Friday, October 27, 2006

DIRTY LIES or DIRTY TRUTHS!

PLEASE GO TO MY SITE TO SEE THIS POST: Thank you, thinkingblue

The National Conference for Media Reform
is an event you don't want to miss. Thousands of media reformers from across the country will converge in
Memphis, Tennessee on Jan. 12-14, 2007.

A MUST SEE - DEMOCRACY NOW OCT 26, 2006


There is something going on under our noses and behind our backs, concerning our media access to reliable and truthful news reporting.

The media conglomerates, mega mergers and Concentration of Ownership has greatly diminished (if not crippled altogether) our right to receive honest reporting of US and World happenings. You may wonder why this has been allowed to happen. In a word, PROFITS.


Local news is disappearing and in it's place are large corporate media giants that will give you only one side of the events from around the globe and locally. Corporate media headquarters will be peddling, what they want you to believe and convince you how to behave. Whether it be to hate, love war, scandal mongering of their opponents, or whatever is in their best interests, you will only hear and see what they want you to digest. A one sided bias account of faux bulletins. This is how they control, this is how they retain power and this is how they sustain enormous profits.

Their goals are to ensure that the 'great beast', as Alexander Hamilton called the people (the masses) does not stray from their proper confines -- paraphrased from Noam Chomsky's book
Click Here to REview Book
HEGEMONY OR SURVIVAL--
by Noam Chomsky

Metropolitan Books
2003

Noam Chomsky's latest book, "Hegemony or Survival," presents a view of American foreign policy, which lies in stark contrast to that depicted by corporate media, popular pundits, and US heads of state. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the US has emerged as the preeminent superpower of the world and Chomsky dissects with meticulous research how the United States has chosen to leverage that position to pursue an "imperial grand strategy", which will ensure itself "unilateral world domination through absolute military superiority". More Here


Please click on the theater picture of Amy Goodman above to watch the "Democracy Now" show which touches eloquently on this very subject. And attend THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE FOR MEDIA REFORM in January which should be an eye opening and totally entertaining event... We cannot allow them (THE GLOBALIZATION BULLIES) to keep us from the DIRTY TRUTH. thinkingblue
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PS: Watch the below powerful interview with the Dixie Chicks on Hardball. They tell, how media control tried to destroy them.

Click Here to Hear The Dixie Chicks Tell Their Story About Media Control

Here is another reason why it is so important, we have an open and honest media: The only time George W. Bush and his Neo-cons utter the words "BRING THE TROOPS HOME", is when they are in coffins. Yet, those images have been blacked out by our supposedly free government! thinkingblue

98 U.S. GIs killed in Iraq this month

(so far this month of October 2006)



BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military said Saturday that a Marine had been killed in restive Anbar province, raising to 98 the number of American forces killed in Iraq during October, the fourth deadliest month since the
war began in March 2003.




The Marine, assigned to Regimental Combat Team 5, died Friday from "wounds sustained due to enemy action," in the western province, the military said in a statement.


The name of the Marine is withheld pending notification of the family.


There have been only three months in which more U.S. forces died in Iraq:
107 in January 2005; at least 135 in April 2004, and 137 in November 2004.


At least 2,811 members of the U.S. military now have died since the
beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press
count. The figure includes seven military civilians. At least 2,254 died as
a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.


AND YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE FREE!

(All Pictures are from THE MEMORY HOLE)


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CLICK HERE TO WATCH THIS WONDERFUL FILM


From: http://www.bluemoosefilms.com/

MORE INTERESTING READS

The World Financial Condition Is a House of Cards

BRING THEM HOME NOW, BEFORE MORE DIE!

MORE INTERESTING READS

The World Financial Condition Is a House of Cards


SEE MY BLOG ON DEMORATE.ORG

PROGRESSIVE LINKS

MORE THINKING BLUE LINKS

CAROLYNCONNECTION.COM

REAL PICTURES OF WAR

CAROLYNCONNETION - I've got a mind and I'm going to use it!

Thursday, October 19, 2006

RIP HABEAS CORPUS & LIBERAL DEMOCRACY

R.I.P. HABEAS CORPUS AND LIBERAL DEMOCRACY
habeas corpus n. Law. One of a variety of writs that may be issued to bring a party before a court or judge, having as its function the release of the party from unlawful restraint.


We are all up for grabs now... Bush has finally succeeded in murdering the writ of Habeas Corpus with the help of the majority Republican house/senate and a handful of Democrats who feel no shame. AND THAT'S NOT THE WHOLE OF IT, it doesn't end there!

CLICK HERE TO HEAR KEITH O. SPEAK ABOUT THE MURDER OF HABEAS CORPUSI swear, this does not feel like America, it doesn't even feel like reality. We are living in a nightmare, with feelings of intense fear, horror and distress, since Bush and his neo-cons got their wish for another Pearl Harbor so they could finally put to practice and satisfy their lust for WORLD DOMINATION... AND IT KEEPS GETTING WORSE.

Make no mistake, we are not breathing the wondrous fragrance of democracy we are choking down the thick odious ooze of belligerent nationalism. What this small group of plutocrats is accomplishing by degrees, is a re-shaping of our idea of what democracy is. Their first objective is to turn the perception of democracy from a liberal one to an illiberal one. Without our consent and doing so RIGHT BEFORE OUR EYES!

But good news! Bit by bit I'm glad to say we are finally brushing the neo-con wool, from our eyeballs... and waking up to their dastardly schemes.


Although, we must be very careful, for their ambition, at the moment (especially, since they are sensing they may lose some of their powers)is to housebreak liberals. Yes, I have a feeling that they, with the help of the conservative news media, who are constantly bombarding us with polls showing Democratic contenders WAY OUT
AHEAD, are hoping to convince the average liberal (who prefer not to get
involved in politics because they are too busy... TRYING TO PUT A ROOF OVER
THEIR HEADS AND FOOD ON THE TABLE) that they need not go out and vote
CLICK TO GO TO THE NO JOKE SITEbecause we (DEMS) ARE GONNA WIN ANYWAY!

Beware, we need to spread the message these few weeks before the mid-term elections, TO VOTE, GET OUT AND VOTE, WHATEVER IT TAKES CAST YOUR VOTE, before the neo-con VERMIN complete their plans of first turning our Nation into an ILLIBERAL democracy and then ON TO FASCISM! Sadly, THIS IS NO JOKE! thinkingblue aka Carolyn



PS: NEED TO VOTE EARLY OR BY ABSENTEE BALLOT CLICK HERE and please read the eye-popping information below from the http://en.wikipedia.org .

HERE IS AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT OUR DEMOCRACY USED TO LOOK LIKE:
thinkingblue


Liberal Democracy

Liberal democracy is a representative democracy (with free and fair elections) along with the protection of minorities, the rule of law, a separation of powers, and protection of liberties (thus the name liberal) of
speech, assembly, religion, and property.

The term "liberal" in "liberal democracy" does not imply that the government of such a democracy must follow the political ideology of liberalism. It is merely a reference to the fact that the initial framework for modern liberal democracy was created during the Age of
Enlightenment by philosophers advocating liberty. They emphasized the right of the individual to have immunity from the arbitrary exercise of authority.

HERE IS AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT OUR DEMOCRACY HAS BECOME UNDER THE BUSH NEO-CONS: thinkingblue

Illiberal Democracy

Illiberal democracy is one where the protections that form a liberal democracy are either nonexistent, or not enforced.
Illiberal democracy could be any democracy that is not a liberal one. However, the term is almost always used to denote a particularly authoritarian kind of representative democracy, in which the leaders and lawmakers are elected by the people, but do not respect rights and liberties. This has the effect of cutting off the people from real power.

An illiberal democracy is marked by the tension between how a government is selected and how that government behaves. Illiberal democratic governments believe they have a mandate to act in any way they see fit, disregarding laws or the constitution if they desire, as long as they hold regular elections. They often centralize powers both between branches of the national government (having no separation of powers) and between different levels of government and private associations. The former is more noticeable, the latter more common.

Another characteristic is that the lack of rights such as freedom of speech and freedom of assembly make opposition to the rulers extremely difficult. Television and radio is often controlled by the state and strongly support the regime. Non-governmental organizations may face onerous regulations or simply be prohibited. The regime may use red tape, economic pressure, or even violence against critics. (Such as murdering HABEAS CORPUS! thinkingblue) from http://en.wikipedia.org

Click Here to go to Lewis Peake page NO JOKE



I dropped a little note of appreciation to the author of the webpage called NO JOKE. I would like to include it (the note) here: Thanks so much for your site with pictures, and jokes to lighten our burden of this despicable Iraq war... I write a blog here in America, just for amusement and mental exercise. Every so often I include illustrations to augment the meager words and ideas, I am trying to express. I needed an image that would shout NO-JOKE concerning what our selected President Bush is doing to our liberties and freedoms, so I googled the words no joke and voilà your site popped up almost immediately. The blood stained American flag with the figure from the Edvard Munch painting "Scream" WAS PERFECT. I linked your page to the picture which I try to do whenever I use someone else's clip-art. Anyway, just thought I would drop you a line of appreciation. The link to my blog is
http://thinkingblue.blogspot.com
or
http://www.democrats.org/page/community/blog/thinkingblue

thinkingblue aka Carolyn

(Click the above NO-JOKE picture to read the author's words [Lewis Peake] about why he put his page on the world wide web. thinkingblue)

The President Gets His Wish: He's The Dictator

The Constitution of the United States, Article 1, Section 9:

"The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."
There is no rebellion. There is no invasion and thus habeas corpus can not be suspended. The president and every politician who voted to support this law has thus knowingly and without remorse violated their oath of office, but worse: they've violated the confidence with which we've entrusted them. That trust encompasses the very basic American notion that they work for us to help ensure our liberties and way of life. But that trust has been tossed aside for absolute power and a reasonably large percentage of Americans either don't care or they're not shy about voicing their support for this crap on a stick.

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Also Read: Torture, Murder, Bush, Kissinger and The Mothers of the Disappeared in Argentina: America on the Brink of Horror

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Olbermann's whole show: ‘The president has now succeeded where no one has before’

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ALSO: Voter warning linked to GOP campaign

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BRING THEM HOME NOW

SEE MY BLOG ON DEMORATE.ORG

PROGRESSIVE LINKS

MORE THINKING BLUE LINKS

CAROLYNCONNECTION.COM

REAL PICTURES OF WAR

CAROLYNCONNETION - I've got a mind and I'm going to use it!

Saturday, October 14, 2006

Silence and Fascism, one leads to the other.

Click here for: Kyrie - In their own Words.

Silence and Fascism, one leds to the other.
A good LIBERAL friend of mine sent me this interview with Aaron Russo, it KNOCKED MY SOCKS OFF. I had heard of this man before but had no idea the scope of his character. He is not just a director/producer of great fictional and nonfictional movies, he cares about our America and is doing something about the direction we are all being dragged or pulled towards by the neo-cons now in control and that is the ideology of FASCISM.

Click Here To See An Amazing Interview With Aaron Russo(Fascism is a radical political ideology that combines elements of corporatism, authoritarianism, nationalism, militarism, anti-anarchism, anti-communism and anti-liberalism.)

Some of the revelations you will hear in this meeting of the minds may seem "over the top" but that is what we sheepal who take freedom for granted need - a little bounce "over the top" to awaken us before it's too late.

His political libertarian opinions may seem a little too exaggerated for most of us who have labeled ourselves LIBERAL and PROGRESSIVE but we, especially myself, can identify with his convictions far more easily than those of the conservative right... as in the statements below:

Libertarians find themselves in an odd position these days, circumstantially alongside many on the Left in our opposition to those on the Right who happen to hold power. On the issues of war, civil liberties, and even fiscal solvency, the Left appears more sane, or at least less recklessly insane, than the militarist Right. LINK HERE
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Liberals favor government action to promote equality, whereas conservatives favor government action to promote order. Libertarians favor freedom and oppose government action to promote either equality or order. LINK HERE

I'm not sure exactly what we can do to stop the movement towards stringent socioeconomic controls and oppression but BEING AWARE THAT IT IS HAPPENING is a start. thinkingblue aka Carolyn

“There can be no really pervasive system of oppression . . .without the consent of the oppressed” (Florynce R. Kennedy).

CLICK HERE TO GO TO SITE OF AARON RUSSO

An interview by consciousmedianetwork.com of Aaron Russo about his new film, America: Freedom to Fascism. In this film Russo sets out to find the law that requires American citizens pay a direct income tax. This interview contains info about the fiat currency owned by private, for profit bank that we call "dollars". He explains how the Federal Reserve is neither 'Federal' nor has any reserves. He also gives a spot on critique of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 . America: Freedom to Fascism is opening in USA . the 14 min. trailer to the film.
fromfreedomtofascism.com

PS: Also, please read the essay below, another great eye opener...

'ANDRE
Breaking the Silence of the Night

By Ron Kovic Truthdig Wednesday 11 October 2006
A time comes when silence is betrayal.- Martin Luther King Jr., 4/04/67

It all begins somewhere, the questioning, the doubting, the feeling that something's not right; like that day the captain set fire to the Vietnamese woman's hooch, or the night we shot those women and children by mistake. It's all got to start somewhere. For them it might have been the innocent civilians killed that day at the checkpoint just north of Baghdad or the dead children lying in the road in Kirkuk, or that night in Nasiriyah when they kicked in the front door of that house, screaming and cursing at the children as they threw their father to the floor, tying his hands behind his back and putting a hood over his head, but you remain silent, you say nothing. You've been taught to follow orders, to obey and not question, to go along with the program and do exactly what you're told. You learned that in boot camp.

You learned that the very first day at Parris Island when the drill instructors started screaming at you. It is "Yes sir" and "No sir," and nothing in between. There is the physical and verbal abuse, the vicious threats and constant harassment to keep you off balance. It is a powerful conditioning process, a process that began long ago, long before we signed those papers at the recruit stations in our hometowns, a process deeply ingrained in the American culture and psyche, and it has shaped and influenced us from our earliest childhood.

Born on my country's birthday in 1946, I had grown up in the shadow of the Cold War after the great victory of World War Two. Both my mother and father had served in the Navy during that war. It was where they met and were married, and we their children were to be called the "Baby Boom." It was a beautiful time, a time of innocence, a time of patriotism, a time of loyalty, conformity and obedience. The threat of Communism was everywhere. We did not question. We did not doubt. We believed and we trusted our leaders. America was always right. How could we ever be wrong? We were the most powerful nation on earth and we had never lost a war, but all that was to change, all that was to be shattered in Vietnam.

I can still remember marching on Memorial Day, our parents on the sidewalks waving their American flags proudly. There were the war movies and the Sergeant Rock comic books, the toy guns that we got for Christmas, and the little plastic green soldiers that I played with in my backyard, fighting the Japs and the Germans, attacking the imaginary bunkers with our bazookas and flamethrowers, dreaming that someday like our fathers before us we would become men.

I volunteered for my first tour of duty in Vietnam in 1965, only to return to a country deeply divided. I remember tears coming to my eyes when I saw a photograph in the newspaper of the American flag being burned at an antiwar rally in New York City. I was outraged and became determined to set my own example of patriotism and volunteered to go to Vietnam a second time, ready to die for my country if need be. Before leaving I purchased a diary that I promised to keep during my second tour of duty. I still have that diary today, and though it is a bit worn and frayed the words that I wrote nearly four decades ago are still there. On January 18th, 1968, two days before I was shot and paralyzed, I wrote, "Time is going fast in a way, while in other ways it seems I've been here 100 years. I love my great nation and am ready to die for freedom." Just below I had written the quote,

Fear not that ye have died for naught
The torch ye threw to us we caught.
Ten million hands will hold it high,
And Freedom's light shall never die!
We've learned the lesson that ye taught
In Flanders fields. - R.W. Lillard

Like many Americans who served in Vietnam and those now serving in Iraq, and countless other human beings throughout history, I had been willing to give my life for my country with little knowledge or awareness of what that really meant. I trusted and believed and had no reason to doubt the sincerity or motives of my government. It would not be until many months later at the Bronx Veterans Hospital in New York that I would begin to question whether I and the others who had gone to that war had gone for nothing.

It was a violent spring. Martin Luther King had been killed in Memphis and I had just begun reading Senator Robert F. Kennedy's book "To Seek a Newer World" at the Bronx VA when Kennedy was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Kennedy had been the antiwar candidate, and I remember picking up his book with hesitation at first, his views seeming so very different from my own back then, but there was something that drew me toward him and his call to end the war that spring. Maybe it was the wounded all around me on the paraplegic ward, or the hundreds of Americans who continued to die each week, but I remember feeling deeply saddened when he died, just as I had when his brother, President John F. Kennedy, had been killed in Dallas in 1963.

I had been so certain of victory, but each day now I began to realize more and more that we were not going to win in Vietnam, and that realization was painful and devastating. I felt betrayed and could not understand why my government had not done all that it could to win the war. Did they have any idea how much we had sacrificed, how many had already died and been maimed like myself? I felt sad and depressed and would often go down to the hospital library on the first floor, where I would read for hours at a time trying to forget the war. The first book that I read was about the life of Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and I remember listening to his voice on the Armed Forces Radio during my second tour of duty and writing in my diary how much hearing him and his determination to stay the course and not give up in Vietnam had inspired me. Several days later I discovered the diary of Che Guevara, the Cuban revolutionary who had gone to Bolivia and was later killed there while attempting to inspire a revolution. I felt uneasy at first holding the book in my hands as I sat paralyzed in my wheelchair, afraid that someone might come up to me and catch me reading about the "enemy," but I now wanted to know who this enemy was, who were these people I had been taught to hate and sent to fight and kill.

I remember watching the 1968 Chicago Republican National Convention on TV with other paralyzed veterans in their wheelchairs, the crowds in the streets outside the convention hall chanting, "The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!" as antiwar demonstrators were beaten and bloodied by police and dragged into waiting paddy wagons. Most of my fellow veterans were angry at the protesters, cursing them and calling them traitors, but I remember feeling very differently that night. What the police had done was wrong, and for the first time, though I did not share it with anyone yet, I began to sympathize with the demonstrators.

It was not long after that that I left the hospital and began attending classes at Hofstra University on Long Island, determined to rise above what had happened to me and begin a new life after the war. It was a quiet and peaceful campus, so different from Vietnam and the hospital, and it was at the university that I was to first hear the passionate exchange of ideas and different points of view. Many of the discussions had to do with the war and why it had to end. There were the lit candles and the moratoriums, the John Lennon song "Give Peace a Chance," and I remember listening to the Woodstock album and hearing Jimi Hendrix's wild rendition of the "Star Spangled Banner" for the first time. There was the infamous My Lai massacre poster, "And babies too?" It was shocking and I could not help but think back to that night during my second tour of duty when we shot those women and children by mistake, all those bloody bodies, the old man with his brains hanging out and that Vietnamese child whose foot had nearly been shot off, dangling by a thread.

I continued to attend classes, still keeping my thoughts and feelings about the war deep inside of me and sharing them with no one.

It was during this period that I read Henry David Thoreau's essay "Civil Disobedience" and was immediately struck by the concept of "resistance to civil government and non cooperation with evil" seeming to directly contradict what I had once believed in as a boy - that my country was always right and could do no wrong. The whole idea that we as citizens had a right to follow our conscience and resist laws that were unjust and immoral had a powerful effect on me. I was later to learn that Senator Joseph McCarthy had attempted to ban Thoreau's essay... and that both Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King's philosophy of creative nonviolence as a tactic for social change had been strongly influenced by their reading of "Civil Disobedience."

There was "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" and "Nigger: An Autobiography" by Dick Gregory and Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," which exposed the brutality and horror of colonialism. I remember reading Jerry Rubin's "Do It" and Abbie Hoffman's "Revolution for the Hell of It," astounded at the sheer audacity of these two "Yippie" (Youth International Party) radicals and their willingness to stand up to the most powerful government in the world and its policy in Vietnam. They were wild and outrageous, and believed in revolution and were not afraid to say it or write about it and act it out. There was the article in Ramparts magazine by the Army Green Beret Sergeant Donald Duncan, who had turned against the war, and I
remember someone from the university mentioning that a Vietnam veteran from Suffolk Community College was now heading the S.D.S. (Students for a Democratic Society) on his campus.

There were the Columbia University sit-ins and Woodstock and the alternative radio station WBAI, which I listened to in my room late at night, deeply moved by talk of protest and revolution, power to the people and provocative antiwar songs that brought tears to my eyes, giving me an entirely different perspective on what was happening in Vietnam and here at home.

America seemed to be tearing itself apart; never before had the nation been so polarized, not since the Civil War had we as a people been so divided. Everything was being questioned, nothing was sacred, even the existence of God was now suspect. The very earth beneath my feet seemed to be shifting, and there no longer seemed to be any guarantees, or anything that could be trusted or believed in anymore. Many of the students had become so angry and frustrated with the war and what was going on that they had begun to give up on America. Many wondered if we were ever really a "democracy" to begin with, while still others spoke openly of leaving the country and abandoning America forever. I continued attending my classes, trying to be a good student, but I could not help but be affected by all the things that were happening around me. Several weeks later while sitting in the back of a crowded auditorium I remember listening to the impassioned words of the late Congressman Allard Lowenstein, who had come to speak at our campus that day, fiercely condemning the war and telling us all to not give up and that it was "better to reclaim the country than abandon it!"

It was about that time I received a call from my friend Bobby Muller, whom I had first met at the Bronx Veterans Hospital only a few months before and who had also been paralyzed in Vietnam, asking me if I would join him at Levittown Memorial High School on Long Island later that week to speak against the war. I remember being hesitant at first, telling him I wasn't sure. I had never spoken in public before and the thought of giving my first speech against the war frightened me. When I got off the phone I felt an uncomfortable burning in my stomach. A part of me wanted to speak for all I had seen in Vietnam and the hospital and for all the thoughts
and feelings I had been having ever since I had begun attending classes at the university, while another part could not help but think of what might happen to me if I did. Would I be called a traitor? Would I end up in some FBI file, no longer the quiet student sitting in his wheelchair alone on the outskirts of the demonstrations but now a direct participant, a radical, a demonstrator? I would be stepping over the line and joining with the very people I had once thought of as traitors. What would my mother and father think if they found out? And the veterans at the university - what would they say? Would they feel that I had betrayed them? Bobby called me several times that week, sounding a bit impatient, but again I hesitated, telling him that I hadn't made up my mind yet. I asked him if he would call me the following morning, which was the day of the speech, saying I would let him know for sure. I could hardly sleep that night, tossing and turning, tormented by fear and doubt, trapped between the awful twilight of what might happen to me if I did speak and what I knew would continue to happen if I remained silent.

The phone rang early the next morning and I remember picking it up, telling Bobby in a voice that was still only half awake that I had decided to join him that day. It was nearly forty years ago but I can still remember driving down to the high school in my hand-controlled car thinking of all the things I wanted to say to the students. When I arrived I parked the car, transferred into my wheelchair and pushed over to the entrance of the school and into the auditorium, where Bobby was already sitting on the stage in his wheelchair talking to one of the teachers. I was carried up a few steps, where I joined him, and for a moment I remember turning my head and looking out at all the students, thinking how much they reminded me of myself only a few years before, so young and innocent, so trusting and willing to believe without question. Bobby spoke first and a few minutes later it was my turn. I approached the microphone slowly, pushing my wheelchair to the very center of the stage, and in a voice that I can still remember being a bit anxious I began to speak. I told them about the hospital first, the overcrowded conditions, the rats on the ward, and just as I began to speak about how I had been shot and paralyzed in Vietnam the fire bell rang. The auditorium quickly cleared after that, one of the teachers telling us that someone had just called in a bomb threat. I didn't know what to think at first. I remember feeling frightened, angry and outraged all at the same time! Why would anyone want to stop me from speaking? Who could that voice on the other end of the phone have been? Was it another boy, a student, a teacher, an angry parent? What could they have possibly been thinking? I would never know for sure, only that someone had made an effort to stop me from speaking that day, and that affected me deeply. We all went outside and after a brief discussion decided to go over to the high school football field, where we assembled all the students in the grandstands and I continued speaking, more determined than ever to not be silenced.

There would be Kent State and my first demonstration against the war in Washington, D.C, the VVAW (Vietnam Veterans Against the War), arrests, tapped phones, undercover agents, and many more speeches in the months and years that were to follow as my political awakening continued and I began to discover an America far different than the one I had once believed in as a boy. There were the trials and days and nights I spent in jail in my wheelchair feeling more like a criminal than someone who had risked his life for his country, but I continued to speak.

Perhaps it was survivor's guilt, or my own desperate need to be forgiven and keep others from having to come back like me, but as I sat before those crowds I began to open up my heart in a way that I had never done before, sharing everything, all the horrors and nightmares, all the things I had locked deep inside of me and had for so long been afraid to say. In many ways I was confessing the sins of America. I remember many nights driving home to my apartment after those speeches feeling exhausted and deeply troubled, unable to sleep, knowing that if I did, the nightmares would return and I would be back in Vietnam all over again; only to awaken a few hours later with my heart pounding in my chest, feeling terribly alone and wondering why I was putting myself through all this pain and agony.

It had only been a few years before that I had sat in the living room of my house in Massapequa, Long Island, with tears in my eyes listening to the words of President John F. Kennedy call my generation to "A New Frontier," urging us all to be ready to "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe in order to insure the success and survival of liberty," but those words seemed hollow to me now. Somewhere along the way we had taken the wrong turn, somewhere through it all America had veered tragically off course, leaving behind our sacred ideals and betraying the very roots of our revolutionary past. Instead of the great champion of liberty we had emerged the imposter, a fraud, a dangerous, corrupt frightening monstrosity of what we had first set out to be. America had lived a terrible lie. We had been on the wrong side of history. The great defender of liberty had become the tyrant, the arrogant bully, the cruel exploiter of "the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breath free." Wearing the deceitful mask of the great liberator and promising freedom and democracy, we had robbed and raped, blackmailed and perverted our way around the world, supporting the most despicable tyrants and despots as we expanded our bloody empire, causing the death and suffering of countless human beings. I now understood what Martin Luther King had meant when he had called America "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world...."

I remember reading "State and Revolution" by Lenin and "The Prison Poems of Ho Chi Minh." There was George Jackson's "Prison Letters" and a powerful book by Felix Green called "The Enemy: What Every American Should Know About Imperialism." There was the documentary "Hearts and Minds," and the agonizing scene of the grief-stricken Vietnamese woman being held back by family members as she tried to crawl into the grave of her husband, who had just been killed in an American air strike, and the haunting scene of a terrified Vietnamese child screaming and running naked from her village after being severely burned in a napalm attack as the war raged on, and my speeches grew angry and bitter at a government I could no longer trust or
believe in anymore. There were the body counts and booby traps, body bags, "light at the end of the tunnel" and Vietnam veterans throwing their ribbons and medals away at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., outraged with a government and a war they had now come to see as unjust and immoral.

The Vietnam War finally ended in the spring of 1975 and with its end came the hope that America might change and begin to confront the painful legacy of its past. I will always remember the words of Vietnam Veteran Against the War John Kerry as he spoke before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the spring of 1971:

And so when thirty years from now a brother goes down the street without an arm, without a leg or a face and small boys ask why, we can say, Vietnam, and not mean a desert or some filthy obscene memory, but instead mean the place where America finally turned and where soldiers like us helped in that turning.

But tragically that "turning" was not to be, and the dream of a more peaceful and nonviolent America was put on hold by a government that continued to refuse to face the reality of the terrible crimes it had committed in our name.

For the past three and a half years I have watched in horror the mirror image of another Vietnam unfolding in Iraq. As of this writing over 2,700 Americans have died and nearly 20,000 have been wounded while tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, many of them women and children, have been killed. Refusing to learn from the lessons of Vietnam, our government continues to pursue a policy of deception, distortion, manipulation and denial, doing everything it can to hide from the American people its true intentions in Iraq. Sadly, the "War on Terror" has become a war of terror. Never before has this government through its outrageous provocations and violent aggressions placed the citizens of this country in such grave danger. Never have the people of this country been so threatened, never before has life and liberty been in such great peril; not in the two hundred and thirty years since our revolution have we as a people and a nation been at such a crucial turning point. These are dangerous times. A century of arrogance, brutality and aggression has come back to haunt us all. September 11th has happened. The mask has been ripped away. The lie has been exposed and this criminal government now stands naked before the world! These are provocative words, and the truth may be deeply unsettling but when will we speak the truth? When will we end this silence? How much longer will we wait before we are ready to finally admit that the murderer lives in our own house, that this government that we entrusted long ago with the sacred task of protecting life and liberty now, by it's every reckless, unjust and immoral action threatens the lives and liberty of us all?

Have we become so complacent, so coward and intimidated by this government that we have forgotten our own revolutionary birthright of rebellion and dissent? Have we become so paralyzed by the eleventh of September that we would give up our liberty and freedom for the promise of a security that does not exist by a government that now threatens our very lives? What will it take before we finally realize the true reality of this crisis? How many more terrorist attacks, senseless wars, flag draped caskets, grieving mothers, paraplegics, amputees, stressed out sons and daughters before we finally begin to break the silence of this shameful night? Let us open up our hearts and speak in a way we have never spoken before knowing that lives now depend on it, and the very survival of our nation is now at stake. Let not our silence in this crucial moment betray us from our destiny.
--------------------------------------------------------
Sometimes we discover unpleasant truths. Whenever we do so, we are in difficulties: suppressing them is scientifically dishonest, so we must tell them, but telling them, however, will fire back on us. If the truths are sufficiently impalatable, our audience is psychically incapable of accepting them and we will be written off as totally unrealistic, hopelessly idealistic, dangerously revolutionary, foolishly gullible or what have you. (Besides that, telling such truths is a sure way of making oneself unpopular in many circles, and, as such, it is an act that, in general, is not without personal risks. Galileo Galilei



More quotes from Galilei: All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with
sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.
BRING THEM HOME NOW


SEE MY BLOG ON DEMORATE.ORG

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REAL PICTURES OF WAR

CAROLYNCONNETION - I've got a mind and I'm going to use it!


Thursday, October 12, 2006

A LIBERAL AND A LIBERAL EXCHANGE THOUGHTS, boring? NOT!

Reply, By Barry Yesterday at 2:53 am EDT

I hope I got this right the bold type belongs to Carolyn and the regular
type belongs to "snakelips". I know it is not quite right for a middle age
white man to say this but Carolyn you go girl. I've got your back. The
first thing that got me started about "snakelips" is the teach a man to
fish comment. Go back to the history books that idea comes right out of
the Kennedy Democrats. It is the basic foundation of "The Great Society"
and goes back to basic christian teaching as well. The problem that social
programs had and still have (I have said this before here) is that
conservatives be they neo-cons or Dixiecrats alway fight on funding. Pres.
Bush spouts off about no child left behind while not fully funding it.
They blame the poor for not learning enough to get ahead while attending
the crumbling schools that they created. Neo-cons talk about
redistributing the wealth when what people want is a fair chance. Even
though our poor are the richest in the world our middle class does not
include people living in McMansions. I live in one of the wealthiest
states in America. I pay half as much in rent as my neighbor because my
landlord rented me a home not a house. I have lived here 16 years because
they have told us a number of times that we can live here as long as we
want. We live here without fearing they will cash out as the housing
bubble bursts. That has really helped since I was crippled by the lasting
effects of polio. "snakelips" take away one of your family's incomes and
see how long it takes for you to hit the streets. I also live in a state
that boasts a large percentage of registered Democrats. I'm sorry but I
can pick a Republican in any public place in this state. They're the one
making snide remarks because the black girl at the counter is working fast
enough to suit them. They're the ones using terms like towelheads. They
ride around in pick-up trucks with a "God is my co-pilot" bumper sticker.
Just recently I watched one going down the road at 70 mph playing pinball
with the lines on the highway at 11:00am. Beware if I see you doing it
I'll call 911 on your ass. Lastly neo-cons are the most self-righteous lot
who believe Dems are whats wrong with America all the while commiting all
sorts of sins i.e Foley, Abramoff, Cunningham, Delay, Nixon, Agnew...



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

HALLOWEEN FUNNY MASK SITE:
Thanks for the reply, Barry. It is so refreshing to talk to a fellow liberal, someone who uses their brain for research and inquiry, instead of for memorizing trite phrases or terms of newspeak (rovespeak). Like this question from Blogbox:

Who has the best research skills and demonstrates a genuine thirst for the truth?

A. The Washington Times

B. Any lefty blogger

Also want to thank you for the reminder of where snakelips' expression "teach a man to fish..." (one of the idioms in the conservative dictionary of Orwellian language) came from. Yes, I believe it was, Kennedy who used this catch-phrase when he started the Peace-Corps but did you know it is actually an old Chinese proverb:
“Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for the rest of his life.”

But like most of the politically charged phrases the con people use IT IS TAKEN OUT OF CON-TEXT! In my limited estimation, it is meant as a guide for helping third world countries to become autonomous and sovereign, and not to rely on foreign entities for their daily bread (hence, cannot become victims of embargos and sanctions from the rich states, that enjoy playing with the poor ones).


NOT, and I mean IN NO WAY as reference to a welfare mother with many little kids or the working poor on food stamps. But, that is how they use it.

The snakelips of our nation do more harm to us as a people than all the WMD cache in No. Korea could ever do. They make us look like, (another old saying) UGLY AMERICANS, heartless and cruel. They voted in the most inhuman bunch of compassionless ideologues to come down the pike. They believe the malicious logos from the likes of the Limbaughs, Savages, Falwells, Robertsons, Coulters, and other nasty, venomous people from the rightwing, who they revere, without question. They suffer from this blindness of mind, by making misinformed choices but worse, WE SUFFER TOO!


Like I wrote in my post to snakelips, we all are plagued with a certain amount of bigotry, that most of us who use our noggins can fight off but since the red states won...it is getting almost impossible for me to beat back the feeling of nausea when I reflect on what the neo-cons have thrust us into. (with the help of the non-thinking citizens with red faces) They have played us for a chump in a variety of ways but mainly THE BUSH IRAQ WAR.

So much heartache, sacrifice and cost to so many people, even if they (the neo-conservatives) gave up their fortunes or their spineless existence they could not repay the damage they did so nonchalantly, with little concern for those, the mothers and children, the elderly and sick, the TROOPS and their families, who they put in harms way to satisfy their controversial dreams of USA Superpower supremacy. It all stinks to high heaven, and we are stuck with the mess! Even if we take back our country, the cleanup will be lengthy and costly, we all will be anguished for years to come but let us hope that at least the screw-ups will have ceased and recovery will be on its way.

Thanks again, and write often, Carolyn


PNAC:
Philosophy of Deception


A short, interesting article about Leo Strauss, the 'father' of the neo-conservative (PNAC) ideology. Deception, religion, nationalism, all for the benefit of the elites and to control the masses. REPOST of UK IMC
SEE MY BLOG ON DEMORATE.ORG

PROGRESSIVE LINKS

CAROLYNCONNECTION.COM


REAL PICTURES OF WAR

CAROLYNCONNETION - I've got a mind and I'm going to use it!


Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Liberal or Conservative, are we really so different. YOU BET!

GREAT SONG: C&L Premiere: Rickie Lee Jones sings “Have You Had Enough?”

LIBERAL AND A CONSERVATIVE are we so different... YOU BET!


CLICK TO GO TO LYNN'S SITE... A SAD CONSERVATIVE MAY HAVE SOMETHING IN COMMON WITH SNAKELIPS


I will continue my post of "A thoughtful request from a liberal to a conservative..." of October 5, 2006... with a response from snakelips. I hope no one will find this offensive, it is really just two people trying to explain the difference between two opposing ideologies that have materialized in today's America. My comments are in BLUE... I also, have found some political cartoons called
The Boiling Point, to help make this posting a little more interesting, please click on them to see the original size, easier to read... thanks Carolyn

By snakelips Yesterday at 1:34 am EDT
Wow, I go out of town for a couple of days, I jump in to check out dems.org and this is what I find! I wish I had more time to write, but I would like to comment a little.

It seems to me Carolyn that you are trying to pick a fight with me. I am not mean-spirited. I don't want to fight with you and one of the reasons I responded to Adam's original post was that he sounded calm and reasonable. I think we had an enjoyable worthwhile discussion. You seem to enjoy the nonproductive name calling angle and it doesn't really interest me. I didn't bother to read your cut and paste writings from other people. I'm sure they are very well thought out and interesting, but I more want to know what YOU think in your own words.

Perhaps, if you would have read the "cut and paste" articles you may have learned a little... I use that method because there are a hellava lot of people out there in this big world of ours who have educated themselves in certain subject matters and can say what I feel so much better than I. But NO you don't wish to enlighten yourself by reading "cut and paste" words of wisdom from other people... But don't feel too bad... your leader George W Bush doesn't wish to bother himself with other people's words either.

See image large click here...Speaking of your own words, I don't appreciate being called a bigot. As Yosemite Sam says, "Them's fightin' words!" But, like I said, I don't want to fight, I want to talk and learn, and maybe teach...to a few open-minded types (thanks, Adam).

Maybe, you in particular, may not be the full fledged
bigot but many upstanding conservatives are. But honestly now, if you see a person that may not look like you or share your world view... tell me that you don't think less of them... We are all bigots to a point... black, white, yellow, red, religious, non-religious, irrational or rational. Unfortunately it's par for the course, part of our evolutionary trip through existence. It just is a matter of how severely we are damaged by this human phenomenon and how hard we fight not to allow it to take over our being.

To clarify my thoughts on the "America Dream", of course even if you work your fingers to the bone you may not succeed, but you absolutely will not and SHOULD not if you don't even lift a finger.

I really had to laugh at your "YOU MAY NOT SUCCEED"... look at the statistics man, the percentage of successes are miniscule... When I was a kid it took ONE PAYCHECK to raise a family... now two wages are not enough... e-nof said!

I am not conditioned in my thinking. I think and struggle about this and as I wrote in my reply to Adam's post I sometimes have to make a desision that is difficult and may not make everyone involved happy. I talk to a lot of different people and find that I constantly have to re-evaluate my position. I am still coming up a conservative though.

Well that is sad for you to constantly come up conservative. I am so glad my "conditioning" tilted towards liberal... I don't know why that is, oh here's an idea, maybe it's because I walked a mile in a liberals shoes... I was raised in a family with limited funds... so you see I've been there and done that. I know what it feels like to not have enough food to eat or enough fuel to heat your home. I know what it feels like to be shunned because your clothes are wrinkled and worn-out. I know what it feels Click to enlargelike to pretend you are not hungry and only eat half of your ten cent sandwich at school so maybe, just maybe no one will suspect that you are poorer than a church mouse, because in a conservative world, this is something to be ashamed of...

click here if you want to know one of the meanings of

"poorer than a church mouse
"... And I know what it's like to come home from school and see a big SHERIFF'S notice hanging on the door of your rented house because your mother ran out of money before the rent was paid. We lived on a fixed social security income (that my mother was getting THANKS TO A LIBERAL PRESIDENT) and received a check once a month due to my father's death, he left Mom with six kids to raise. I guess you might have labeled her lazy, since she could not work outside the home and was part of a government entitlement program.

There are many Liberals who did not walk in my shoes, it doesn't take experience to make someone empathetic. A liberal doesn't exclude, like conservatives, liberals believe we are ALL in the same boat, with similar problems. Not so for a conservative, REMEMBER KATRINA... and Mama Bush's statement. Forgive me for this "cut and paste" but...HERE'S THE ACTUAL QUOTE:click to go to original“And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this — this [she chuckles slightly] is working very well for them.” Now, I'm sure she didn't mean anything vicious by it, but that’s kind of the point. Anybody who says that the flood is actually working out well for the poor in New Orleans because it allowed them to come to Houston doesn’t have any appreciation for what the working poor goes through in our country. From this site:
donklephant.com

Please don't label me as thinking that all the poor are lazy and all dems are commies. That's a broad statement that of course isn't true. I want to show the poor where the lake is and teach them to fish, not give them one of my fish every time they are hungry. I'll help them on the way, but if they continue to refuse to fish, well.... I think the level of help in that journey is the real issue when talking about the poor. It's a matter of finding the balancing point. In my view I see libs as wanting total wealth redistribution - take it all from those who have it and give it to those who don't. I imagine your view of conservatives is that we don't want to give a single penny. Well, of course, neither is true. Both sides want to help their fellow man. We just have to figure out how much.

click to go to Reagan Poor Guide

CLICK TO SEE LARGEThat is the difference between you and me, you always assume, there is a lake nearby stocked with fish. There are generational poor and poverty is not their fault, it's kind of a miserable way of life for them... Oh, we have come a long way thanks to the help of liberals who took the chance of losing their power by supporting the civil rights movements... But we have a long way to go, and the way I see it... the conservatives fight tooth and nail to stop those advancements and turn back the clock... They refuse to see the big picture and just pour money into building more prisons.

Every child should be important in our school system but they are not. The cracks these children fall through are big and wide. If they don't make the grade the system just looks the other way and they grow up to live their lives with almost no resources... In a country as rich as ours, we should treat each and every child like he is a winner no matter how laborious this task may be. In the long run, we would have a society with hardly no crime and a productive one to boot and maybe you would see more happy faces with smiles of kindness instead of grimaces of unfulfilled emptiness.

I don't know what your second ammendment rant meant. You didn't really say anything other than it was a myth. If you are interested in more of my opinions, I have talked about that in other posts.

There again, if you would have read the "cut and paste" portions you would not need to ask me about my so called RANT. I cried a million tears watching the killing spree unfold on that Amish farm in Pennsylvania. All those little children murdered with LEGAL WEAPONS. They (the Amish) may forgive BUT I DON'T. If the rifle and gun lobbies weren't so "successful" in their quest to allow weapons to be bought and sold like so many pieces of candy... Those little ones might still
be alive. I don't blame the crazy crackpot who pulled the trigger, I blame the NRA!!!

I thought your reference to the "liberal media" was kind of funny. If you believe in the capitalist idea of supply and demand, it would seem to suggest that there is a lot of demand out there for the more conservative viewpoint. I've listened to Air America to try to learn more, but after a while, the non-productive name calling seems to grab my attention more than any logical
discussions, so I turn it off. But, I'm glad it's there. (Is it still?) Maybe there's not much demand...

WHAT A JOKE... there is not a demand for the liberal point of view...huh?? There is only one side being offered and presented... The capitalist idea has been confiscated by BIG CORPORATIONS who want to narrow down our newspapers, TV shows and media as a whole into one BIG CONGLOMERATE controlled by their one sided ideas... IDEAS really isn't the right word PROPAGANDA is more like it, they want control of the masses so they can manipulate them for the sake of greedy profits... If that isn't fascism, I don't know what is.

I LOVE the reading of snakelips as a psuedonym! It's just a nickname my parents gave me in high school cause I was always "snaking" around with my girlfriend after school. It's just a good screen name, nothing more. LOL I hope, Carolyn, that we can discuss this more. If we really want to make America a better place we have to start talking substance.

I do want to make America better but I have no power, except for my vote and THE LIBERAL CLICK FOR PICTURE FROM SITEDEMOCRATS will get that little itty bitty power... The money people can do more but with attitudes like yours "THE WHY SHOULD WE "THE HAVES" SHARE WITH THOSE "HAVENOTS" In other words, MY WORDS, I believe this is how the wealthy would look at the redistribution of their wealth..."I am not worried about America because my part of town is beautiful with green grass that is taken care of by a havenot... I have clear blue clean lakes stocked with fish and have hired many havenots to keep it that way...and I have a big mansion of a house with lot's of servents(havenots) to clean and care for if. Therefore, I live in a beautiful place, so why worry about America, I keep many havenots employed...?"

Just be careful that the HAVES don't need to cross the street for some reason (maybe to find some havenots to work in their factories for as little money as possible... more profits that way...) They may then, get a whiff of the impoverished ghettos on the unbeautiful side of town.

I know I am generalizing but since the Republicans have been in office the ranks of the poor have grown. More and more middle class people have fallen into poverty because of piddling wages. And if the conservative corporations continue to control all the power in our government, we will fast become a two class America with only a handful at the top and many slaves at the bottom for the "top ones" to take advantage of.

CLICK FOR ORIGINAL SIZENo I don't want to fight with you, but I know there is NO WAY that I can change your mind. You are conditioned, mi amigo, just like the rest of us. For you and your conservative friends to see this world without rose colored glasses it would take a catastrophic event... like perhaps, a global warming that dries up your lake leaving it now, stocked with dead fish.

Happy to live in America where one can express dissent and not have a contract put out on one's head... that is for now, anyway. Carolyn

PS: A friend of mine, read my post of the other day and asked me WHAT'S THE POINT, ENLIGHTEN ME. I will tell her there is no need to enlighten her, she has got it right, there really is no point, just a so called "rant" from me to vent some of the anger and sadness I feel living in this NEO-CONSERVATIVE America of today, with all its distress.

One last conservative action in pictures...



UPDATE: I haven't checked my Democrat.org blog for awhile so I missed the snakelips reply to my post of
LIBERAL AND CONSERVATIVE...
It's the same ole, same ole... I think I will tell this conservative that there is no way he will ever take off his rose colored glasses and look at the world as it really is... He might just SCREAM at such a site, so he should keep em on and just go on his merry delusional way... Carolyn

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
by snakelips Oct 15th 2006 at 9:46 pm EDT
Hi Carolyn,Sorry I've not written in a while. Let's continue our discussion.

You're right. I should have read some more of your cut and pastes, so I did. There are some valid points that I could would like to dig into more deeply, but as a whole, I mostly disagreed with a lot of it. Please remember, just because I don't agree doesn't mean I'm ignorant of your message. I think that probably holds true for Geo. Bush as well. I assume you are not an angry teenager and understand the difference between "not listening" and "not agreeing". Try to pursuade me that your ideas are better than mine. I'm listening.

Regarding bigots, I had to look up a dictionary definition of the word to make sure that we are talking about the same thing. According to Wikipedia: A bigot is a prejudiced person who is intolerant of any opinions differing from their own. I am certainly not a bigot in any way. I take people as they come. Just like everyone though, the more I come in contact with them, the more I form an opinion about them. I am very tolerant of other opinions. I welcome them! It's much more interesting talking to those with differing opinions than robots who just repeat back what they think I want to hear.

I am concerned about your prejudices and bigotry though. You assume later in your post that I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth and wanted for nothing. You don't seem to want to accept and understand my opinion on things. NEVER MIND ALL THAT! I don't want to get into name calling. Let's get back to a discussion on issues.

Ok, so what are you saying when you say that now two wages are not enough to raise a family and the chances of "success" are miniscule. Should we just give up? Should government raise the minimum wage? If so, how much should it be? How about $10...well, why not $30? Hell, why not $300 an hour. That would be great! But who pays for that? Do you think money just magically appears in corporations' coffers? If they had to pay $300 an hour minimum wage, don't you think they'd pass that on to the consumers? And who are those consumers? Why, gee, it's the people they are paying $300 an hour. Now that money doesn't seem like as much. Like I said before, it's all a balancing act. If we could start with as much fairness as possible and rely on people's natural ablilities to succeed or fail, then that's as close as we can hope to be to utopia.

I'm sorry your father died. I have a lot of empathy for your predicament growing up and your family was certainly a worthy recipient for social aid. I don't want to take that away. I want to stop cheats of the system who put a bad taste in the mouths of those funding it. My only question about your family and mother would be: did you grow up on farm? I ask that because I'm curious why you had 5 siblings. If on a farm I could see you would need the labor. Otherwise, it seems a bit irresponsible to have so many kids with no life insurance to provide for them if something catastrophic happened like it did. This may shock you, but I shouldn't have to pay for your family's lack of planning. It's not about bigotry, it's about responsiblilty. Before your head explodes, think calmly about what I've said. I don't want to NOT help people, I just don't want to be taken advantage of. I want people to be responsible for themselves first. If they can't I want to help. If they refuse to, than that's a different story.

Regarding the second ammendment, I read what you pasted, and although that link quoted a lot of case law supporting armed citizens only in relation to a militia, I would bet that there are other cases to the contrary. Regardless of the case law, I am arguing the idea. I believe the second ammendment gives us our last and final guarantee of the remainder of our rights. Without the threat of an armed citizenry, the government would have no fears in abolishing all of our rights as they saw fit. As far as the Amish tragedy, the gun was not the important part of the story. He could have just as easily slashed their throats with a knife. It's horrible and tragic and I'm a little shocked you are blaming the NRA. You might as well blame the Chinese for inventing gun powder.

Well, that's all the time I have to write right now...I'll continue later. Hopefully you're still interested in talking.Thanks, snakelips

BRING THEM HOME NOW

SEE MY BLOG ON DEMORATE.ORG

PROGRESSIVE LINKS

MORE THINKING BLUE LINKS

CAROLYNCONNECTION.COM

REAL PICTURES OF WAR

CAROLYNCONNETION - I've got a mind and I'm going to use it!

Monday, October 09, 2006

IS THE REPUBLICAN REIGN OF HATE FINALLY OVER?

CLICK HERE to see another great commentary from Keith Olbermann


Are people really starting to wake up? According to Paul Krugman, THEY ARE! It's been a long time, since we Democrats have had a resemblance of sanity in our life and in our government.

It seemed as though, the Republicans had no limits, no boundaries in their game of dirty pool. They lied, smeared, concocted and conspired to maintain their power. 40 years of their power climb, finally being questioned by more than Democrats.

Many have speculated the Democratic Party is foundering, claims were made that they are spinless. But I don't see it that way, because in frailness one gives in, in decrepitude one gives up the ghost. The Democrats have been hanging in there through all the Republican illegal coup d'états... for instance,the Delay illegal redistricting:

Republican lawmakers and state officials who helped craft the proposal were aware it posed a high risk of being ruled discriminatory compared with other options. But the Texas legislature proceeded with the new map anyway because it would maximize the number of Republican federal lawmakers in the state. The redistricting was approved in 2003, and Texas Republicans gained five seats in the U.S. House in the 2004 elections, solidifying GOP control of Congress. From this site: Washington Post Justice Staff Saw Texas Districting As Illegal.

The Dems were in the minority, they couldn't do anything under our constitution to stop this thievery but they didn't just idly stand-by they took off to another state to stall this dishonest action by the Repubs...

Texas law required that two-thirds of the hundred-and-fifty-member body be present in order to conduct legislative business; the Democrats, who numbered sixty-two, could stop the legislation simply by not showing up. So most of them took off for Oklahoma. From this site: DRAWING THE LINE

And, as the recent Foley scandal unfolds, Democrats are hitting back hard, it's payback time. What the Republicans did to Bill Clinton was nothing more than slander to the highest degree. Foley, himself took part in the brutal defamation of a standing president... Read below:

Perverts Who Live in Glass Houses Shouldn't Throw Stones. But that Didn't Stop Foley from Blasting Bill Clinton 8 Years Ago They say that hindsight is a luxury, and if the events of the past few days are any indication, Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) very well may be an authority on sexual addiction, which would explain his comments back in September 1998 about former president Bill Clinton's randy transgressions:

"It's vile," said Foley to a reporter from the St. Petersburg Times after reviewing special prosecutor Kenneth Starr's report . "It's more sad than anything else, to see someone with such potential throw it all down the drain because of a sexual addiction."

Foley had joined a chorus of Republicans who excoriated Clinton over his sexual affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. He was especially disturbed at the time over Starr's account of Monica Lewinsky performing oral sex on Clinton as he chatted with members of Congress on the telephone. That was "just sad," he said. "It's unbelievable that he could behave so carelessly in that setting." Perhaps we'll learn in the near future just how many Congressmen and women Foley might have been chatting with while typing away his perverted emails and instant messages to underage boys.

Please read the revelations below (revelations for Republican voters, most Democrats knew this all along) from Paul Krugman. The comments are mine.

It's been a long, tough road of Republican authority with the conservative plutocrats striving to maintain their wealth and muscle at the expense of our constitution and our very lives. But a new beginning is on the horizon, a better tomorrow is on its way! thinkingblue


PS: Also, view another outstanding commentary by Keith Olbermann.

Things Fall Apart

Monday, October 2nd, 2006 by bill


From NY Times
By Paul Krugman

CLICK HERE TO GO TO TRUE BLUE LIBERAL.COM
Right after the 2004 election, it seemed as if Thomas Frank had been completely vindicated. In his book “What’s the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America,” Mr. Frank argued that America’s right wing had developed a permanent winning strategy based on the use of “values” issues to mobilize white working-class voters against a largely mythical cultural elite, while actually pursuing policies designed to benefit a small economic elite
.
(Good Grief what is wrong with this white working-class voter? thinkingblue)
It was and is a brilliant analysis. But the political strategy Mr. Frank described may have less staying power than he feared. In fact, the right-wing coalition that has spent 40 years climbing to its current position of political dominance may be cracking up.
(I hope so! thinkingblue)


At its core, the political axis that currently controls Congress and the White House is an alliance between the preachers and the plutocratsbetween the religious right, which hates gays, abortion and the theory of evolution, and the economic right, which hates Social Security, Medicare and taxes on rich people. Surrounding this core is a large periphery of politicians and lobbyists who joined the movement not out of conviction, but to share in the spoils. (Guess which type of people are in the economic right... If you see dollar signs... BINGO! thinkingblue)

Together, these groups formed a seemingly invincible political coalition, in which the religious right supplied the passion and the economic right supplied the money.

The coalition has, however, always been more vulnerable than it seemed, because it was an alliance based not on shared goals, but on each group’s belief that it could use the other to get what it wants. Bring that belief into question, and the whole thing falls apart.

Future historians may date the beginning of the right-wing crackup to the days immediately following the 2004 election, when President Bush tried to convert a victory won by portraying John Kerry as weak on defense into a mandate for Social Security privatization. The attempted bait-and-switch failed in the face of overwhelming public opposition. If anything, the Bush plan was even less popular in deep-red states like
Montana than in states that voted for Mr. Kerry.
(Bush&Co. forgot the rice bowl concept of DON'T YOU DARE GO NEAR MY RICE BOWL! thinkingblue)

And the religious and cultural right, which boasted of having supplied the Bush campaign with its “shock troops” and expected a right-wing cultural agenda in return — starting with a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage — was dismayed when the administration put its energy into attacking the welfare state instead. James Dobson, the founder and chairman of Focus on the Family, accused Republicans of “just ignoring those that put them in office.”(Oh how sad for the Dobsons, their bigoty didn't take precedence over greed. thinkingblue)

It will be interesting, by the way, to see how Dr. Dobson, who declared of Bill Clinton that “no man has ever done more to debase the presidency,” responds to the Foley scandal. Does the failure of Republican leaders to do anything about a sexual predator in their midst outrage him as much as a Democratic president’s consensual affair? (Now we know, it was not about Bill Clinton's sex-Capades IT WAS ABOUT GREED AND POWER!!! thinkingblue)

In any case, just as the religious right was feeling betrayed by Mr. Bush’s focus on the goals of the economic right, the economic right suddenly seemed to become aware of the nature of its political allies. “Where in the hell did this Terri Schiavo thing come from?” asked Dick Armey, the former House majority leader, in an interview with Ryan Sager, the author of “The
Elephant in the Room: Evangelicals, Libertarians and the Battle to Control the Republican Party.” The answer, he said, was “blatant pandering to James Dobson.” He went on, “Dobson and his gang of thugs are real nasty bullies.”
(Enlightenment! thinkingblue)

Some Republicans are switching parties. James Webb, who may pull off a macaca-fueled upset against Senator George Allen of Virginia, was secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan. Charles Barkley, a former N.B.A. star who used to be mentioned as a possible future Republican candidate, recently declared, “I was a Republican until they lost their minds.”(Why must discernment take so long. thinkingblue)

So the right-wing coalition is showing signs of coming apart. It seems that we’re not in Kansas anymore. In fact, Kansas itself doesn’t seem to be in Kansas anymore. Kathleen Sebelius, the state’s Democratic governor, has achieved a sky-high favorability rating by focusing on good governance rather than culture wars, and her party believes it will win big this year.(At last, caring about peole instead, FOMENTING HATRED... isn't it funny when you split hatred by syllables it reads HAT RED... Let us hope the republican reign of hatred is finally over. thinkingblue)

And nine former Kansas Republicans, including Mark Parkinson, the former state G.O.P. chairman, are now running for state office as Democrats. Why did Mr. Parkinson change parties? Because he “got tired of the theological debate over whether Charles Darwin was right.”


Picture of the week, from the IRAQ, BUSH'S WAR, saddest picture ever
seen:


One of the SADDEST PICTUREs click here


The IRAQ BODY COUNT Database

UNKNOWN NEWS casualties from AFGHANISTAN and IRAQ wars

BRING THEM HOME NOW

SEE MY BLOG ON DEMORATE.ORG

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YOU CAN BEAM ME UP NOW, SCOTTIE. Thinkingblue