Zogby Poll -- No Bounce: Bush Job Approval Unchanged by War Speech; 42% Want Impeachment for Bush Lies; Americans Tired of Divisiveness in Congress—Want Bi-Partisan Solutions http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1007
Friday, June 17, 2005 - Remember the fable of the little boy who cried
wolf so many times that when he was in real danger no one believed him?
This is the position we are in now; the current "leaders" in Washington
have lied to us so many times that, were we to face imminent danger
again, who could we trust?
THE BILLOFRIGHTS Amendments 1-10 of the Constitution.
This July 4, let's enshrine
the Ten Amendments,
not the Ten Commandments,
as America's true Patriot Act
by Harvey Wasserman
June 28, 2005
The Supreme Court's mixed rulings on displaying the Ten Commandments
on public buildings and property offer us the perfect patriotic step
forward
for this coming July 4: let's post the first Ten Amendments, i.e. the
Bill of
Rights, instead.
The DNC 2004 Election Report: An indictment of incompetence
The Democratic National Committee's investigation into
Ohio's 2004 presidential election irregularities is the
perfect postscript to the party's 'election protection'
efforts last fall: it is a shocking indictment of a party
caught completely off-guard in its most heated presidential
campaign in years, and a party still doesn't fully understand
what happened and how to avoid a repeat in the future.
Karl Rove is a liar
In attacking liberals' reaction to Sept. 11, Bush's senior advisor once again resorts to McCarthy-style tactics.
By Joe Conason
The other night Rove lied about the liberal reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks and again exploited patriotism for narrow partisan advantage in a time of war. He seeks to divert public opinion from the failures of the Bush administration by suppressing dissent, stigmatizing "liberals"
Evidently Rove believes that demonizing Democrats and liberals will distract the nation from the Bush administration's failures. That tactic has certainly served him well in the past, when he managed to divert attention from the failure to deal with the terrorist threat before 9/11, the failure to speak honestly about the alleged threat from Iraq and the failure to plan intelligently for the Iraq invasion and its aftermath. We have paid an enormous price for those failures, yet cynical Rove still thinks he can convince us that this is all the fault of "liberals."
For the record Karl, does Iraq have any connection to the 9/11 attacks? Because, you and your friends with your collective “understanding of 9/11” seem to be contradicting yourselves about the Iraq-9/11 connection, too. First, we were told that we went to war with Iraq because it was linked to the 9/11 attacks. Then, your rationale was changed to "Iraq has WMD". Then you told us that we needed to invade Iraq because Saddam was a "bad man". And now it turns out that we are in Iraq to bring them "democracy."
Of course, the Downing Street memo clarifies many of these things, but for the record Karl: Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11; there were few terrorists in Iraq before our invasion, but now Iraq is a terrorist hot-bed. America had the sympathy and support of the whole world before Iraq. Now, thanks to your actions, we find ourselves hated and alienated by the rest of the world. Al Qaeda's recruitment took a nose-dive after the 9/11 attacks, but has now skyrocketed since your invasion of Iraq; and most importantly, nearly 2,000 U.S. soldiers have been killed because of your war in Iraq. These facts speak for themselves. (And, they speak very little about effectively winning any war on terror.)
On October 26, 2001, President Bush said, "The elected branches of our government, and both political parties, are united in our resolve to fight and stop and punish those who would do harm to the American people." That was before the administration's unwise, unfocused and unsuccessful approach to combating terrorism helped push Bush's approval ratings to historic lows. Out of answers, Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove went back to his biggest strength, political mudslinging.
The question the reporter asked was, "Governor, what do you think the voters will say to you come next election once you fail to fix school finance yet again?"
In the Lone Star State, where Governor Rick Perry is feeling mighty aLONE (ahh ha ... ha) with a oyish 38% approval rating. Things won't get better after a little slip of the tongue this week: In reference to a reporter who had just interviewed him, and unknown to Perry, the Governor said in a live mic, “Adios, mofo.”
In the Lone Star State, where Governor Rick Perry is feeling mighty aLONE (ahh ha ... ha) with a oyish 38% approval rating. Things won't get better after a little slip of the tongue this week: In reference to a reporter who had just interviewed him, and unknown to Perry, the Governor said in a live mic, “Adios, mofo.”
While Gov. Rick Perry and his camp may be trying to
trying to distance from his ill-timed “Adios, mofo”
remark to a reporter, one entrepreneur has embraced
the quip as a moneymaking opportunity.
Democrats Call for Firing of Broadcast Chairman
By STEPHEN LABATON
Some Democrats are concerned that the head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is injecting partisan politics into public radio and television.
THE LONELINESS OF A LONESTAR LIBERAL
Rose Aguilar, AlterNet
Progressive activists in Texas face strong and often hostile
opposition. But they say they're going to fight to turn
Texas blue again. http://www.alternet.org/story/22254/
For those who don't receive C-SPAN 3 on their local cable system, the video and/or audio from the hearings should be carried via the Internet right here.
Yesterday, TrueMajority.org, another very large citizens activist organization, joined in sending Petitions to its members to collect signatures for John Conyers Letter to Bush, to be delivered bu Conyers himself after todays hearing. TrueMajority.org joins MoveOn.org who last week collected some 500,000 signatures in 48 hours or so.
As well, the hearings have now been rescheduled to 2:30pm 5:00pm, and have been moved from the DNC offices -- where they had previously been scheduled, when Republicans would not allow a hearing room for the Democrats -- back to a room in the CapitolBuilding…
Freshly-released autopsy results reveal that Terri_Schiavo was blind:
Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner Jon Thogmartin concluded that…her brain was about half of normal size when she died. …
Thogmartin says her brain was “profoundly atrophied” – and that the damage was “irreversable.” He also says, “The vision centers of her brain were dead” – meaning she was blind.
Which makes Dr. Frist’s expert “diagnosis” all the more outrageous:
... “She certainly seems to respond to visual stimuli.”
SOMETHING ROTTEN IN OHIO
Gore Vidal, The Nation
The disturbing truths about the last election in Ohio have
been largely ignored by the press and the Congress. http://www.alternet.org/story/22222/
Outside the oil and gas junta that controls two and a half branches of our government (the half soon to be whole is the judiciary), there was a good deal of envy at the late British election among those Americans who are serious about politics. Little money was spent by the three parties and none for TV advertising. Results were achieved swiftly and cheaply. Best of all, the three party leaders were quizzed sharply and intelligently by ordinary citizens known quaintly as subjects, thanks to the ubiquitous phantom crown so unlike our nuclear-taloned predatory eagle. Although news of foreign countries seldom appears in our tightly censored media (and good news, never), those of us who are addicted to C-SPAN and find it the one truly, if unconsciously, subversive media outlet in these United States are able to observe British politics in full cry.
"Deism, as they called their belief, runs unmistakably through the Declaration of Independence, in which Thomas Jefferson wrote of the "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" rather than of the personal, miracle-working God of Christianity."
To cite only one example:
I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity] one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded upon fables and mythologies. (Letter to Dr. Woods)
from: truthout | News Politics
Lets get the Truth Out, changing things For the better through inFormation.
"People don't know where we stand on a lot of issues," he said. "I believe this country's a Democratic country, with a big 'D.' If we got 48 percent of the vote, with their machine and our 30 years behind theirs, then this is a country that if voters vote and if they understand what we believe in, we're going to win. Now, that's why Republicans like to suppress the vote." -Howard Dean
We thought fascism died in the 20th Century, but the Busheviks have revived it and reenergized it in all its infamy: appeals to nationalistic superiorities, demagoguery, centralized government powers, police state powers, merger of religion and state, creation of the ideal that proponents of Constitutionally guaranteed secularism are the enemy, use of a marginal enemy to seize unConstitutional powers, use of wars to galvanize military spending and build up of the military sector, creation of a ruling oligarchy.
All this and more are what the Busheviks are up to. Democracy is an inconvenient obstacle to them that they only give lip service to in order to achieve their goal of one-party police state powers.
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Leading Democrats, including John Edwards, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Dianne Feinstein, have felt it necessary in the last week to distance themselves from Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean. True, Dean has spoken bluntly, as is his wont, about Republicans, particularly the Republican party leadership. One wonders though where these upright Democrats find the time and energy to publicly criticize one of their own during such trying times.
Further evidence, as if any more was needed, has emerged establishing that the war in Iraq was sold under false pretenses, but Democrats are speaking out against Dean.
A major news magazine has been discredited to divert attention from confirmed instances of Koran desecration in Guantanamo Bay prison, but Democrats are speaking out against Dean.
Osama bin Laden is still at large, but Democrats are speaking out against Dean…
Republicans are successfully conducting class warfare through the tax code, providing ludicrous cuts to the most wealthy Americans at the expense of the lower and middle class, but Democrats are speaking out against Dean.
Liars, crooks, and worse run amok in our government, but Democrats are speaking out against Dean.
Get your priorities straight, people. Stop pretending that there's a middle in U.S. politics anymore. The foxes are running the henhouse, yet you can't find anything more constructive to do than attack one of your own. If you're not willing to help our country out of this insanity, at least try not to destroy those courageous enough to try.
If you've seen the news over the last week, you know about the release of Amnesty International's Annual Report and our criticisms of human rights abuses by the U.S. government in Guantánamo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other detention camps around the world.
We've exposed widespread abuses. Now we need your help to build momentum for an independent commission and the appointment of a Special Counsel to investigate fully what happened in these detention centers -- and to hold accountable anyone who was responsible.
Thank you,
Bill Schulz
Executive Director
Amnesty International USA
P.S. If you're already an Amnesty International supporter, thank you. If you're not, this would be a great time to join!
Thank you, Bill SchulzExecutive DirectorAmnesty International USAP.S. If you're already an Amnesty International supporter, thank you. If you're not, this would be a
Thank you, Bill SchulzExecutive DirectorAmnesty International USAP.S. If you're already an Amnesty International supporter, thank you. If you're not, this would be a
The latest on the Right Wing takeover of PBS...(Hello In There, has cancelled it's support of PBS, as long as KenTomlinsonis in charge)
MEDIA – HOUSE TRIES TO TAR AND FEATHER BIG BIRD: Apparently not content with simply taking over the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the congressionally chartered agency that directs funding for public broadcasting, conservatives are now trying to gut its funding. Yesterday a House subcommittee voted "to sharply reduce the federal government's financial support" of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting with the intention of eliminating all federal money for CPB in two years. This would be "the most drastic cutback of public broadcasting since Congress created the nonprofit CPB in 1967." On another front, high-ranking State Department official Patricia de Stacy Harrison, "a former co-chairman of the Republican National Committee is the leading candidate" to be CPB's next chief executive and already has the full support of the corporation's chairman.
The rest of America is beginning to get hip to the Bush administration and the Republican congress. Not even Rove could prevent their recent plummet in the polls.
This is not cause for celebration (well, maybe just a little). Rather it is a signal to be on the lookout for new tactics to distract, twist and hide the truth from citizens who have simply had enough of a very bad thing.
Finally forced to confront the Downing Street Memo, Bush & Co. did a wonderful job downplaying its seriousness and flat-out lying about its accuracy.
Fortunately, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) takes the matter of lying our way into war a little more seriously than his GOP colleagues do (see below).
Houses of Right-Wing Worship By Rose Aguilar, AlterNet A group of Texans say Governor Rick Perry's recent signing of anti-abortion and anti-gay legislation on the grounds of a church school is decidedly un-Christian. Posted on Jun 7, 2005
A JOURNEY INTO RED AMERICA
Rose Aguilar, AlterNet
A San Francisco progressive begins her four-month journey
through the Red States. Her first stop: the bluest town in Texas. http://www.alternet.org/story/22059/
501 Oakhurst Scenic Dr (east of I-35N & Yucca Ave)
The Purpose:
Rick Perry left Texas children behind, but he will be in Fort Worth this Sunday for a rally and photo opportunity, pandering to his base and trying to scare off a primary challenge. After all, when one can use a church as a film set and its people as props for a political, who will ask him why 4.4 million Texas children remain shortchanged? WE WILL!
StandAgainstExtremeJudicialNominees! Take action now to oppose the nominations of Janice Rogers Brown and Bill Pryor. ...
www.au.org/site/PageServer/ - 15k
Tell Corporate America to Drop the Hammer You might be subsidizing Tom DeLay's legal defense when you buy an airline ticket, make a phone call or have a happy hour cocktail.
The Sunshine Boys -- Jon teaches the president the difference between "dissemble" and "disassemble
To mark the occasion of Wal-Mart's upcoming annual meeting, Wal-Mart Watch has posted its version of a Wal-Mart annual report. It's 24 pages long in .pdf format, has two solid pages of very small endnotes and really should be considered the definitive statement on just what Wal-Mart is doing to this country.
What's Good for Wal-Mart is Good for America?
A Debate between The Nation and The Economist
Click here to watch the Debate: Part IPart II
In "Is Wal-Mart Good for America?", correspondent Hedrick Smith
examines Wal-Mart as a global force changing the balance of
power in the business world--and leaving workers behind. You'll
hear from an IBEW member who worked at television manufacturer
Thomson Industries and see Rubbermaid's equipment auctioned off
to Chinese buyers, illustrating what many consider Wal-Mart's
strong-arm tactics on suppliers to lower prices that have driven
jobs from once-solid American companies to low-wage operations
overseas.