news story that unfolded was, to me, one of the more offensive and disturbing I've heard in a long time.

It's nothing new that many fundamentalist Christians like to procreate as many Christian babies as they can. What was shocking to me were the words of some of the people interviewed for the piece.

Nancy Campbell, a leader of the Quiverfull movement and author of Be Fruitful and Multiply had this to say: "The womb is such a powerful weapon; it's a weapon against the enemy."

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The "enemy", it turns out, is the gay community and Muslims (read the article) and doubtless anyone, including Christians who don't interpret the bible in the same way as they do.

In an article from The Nation, which I discovered at QuiverFull.com, I quote this passage about the Quiverfull movement:

They refuse any attempt to regulate pregnancy. Quiverfull began with the publication of Rick and Jan Hess's 1989 book, A Full Quiver: Family Planning and the Lordship of Christ, which argues that God, as the "Great Physician" and sole "Birth Controller," opens and closes the womb on a case-by-case basis. Women's attempts to control their own bodies--the Lord's temple--are a seizure of divine power.

Another Quiverfull warrior by the name of Mary Pride is quoted in The Nation article as writing: "My body is not my own." This rebuttal of the feminist health text Our Bodies, Ourselves is deliberate. Quiverfull women are more than mothers. They're domestic warriors in the battle against what they see as forty years of destruction wrought by women's liberation: contraception, women's careers, abortion, divorce, homosexuality and child abuse, in that order.

A evangelical pastor:

"Some people think that what I'm doing--having eleven children--is wrong. I don't really get into that much. The Bible says 'be fruitful and multiply.' That's my belief system. They don't believe in God, so they think we have to conserve what we have. But in my belief system, He's going to give us a new earth." Overpopulation isn't a problem in a universe where God promises a clean global slate."


It's doubtful they'll have the large-scale impact they think they may have. But joined with other fundamentalist Christian churches, these people are going to be a constant thorn in the side of those of us who are pro-choice and support marriage equality. Look at the extent to which the Mormon community has grown, flourished financially and taken up the battle against marriage equality in the state of California.

Crony Capitalism at its best!

(Cross posted on The Aristocrats)

Here's what Mike Whitney has to say about Tim Geithner's Public Private Investment Partnership (PPIP):

What manner of man would conjure up a transaction where taxpayers put up 94 percent of the investment ut only stand to get 50 percent of the profits.

That's assuming there is a profit. If the toxic sludge goes bust, private investors only lose the six percent they put up.

Whitney goes on to point out that:

The Treasury Secretary's main job is 'to keep the banks in private hands' and to remove over a trillion dollars of toxic mortgage-backed assets that are worth only a fraction of their original value.

Isn't it time for some pitchforks and torches?

Don't Drill, Baby! Don't Drill!

Urge Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar to oppose new offshore oil and gas drilling in areas that were protected by the long-standing Congressional drilling moratorium.

Please visit Actionable Resistance to take more urgent actions!

Talking About Religion And Absurdity ...

... things could not get any worse in this respect - to whit (emphasis added):

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Bill in Texas would allow creationists to grant Masters of Science degrees

If a private college doesn't receive funds from any governmental organization, should they have to be held to any standards or requirements when they award degrees? No, one Texan lawmaker is insisting.

Texas State Representative Leo Berman has proposed House Bill 2800, which would exempt any private non-profit institution that requires students to complete “substantive course work” from having to acquire a certificate of authority from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board(THECB). “If you don’t take any federal funds, if you don’t take any state funds, you can do a lot more than some business that does take state funding or federal funding,” Berman says. “Why should you be regulated if you don’t take any state or federal funding?”

Because creationism isn't science, critics argue.

Berman admits that his 'inspiration' for the bill was the Institute for Creation Research Graduate School, a Young Earth Creationism institution that has been trying to achieve certification in Texas for two years. Young Earth Creationism, much more popular than the recent Intelligent Design Creationism, is essentially Biblical literalism – Earth is 10,000 years old, Noah's Flood occurred, Adam and Eve were real people. ICRGS insists that they teach more than just “Biblical Creationism," which is based only on the word of the Bible; they also have incorporated tenets of “Scientific Creationism” into their bylaws. Most of these relate to origins of Earth and the evolution of species. Originally the creationist research branch of Christian Heritage College in San Diego, the ICRGS was forced to split from that college when California regulators threatened to take away its certification. Now, the ICRGS operates mostly online, and its Masters of Science Degree is recognized by California and federal law. According to its website, however, Texas residents cannot receive a degree.

Degree-granting colleges and universities in Texas currently must be issued a certificate of authority by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. The certificate allows the holder to grant a degree that a graduate would need to apply for a teaching position in a Texas public school. If House Bill 2800 was made into law, only state-funded colleges and universities would have to report to THECB; everyone else would be free to design their curriculums without any regulation.

Here's what "M.Sc." means:

A Master of Science (Latin: Magister Scientiæ; abbreviated MSc, M.Sc., M.S. or S.M.) is a postgraduate academic master's degree awarded by universities in a large number of countries. The degree is typically studied for in the sciences.

It bears repeating: creationism is not science.

Creationism in fact belongs in theology (at best). Period.

And yet - here we are with such an absurd and ludicrous proposal to allow "private" (i.e. unregulated/unsupervised) institutions to give out M.Sc. degrees in non-sciences, in non-scientific religious/paranormal/supernatural beliefs.

What's next? B.Sc.'s in prayology? M.Sc.'s in demonology? Ph.D.'s in Spiritology?

A chiropractician who understands little about science as a Minister of Science and Technology?

I say again: welcome to the Semi-Dark Ages of superstitious ignorance.

And to think that, in the end, it's all in our heads.

Looks like constant vigilance on our part is de rigueur indeed if we are to prevent our modern, civilized nations from slowly and gradually becoming scientific/technological backwater societies ruled by parochial religious/supernatural beliefs ...

(More such absurdities can be found here, here and here, folks)

(Cross-posted from APOV)

Water - Ma'a - River - Rival

Circle of Blue.org - Water News

Take Action Tuesday!

1.

There's a lot of talk these days about "green collar" jobs - that they are the answer to our ailing economy as well as global warming. Well, it's time we start seeing these jobs in action.

Duke University has released a report, sponsored in part by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), that links low-carbon jobs to a growth in U.S. manufacturing. Now, EDF has started to map where these green jobs are, starting with 12 states - AR, CO, FL, GA, IN, MI, MO, NH, OH, PA, TN and VA (Visit LessCarbonMoreJobs.org for more info).

Whether you are in one of these states or not, you can help in your state! We need every governor in the country to be aware of what EDF is doing. And we need to encourage them to promote capping carbon as a way of incentivizing these low-carbon companies.

Green jobs are here! We just need to start rewarding their innovations. Please write to your governor today.

2.

Israel has issued demolition orders for an entire neighborhood in the East Jerusalem village of Silwan. This is one of the issues which spurred Secretary Clinton’s statement. Click here for more background on Silwan.

The policy of home demolition stands in blatant contradiction to Israel’s commitment to equality and human rights. The demolitions leave families homeless, and increase feelings of hostility toward Israel. Please let President Obama know that you support Secretary Clinton’s statement and urge the whole administration to follow these words up with actions to ensure Israel’s respect for human rights.

3.

President Obama has demonstrated his commitment to action on these issues by assuming $646 billion in revenue over 10 years from reducing global warming pollution.

About $80 billion of the dollars allocated in his plan for fiscal 2010 will help create an estimated 1.6 million green jobs across sectors including clean energy, transit and green infrastructure.

This proposal is a step towards solving global warming and building the resources to invest in the transition to a clean energy economy.

Ask Congress today to cast the right vote—and support this precedent-setting budget.

 4.

Curb Abuse by Credit Card Companies

global unrest looks more likely

than global peace. i have been battling a cold and so have been giving my garden a think. the prognosis this year is drought and continuing drought in many places considered 'bread baskets'- america's west and southwest, australia- not to mention what that will do to livestock. and we have almost 7 billion people- hovering around 6 billion 700 million or so right now- on the planet.

that doesn't bode well for our future. there have already been food riots in places like haiti- and around the world- and hungry and thirsty people are not going to be kind and rational. in fact, the un has posted an article declaring that the growing fresh water crisis in the world- is the single biggest security factor in the future.

it's much to wrap our minds around as we have lived in relative peace and harmony in the land of plenty. but i think it's valuable to think about what we would do in a situation where our families were starving and/or dehydrating and i think it's also valuable to think about keeping our families safe. i have the suspicion it's why we now have american troops stationed within our borders for the first time in modern history and why our police are looking more and more paramilitary.

wars have been started and fought over less- but natural, basic resources for 6+ billion people- not a sustainable, renewable option. people's will to survive is strong but the will is not enough.

SOMETHING SLEEPING THIS WAY COMES (403)

TUESDAY (3/24/09)

Something Wicked (or good, depending on your perspective) This Way Comes

O! It moves with such cruelty, such a violent gait,

It seems to breathe of a bastardized conception;

Less human, more beast, without love or teeth.

15 AIG execs agree to return bonus

Whether millions is even comprehensible

to us normal Joes

Isn’t the astounding thing...

We’ll never see such weight, yet our hands

Hands of our living,

Sagging low of struggle,

Exhausted like a sea of promises at sundown

Tell a different story.

Suicide attack on Iraqi funeral

Even the wavering spirits, the dull hearted

And brooding children are due a walk in the valley.

The devotion of arid prayer brings even rainfall to grief.

Accused "sleeper agent" pleads not guilty in U.S.

In the slowness of our watch,

Our startled and clatter filled lives

Echo a self-imposed blunder

Used to smash our prattling teeth.

Sunni Fighters Say Iraq Didn’t Keep Promises on Jobs

“Work!” cried the people covered in blood.

“Truth!” cried the people grown of torn flesh.

Promises in the gray-skied streets lining

The rumble of the Twin Rivers;

No certainty, happy triumph, sleep or love

Left to extinguish.

EPA: Warming Endangers Health

When we are through with our flowery speeches, when we are done

With our marches on bombed out streets, when we no longer covet

And we stop our crying and revulsion and rage and furious sway,

Will the earth cool?

Dalai Lama refused visa for peace summit

If love and peace are silenced for profit

Then what chance has liberty

Or happiness to speak?

© 2008 mrp/thepoetryman

ONE TWO PUNCH

 ONE

This week, the House will again take up the Omnibus Public Land Management Act, landmark legislation that would protect more than two million acres of public lands as Wilderness in nine different states. Many measures in the bill have been at play for years, and this is the culmination of significant work by The Wilderness Society, partner groups, and citizen activists nationwide.

Please take action to help win this vote in the House. If this legislation passes, it will be on the way to the White House for signature.

TWO

Horses deserve a more dignified end to their lives than to be inhumanely slaughtered and served for dinner. The Prevention of Equine Cruelty Act will end this practice by prohibiting the transport of America's horses to foreign countries for slaughter. Please contact your representative now and urge him or her to cosponsor and support H.R. 503!

FUNDAMENTALS

The fundamentals of our economy may not be strong- 

The fundamentals of Wall Street may have lost their way- 

The fundamentals of our banking system may be corrupt and unethical- 

The fundamentals of our health care is in need of sweeping changes, 

But the fundamentals of the following exchange

between our president 

and 

Kroft of 60 Minutes is rock solid...

OBAMA: I fundamentally disagree with Dick Cheney. Not surprisingly. You know, I think that Vice President Cheney has been at the head of a movement whose notion is somehow that we can't reconcile our core values, our constitution, our belief that we don't torture, with our national security interests. I think he's drawing the wrong lesson from history. The facts don't bear him out. I think he is... that attitude, that philosophy has done incredible damage to our image and position in the world. I mean, the fact of the matter is, after all these years, how many convictions actually came out of Guantanamo? How many... how many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney? It hasn't made us safer. What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment, which means that there is constant effective recruitment of Arab fighters and Muslim fighters against U.S. interests all around the world.

KROFT: Some of it being organized by a few people who were released from Guantanamo.

OBAMA: Well, there is no doubt that we have not done a particularly effective job in sorting rough who are truly dangerous individuals that we've got to make sure are not a threat to us, who are folks that we just swept up. The whole premise of Guantanamo promoted by Vice President Cheney was that, somehow, the American system of justice was not up to the task of dealing with these terrorists. I fundamentally disagree with that. Now, do these folks deserve miranda rights? Do they deserve to be treated like a shoplifter down the block? Of course not.

KROFT: What do you do with those people?

OBAMA: Well, I think we're going to have to figure out a mechanism to make sure that they are not released and do us harm, but do so in a way that is consistent with both our traditions, sense of due process, international law. But this... this is the legacy that's been left behind and, you know, i'm surprised that the vice president is eager to defend a legacy that was unsustainable. Let's assume that we didn't change these practices. How... how long are we going to go? Are we going to just keep on going until, you know, the entire Muslim world and Arab world despises us? Do we think that's really going to make us safer? I... I don't know a lot of thoughtful thinkers, liberal or conservative, who think that was the right approach.

Come Home America: An Interview With Truth Teller William Greider

The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

I first became aware of William Greider after the publication of his 1981 Atlantic Monthly profile of President Reagan’s embattled Office of Management and Budget Director (“OMB”), David Stockman. At the time I was just a kid and the Reagan administration insisted they could simultaneously balance the budget, cut taxes and increase defense spending exponentially.

Greider’s reporting however exposed that even Stockman, doubted the fiscal prudence of Reaganomics. After the article’s publication, Stockman absorbed public humiliation when President Reagan took him “to the woodshed.” I trace that article as a seminal moment in my own political awareness.

Over the years, Greider has been a determined voice of truth against a backdrop of America’s pro-war, pro-Wall Street governing elites and their enablers inside the corporate media. While Alan Greenspan was celebrated, Greider warned that the Federal Reserve and other regulatory agencies were guilty of dereliction. When celebrated economists such as Paul Krugman extolled the virtues of free trade and globalization, Greider warned of diminished wages at home and condemned the shameful exploitation our consumption habits subsidized abroad.

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Greider’s latest book, Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country, just published by Rodale, is a manifesto of hope and warning. In Chapter One, Greider writes:

“Think of America at this point as a muscular teenager, full of talent, adolescent energy, and youth’s over-reaching impulses. This is a critical stage in human development and for our nation it could go either way. Some nations that acted like willful children when they were young formed balanced societies when they became adults. Other nations have never really grown up.

The question, I think is whether-we-the people who proudly call ourselves Americans – can mature as a society. The country can develop a deeper sense of what matters most in life and what doesn’t. It can shed some self-destructive reflexes and acquire a wiser sense of national self-interest that is anchored in the nation’s ideals. Wisdom tempers egotism. This is true for both people and nations.

Or, the United States can plunge ahead self-indulgently, repeating destructive habits, acting out reckless ambitions, and getting into deeper trouble. We all know children who, for whatever reason, got older but never found themselves. This is possible for nations too, especially ones that refuse to reconcile themselves to new realities.

I am betting we will grow into our maturity and hoping that lots of Americans agree.”

Greider’s book chronicles why America is in dire straits and proposes numerous solutions to facilitate a better economic foundation for America's struggling middle class. His recommendations include consolidating many of the Federal Reserve’s functions within the executive branch to ensure public accountability for monetary policy, replacing private pension plans such as 401ks with government pension plans instead and capping U.S. trade deficits through a general emergency tariff authorized under the charter of the World Trade Organization.

Even more than any singular remedy however, Greider’s book urges outraged citizens to embrace activism as a means of forcing the powerful in the public and private sectors to finally put our national interests above corporate greed. Ultimately, Greider's book argues that the current crisis is an opportunity for citizens to reengage and facilitate a more just and equitable society.

Greider is the best-selling author of five previous books, including One World, Ready or Not; Who Will Tell the People; and Secrets of the Temple. He’s written for the Washington Post and Rolling Stone as well as serving as an on-air correspondent for six PBS Frontline documentaries. Currently, Greider is the national affairs correspondent for The Nation.

Greider agreed to a podcast telephone interview with me this afternoon about his book and views. Our conversation was just over forty-eight minutes and among the topics we discussed were the current A.I.G. bonus controversy, the Democratic Party’s culpability in overriding state and local laws against usury, his recommendations to overhaul the Federal Reserve and America’s pension system, our destructive relationship with China, America’s excessive militarism and the fine line being walked by activists who support the Democratic Party and President Obama while simultaneously pushing for real change.

Please refer to the flash media player below.



This interview can also be accessed via the Itunes Store at no cost by searching for either the "Intrepid Liberal Journal" or "Robert Ellman."

Mother Earth To Take a Major Hit from US Government

In a major setback to the environment last week, the Laredo TX city council voted to allow the Border Patrol to aerially spray the US-Mexico border with the toxic herbicide Imazapyr, a substance which begins to kill all vegetation immediately upon application. Many residents at the meeting opposed this move, citing the environmental impact and potential health side effects, as well as the likelihood that the chemical could contaminate the water supply for Nuevo Laredo, their Mexican sister-city.

The accompanying photo (above) shows the effects of an aerial spray conducted six months prior on a test site near Laredo. Federal officials considered the results "successful" in efforts to eradicate the invasive plant carrizo; however, the site now slated for defoliation contains 1000 living species, including four endangered species. This photo was taken on the Zachary Ranch in March 2008 by Dr. Jim Earhart of the Rio Grande International Study Center.

Local activist Jay J. Johnson-Castro Sr. of the Rio Grande International Study Center stated in a telephone interview that federal agents intend to eventually spray the extensive border river area, from Big Bend to Brownsville Texas. "Why would they make the initial spray in a populated area?" he queried. Clearing 1.1 miles of border between the cities of Laredo and Nuevo Laredo will cost $2 Million.

Activists on the Yahoo group "No Border Wall" urge the public to contact the office of US Attorney General Eric Holder to protest the impending action: http://www.usdoj.gov/contact-us.html; Department of Justice Main Switchboard: 202-514-2000; Office of the Attorney General: 202-353-1555.

The detrimental effect of toxic air pollutants is documented on the US Environmental Protection Agency website.

This post has been cross-posted anywhere I could put it on the internet! For info on this developing story, click "Read More"

Read More +/-

As a participant on the No Border Wall Yahoo group, I first became aware of this story Tuesday last week. As far as I know, the spraying has not yet begun, although Laredo locals expected it would begin already last week. I will return and update this post when I hear that the spraying has happened.

http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/2755552-breaking-news-us-feds-to-defoliate-rio-grande-river-bank
Tiny URL: http://tinyurl.com/cu8xwo

It appeared on the US National Indymedia site:
http://indymedia.us/en/topic/cross_border/archive.shtml
or Tiny URL: http://tinyurl.com/c4rdom

and on a European internet citizen news site:
http://www.agoravox.com/edition_du_jour.php3?date_du_jour=2009-03-19
or Tiny URL: http://tinyurl.com/cgde8r

It ranked in the top 20 stories Wednesday on the "politics" branch of Reddit.com, and Thursday it hit #3 on the "environment" branch of Reddit.com.

Feel free to repost this story. I'm not looking for credit or for links; I just want to get the story to the public, before it is too late. This spraying will contaminate the soil for years to come, and it will contaminate the Rio Grande River, the drinking water for Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.

------

Update (2/22 PM): This story published yesterday (3/21) on an El Paso online newspaper:

http://www.newspapertree.com/news/3575-the-border-s-agent-orange-controversy

The information is still not in the mainstream media.

I CAN'T KEEP MY EYES...

(A Poetryman Video production)

© 2008 mrp/thepoetryman

Music by Amy Kuney - "The Blowers Daughter"

I CAN'T KEEP MY EYES OFF OF YOU...

A Poetryman Video production

© 2008 mrp/thepoetryman

Music by Amy Kuney - "The Blowers Daughter"...

TAKE TWO (now!)

1.

A panel of federal judges has ruled in favor of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in a controversial mountaintop removal mining legal case.

The ruling will permit mining companies to conduct devastating mountaintop removal coal mining operations without acting to minimize stream destruction or conducting adequate environmental reviews. 

Take ACTion!

2.

"Congress should change its rules to require that non-emergency legislation and conference reports be posted on the Internet for 72 hours before debate begins." READ THE BILL - ACTion!

 

Please take an AfghaniSTAND...

More troops won't solve our problems in Afghanistan. Click here to tell President Obama and Congress that we need a comprehensive plan for Afghanistan before risking more American and Afghan lives.

We have seen the disastrous consequences of heading into war without a plan in Iraq. We are still mourning American and Iraqi lives lost, and struggling to rehabilitate our economy while spending billions of dollars on war.

Peace Action calls for the 'rapid withdrawal' of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and a new commitment to a negotiated diplomatic solution involving all regional players.

A damn good article

An excellent article, "Free markets are not rational," can be found at

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/KC20Dj04.html.

Here is an excerpt:

The rational behavior of man has succeeded in removing more than 160 million rational men, women, and children of free will from the market, and with the dull precision of 100 million mallets, rationally pummeled the earth to pieces in its own best interest. Regardless, it still came to pass that "rational", as they say, was written by the victors, and so from the smoke and ruin of trial by fire came the forged steel sword of the American Way, embracing its own best interests by clinging to the myth as flag, an inviolate symbol of the good, the bad and the ugly.

Tomar medidas ahora!

UNO

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that in 2005, almost 95,000 Americans developed a MRSA (an antibiotic-resistant strain of "staph") infection, and 19,000 of them died from its symptoms, such as inflammation of the heart lining and pneumonia.

What's more shocking is that 85 percent of those infected with MRSA contracted it in health care facilities, largely due to inadequate sanitation procedures.

Congress must pass pending legislation that would lower the rate of MRSA and other deadly infections, including a bill that would require hospitals to publicly report infection rates. Tell your elected officials in Congress to vote to keep MRSA and other deadly superbugs out of our hospitals and communities.

DOS

The one click form here will send your personal message to all your government representatives selected below, with the subject "Investigate Cheney's Private Assassination Ring." At the same time you can send your personal comments only as a letter to the editor of your nearest local daily newspaper if you like.

SUPER FEINDS

Beck brought on his best Wingnut Super Friends, Michelle Malkin and Jonah Goldberg, to whine on Beck's Fox News show about the horrible torch-bearing mob that has been unleashed in the direction of those poor AIG executives. (H/t Crooks & Liars)

© 2008 mrp/thepoetryman

The Photography of Timothy Greenfield Sanders

The following images are photographs I took of the exhibition Injured Soldiers and Marines by Timothy Greenfield Sanders, when it came to The Brattleboro Museum in Vermont. The one above is not my photograph but one that was featured in the article I link to below.

HBO Special: Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq

"Injured Soldiers and Marines: Portraits by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders," is as powerful a reminder as you will see of the emotional and physical price so many have paid. Greenfield-Sanders, a well-known portrait photographer, was invited to make portraits of 17 Iraq war veterans to accompany the 2007 HBO film, "Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq." read the rest of the article here


Timothy Greenfield Sanders Homepage
Wikipedia page on Timothy Greenfield Sanders

TODAY & TOMORROW 1-4

1.

A New Foundation for Growth

President Obama submitted a budget to Congress that challenges the status quo and directly confronts the long-term threats to our prosperity.

But it's up to us to make sure Washington knows that Americans across the country stand by the President's plan to invest in energy, health care, and education.

Watch President Obama's message and get involved in the effort to make this plan a reality by calling your elected representatives and by joining a canvass this weekend.

2.

Today, the head of American International Group (AIG), the beleaguered insurance firm that has received $170 billion from the federal bailout to date, will testify before Congress. AIG Chief Executive Officer Edward M. Liddy will certainly be grilled by lawmakers about the $165 million AIG paid out in performance bonuses last week.

A large portion of the bonuses went to managers in the Financial Products division – the same division that created and marketed credit default swaps and other vehicles that inflated the financial bubble and exacerbated the ongoing financial crisis.

We, the undersigned, demand that executives return all of the bonuses and that Mr. Liddy answer the following questions: Your name here...

3.

Aung San Suu Kyi is still under house arrest and 2,000 pro democracy monks and activists are being held in inhumane conditions in Burmese prisons. Their crime: peacefully calling for democracy.

Click here to sign a petition to Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to call for their release.

4.

Over $100 million to AIG execs? Help get federal stimulus money to the people who really need it.

Your state needs to pass laws to update its unemployment insurance programs so that it will be eligible for all the available funding to help families.

Contact your Governor and state legislators today urging them to bring stimulus money to Main Street now!

Dear President Obama ...

... for someone who is supposed to know law and who has repeatedly pledged to respect not only the rule of law of your country but also international laws and treaties, you and your administration are definitely acting like two-faced, mendacious, incompetents.

Read More +/-

Indeed (emphasis added):

Obama Justice Dep. defends Rumsfeld in torture case

In a brief filed Thursday evening, Obama Justice Department lawyers extended many of the same arguments made by Bush attorneys – that top government officials have qualified immunity from prosecution and that Guantanamo detainees do not have constitutional rights to due process.

The Department of Justice has asserted that a Supreme Court ruling reaffirming the rights of Guantanamo detainees to habeus corpus does not apply to plaintiffs in a case against former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld because the plaintiffs were released from prison four years prior to the SCOTUS decision.

“It is fair to say that the current brief that is filed by the new administration supports a lot of the arguments that were made by the previous administration,” said Kate Toomey, an attorney with Baach Robinson & Lewis who is representing the former detainees in an interview with RAW STORY. “They continue to assert that torture was in the scope of employment and could be reasonably expected. They continue to assert that these [top officials] be entitled to immunity. They also continue to argue that detainees at Guantanamo don’t have constitutional rights.”

Let me remind you of what I previously conveyed to your CIA director, Mr. Leon Panetta:

(...) the Convention Against Torture, which was signed by President Reagan in 1988 and ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1994, explicitly states the following among others (emphasis added):

Article 2

1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.
2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.
3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

Article 4

1. Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law. The same shall apply to an attempt to commit torture and to an act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture.
2. Each State Party shall make these offences punishable by appropriate penalties which take into account their grave nature.

Article 5

1. Each State Party shall take such measures as may be necessary to establish its jurisdiction over the offences referred to in article 4 in the following cases:
   1. When the offences are committed in any territory under its jurisdiction or on board a ship or aircraft registered in that State;
   2. When the alleged offender is a national of that State;
   3. When the victim was a national of that State if that State considers it appropriate.
2. Each State Party shall likewise take such measures as may be necessary to establish its jurisdiction over such offences in cases where the alleged offender is present in any territory under its jurisdiction and it does not extradite him pursuant to article 8 to any of the States mentioned in Paragraph 1 of this article.
3. This Convention does not exclude any criminal jurisdiction exercised in accordance with internal law.

Article 7

1. The State Party in territory under whose jurisdiction a person alleged to have committed any offence referred to in article 4 is found, shall in the cases contemplated in article 5, if it does not extradite him, submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution.
2. These authorities shall take their decision in the same manner as in the case of any ordinary offence of a serious nature under the law of that State. In the cases referred to in article 5, paragraph 2, the standards of evidence required for prosecution and conviction shall in no way be less stringent than those which apply in the cases referred to in article 5, paragraph 1.
3. Any person regarding whom proceedings are brought in connection with any of the offences referred to in article 4 shall be guaranteed fair treatment at all stages of the proceedings.

Article 12

Each State Party shall ensure that its competent authorities proceed to a prompt and impartial investigation, wherever there is reasonable ground to believe that an act of torture has been committee in any territory under its jurisdiction.

Article 15

Each State Party shall ensure that any statement which is established to have been made as a result of torture shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceedings, except against a person accused of torture as evidence that the statement was made.

Incidentally, I ended this previous reminder of the laws of the land of your country, Mr. President, with the following probing question (addressed then to Mr. Panetta):

Are you then saying that you, and therefore the Obama administration, repudiate such laws?

It would seem that I now have an unequivocal answer to this question.

Hence, Mr. President, you and your administration stand in utter contempt of the laws of your own country, as well as of your own constitution and all international laws and treaties signed by your country to this effect.

Just be reminded of your very own words (emphasis added):

"But what we cannot do is have the president of the United States state, as a matter of policy, that there is a loophole or an exception where we would sanction torture. I think that diminishes us and it sends the wrong message to the world."

Therefore you, sir, are a blatant, shameless, hypocritical, and untrustworthy, liar.

Allow me to paraphrase what I conveyed already to your CIA director:

It should be obvious to you now, sir, that your demonstrated legal strategies so far not only constitute implied condoning of torture, but furthermore constitute a disavowal of the law of your country regarding torture - and consequently A) this makes you directly complicit after the fact of any and all acts of torture performed under the Bush administration; and B) this makes you directly complicit after the fact of the policies of torture sanctioned/approved/encouraged/allowed by the Bush administration.

All of which, under the same laws outlined above, render you and your administration equally guilty of criminal offences as outlined by said laws against torture.

Ergo: you and your administration are no better than your (criminal) predecessor and his administration.

Here is but yet another case in point: your pledge of government transparency versus your mendacious actions in this respect.

Mr. President Obama - you are a sham and an incompetent - and a criminal one at that.

Just. Like. Your. Predecessor.

You, sir, are no change at all.

You are merely an extension - and continuation - of the crimes against Humanity, human rights and civil rights, that have been committed over the last eight years, and which are now still being committed under you and your equally criminal administration.

Consequently, you may consider yourself put on notice regarding such criminality.

After all - ignorance of the law is not an excuse to justify breaking the law ... as you should well know.

May you go down as much in infamy as your predecessor has.

That, at the very least, would constitute small comfort to those of us who genuinely and sincerely uphold human rights, human decency and civil rights - you know - the truly civilized ones.

An ideal that you, sir, and your damned administration, cannot claim to be anymore.

(Cross-posted from APOV)

A Conversation (sort of) with George W. Bush

The audience of 2,000 of your sycophants paid $3,100 dollars per table to, I can only assume, listen to you apologize for your pathetically corrupt and mostly incompetent eight years as president. ...No. That would have been too unlike you. Huh, George?

"I want the president to succeed.

Gee! That’s mighty patriotic, not to mention grown-up of you, junior!

“I love my country more than I love politics.”

You’ve got one hell of an unpleasant way of showing it. This tells me that you haven’t a clue as to what the word “love” even means, which goes a long way in explaining why you think water boarding isn’t torture.

“I'm not going to spend my time criticizing Obama.”

That’s right, George. Your time will best be spent making jokes like the one you made in front of the crowd- "I actually paid for a house last fall. I think I'm the only American to have bought a house in the fall of 2008." –you miserable sack of shit!

“It's time for the former president to tap dance off the stage.”

Oh, but you’re still dancing, George! You’re still imagining yourself a Fred Astaire instead of a Fred Muggs!

“My purpose here today is not to criticize the president. He deserves my silence.”

The world deserves your silence, George. I’m rather sure, if they could’ve had their druthers, you’d have been silenced years ago.

“If he wants my help, he can pick up the phone and call me."

Again, George, you imagine yourself a man who has anything worthy to offer President Obama or humanity… other than your sincerest apology.

"I think it is essential that he be helped in office."

That’s funny. I, and millions of others, thought it was essential that you be helped OUT of office all the way back in two thousand and three.

"This is my maiden voyage.”

Damn, George! Must you also scare the children of Canada?

“My first speech since I was the president of the United States and I couldn't think of a better place to give it than Calgary."

You meant “…a safer place”, didn’t you?

"I’m going to write a book that’ll ask people to consider what they would do if they had to protect the United States as president.”

I can save you the trouble of writing a book that you’ll never read and neither will anyone else. The answer to your fallacious argument is `the opposite of you’. 

“It's going to be about the 12 toughest decisions I had to make."

Fascinating stuff, George! I suppose if the title of your book were “…the 12 mistakes (or crimes) I committed while in office.” then the number 12 would be laughably small, but at least it wouldn’t be a work of fiction...

"I'm going to put people in my place, so when the history of this administration is written at least there's an authoritarian voice saying exactly what happened."

What the-? …Okay. A couple of things right off the bat. Firstly, the Geneva Conventions do not permit you to put people in your place, George. Torture, I’m happy to say, is illegal again.

And secondly, when history is written about you George, it will indeed employ the word `authoritarian’ …And it will certainly, I hope, unlike your administration’s secrecy involving every-goddamned-thing, illustrate exactly what, when, where, how, why and to whom it happened!

"I want people to understand what it was like to sit in the Oval Office and have them come in and say we have captured Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, the alleged killer of a guy named Danny Pearl because he was simply Jewish, and we think we have information on further attacks on the United States."

You’re not the president anymore, George, so stop repeating the idiotic talking points (lies), you slithering shit-heel!

"I'm flattered people even want to hear me in the first place."

Come on, George! Your flatterers or ‘have mores’ can hardly be considered people, if, by people, you mean `human, with a heart, a brain, and dignity’…

"We just had a poll in our country where people decided that the foreign policy of the Bush administration ought to stay in place for four more years."

I guess one thing’s for certain; you haven’t changed one measly nth of a damned iota of a hairsbreadth of a mite-sized smidgen! You’re still lying like a damn dog! 

(In the 1950s, the Russian newspaper, Izvestia, described J. Fred Muggs, as "a symbol of the American way of life", and said, "Muggs is necessary in order that the average American should not look into reports on rising taxes, and decreasing pay, but rather laugh at the funny mug of a chimpanzee.")

Tip of the hat to The Huffington Post

birds on a wire

for some reason, that song has been running through my head.

so, big dick cheney is threatening a terrorist attack again. sigh. i don't get americans who want americans to die. this is the second time he has come out talking about terrorists attacks on american soil- after perpetrating 9/11/01.

i never thought i would ever have to live through domestic terrorism in my lifetime, but i have. and i never thought that i would ever have to entertain the idea that my country- once a democratic republic- would turn into a police state- but there's that very real possibility. even with barack obama as president. if we have another tragedy like 9/11 or the joblessness and homelessness turn even more desperate, we may see the troops deployed here on american soil for the first time in our history- turn against fellow americans. it's a very real possibility. and it's scary.

i am stubbornly and determinidly moving ahead with my gardening and sustainability plans. the birds are indeed on the wires in front of my house and they dine in my yard (hopefully on japanese beetle grubs) twice a day. life changes. i don't particularly want it to- especially in the ways it has changed so recently, but the buddha says that life changes. that our suffering comes from attaching ourselves to ideas and ways of life and clinging. some days i feel like i want a life preserver because i have fallen overboard but then i realize- hey, this is the life i have been given and i won't let the shortsighted, greedy bastards win.

and here i am- like a bird on a wire- trying in my way to be free:

TUESDAY (3/17/09)

Tancredo tells University Students "It IS About Race!"

There is an immense and colorless grief in the world

And so I urge no malice against this frenzied persuasion,

Call for no punishment; seek no apology or pain,

Instead, let us search for our own truths… without weeping.

Back from Iraq, soldiers look ahead

Returning to the disquieted world

Like a nomadic ghost covered in sand,

The uniforms

Carefully starched and pressed

Hold the warriors up,

Their eyes, stories of woe.

Mexico slaps tariffs on U.S. goods in truck feud

The crows, above our fears, fly,

Shadows trace along the wall

And money slips by.

White House Rebuffs Cheney

It will not be his last rejection,

But, fret not; gates will open for him again,

Hunched in the heaving nighttime

Bloodstained hands, talons.

NASA: Space Station Safe From Latest Debris

O! Again! Glorious is this achievement;

Machines lifting mere mortals to heaven...

If only man could be as magnificent.

Warning shot kills Iraqi girl, coalition says

A cautionary truth of war soars home.

Everyone knows we’ll no more embrace her affection

And that rising in her place, a world exposed,

More ready to punish her assassin.

© 2008 mrp/thepoetryman

Money, Families, Wall Street, Dr. Wicklund, Humanitarian, Darfur, Iraq/Afghanistan, Veterans

 1.

Tell your Senators to pass the "Helping Families Save Their Homes in Bankruptcy Act"

2.

Tell Congress -- no more money for banks until they tell us where it has all gone. 

3.

CNBC: Hold Wall Street accountable!

4.

Thank Dr. Wicklund...Thanks to the tireless work of Dr. Susan Wicklund, an abortion provider, Montana’s women and their families have choices. She’s provided abortion care for more than 20 years, and she frequently goes to work in a bullet-proof vest and often faces a mob of protesters.

Take a moment to write a thank-you note to Susan Wicklund and her dedicated staff.  -Your letters will be compiled and delivered to her directly.

5.

Help Restore Humanitarian Aid to Millions in Darfur...

 6.

Can you take a minute to help Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America with their newest television advertisement before they release it to the public?

DRAG-ON

(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)

O Mr. Maudlin, it’s a shame you were born of such pitiable motives

And decrepit spine.
You encourage such nausea; fetch such odium to the keepers of truth.
You spin such possibilities.
That’s all they are- No. They’re not even that. They’re white magic;
Vile and superfluous.

Tears of a clown. Fools play. Idiotic charades meant to lure the numb,
The elector androids with sacrosanct levers at their disposal and loud
Flapping jaws ready to drown out all reason and suffocate authenticity.
You’ve an audience riveted to your every word, howl, grimace and tear.
O how these toads must love your fiddle to be so blind to your pretense!

A two-towheaded rock star
Doling out your lies like a Pez dispenser and your crawlers with paws out,
Eyes winked and shit-stained brains sucking up every god-awful speech!
You must be proud to have such sycophants eating out of your hairy pickers.
Elated at the idea of your one-man show bringing fools to don their hankies.
You’ve been groomed, plumed, tuned and spooned out for our consumption
Without as much as a twinkling to the byproduct of such miserable fiction!
The smell must be agonizing following such a shit-crammed night of theatre!
Free Speedo® Nose Plugs for everyone! ShamWow’s® available in the lobby!
You’ve a bona fide Pansy scheme enchanting the natives with frivolous dread!
There’s an eerie whiff of Auschwitz.
A touch of Jonestown Jim Jones!
Post-sideshow to Heavens Gate.
Rise up preacher!
Rise up!
Rise up!

O, but you’re such an insensible little snake selling serum;
A super-tonic that makes hair grow over the eyes and turns the backbone into jelly.
Problem is it only seems to work on those already afflicted;
Those without reason at the outset, without cerebral curiosities.
You’ve captured them with your shady-shoed dance and crocodile tears.

“Pass the plate, my two-towheaded brother! I’ll give my last dime!”
“I’ll give my child to slay the seven-headed dragon consumption!”
“Yes! I too will sacrifice for the cause of liberty!”, “And I!”
“I will follow you!” “We are in!”, “Me too!”, “Yes!” and “Aye!”
Rang the cries of the useless throng…

© 2008 mrp/thepoetryman



Hat Tip to Crooks and Liars They Call Him Mr. Maudlin...

Clarence Darrow & Yogi Berra

The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

Arguably America’s greatest trial lawyer, Clarence Darrow, famously once said,

"First and last, it's a question of money. Those men who own the earth make the laws to protect what they have. They fix up a sort of fence or pen around what they have, and they fix the law so the fellow on the outside cannot get in. The laws are really organized for the protection of the men who rule the world. They were never organized or enforced to do justice. We have no system for doing justice, not the slightest in the world."

Reading this morning’s headlines about A.I.G. utilizing $165 million of their $170 billion tax payer financed bailout for bonuses, reminded me of Darrow’s insight. The excuse being offered after all is that a “contract is a contract” and A.I.G. must fulfill their obligations.

Isn’t it curious how contracts are deemed sacrosanct for Wall Street beneficiaries but not blue-collar members of unions in the auto industry? Unions are expected to get “realistic” and “ renegotiate” their contracts but moneyed elites are allowed to carry on as before. Anyone who has the temerity to point out the contradiction is “unreasonable,” “angry,” “extreme,” or heaven forbid, one of those “crazy left wing bloggers.”


Read More +/-

For what it’s worth, I personally believe all demographics must ultimately sacrifice for the greater good during this calamity. Unlike its imperial antecedents, the American empire has largely serviced the purpose of consumer excess – especially for the top. With America’s empire in decline, all hands must now be on deck to reverse our society’s cascade of ruin as we develop a new socio-economic paradigm, absent the perks and burdens of a hyper-power.

That means a tough transition for all of us as we cease to consume a quarter of the world’s resources, work to extricate ourselves from Beijing bankers and end our addiction to military conflict as a means of resolving disputes. Nonetheless, how can any president ask Americans to accept their health benefits being taxed, when A.I.G. is permitted to distribute unseemly bonuses after their conduct precipitated the current crisis? Bottom line, the worst insurance company in history is utilizing our tax dollars to reward their employees with bonuses, while the rest of us are treading water and being asked to shed even more skin.

I suspect most people understand we have to change in order to bring about change. That was my sense during the campaign as I canvassed and phonebanked. Indeed, as the Jon Stewart showdown with CNBC’s Jim Cramer illustrated, Americans are finally ready for hard truths after lies about WMD’s in Iraq while warning signs with respect to the current economic crisis were ignored. People are just desperate enough now to respond to hard truth if it’s backed up with a coherent strategy and the pain is absorbed fairly.

Alas, asking people who are currently teetering on the abyss to sacrifice has no credibility given the circumstances and messengers. How could it when tax-cheat Timothy Geithner and his plutocratic deregulating mentor from the Clinton Administration, Larry Summers, continue to subsidize thieves? The good people of A.I.G. are like the proverbial bank robbers holding bags of nitroglycerin. Give us your money they say or we’ll drop our nitroglycerin bags on what’s left of the global economy. So we continue to appease them.

Now in fairness to President Obama, he inherited what can only be described as a cluster fuck. And he hasn’t even been in office two months. Furthermore, much of the so-called political opposition as well as the establishment that critiques him, are simultaneously insipid and disingenuous. As I wrote a few days ago,

“Already you’re hearing voices question whether President Obama’s is pushing too much at once on the ‘system.’ These voices sound reasonable when they claim we should ‘fix the economy first’ and worry about health-care, energy and education later. They're enablers of capitalism’s dark underbelly, hoping to run out the clock on President Obama’s popularity and continue business as usual.”

Hence, I largely support the goals of President Obama’s proposed budget and have contempt for this “establishment” that failed to address the very challenges he dares to take on. Clarence Darrow would certainly recognize those that oppose Obama’s agenda as elites making laws to “protect what they have” at the expense of everyone else.

Yet each day that passes without the Obama administration implementing a credible, transparent and coherent strategy to address America’s banking and housing crisis, only serves to further tighten the Gordian knot of economic calamity. This week we're supposed to hear more from Secretary Geithner about his plans to resolve these challenges with a “public-private” partnership. I don’t have much faith in Geithner, an upwardly mobile tax-cheating plutocrat who previously served at the New York Federal Reserve Bank and engineered the TARP legislation that passed last fall.

So even though it hasn’t even been two months since Obama’s inaugural, a famous Yogi Berra quote also comes to mind:

“It gets late early around here.”

BECK'S DRAGON (399)

(398) photomontage RIP OFF

A Step Closer to Truth in the Death of "The Rainforest Martyr"

Sr. Dorothy Stang, a 74-year-old US nun, read the Bible aloud when the men came to kill her. They listened for a moment. then fired--there in the Amazon rainforest she loved enough to protect with her own life. She had lived among wealthy enemies for 30 years in the Amazon jungle, trying to preserve the environment and defend the rights of poor settlers against powerful ranchers eager to steal their land. Her corpse, lying face down in the mud just over four years ago in 2005, was shot pointblank six times: in the head, throat and body.

"Death in the Amazon" (4:20):


A rancher accused of ordering her murder is now charged with trying to fraudulently obtain the plot of Amazon rain forest she died trying to defend, a prosecutor stated yesterday. Rancher Regivaldo Galvao previously testified he had no interest in the property that 73-year-old Dorothy Stang protected, but prosecutors say Galvao presented documents to Brazil's Incra land reform agency in November asserting he owns the disputed land and demanding its return.

Federal prosecutor Felicio Pontes denies Galvao's claim that the land where Stang was killed is public. It is possible that Galvao's attempt to take the land will help convict him of killing the Dayton, Ohio nun.

"It will help the case of Dorothy's murder," Pontes stated, according to Associated Press Writer Bradley Brooks. "The case is still open and we can use the facts from this land case in Dorothy's. He is going to be found guilty, I have no doubt."

Prosecutors contend Galvao and another rancher hired the gunmen who killed Stang. Although he was arrested in 2005, he was freed on bail in 2006 and has since avoided trial through various legal maneuvers.

An acclaimed HBO documentary film, "They Killed Sister Dorothy," will air on HBO2 pay service Wednesday, March 25, 8-9:30 p.m. EDT. It treats the life and mission of Sister Dorothy, who admirers called "The Angel of the Amazon," in her quest for sustainable living practices.

"They Killed Sister Dorothy" trailer (3:28):


After she received several death threats Sister Dorothy commented, "I don't want to flee, nor do I want to abandon the battle of these farmers who live without any protection in the forest. They have the sacrosanct right to aspire to a better life on land where they can live and work with dignity while respecting the environment."

--crossposted on Border Explorer

Beck's Dragon

O Mr. Maudlin, it’s a shame you were born of such pitiable motives

And decrepit spine.
You encourage such nausea; fetch such odium to the keepers of truth.
You spin such possibilities.
That’s all they are- No. They’re not even that. They’re white magic;
Vile and superfluous.

Tears of a clown. Fools play. Idiotic charades meant to lure the numb,
The elector androids with sacrosanct levers at their disposal and loud
Flapping jaws ready to drown out all reason and suffocate authenticity.
You’ve an audience riveted to your every word, howl, grimace and tear.
O how these toads must love your fiddle to be so blind to your pretense!

A two-towheaded rock star
Doling out your lies like a Pez dispenser and your crawlers with paws out,
Eyes winked and shit-stained brains sucking up every god-awful speech!
You must be proud to have such sycophants eating out of your hairy pickers.
Elated at the idea of your one-man show bringing fools to don their hankies.
You’ve been groomed, plumed, tuned and spooned out for our consumption
Without as much as a twinkling to the byproduct of such miserable fiction!
The smell must be agonizing following such a shit-crammed night of theatre!
Free Speedo® Nose Plugs for everyone! ShamWow’s® available in the lobby!
You’ve a bona fide Pansy scheme enchanting the natives with frivolous dread!
There’s an eerie whiff of Auschwitz.
A touch of Jonestown Jim Jones!
Post-sideshow to Heavens Gate.
Rise up preacher!
Rise up!
Rise up!

O, but you’re such an insensible little snake selling serum;
A super-tonic that makes hair grow over the eyes and turns the backbone into jelly.
Problem is it only seems to work on those already afflicted;
Those without reason at the outset, without cerebral curiosities.
You’ve captured them with your shady-shoed dance and crocodile tears.

“Pass the plate, my two-towheaded brother! I’ll give my last dime!”
“I’ll give my child to slay the seven-headed dragon consumption!”
“Yes! I too will sacrifice for the cause of liberty!”, “And I!”
“I will follow you!” “We are in!”, “Me too!”, “Yes!” and “Aye!”
Rang the cries of the useless throng…

© 2008 mrp/thepoetryman

Hat Tip to Crooks and Liars They Call Him Mr. Maudlin...

CO-SPONSOR,PROTECT,DISSENT,CNBC

 Saturday Resistance!

Pro-Anti or Anti-Pro (a discussion with my muse.)

My muse has been banging the gong in my head for about two hours now. Before you ask… Yes. There is a gong in my head. It was put there years ago by men in white coats who said it would be used to keep my wits from colliding up against my colossal ignorance. To this day I do not know who those men were. One of them looked suspiciously like my Uncle Chester.

(Long pause.)

Yes. My muse must be banging on it hard, because I’m sure she isn’t just getting my attention for attention’s sake... It’s not her Modus operandi.

(Pause.)

So I’m just waiting for her to rear her beautiful head…

(Looks at watch. Silence.)

I am rather sure that she’ll begin shortly.

(Looks at watch. Silence. Looks at watch again. Silence.)

I’m serious… I am. ...She’s banging the gong so friggin’ loud she must be in one hell of a lather over something.

(Pause.)

Something has her furious! Some injustice or war or genocide or fool or politician or thief- but there I go repeating myself.

(Pause.)

When this happens, and it happens more times than I’ve the pills for, she will, rather quickly, begin to do her thing…

(Looks at watch. Silence. Knocks on forehead.) 

Hello? You can stop banging and get to work, muse. ...Hello?

(Silence. Begins to pace about the room grunting and in general making the headache worse.) 

Say something! Move my fingers already would ya? I don’t have all night and the faithful readers will tire of this idiotic monologue soon and hit the back button, or some link... anything to rid themselves of what isn’t theirs! Namely, my headache!

(Looks about the room desperately to draw attention from the bombardment. Nothing. Begins to pace wildly and grit teeth.)

Stop banging the damn gong and speak! I demand that you say something or take my wrist and begin to type something worthy! Now!

(Silence.)

Come on, muse! I’ve been very patient and you know it! Please? Please? Please?

(You’re groveling.)

Of course I’m groveling! It’s your gonging that is driving me to it! Your incessant clanging is causing me to do things that I would otherwise never do!

(Ha! You always grovel. I’ve told you so many times how unbecoming it is on you. Remember?)

For God’s sake! Must you be such a pigheaded mule?

(That’s better. Still, it is rather evident that you need me to write. I mean you mix metaphors like Michael Steele mixes his definition of conservatism.)

Oh god! That was pathetic, muse!

(Was it?)

Hell yes it was! Just ask the readers here if your metaphor was any better than any of mine. Go ahead. Ask them. I dare you.

(You’ve done it for me, dear. But mine was not a metaphor.)

Huh? …Oh. Yes.

(Silence. Puts fingers to temples. Muse is again banging the gong.)

For the love of all things! This has not been the best of weeks for me, muse! You of all people should know this!

(Sudden stop.)

Oh. No. That didn’t come out the way I intended it. I didn’t mean to imply that this weeks writing has not been your best, muse. I meant, outside of the writing, I’ve had a bad week. Understand? Don’t take it the wrong way. I didn’t-

(You’re groveling again!)

Sorry.

(You need to lighten up, Mark. You need to stop taking things so seriously, because they’re not.)

They’re not?

(No.)

But what about Madoff and torture and war and Sudan and the economy and joblessness and homelessness and hunger and-

(I was talking about your personal life, you schmuck. You’re too serious about yourself.) 

I am?

(Yes. The other things, those outside of you, are serious. You see?) 

Yes. (Beat.) No. I don’t think I get it…

(That’s because you’re not supposed to “get it”.)

I’m not?

(No.)

But… Wait? But… Wait a second… What am I supposed to not get? Myself? But I do get myself. I do! I get myself!

(Really?)

Yes.

(Okay. In what way do you “get yourself”?)

I… Well I… I know what I stand for. Yes! I do! I understand that little missy!

(Then by all means do tell…)

Okay. (Resolutely.) Do you mind? I know I’m resolute about the forthcoming list!

(Sorry. I couldn’t help myself.)

Of course you couldn’t. (Rowwrrr...) Stop it.

(Okay. Sorry. Please, Mark, tell us what you stand for. I’m sure the good readers are just dying to know.)

...Sarcasm noted... Okay. Ummm… I’m against unjust and non-defensive war. I’m against needless starvation. I’m against genocide and theocracy. I’m against tyranny. Against corruption and homelessness. I’m against torture and the death penalty. I’m against Prop 8. Against child abuse and sex slavery. And I'm certainly against racism.

(Muse clears her throat, which causes Mark to think faster, which, in turn, causes his headache to near migraine speed.)

I’m anti-war. Anti-anti-choice. Against slavery of any kind. I'm against pedophilia and against those that would force their religion down the throats of an unwilling populace. I’m anti-empire. Against preemptive strike. Against-

(Muse relentlessly and ferociously bangs the gong!)

Holy crap! Give a guy a heads-up, no pun intended, (none taken) before you bang the goddamn gong! I’m telling you what I’m against! What the hell else do you want from me?

(Muse bangs the gong!)

WHAT? WHAT? TELL ME!

(I thought you were going to tell us what you were for not what you're against.)

Stand for, stand against- like there’s a difference?

(Muse bangs the gong much harder than before and Mark storms out of the room holding his head and screaming...)

© 2008 mrp/thepoetryman

RIP OFF

(Click to enlarge)

S,A,S,D,D,P,T

Shatter, Ask, Stop, Don't, Demand, Protect, Tell!

THURSDAY (3/12/09)

Downturn trims list of billionaires
What remains for us to sing about when we’re alone?
We’ve been left a tall rocking horse on the arid shores
Whose face is stopped in horror; fierce eyes, pale
Mane, and a faded mouth filled with graying wicked teeth.
It cannot be enough.

Teenage gunman kills 15 in German school attack
One can sense the pallid bend of eternity as it tumbles headlong off the peak.
(Have we been here before with an equally strange and untamed coldness?)
Surely our minds will strike a chord and summon our better selves?
Without doubt. Yes? ...Without a doubt...

Israel Stance Was Undoing of Nominee for Intelligence Post
The land remains, the waves bite the shore with thunder
Like shrill whores pacing outside a fortified gate
In a land gone mad of money, torture, war and death;
a constant noise percolates in the greed-murdered flesh.

Survey: Obama Team Gets Poor Grades on Economy
The above survey is from Faux News,
Unjust and unhinged.
In other words, there’s no truth in it...

The Terror Watch List in America hits ONE Million, President Obama needs to have this list Audited and Overhauled.....
A massive lump impatiently writes the names of another terrorist and then another.
It’s his job to do so.
Hey! Do not mock the enormous dread-list maker!
At least he has a damned job, which is more than I can say for the rest of you no-good, dispossessed, lazy bastards! Get off your ass and get a job!
If that fails…? Make your own goddamned list of terrors!

Scattered Droplets of Inspiration.
Build the machinery that shall deliver us from here.

It’s not our job to rescue homes or clean our shores.
It’s not our place to feed all the howling little horrors.
It’s not our task to clothe the naked or help the poor.
It’s not our responsibility to care for the droning horde.

Build the machinery that shall deliver us from here.

© 2008 mrp/thepoetryman

7

7 Areas Where Your Voice Will (and should) Be Heard

Dear CIA Director Leon Panetta ...

I would simply like to bring to your utmost attention that your internal e-mail boldly declaring that "agency employees who took part in harsh interrogations of terrorism suspects are not in danger of being punished" is in direct contravention of the law of your country.

Read More +/-

Indeed, the Convention Against Torture, which was signed by President Reagan in 1988 and ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1994, explicitly states the following among others (emphasis added):

Article 2

1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.
2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.
3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

Article 4

1. Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law. The same shall apply to an attempt to commit torture and to an act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture.
2. Each State Party shall make these offences punishable by appropriate penalties which take into account their grave nature.

Article 5

1. Each State Party shall take such measures as may be necessary to establish its jurisdiction over the offences referred to in article 4 in the following cases:
   1. When the offences are committed in any territory under its jurisdiction or on board a ship or aircraft registered in that State;
   2. When the alleged offender is a national of that State;
   3. When the victim was a national of that State if that State considers it appropriate.
2. Each State Party shall likewise take such measures as may be necessary to establish its jurisdiction over such offences in cases where the alleged offender is present in any territory under its jurisdiction and it does not extradite him pursuant to article 8 to any of the States mentioned in Paragraph 1 of this article.
3. This Convention does not exclude any criminal jurisdiction exercised in accordance with internal law.

Article 7

1. The State Party in territory under whose jurisdiction a person alleged to have committed any offence referred to in article 4 is found, shall in the cases contemplated in article 5, if it does not extradite him, submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution.
2. These authorities shall take their decision in the same manner as in the case of any ordinary offence of a serious nature under the law of that State. In the cases referred to in article 5, paragraph 2, the standards of evidence required for prosecution and conviction shall in no way be less stringent than those which apply in the cases referred to in article 5, paragraph 1.
3. Any person regarding whom proceedings are brought in connection with any of the offences referred to in article 4 shall be guaranteed fair treatment at all stages of the proceedings.

Article 12

Each State Party shall ensure that its competent authorities proceed to a prompt and impartial investigation, wherever there is reasonable ground to believe that an act of torture has been committee in any territory under its jurisdiction.

Article 15

Each State Party shall ensure that any statement which is established to have been made as a result of torture shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceedings, except against a person accused of torture as evidence that the statement was made.

Therefore, it should be obvious to you now, sir, that your aforementioned e-mail declaration not only constitutes implied condoning of torture, but furthermore constitutes a disavowal of the law of your country regarding torture - and consequently A) this makes you directly complicit after the fact of any and all acts of torture performed by CIA agents since 2001 (i.e. under the Bush administration); B) this makes you directly complicit after the fact of the policies of torture sanctioned/approved/encouraged/allowed by the Bush administration; and C) by extension due to the context of your nomination as CIA director by President Obama, this makes the Obama administration directly complicit after the fact (through your own implied condoning) of the policies of torture sanctioned/approved/encouraged/allowed by the Bush administration.

All of which, under the same laws, render you and the Obama administration equally guilty of criminal offence as outlined by said laws against torture.

Are you then saying that you, and therefore the Obama administration, repudiate such laws?

If that is not the case, then I strongly suggest to you, sir, that you seriously reconsider your position ...


(Cross-posted from APOV)

national peace academy launched

an fyi

peace academy

A reckoning at hand...

Alabama rampage leaves several dead
Storm of the wounded, the quieted dead
Snuffed down under. What will we do,
Drain ourselves of living? Where are we traveling
In the smog-stacked spaces of dread...

Acidic seas fuel extinction fears
The sea crept by a sunken oil tanker,
Air bubbled out its blackened hull
And called out, “In here! It’s safe enough!”
The sea moved on without notice.

WEDNESDAY (3/11/09)

Alabama rampage leaves several dead
Storm of the wounded, the quieted dead
Snuffed down under. What will we do,
Drain ourselves of living? Where are we traveling
In the smog-stacked spaces of dread...

Acidic seas fuel extinction fears
The sea crept by a sunken oil tanker,
Air bubbled out its blackened hull
And called out, “In here! It’s safe enough!”
The sea moved on without notice.

Madoff faces life in prison on 11 criminal charges
Eleven-
One more and he’d be a disciple,
One less and he’d be Moses,
As it stands, death will find him there.

CIA Torture: A Reckoning at Hand?
O agony has found his lover in this,
With hooded face and shackled wrist,
Naked, they shall move together as one
And assemble tombs in their offspring.

Bomber kills 33 at Iraq peace conference
They had removed their shoes
And sought a silence over the blaring storm
That shrieked across an engaged spirit,
Their many scarves, like a morning dew,
Longing to shroud the wounded world.

© 2008 mrp/thepoetryman

Wild Action!

Time again to take action(s)!

+

petition your reps for

the wilderness

Floodplain and simple...

Did you know that portions of most of America's largest cities lie on a floodplain? *

Actually, 39 of the 50 largest American cities lie partly on a floodplain! **

Historically that's because towns and cities developed on rivers to supply daily water needs and also for affordable transportation of commerce.

And in more recent times, the trend is for people to locate near rivers and coastal areas for recreational reasons and continues to be popular. ***

"But FEMA's flood plains might be different from God's floodplains," notes Ricardo Pineda, Chief Floodplain Management Branch, CA Dept of Water Resources, and Member SE Louisiana Flood Protection Authority - East.

"God does not recognize 100-year floods and some levees," says Pineda. "Bottom line, you need to look at the geologic or paleo history of the floodplain."

All of the following cities have portions in a floodplain according to the National Center for Earth Surface Dynamics (NCED):

Albuquerque, NM

Atlanta, GA

Austin, TX

Baltimore, MD

Boston, MA

Charlotte, NC

Chicago, IL

Cleveland, OH

Colorado Springs, CO

Columbus, OH

Dallas, TX

Denver, CO

Detroit, MI

El Paso, TX

Fresno, CA

Fort Worth, TX

Houston, TX

Indianapolis, IN

Jacksonville, FL

Kansas City, MO

Memphis, TN

Milwaukee, WI

Minneapolis, MN

Nashville, TN

New Orleans, LA

New York, NY

Omaha, NE

Oklahoma City, OK

Philadelphia, PA

Portland, OR

Sacramento, CA

San Antonio, TX

San Jose, CA

Seattle, WA

St. Louis, MO

Tulsa, OK

Virginia Beach, VA

Washington, DC

Wichita, KS

So the next time someone tells you that New Orleans should not be rebuilt if it's on a floodplain, you can say,

"Most major American cities lie on a flood plain and for very good reason!"

To find out why we should expect New Orleans and the region to have a bright and prosperous future, click here and watch the short video.

success- what is it?

i have been giving this a think today- i guess i was thinking about my life and if i thought i was 'successful.' and then i started thinking about what exactly it meant to be successful. bushco said we had to be 'successful' in iraq and we couldn't fail. my husband had an uncle who asked him at every family gathering what it was that he was doing (as far as employment) because he never remembered- my husband wasn't making enough money for him to remember.

so, i started thinking about what i wanted to be remembered for- now and by posterity- and it really boiled down to one thing- being an honest person with integrity. the kind of person that people can trust to be there when needed and to make honest assessments of situations. i want to be a person who is peaceful inside and spreads that peace- along with compassion- to others. those kinds of folks don't start wars or make power grabs or defraud other people. those kinds of folks try to do the right thing- simply because it's the right thing to do.

success isn't the size of your house or how many cars you drive or the brand of clothes you wear. i hope that more and more folks are beginning to realize that. if they are and do- then something positive will come out of the last nightmarish decade. something positive will come out of the terrible economy. i wish all of us much success. namaste.

Frank Schaeffer tells it like it is...

Dear Republican Leaders: The Republican Party has become the party dedicated to sabotaging the American future.

You Republicans are the arsonists who burned down our national home. You combined the failed ideologies of the Religious Right, so-called free market deregulation and the Neoconservative love of war to light a fire that has consumed America. Now you have the nerve to criticize the "architect" America just hired -- President Obama -- to rebuild from the ashes. You do nothing constructive, just try to hinder the one person willing and able to fix the mess you created.

I used to be one of you. As recently as 2000 I worked to get Senator McCain elected in that year's primary. (McCain and Gen. Tommy Franks wrote glowing endorsements regarding my book about military service, AWOL.). I have a file of handwritten thank you notes from Presidents Ford, Reagan, Bush I and II. In the 1970s and early 80s I hung out with Jack Kemp and bought into his "supply side" myth and even wrote a book he endorsed pushing his ideas.) There's more, but take it from me; my parents (evangelical leaders Francis and Edith Schaeffer) and I were about as tight with -- and useful to -- the Republican Party as anyone. We played a big part creating the Religious Right.

In the mid 1980s I left the Religious Right, after I realized just how very anti-American they are, (the theme I explore in my book Crazy For God). They wanted America to fail in order to prove they were right about America's "moral decline." Soon after McCain lost in 2000 I re-registered as an independent in disgust with W. Bush. But I still respected many Republicans. Not today.

How can anyone who loves our country support the Republicans now? Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan defined the modern conservatism that used to be what the Republican Party I belonged to was about. Today no actual conservative can be a Republican. Reagan would despise today's wholly negative Republican Party. And can you picture the gentlemanly and always polite Ronald Reagan, endorsing a radio hate-jock slob who crudely mocked a man with Parkinson's and who now says he wants an American president to fail?!

With people like Limbaugh as the loudmouth image of the Republican Party -- you need no enemies. But something far more serious has happened than an image problem: the Republican Party has become the party of obstruction at just the time when all Americans should be pulling together for the good of our country. Instead, Republicans are today's fifth column sabotaging American renewal.

President Obama has been in office barely 45 days and the Republican Party has the nerve to blame him for the economic and military cataclysm he inherited. I say economic and military cataclysm because without the needless war in Iraq you all backed we would not be in the economic mess we're in today. If that money had been spent here at home on renovating our infrastructure, taking us toward a green economy, putting our health-care system in order we'd be a very different situation. (Read the rest...)

(The DRC) Take Action!

Since 1998, an estimated 5.4 million people have died due to the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), while countless others fled to neighboring countries for safety or remain in camps far from their homes. 
Please tell President Obama that the US needs a special envoy to help end the conflict in the DRC.

President Obama: Who Will Go to the Congo?

Evan Bayh Is A Corporatist Class Warrior

The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

Among my least favorite Democrats is Indiana Senator, Evan Bayh. Bayh wasted no time after President Obama’s election to announce his formation of a Blue Dog caucus in the Senate.

With Republicans out of power, elites are more likely to favor Bayh and his Blue Dog friends as enablers in their ongoing crusade against wage earners, small business entrepreneurs and the poor. While liberals are expending energy on Rush Limbaugh and the insipid Republican minority, corporatist predators have shifted their focus to greasing corporate appeasers such as Evan Bayh.

Accordingly, Bayh is causing mischief with respect to the Omnibus Appropriations Act. For the record, Wisconsin Senator, Russ Feingold, a politician I have long admired has also opposed legislation to keep the government running in protest to the omnibus process itself. I am of course disappointed in Feingold for playing games during an economic calamity as well as increasingly disenchanted with Senator Harry Reid’s hapless performance as Majority Leader.

Unlike Feingold however, Bayh is continuing a pattern of using appealing moderate language such as “fiscal discipline” to support a corporatist agenda. Ironically, his father, Birch Bayh was a proud and unapologetic liberal who defended the middle class when he served in the Senate. Alas, the apple has fallen far from the tree with the son.


Read More +/-

Bayh was among eighteen Senate Democrats to betray working people and join Republicans in support of the Bankruptcy Abuse and Prevention Act in 2005. For the record, so did Vice President Joe Biden, while he served in the Senate. At least Biden though had the excuse of representing a state with workers disproportionately employed by the banks and credit card companies. Bayh had no such excuse in supporting arguably the worst piece of domestic legislation in a generation.

A review of the online Federal Election Commission database with respect to Bayh’s contributions is especially instructive. Below is a bullet summary listing some of the donations Bayh has received over the years:

• Between 1997 and 2006, Bayh received eight contributions from the American Bankers Associations Political Action Committee (BANKPAC), totaling $20,000. No wonder Bayh supported bankruptcy legislation in 2005. It’s also noteworthy that Bayh received a $2,300 contribution from the Bank of America Corporation Federal PAC on January 8, 2008.

• Between 1998 and 2004, Bayh received 12 contributions from the General Dynamics Voluntary Political Contribution Plan (GDVPCP) totaling $17,000. General Dynamics are notorious war profiteers and Bayh voted in favor of our disastrous war in Iraq.

• Between 1997 and 2005, Bayh received 16 contributions from the General Electric Political Action Committee (GEPAC) totaling $17,000. GE is not only a war profiteer but also the parent company of NBC.

• Between 1999 and 2005, Bayh received five contributions from the Citigroup Inc. Political Action Committee-Federal (Citigroup PAC-Federal) totaling $12,000.

• Between 2000 and 2006, Bayh received six contributions from the Capital One Financial Corp. Assoc. Political Fund, totaling $11,000. What’s in your wallet Senator Bayh?

• Between 1997 and 2005, Bayh received eleven contributions from the AFLAC Incorporated Political Action Committee (AFLACPAC), totaling $11,000. I’ve always admired the AFLAC “duck” from their commercials. AFLAC also provides helpful supplementary coverage to your garden variety HMO plan. Nonetheless, real comprehensive healthcare reform would render AFLAC irrelevant. So once the battle for healthcare reform is joined, you can be sure their duck will not be quacking on your side.

• Between 2001 and 2003, Bayh received five contributions from the Aetna Inc. Political Action Committee totaling $8,000. Aetna is an insidious component of the medical industry complex favoring profit over wellness and gouging Americans at every opportunity.

• Between 1997 and 2005, Bayh received six contributions from the Action Fund of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. totaling $5,500. No more need to be said about that.

I’m not looking to merely attack Senator Bayh. To be sure, the online FEC database also references generous contributiors to him that I find less objectionable such as the AFL-CIO. Also, my home state Senator Charles Schumer is no prize either. That said, Senator Bayh illustrates why liberals must remain engaged and nurture strong counterweights to corporate influences responsible for America’s current cascade of ruin.

One such counterweight is Accountability Now founded by Jane Hamsher and Glenn Greenwald. Accountability Now is the netroots answer to special interest lobbyists that buy politicians like Bayh to support their pro-war/pro-corporatist agenda.

Already you’re hearing voices question whether President Obama’s is pushing too much at once on the “system.” These voices sound reasonable when they claim we should “fix the economy first” and worry about health-care, energy and education later. They're enablers of capitalism’s dark underbelly hoping to run out the clock on President Obama’s popularity and continue business as usual.

We in the reality-based community know that America’s can’t be saved until we fix health-care, implement an effective environment friendly energy policy and strengthen public education from coast to coast. America’s salvation stems from a comprehensive overhaul of our priorities and how we divide a rapidly shrinking pie. That is why I am donating to Accountability Now and I hope readers here do the same.

Nothing concentrates a politician’s mind like the prospect of a primary challenge. Accountability Now is a vehicle to obtain leverage and pressure Democrats such as Evan Bayh that opposing progressive change will put their careers in jeopardy. Delivering power to the Democratic Party in 2006 and 2008 was merely Phase One. Phase Two is transforming the Democratic Party as the people’s party rather than simply existing as the lesser corporatist evil in a two party duopoly. That also happens to be the best way to support President Barack Obama. And we must not fail in that endeavor. At stake is nothing less than peace and prosperity.

SUNDAY (3/08/09)

US 'not winning in Afghanistan'
The useful truths, which are now dead,
Had something more to offer.
They held something greener
In a land overwrought with war,
Hemorrhaging of empire’s lance,
Crawling with the decaying carcass of liberation.


Authors Warn That Many Textbooks Distort Religion

Our gods, like the books we consume,
Often convey our red imaginings,
Others bring joy to a solemn day
While others convene gray death.
It is the same of modern history;
Written, and rewritten, by mortals.


Economic News Continues To Sour
O hopeful and poor
Are the future stewards;
Their appetite for a new land
Shall only be eclipsed by their starvation.


Study: Widows 'forgotten victims of Iraq'
In the center of these women, where astonishing energies
of things like the savor of love, the curl in their child’s hair,
the way rain drops upon a roof and how the rivers smell,
and the way their men so easily touch upon their dreams
has forever changed.

© 2008 mrp/thepoetryman

If Jesus Died to Save Us from Sin, Why Do Migrants Die in the Desert?

Hundreds of El Pasoans hiked up Mount Cristo Rey with Catholic Bishop Armando Ochoa in honor of migrants and refugees in the Texas community yesterday. As a pilgrimage of remembrance, they linked the sufferings of Jesus Christ as he walked to his death with the sufferings of migrants today.
The Bishop explained prior to the event: "By doing this, it's not only a reflection of the Passion of Christ 2,000 years ago but trying to look for Jesus in the migrant that we encounter day in and day out. It might be the person looking to feed her children, a single mother, or an 18-year-old Central American woman who has already had a difficult and trying journey in coming through Mexico and is in a detention camp in the U.S. side. Certainly, they are looking for nothing more than a way to better their lives and those of their families."
The four mile hike up the mountain located at the US-Mexico border included fourteen stops for prayer and reflection. One woman was spotted making the walk barefoot, likely as her personal sacrifice. Mount Cristo Rey is known in El Paso for the statue Christ of the Rockies, 42 feet in height, that tops the mountain as a symbol of goodwill between the US and Mexico, crafted by Urbici Soler in 1937.

photomontage (397) RUSH LIMBLAH BLAH BLAH

Bush was to diplomacy what Rush is to neutrality.

Rush Limblah blah blah...

Submit Your Slogan

The Democratic Party will go through all of the submitted slogans, and the winner will have his or her submission appear on a billboard in Rush Limbaugh's hometown of West Palm Beach, Florida -- and receive a free T-shirt featuring the winning slogan.

Bush was to diplomacy what Rush is to neutrality.

Interview with Blogger...

I was recently honored by The Pakistani Spectator with an interview.

a Drift (396)

© 2008 mrp/thepoetryman

(a)Drift...

Head-Lines

THURSDAY (3/04/09)

What motivated a Florida gunman to open fire on Latino exchange students?

It’s hard to tell, but, rest assured, it was not for the same reason

That fog drifts out over the bay like a creeping thought

Or sleep puts her lips upon the offspring of all living things.

Finally! Karl Rove and Harriet Miers agree to testify under oath before Congress. Well sort of.

Like a caged and unfed dog that builds a church in his howling,

Or a sleepy guardian of stars that leans her head against the universe,

This oath is the only decent pledge, or truth, they’ve ever known.

Pants Saggin

It stands to reason that

All we know comes from the past,

But the tree covered in ice can’t grow

Until it shakes itself free of the load

Or cries out while it severs its reach,

Yet a bird snatches its fallen seeds

And skillfully ascends into the offing sky.

What clothes should we put on when we talk about brotherhood... or war?

© 2008 mrp/thepoetryman

Return Of The Mob - Or The Mob Strikes Back?

This ignoramus represents what the Republican party is now - a devolution we've witnessed all too well (more examples here, here, here, here, here and here) during the past U.S. Presidency campaign and which is now fully achieved:

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Joe the Plumber suggests some members of Congress should be shot

On Wednesday, Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher said that if he were in Congress, he would “probably be in jail” because he’d be charged with “slapping some member.” He added, “And that’s not [bull] either.” ThinkProgress asked Joe at CPAC yesterday which members he would most like to slap. “Pretty much anybody that’s stood there and said anything bad about our troops, pretty much anybody who sat there and talked treasonous talk about America,” Joe said. He then implied that some members of Congress should be shot:

Back in the day, really, when people would talk about our military in a poor way, somebody would shoot ‘em. And there’d be nothing said about that, because they knew it was wrong. You don’t talk about our troops. You support our troops. Especially when our congressmen and senators sit there and say bad things in an ongoing conflict.

Watch it:

Of course, politicians aren’t the only ones Joe thinks should be banned from speaking about war. Last month, he said that journalists shouldn’t “be anywhere allowed war.” “I think media should be abolished from, uh, you know, reporting,” he said.

Update: ThinkProgress also asked Joe about his recent trip to Israel. Wurzelbacher repeated his claim that Obama’s victory means “death to Israel.” He also seemed to say that there is no such thing as a Palestinian. Watch the video here.

If you think that Joe is not representative of today's devolved G.O.P., then try this for size:

This morning, former U.N. ambassador John Bolton spoke to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). He tried to up the fear quotient in the room by raising the prospect of an Iranian-sent nuclear attack on an American city. “It’s [a] tiny [threat] compared to the Soviet Union,” Bolton said, “but is the loss of one American city — pick one at random: Chicago — is that a tiny threat?” The audience erupted in cheers and laughter at the idea of Obama’s home city being obliterated. Watch it:

Later during the conference, Joe Scarborough warned the audience that conservatives would have to work on their “tone.” “We’re not going to win votes, we’re not going to win elections by calling Obama a communist,” Scarborough said.

Update: The Wonk Room's Matt Duss, who attended CPAC today, notes that Bolton also fearmongered on Obama's dedication to Israel. He told an audience member that he "very much fear[s] it's right" that Obama would not aid Israel were it attacked.

And even this, as well:

ThinkProgress is attending the right-wing Conservative Political Action Conference today. Earlier this afternoon, Cliff Kincaid, head of a conservative group Accuracy in Media, introduced Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN). Kincaid suggested that President Obama is a communist, then suggested Obama was not born in the United States — to which the crowd cheered wildly. Watch it:

Despite the fact that it has been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked, radical conservatives continue to peddle the ridiculous myth. Last weekend, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) noted that he had never seen Obama’s birth certificate. Trying to calm the ensuing firestorm, a spokesman for Shelby claimed the senator “was not saying and I’m not saying he (Obama) is or isn’t [a U.S. citizen], he was just saying he hasn’t seen one (a birth certificate).”

The more things change ...

Aah, those primitive minds (here's yet another one) - it is fascinating - and also worrisome - how much they are uncivilized, crass, savage barbarians, don't you think?

This picture taken at this year's CPAC is quite telling (h/t):
Rush Limbaugh must be ever so proud (and then some) of his United Haters of America Party - where fear and hate are the end all, be all, of the game.

Good thing Joe's book of wit and wisdom is apparently failing to thrive ...

Maybe then there's still hope for us.

But we still have a long way to go ... a very long way to go.

Yet one more case in point.

(More here, here, here and there)

(Cross-posted from APOV)

Depraved Days

O! These depraved days of doom rocking the skies, the armies
Of sinister things toward death
To the fetid drums of war.

O! To our horror these damned devil dogs to their howling
Near the gaping mouths
And unwarranted, decomposed applause
Within the pulse of torturous, whirling dread.

Goddamned horror of their pasty mouthed infection
Riddling the mind, dulling the senses, stoking the fear of fear.
This! This! This is what we want? Tormented reason? Souls
Whose only judgments are bloody goddamned vengeance?
Rooting downward we’re filling our mouths with reeking sewage.

In these audiences are the people of this land. O! The children
Will soon look to them for truth,
Seek them out for sound council,
Shaping their ovation, bent, unripe and swilling from hell’s cup.

© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman

Transparent President

 

 President Obama, What Happened to Openess and Transparency?

mother jones

i have been chatting much with my mom- as she is only on a semi news blackout and mine is near total. i can't bring myself to really immerse myself right now after having been in the trenches for so long. the long, dark nightmare that was republican rule is only partially over- the narrow minded, grasping, greedy pursuit of unbridled power and wealth for a few continues in spite of our recent election. and this is not a war we can fight simply with words. we have to force change and we have to change hearts and minds. and we have to accept that some will always be left behind.

and it is unfortunate.

these folks don't ever really go away and leave others alone- they continue- single mindedly- on their quest for ultimate world dominance. and they are formidable. but the bright spot that mom and i have been talking about is the fact that they 'misunderestimated' people. yep. they only stayed within their 'el rushbo' demographics and they did not realize that most human beings are sentient. and when backed into a corner, americans will fight back. it's our nature- it's our history. and they thought we would just cower meekly and give in. and we haven't.

with the very recent election- president obama has only been in the white house one month and a little- the attitude has changed. sure, folks are griping- they always do- but change is happening on a personal level and on a larger scale. hope is happening. new ways of looking at our world and our communities- our ways of life- are happening. we have many challenges ahead- and i don't know if we can overcome because the global climate and ecological issues we face are quite large (understatement)- but folks know that we have to change our way of life. the illusion of the american dream is coming to an end.

our food supply system is troubling but these two links from mother jones sparked some hope within me for folks. i plan to grow my own but not all will or can.

beets in the hood

spoiled: organic and local is so 2008

the mere fact that folks are making the attempt to think outside of the box is hopeful. that wouldn't have happened even 3 years ago. it's positive in a negative world. namaste.

...Don't bank on it...

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Prop 8 Challenge...

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Obama The Fighter

The topic below was originally posted yesterday, on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

Earlier this week, I did not jump on the bandwagon following President Obama’s nationally televised speech. As speeches go, it further reinforced the growing stature gap between Obama and the Republican Party’s insipid indecency as illustrated by Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. Nonetheless, my immediate reaction Tuesday evening was ,

“Obama's words and presence illustrated why I personally admire him but the substance of his administration's soon to be released budget are more important than this single speech. I still get a clinical thrill from observing how Obama's speeches impact others but I want to read the fine print of his budget proposal.”

Well, we’re still awaiting the fine print to be released in the spring. In the meantime, the administration has released an encouraging blueprint. Their 142 page outline, combined with this morning’s weekly address (access the video above), suggest the conciliatory Obama from the stimulus debate has been benched in favor of a pugnacious liberal.

John Edwards could have drafted today’s weekly address and Obama’s proposed budget offers a transformational paradigm shift. From cap and trade with respect to carbon emissions to setting aside $634 billion for healthcare reform, there is much to like about this budget from the liberal perspective. Even better, Obama threw down the gauntlet with today’s weekly address when he said,

"I realize that passing this budget won’t be easy. Because it represents real and dramatic change, it also represents a threat to the status quo in Washington. I know that the insurance industry won’t like the idea that they’ll have to bid competitively to continue offering Medicare coverage, but that’s how we’ll help preserve and protect Medicare and lower health care costs for American families. I know that banks and big student lenders won’t like the idea that we’re ending their huge taxpayer subsidies, but that’s how we’ll save taxpayers nearly $50 billion and make college more affordable. I know that oil and gas companies won’t like us ending nearly $30 billion in tax breaks, but that’s how we’ll help fund a renewable energy economy that will create new jobs and new industries. I know these steps won’t sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who are invested in the old way of doing business, and I know they’re gearing up for a fight as we speak. My message to them is this:

’So am I.’”

Thankfully, the president learned after the stimulus debate that he’s better served by establishing a high threshold at the onset of negotiations. Perhaps, the president also realizes that the public’s perception of him as “reasonable” following the stimulus debate allows his administration to take a firmer stand this time. That’s good because the stimulus debate is child’s play compared to the high stakes bargaining ahead.

Obviously, the budget Obama proposed will not be what ultimately passes through two houses of congress. Liberals don’t have a filibuster proof majority in the senate, Norm Coleman continues to tie up Al Franken in the courts and special interest money is flowing to conservative blue dog Democrats.

If so-called moderate senators such as Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins and Joe Lieberman put up a fight, than Obama should be prepared to stare them down. I suspect it won’t come to that however with those senators. Of greater concern may be senators such as influential Iowa Republican Charles Grassley, who will protest cuts to agricultural subsidies – especially if he convinces any Democrats to join him.

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Hence, this process will require strong nerves and Obama not blinking. In 1995, President Bill Clinton prevailed in his showdown with Newt Gingrich because his reputation as a compromiser allowed him to appear tough without looking partisan. Similarly, Obama’s greatest political asset is that his fist in the velvet glove approach allows him to stand firm while appearing flexible.

It should also be noted, that Obama’s budget is far more honest than any we’ve seen from the executive branch in recent years because it doesn’t pretend that we’re not fighting two wars or ignore the possibilities of disasters such as Hurricane Katrina. Nonetheless, like all budgets, it has its own deceptions. For example, the economic growth projected by the administration seems unlikely, at least in the near term. To some extent, ignoring the possibility of low growth is their way of promoting needed confidence. Even if we stipulate to the political necessity of rosy projections, the administration better have a backup plan.

Another concern is just what the hell did Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promise the Chinese during her Asian trip? Our ability to afford a progressive agenda is contingent upon the Chinese continuing to finance our consumer debt. Reading between the lines, when Hillary Clinton said last week she didn’t want to let “issues” such as human rights interfere with the economic crisis or climate change, it was obvious that the administration promised the Butchers of Beijing something in return.

The administration and corporate press will likely parrot the line that our plans for deficit reduction has reassured foreign investors we can pay back our loans. If you believe that, I have a bridge here in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you. Even so, given the crisis he inherited, Obama had little choice but to assuage the Chinese and other foreign investors to finance our debt. Hopefully, the price for their forbearance won’t be too high.

So, a little more than a month into his presidency, Obama has moved further to the left domestically with his proposed budget. Ironically and perhaps tragically, President Obama has moved to the right with foreign policy as 17,000 troops are being deployed in Afghanistan without an exit strategy and our “pullout” from Iraq will still mean leaving behind 50,000 troops. That worries me because the last time a Democratic president tried to have guns and butter at the same time resulted in President Richard Nixon.

Kris Krisofferson: "In the News"

"I want nothing but the ending of the war. No more killing, or it's over and the mystery won't matter anymore."