Animal Terrorism Act Signed Into Law

This article borrowed from Lori Prices'(CLG) site is in regards to the penalties that the shrub wants to impose on those who protest against animal abuses...including in research!


Coming from a "man" who liked to blow up frogs with M-80's, I guess this should come as no surprise. He also appears to like to blow up people...and entire Countries!!

What a freak of nature he truly is...

Jewels

Go Patrick!

Patrick Leahy is continuing to press the Bush Administration to reveal "classified" documents pertaining to illegal detainment and TORTURE of suspects held in Gitmo, Abu Ghraib et al.

(See above Link.)

Finally!!

Jewels

MORE BUSH-ISM'S?

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the public believes is false." William Casey, CIA Director (first staff meeting, 1981)

Republicans To Bush:
"Your Presidency Is Effectively Over"

Bush Regarded As Party's Greatest Liability
A growing number of Republican leaders, party strategists and political professional now privately tell President George W. Bush that his presidency "is effectively over" unless he fires embattled White House advisor Karl Rove, apologizes to the American people for misleading the country into war and revamps his administration from top to bottom.
The only show of unity we have now in the Republican Party is the belief that the President has failed the party, the American people and the presidency," says a longtime, and angry, GOP strategist.
With the public face of support for Bush eroding daily from even diehard Republicans, the President faces mounting anger from within his party over the path that may well lead to loss of control of Congress in the 2006 midterm elections and the White House in 2008."This presidency is in trouble," says a senior White House aide. "Even worse, I don't know if there is a way out of the trouble."
Congressional leaders journeyed to the White House before Bush left on his South American tour this week to tell the President that his legislative agenda on the Hill is dead, his latest Supreme Court nominee faces a tough confirmation fight in the Senate and he is facing open revolt within party ranks.."The Speaker is having an increasingly difficult time holding his troops in line," says a source within the office of House Speaker Dennis J. Hastert. "Anger at the President grows exponentially with each passing day."
At a recent White House strategy session, internal party pollsters told the President that his approval rating with Americans continues to slide and may be irreversible, citing his failed Iraq war, the failed Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers and his failure to deal decisively on a number of fronts, including Hurricane Katrina, the economy and the Valerie Plame scandal.
In meetings, leaders and strategists have suggested a number of things that Bush must do to try and save his presidency and GOP prospects in upcoming elections, including:
1. Apologize to the American people, Congress and our allies for misleading them on the reasons for invading Iraq;
2. Revamp the White House staff from top to bottom;
3. Fire Rove."We keep coming back to Rove," says a GOP pollster. "He has escaped indictment, so far, but the feeling within the party is that another shoe is ready to drop and the longer he waits to jettison Rove the greater the damage.
As long as Karl Rove remains at the President's side, the Bush presidency is effectively over and he is just riding out the days until the nation elects a Democrat to replace him. Even with Rove gone the damage may be irreparable.
"Bush, however, has dug his heels in on Rove. When a GOP strategist suggested last weekend that the President fire Rove, Bush exploded."You go to hell," he screamed at the strategist. "You can leave and you can take the rest of these lily-livered motherfuckers with you!" The President then stormed out of the room and refused to meet further with any other party leaders or strategists.
Bush's escalating temper tantrums and his intransigence on political issues increase Republican worries about the long term effects on both his presidency and the party's prospects in upcoming elections.
"Right now, George W. Bush is the Republican Party's chief liability," says a GOP strategist who has advised Presidential campaigns for 30 years. "The entire political future of the party and perhaps the nation now rests on the shoulders of a President that no one - Democrat or Republican - believes in or trusts."

Great HuffPost article~~Hehehehehe...

Yes, this describes exactly what I have been feeling lately!!

Great Post, Bob!

Jewels

CONyer's blog

Just as I expected...as soon as the stinking Democrats-DemocRATS-came into power, they recanted everything they said! The Pelosi woman is nothing more than another Bush mouthpiece, and the WORST administration in the history of this country is going to get off scott-free.

CONyer's basement hearings and all other such rhetoric/actions are naught but a bunch of lies to gain a Seat in Congress.

Read the anger and cries of "FOUL" here by the American People.
This heartens me if nothing else does!! I don't think it will take much more lies and bullshit and EVIL in our Government to trigger a new Revolution! I will be right in the middle of the fray if such occurs-violent or non-violent.

There is nothing less then our entire future-and the coming generation's future-at stake.

Jewels

NANCY PELOSI: CONSPIRATOR IN PEARLS

NO WONDER CONYERS CAVED!!

JEWELS

THIS IS FUNNY, ALSO!

Well, it took me awhile, but I finally realized what "I'm the decider," reminds me of. It sounds like something a character in a Dr. Seuss book might say. So with apologies to the late Mr. Geisel, here is some idle speculation as to what else such a character might say:

I'm the decider.
I pick and I choose.
I pick among whats.
And choose among whos.


And as I decide
Each particular day,
The things I decide on
All turn out that way.

I decided on Freedom
For all of Iraq.
And now that we have it,
I'm not looking back.

I decided on tax cuts
That just help the wealthy.
And Medicare changes
That aren't really healthy.

And parklands and wetlands
Who needs all that stuff?
I decided that none
Would be more than enough!

I decided that schools
All in all are the best.
The less that they teach
And the more that they test.

I decided those wages
You need to get by,
Are much better spent
On some CEO guy.

I decided your Wade
Which was versing your Roe,
Is terribly awful
And just has to go.

I decided that levees
Are not really needed.
Now when hurricanes come
They can come unimpeded.

That old Constitution?
Well, I have decided
As "just Goddamn paper"*
It should be derided.

I've decided gay marriage
Is icky and weird.
Above all other things,
It's the one to be feared.

And Cheney and Rummy
And Condi all know
That I'm the Decider
They tell me it's so.

I'm the Decider
So watch what you say,
Or I may decide
To have you whisked away.

Or I'll tap your phones.
Your e-mail I'll read.
`cause I'm the Decider
Like Jesus decreed.

This is Funny!!

This is an archived letter I was sent by a friend...it is an "open" letter to the Democrats regarding their shameless tactics in the 2000 (s)election!! LMOA!!


Jewels

AND NOW...REALITY.

08 November 2006

http://www.chris-floyd.com/

Election 2006: Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me

by Chris Floyd

Ordinarily, the elevation of a gaggle of corporate bagmen, spine-free
time-servers and craven accomplices of tyranny and aggression to the
control of Congress would not be a cause for rejoicing. With a few
notable exceptions, the Democratic Party has displayed nothing but
cowardice and cluelessness over the past five years, betraying the
interests of the American people at every single gut-check point in the
long march to the self-proclaimed "Unitary Executive" dictatorship of
George W. Bush. Whenever it really counted – Supreme Court nominations,
tax cuts for the rich, the class-warfare nuclear bomb of the Bankruptcy
Bill, the appointment of sleazy, third-rate officials such as
torture-enabler and Constitution-gutter Alberto Gonzales to high
office, and of course, the eager goose-stepping into the war crime of
Iraq (which was, let us remember, approved by a Democratic-controlled
Senate) – the Democrats folded, would not even go down fighting.

Is there any greater example of this than the vote, just a few weeks
ago, on the "Military Commissions Act," the republic-killing measure
that gave the president virtually unlimited, unchecked, unappealable
powers over the life and liberty of every citizen? The Democratic
"leadership" – now suddenly basking in media lionization – would not
even mount a filibuster to defend the Constitution (not to mention the
Magna Carta). Many Democrats actually voted in favor of ending the
American Republic. (Harold Ford Jr. of Tennessee was one of these – and
now he has reaped his reward: defeat. That's how it goes, Harold; you
can make a deal with the devil, but he'll always cheat you in the end.
You sold out the nation for nothing – and now Bob Corker, yet another
feckless, faceless, money-grubbing tycoon will pollute the Senate
chamber.) The MCA debacle was the last full measure of fear and
servility from a group whose collective record is one long tissue of shame.

And yet, and yet…this is indeed a time – a brief, brief time – for
celebration. For the fact remains that the Republican Congress is – as
Matt Taibbi has detailed so forcefully – the worst in American history:
corrupt, incompetent, dysfunctional, lazy, and ignorant almost beyond
measuring. As often mentioned here, they are the very picture of the
Roman Senate described by Tiberius, after they'd voted him yet another
grovelling set of honors and powers: "Men fit to be slaves." The damage
they have done to the nation, and the world, as the bootlicking
handmaidens of George W. Bush and his militarist mafia is incalculable,
and will go on producing foul repercussions for years, perhaps generations.

And so it is meet indeed that we praise the parting of these wretched
fools from their dominance of the legislature. And even though
Democratic control of one or both houses of Congress will certainly not
usher in a new Golden Age of enlightened and noble governance, it would
be churlish and wilfully perverse not to acknowledge that genuine
benefits will accrue from the change. Giving subpoena power to Rep.
Henry Waxman – one of the few Democrats who have served in opposition
with honor, vigor and fire – is a mighty boon in itself, no matter how
tepidly the Democratic leadership conducts itself in the months to
come. Even though the Bush Faction has already promised a Nixon-style
stonewall on every single investigation – and although Bush has already
openly declared, in his "signing statements," that he doesn't feel
bound to provide Congress with even routine information required by law
– the probes launched by the new majority (or at least their bulldogs
like Waxman) will doubtless produce many nuggets of truth from the
Regime's mountainous slapheap of lies and secrecy.

And that's really all that we can expect at this point – or perhaps at
any point. The Democratic leadership is a deeply embedded part of the
Establishment; multimillionaires like our soon-to-be Speaker, Nancy
Pelosi (who is probably richer than Bush) aren't going to seriously
challenge the near-total domination of American politics and society by
Big Business and wealthy elites. They may re-arrange the display a
little, but they are not going to upset the golden applecart. So while
we may see a slight goosing of the minimum wage, we will almost
certainly not see a major rollback of the relentless rightwing assault
on the rights, protections and well-being of working people and the
poor. We can hope for some modifications of the bizarre and punitive
prescription drug "reforms" imposed by the Bush Party; but we won't see
anything resembling a national health insurance system, despite the
majority of Americans in favor of one. We won't see a reinstatement of
the safety net that was gutted, pre-Bush, by Democrat Bill Clinton. We
won't see major reductions – or indeed, any reductions – in military
spending from a party that has faithfully approved every cent of every
"special spending bill" that Bush has submitted to finance his
off-the-books wars. We won't see a lessening of international tensions
from a crew that has spent most of the past year bashing the Bush
Administration for not being bellicose enough in threatening Iran, and
for not larding Israel with even more deadly weaponry to carry out its
aggression in Lebanon and its increasingly frenzied decimation in Gaza.
We will not see an immediate withdrawal from Iraq; at best, we will see
a few tentative timetables based on unreal and unrealizable
"benchmarks" produced by some grandly gassy "bipartisan agreement"
based on the face-saving formulas of the "Baker Commission."

There is going to be no impeachment of Bush, even if the Democrats get
hold of the Senate. There is going to be no criminal prosecution for
the principal architects of the war crime in Iraq (and probably none of
small fry either). There will be little or no rollback of the draconian
strictures of the Patriot Act, which was overwhelmingly approved by the
Democrats, or the many other measures – "national security letters,"
warrantless surveillance, etc. – introduced hugger-mugger by the
"Unitary Executive." Indeed, we will be very lucky if the new
Democratic leadership even revisits the Military Commissions Act.

So perhaps the best we can hope for is that Waxman and his fellow
gadflies can use their new powers, for as long as they have them, to
dig up as many fragments as possible of the dark truths behind the Bush
Regime's crimes and incompetencies – so that these facts will at least
be out there, they will be available for anyone who cares to know, just
as the investigations of Iran-Contra, BCCI, and Iraqgate, for example,
laid out the sinister character of the Bush Faction long before they
returned to power in the Court-fixed election of 2000. Of course, the
mainstream media ignored these past revelations during Bush's
campaigns, but at least they were available to individual citizens. And
with the internet, any new nuggets can be even more widely and easily
distributed. (Assuming the corporately inclined Democrats don't
ultimately cave in to the relentless assault on internet freedom by Big
Business, that is.)

Naturally, the mainstream media will continue their years-long
kid-glove treatment of the Bush Regime. Oh, they may be a bit more bold
now; they may, occasionally, muster up the courage to call a lie a lie
(or some more polite euphemism.) But for the most part, it will still
be softly, softly with the Bushists, a reluctance to reveal their
Beltway pals and inside sources as the fools and criminals they are.
There will still the same cringing attempt to assure the greedy
plutocrats, the hard-right haters of democracy, the putrid gasbags of
hate radio and the sex-crazed cranks who call themselves Christians
that the "liberal media" will continue to contort reality in order to
produce a bogus "objectivity" that gives the lunatic fringe equal
weight with reason, facts and common sense. (You can check out the
obsequious wheedlings of ABC political news director Mark Helperin if
you want to see the latter dynamic in action.)

Meanwhile, of course, you can be sure that every minute crumb of
possible malfeasance, every atom of innuendo that can be inflated into
an appearance of scandal, will be seized upon by a press now suddenly
eager to flash its watchdog fangs at the newly powerful Democrats. And
certainly, there will be plenty of corruption oozing from the nodes of
patronage now available to the Democrats, and it should be
remorselessly exposed. But, just as it's been since Ronald Reagan's
presidential campaign, the vastly different levels of scrutiny that the
media give to Republican and Democratic scandals (real or imagined)
will be very marked.

Finally, we all must remember this: even if the Democrats were paragons
of courage and wisdom, they will control only the legislative branch
(or perhaps only part of it). The executive branch will remain firmly
in the hands of the Bush Faction, a gang that has already shown its
contempt for legislative oversight – even from its own sycophants – and
has publicly declared that the president is essentially beyond the
reach of law. In the openly stated view of the Bushists, Congress is a
"quaint" appendage – like Tiberius' Roman Senate – fit only to ratify
the arbitrary will of the Unitary Executive.

Also remember that the worst depredations of the first Bush
Administration, the Reagan Administration and the Nixon Administration
were all carried out with strong Democratic majorities in Congress
(except for a brief period of Republican Senate control in the Reagan
years). Even in "normal" times (if we have ever known such a thing),
even with the opposition party in control of Congress, there is
virtually no end to the mischief that the executive branch can get up
to. Nixon and Reagan waged whole covert wars, killing hundreds of
thousands of people, without the approval or input of Congress.

If anyone thinks the horrors of the Bush Imperium are somehow at an end
– or will even be seriously impaired – by the results of yesterday's
election, they have a harsh and bitter awakening to come.

But still – the political situation we have today is better than what
we had the day before. In a period of such deep crisis in the life of
the Republic, and (to draw on Noam Chomsky) in a system of power so
massive and far-reaching, even a small change can mean very real
benefits to a good many people. (And to many good people.) And in any
case, we should raise a glass to the American people for standing up –
amidst the hailstorm of lies and bullshit thrown at them – and giving
George W. Bush a resounding slap in the face. Long may he stew in this
great and well-deserved humiliation.

End

I, too, am still skeptical. I just don't TRUST the Creeps

http://mediamatters.org/

IN REPORTING RUMSFELD REVERSAL, WILL MEDIA NOTE THAT BUSH HAS BEEN CAUGHT IN APPARENT LIE ABOUT CABINET SWITCH BEFORE?

SUMMARY:

During a November 8 press conference, President Bush announced that Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld was resigning. Bush's remarks came less than a week after he pledged that he would keep Rumsfeld on as defense secretary until the end of his presidency. When asked about the dramatic reversal by a reporter at the press conference, Bush claimed that he had said Rumsfeld was staying on because he "didn't want to inject a major decision about this war in the final days of a campaign," and later asserted that at the time of the November 2 press conference in which he expressed his support for Rumsfeld, he hadn't yet decided to replace Rumsfeld because he had not yet met with his eventual replacement, former CIA director Robert Gates.

In May, Bush similarly claimed that then-Treasury Secretary John Snow was "doing a fine job" and had given no "indication" that he would resign that position, even though it had already been determined that Snow was, in fact, leaving the administration and Hank Paulson had already been offered the job and accepted it, as the weblog Think Progress noted at the time.

Will the media note that this is not the first time Bush was caught in an apparent lie about whether a member of his Cabinet would continue to serve in his administration?

‹ A.S.

Posted to the web on Wednesday November 8, 2006 at 2:11 PM EST

* FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107 - any copyrighted work in this message is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information. Url.: http://liimirror.warwick.ac.uk/uscode/17/107.html

Election News via AOL.

Thought for the Day!!


So far, the Dems have come out ahead in the mid-term elections!
There is a Dem Majority in the House for the first time in ten years! And the Senate appears to be heading toward a Democratic Majority, also.
Now, if only they keep their heads on and their farts out, the shit may not hit the fan after all!!!

Jewels

From the Message Boards...thank you Jcongalady!!

Whether you realize it or not, posters have made a huge difference in the outcome of the most vital and important election in our nation's history.
Yes it's true!

For those of you who have spent countless hours researching and studying what is really going on behind the scenes in our nation and world, and have dared to report the truths, that the mainstream media did not, to the enlighten this nation, and the world to the facts, and expose the truth, you have indeed made a huge impact in this pivital election, and thus, taken your place in American history as true American patriots!

Though you have been at times sorely insulted, in your intellect and integrity, and though our names may never appear in our history books, you have indeed risked all, and your own personal freedoms, to stand up for this nation, and for what is right. And in fact, fought hard and fought well, in the service to our nation.

You have stood up to the corruption of the most powerful people in the world, you have defended those that defend our nation, and today you have won!

So please realize, the impact you have made, as this election could not have been won without you, and this election has indeed changed the future course of both America's and the world's history!

Please take the time today to celebrate this victory, YOUR VICTORY, the victory of those who have fought in the e-trenches beside you, in America's victory, and recognize YOUR PART in American history!

A big high five, kudo's and blessings to you! You know who you are!

Judges Questioning Legality of Detainee Law (Finally...)

The thing that amazes me in all of this bogus "War On (of) Terror" is that the people are allowing themselves to be manipulated by fear to give up their "essential Liberties" as Ben Franklin put it in his famous quote.

Our Forefathers weren't perfect, being Masons and Illuminatus, many of them, but they had a vision for this Country which didn't include torturing and illegally holding "prisoners!"

I, for one, think we should continue to listen to their knowledge and vision.

Jewels

What, again, needs to be said?

Olbermann: Bush owes troops apology, not Kerry - Countdown with Keith Olbermann - MSNBC.com

NUKE IN IRAQ (?)

My Op-Ed piece on Media Boycott.

A Piece I wrote for a website.

Jewels

Female soldier Kills Herself Rather Than Torture "Prisoners."

Can't say as I blame her.
What an atrocity.

Jewels

WOW...someone else gets it!!!

The passage of the Torture/Detainee bill (hereafter “the Law”) inspires this long rant.
I realize most of you know a good amount of information about the Law already, but I’m obsessively-compelled to spread a fraction of my knowledge and dot-connecting inferences, NOT about human-rights abuses, NOT about Gitmo or renditions to the no-longer-secret CIA prisons overseas, NOT about Geneva conventions’ violations and torture of foreign innocents held for years without charges. This e-mail rant delves deeper into the Law’s implications, what it truly says and doesn’t say regarding people saying “Shame” while thinking it’s not all that relevant to their personal lives, their own futures.

I take consolation in learning that since “Black Friday,” two days ago, a zillion e-mails, blog posts, chats online and telephonic, etc., have been flying all over. I will make one apology only (for those friends who’ve received similar communiqués, a single apology’s an improvement!) I sincerely believe that Friday was one of America’s darkest days and am sorry for the length of what follows, the intrusion, and unedited prose. I couldn’t let this linger, unfinished or unsent. Please read it: feel free to do so gradually, feel free to forward it promiscuously. The first step and most important action we need to take is educating ourselves and others. My compulsion didn’t arise in a vacuum - there’s been plenty for freedom-loving Americans to rant about for five years. Two-hundred-year-old liberties have been chipped away at, there are several dozen “urgent” political problems - actually, crises - but this Law, in one broad stroke demolished a substantial chunk of what the United States has stood for. Permanently, until or unless the Law can be revoked. And again: I’m not concentrating on what this Law means as it relates to the poor souls, some dead, who’ve been tortured and now, retroactively, are deemed to have been tortured legally.

Throughout this Administration/President (“Party” hereafter), the genius of “getting their way” on the tiniest matters and on “everything” overall has involved -- my specialty -- words. It is the semantics, the re-defining, framing and re-framing, linguistics and usage, expression of ideas and concepts, that Karl Rove, et al., successfully manipulate and employ to manipulate us. I won’t ramble too many examples: y’all know plenty. During these half-dozen years, one often-employed technique has turned definitions topsy-turvy, e.g., patriots have effectively become unpatriotic; many “antis” have become “pros,” etc. Another category of new coinages or usage that are spelled out in Party talking points are such minutiae that the deniability is built-in - an accident or elision, perhaps. One seemingly trivial example Newt Gingrich started this summer and that was followed by Party faithful, was the simple change in speaking about the “Democrat Party” and a “Democrat senator.” The misuse of the noun as adjective, the one-syllable change created two different impressions to its audience: these insidious re-definers wanted to make the “Democratic party” sound less “democratic” and a policymaker, allegedly beamed, "and it ends with rat!” Trust me: this is part of my main point, not a tangent.
Words can confuse and complicate consciously; worse, their effects can subtly run deep, work on America’s collective subconscious. By “definition,” the latter means that the Party, despite its anti-intellectual bent, has gotten away with the "nuances" of concealed motives and actions from even the smartest citizens. Our nation is hardly composed of citizens as mentally challenged as our leader appears to be. However, the subconscious works in mysterious ways. And you know from group-psych how collective expands exponentially, it isn’t merely a total of individuals -- a group of 5 hysterical people produces more than 5x the hysteria of one hysteric. Our country’s figurehead doesn’t have the capacity to consistently retain semantic nuances (haven’t scientists miniaturized that mechanical box he wore under his suit during last campaign? Oops: I forgot, “science.”) The people around him, including those involved in the Project for the New American Century, don’t miss a word-trick. I won’t belabor the “framing” and “re-framing” of ideas and the Big Picture - you’re aware of the techniques and can find plenty online to specifically detail them.

Perhaps my greatest concern about the Law, you’ll see soon below, involves its wording, the Party’s words about the Law, and varying interpretations thereof. The entire process that led up to and resulted in this Law is frightening as hell. “Fear” is the over-riding theme of this two-term Administration. Fear is a technique, linguistic and otherwise. Fear is a motivation, a punishment, and collective psychological control. AND - apart from the Party’s incessant attempts to instill of fear, nationally and globally, the Law is shot-through with genuine reasons for Americans to be fearful. The response, “nothing to fear but fear itself,” in this decade, offers no reassurance. “Fear itself” is the Party’s unwritten motto. We who aren’t lemmings handily saw through early fear-mongering in the Electorate: blatant and awkward examples came with the 2002 and 2004 “heightened terrorism alerts” that coincided just before elections Democrats should have won -- or, without Party-owned, -bought, and -manufactured voting machines, and with well-placed State secretaries of state/brothers, the Democratic Party did win. Those of us who dismissed the literal scare tactics have been able to identify and react appropriately to those false fears. And yet, another brilliant piece of psychology was the manipulation of “terrorism alerts” and simultaneous statements “Don’t be afraid, that’s what the terrorists want!” WHO wants it? The Party, big time.

We could go month-by-month (even a day at a time) since September 11th and create a multi-columned “fear chart” that shows the Party’s attempts to instill fear. The intentional fear-mongering has hardly been limited to terrorism or the “war on” terrorism (William Safire in today’s NYTimes examines the various re-wordings of the illegal invasion/occupation and re-wording of the wars' targets as Islamo-fascists).

IT IS ONLY IN THE CONTEXT OF PERPETUAL FEAR and with a knowledge of wording that the Law’s implications, ramifications, consequences, can be understood. Remember how this “issue” -- one of hundreds on which we must be educated -- began with Gonzales terming the Geneva conventions “quaint?”Under our latest, higher-level Fear-Itself conditions, we can look back on the “Orange Alerts” as quaint. As the Party agenda pushes further and further into __ *I won’t say the word till later* and into deeper fears, political decisions and ideas we complained about, say, 4 or 3 or 2 years ago appear comparatively mild. Instead of discussing the torture of Gitmo, et al., and detainees, I want to begin with the effect of the words on the collective subconscious. The most common of rhetorical devices is repetition -- think Gospel services. Six years ago, if you watched television all day long, how many times would you estimate you heard the word “torture?” If it hadn’t been for the “careless” release of Abu Ghraib photographs, even two years ago, you would’ve heard it a little, either in some Afghan/Iraq/terrorist context OR in news descriptions from places few Americans could find on a map, e.g., remote republics of the former Soviet Union. Before touching on the Law’s politics, what do you know rhetorical repetition does, and does to people? How many times would you estimate the word “torture” has popped into your head 10 years ago? Or, except for joking about a job or relationship, have you used the word? Some researcher should Google “torture,” eliminate historical references, and plot the surge in the past decade, then month-by-month in 2006. How many of y'all could explain "waterboarding" in 2002? Other terms have entered our vocabularies. My initial, significant point herein is “merely” the effect that single word has already had on the American people. And that's The Law's subject matter. First, “torture” is a scary concept and a visceral response to the image adds to our personal and collective fears. Second, the concept of AMERICA as a so-called “torture state” is devastating to patriotism, our own national pride. Torture radically alters the definition of America and of how we, our “forefathers” and the Founding Fathers/ ”Framers” of the Constitution, view America. Obviously, it alters how the rest of the world views America. Since the U.N.’s establishment, the designation “torture state” has existed and those bad-guy countries so labeled have had civil and human rights monitored… Traditionally, ordinary U.S. citizens have derided, disdained, whatever, those bad guys, lumping together its people with its populace. And the Federal government frequently imposed sanctions on “torture states.” How can a resident of a torture state muster patriotism? Paradoxically, the solitary answer I can think of must be triggered by a redoubled patriotism. The rest of the world, including allies and ex-allies, has reason now to dub the USA definitive bad guys, and not for the old, long-running reasons like imperialism. Third and most frightening in my opinion, surpassing concern about the Party's implied fear, is the Party's implied power -- the increased power, “evil” power and seemingly absolute power of the unitary executive, the one-man rule under which our nation officially falls (thanks to the Law). The self-described “Decider” has the exclusive authority to decide who gets detained and/or tortured -- legally. Media are focusing on this controversial Law’s aspects of human rights and terrorism: yes, they’re there and I’m not dismissing the horror of torture in any sense. Yet if the Law’s details are examined and if the innumerable words and actions for five years culminates in the Law, then the most terrifying is the specter of one-man rule (or, to quote the bill, it’s one man “AND” whomever he bestows that same power upon). If you’ve not followed the news from outside the huge media majority that’s controlled by five corporations or been unable to take in recent books and documentaries, it may be difficult to piece together each increment of our democracy’s power the Party has usurped. Our nation has reached a new plateau, where the Party’s defining and re-defining skills enable this Law to re-define our form of government from democracy to one-man rule, and re-define both torture and enemy combatant. I will elaborate below on the unitary executive - suffice to end this “torture” paragraph with the ugly image of a life-and-death power resting exclusively in THOSE particular hands.

“Fear Itself” Part II… Rhetorical repetition eventually grows stale, therefore the years of “terror, terror, terror” propaganda has worn off somewhat (although not for the Party's base, otherwise the pre-campaign-season wouldn’t have revisited “9/11, 9/11, 9/11.”) The shift to “torture, torture, torture” -- setting aside that the Law legalizes some despicable behavior and departs from international agreement -- is another shrewd manipulation of the Electorate. Most Americans, including plenty who were in NYC, cannot truly envision or grasp “international terrorism.” And more than were killed on 9/11/01, many more, have first-hand experience with torture, such as from spousal/child abuse, police brutality, rape and other heinous crimes, etc.

A “breather” paragraph before this rant's intensity crescendos. How much better if this Law were horrible and simple, instead of the simplicity being deceptive and the horror complex and multi-dimensional! Secondary motives for the Law, some obvious, are myriad. The superficial and to-become-oft-repeated excuse will be clarifying the definition of “torture,“ and specifically to demonstrate to Americans and the world that there are forms of torture our government won’t tolerate, I.e., how good we are! We won’t leave scars, and some banana republic torture worse! The Geneva conventions, after all, are old-fashioned and not written for today’s terrorists: see! We made concessions and abolished certain methods you accused us of performing (rightly)…. ..The Party needed this Law to shield itself from its own conservative Supreme Court…... It similarly needed the Law retroactively to shelter itself, as well as the military, intelligence agents, and private contractors who carried out inhumane orders against future indictments on international war crimes and Federal felonies…... It needed the deliberately vague phrases -- NB what I mentioned about brilliance with specific wordings, the least specific wordings are another smart technique..…. The newly-minted ambiguous language used to “sell” the bill to Congress and the public helps evoke a picture, for internal and external consumption, that Americans are still the good guys..…. The urgency to pass the bill by last Friday allows the President on behalf of his up-for-election Party faithful to campaign on fear “terrorism, torture, terrorism, torture,” then mendaciously re-frame the “torture law” as some monumental step forward: conversely the Law instills fear and pledges to combat it..…. Those Republican candidates for the House and Senate, in turn, can parrot the Party talking points about why the Law benefits us all “in dangerous times.”…... Those campaign scare tactics that worked in the 2002 and 2004 elections get kicked up a notch with the Law, the superficial appearance of its benefits and the appearance of bipartisan support. I pity the Democrats in vulnerable races who ceded to the majority - the nicest way I can phrase it - because the instilled false fear would be assuaged by this misunderstood, false solution. They knew their opponents would otherwise wind up their “soft on terror, cut-and-run, soft on terror, cut-and-run” mantras (and over the weekend I heard that RNC commercials are saying "soft on crime, soft on pedophilia").

The 0.001% of good the Law that I can discern is forbidding of a very few types of torture. The media will describe how “some of the most heinous interrogation methods, like rape…” are no longer legal under the new legislation. (Has anyone publicly retorted, because the Law covers retroactive actions, that this proves heretofore the family-values Party HAS been raping detainees?) I suspect the "newly illegal" parts will be all mainstream news sources will cover, as has been traditional for five years, the corporate media have obediently relayed Party talking points. (FYI, most of the corporate media's corporations include defense-contracting business, i.e., war-profiteering trumps the news and entertainment divisions and reality shows combined). One very distorted “plus” in the Law is sure to be emphasized before the election: its supposed clarification of “enemy combatant.” This doesn’t do a hell of a lot of good for the Gitmo (et al.) detainees, the majority of whom were SOLD (humans sold) by Afghani warlords and other bad guys c.2002 just to get the U.S. $bounty. Money makes the oligarchy go round and the Administration trusted greedy “evil-doers” with huge financial rewards to sell some bodies to fill up Guantanamo. (No, I won’t say all detainees were innocents, but mighty few men held for years have been charged with crimes.)

Beyond those poor fellows, the disastrous problem with re-defining “enemy combatant” is that the Law gives that “one man” the power to legally decide who fits the revised definition. Exponentially more frightening than the subliminal fears of torture, terrorism, and of his omnipotence, is that the broad, vague definition DOES apply to everyone. An enemy combatant is no longer some foreigner who lays down arms on the battlefield (Geneva definition), it can be a U.S. citizen and resident, a naturalized citizen or illegal alien, even a foreign tourist or businessperson or any foreigner off the battlefield… anyone under the Law can LEGALLY be detained indefinitely with no explanation besides the designation “enemy combatant.” (Every time I've typed “detained” insert “indefinitely”). One middle-of-road commentator, relying on a newspaper in front of him, was asked if the Law covered foreigners only. The uninformed reply was, “Well, I don’t see anything in the article that says Americans are eligible for…” Eligible? A sin of omission, intended to at minimum pile more fear onto every American. (Aside: you think illegal immigrants were frightened before??) I’m not saying that the Party is determined to lock up upstanding, political dissidents (me?). The Law’s language has cleverly built-in deniability: wherever the language is broad, the President and others can answer, “Yes, it says so; but that’d never happen in this great nation!” I have spent a lot of time in these two days inhaling information on the Law. A few hours after the one commentator, a Constitutional scholar who’d digested the final draft was asked about good ol’ citizens and the Law, “Without a doubt, it’s legal,” the scholar explained. “The change in definition is purposefully so broad” that anyone who opposes our President or government, and/or anyone who supports hostilities against our government, is eligible to be deemed “enemy combatant.” One one-word change in the last phrase made a huge difference: it once said “anyone who engages in hostilities” … “supports hostilities” can mean whatever the All-Powerful One Man wants it to mean? If it's any consolation, tacitly, the military big brass and not just the outspoken retired generals, say that a majority of troops and officers are disturbed by the Law: not because it replaces Geneva (although the older officers are hurt by that, too), but it replaces the near-holy Field Manual - reportedly the guide book is revered, not to be messed with. The Law messes with it.

Not-quite-an-aside on 3 justifications and 2 reasons for the U.S. invasion/occupation of Iraq… Two of the three public justifications, "EVERYBODY all knew were lies before the invasion and everyone else knows now: the WMD and 9/11-ties. The third had roots in something that, through Alice-in-Wonderland logic, Americans have been proud of for 200+ years - how our nation was born: the flipside of war as we fought to liberate ourselves from the one-man rule by England's George III. If it weren’t for the gravity of the Law, it would be comical or a bizarre sort of psychological projecting, to analyze the “liberating the Iraqi people” excuse… i.e., based on what I've written so far: that the Party intended its occupation as a method of ridding a country of one-man rule, a ruler who tortured and “disappeared” its residents (“extreme rendition”), people in whom fear was perpetually instilled and who needed expansion of civil and human rights, etc. Pot calling the kettle black? Two of the true reasons for the occupation are what keeps our weakened, sad troops there. It’s tough to figure out which is the higher priority - (1) Oil control, (2) establishment of permanent bases. And this, after Bush 100% caved in to Osama bin Laden’s demand that the U.S. base and hundreds of troops be removed from (holy) Saudi soil (yes, and the accommodation was for bin Laden only, not his dad's buddies in the Saudi family - oh boy, another entire topic I'll avoid; the concession had to do with the U.S. military stationed in same country as Mecca and Medina). How to pin that on Clinton!
Plans for the 15 or so bases under construction in Iraq currently are in the plans of the 1998 Project for the New American Century with clearly imperialistic aims. Jeez - as I typed that, even “imperialistic” in the context of this Party sounds quaint!

No room here to enumerate how much of the Constitution and other 18th century documents has been decimated in five years, many rights have seen gradual shifts, some rights blatantly trashed. I won't belabor Church & State, Search & Seizure, Cruel & Unusual Punishment., et al. Freedom of the Press?? On the annual list of developed nations with Greatest Freedom of the Press, the USA has dropped to a stunning 26th place in the world. It was four full years ago that I initially read “America’s heading toward a ‘constitutional crisis’” and about two or three ago that “constitutional crisis” was a phrase that cropped up more and more. I believe the Law heralds a Constitutional crisis' official arrival.One time the term was frequently discussed involved the FISA courts and warrantless wire-tapping, especially the domestic -- about the President‘s very public lie and public slips, about the USA Today excellent investigation into the phone companies‘ re-rigging of large and complicated systems to accomplish it, and if you research the timeline from when the article appeared, you‘ll find mysterious maneuvering in the private sector and several departments of the government. When the subject was pushed further, lies were flowing freely. (Something freely!) The huge on-record fact that a lot of Americans seem to have skipped over, is that the Congress has altered the FISA legislation 5 times already since Bush took office - to make it more lenient and secretive! Meaning, to help him "break" the law as it was. It’s hardly been etched in stone -- he determined the wiretapping “necessary“ due to terrorism, terrorism, terrorism. And I’ll be reasonable: okay, let Congress tailored it to suit his needs, again and again They complained about not having time to get a warrant, so the time was adjusted. They complained about the uncertainty of a warrant being approved, so they were told that 99.99% in tens of thousands of cases have been approved. The excuse, “If Al Queda’s calling, we wanna know why” but if it’s not Al Queda, then I want to know why he’s tapping phones. Still, the law will never be acceptable with any paper trail. Some evidence has come out on electronic eavesdropping of journalists, of lawyers for media outlets and on other cases (where attorney-client privilege is shattered), of their own Party operatives, and -- like Nixon -- political enemies. Why else would the Party want no paper trail, many have asked. Well, I agree that that’s the main answer, but there is another, more insidious reason -- in a whisper: "you're being watched, we hear you, torture, terror," successful and more tangible, more relevant to OUR quotidian lives, returning to INSTILLING FEAR - hell, real paranoia. The old joke about paranoiacs and “sometimes people really are spying on you…” is a propos. I'm tired of the incessant Orwellian allusions, already! Every line of 1984 someone's quoted during the Party's rule because the "fiction" is apt. Also apt is the Party slogan, “Be afraid, be very afraid.” On the news, in the paper, at the coffee shop, there’s talk about various ways citizens have lost their right to privacy. That WAS one of their first targets in gingerly disassembling our democracy, not just through wiretapping and - AHEM! - reading civilians' domestic electronic communications. And losing liberties and losing privacy, has the same results on individuals and the collective consciousness and subconscious..."we could be tortured, that man tortures human beings, they're reading this e-mail," etc. We feel very vulnerable because we are being made to feel very vulnerable. We are not safe because we are programmed to feel unsafe. I cannot ramble on about every aspect of Democracy Lost, but trampled-upon rights and this Law -- regardless of whether or not ANY torture or eavesdropping ever occurs -- gives the Party omnipotence. The president's "joke" several years ago that he was in favor of "dictatorship, just so long as I get to be the dictator!" is so a propos in retrospect I sense it was more an accidental truth spilling out than anything else. One-man rule is controlling. I wonder how frightened and under-his-control the Non-Neocon Republicans are.... The Party nicknamed last month Security September -- it's the Step Two of their atavistic strategy: scare the hell out of everyone, control their actions and CONTROL EMOTIONS - then twist the falsehoods to provide the sense of security. It’s equal to poisoning someone and offering a placebo antidote. Since 2001, we’ve discussed the real and potential eradication of 200-year-old liberties; another analyst said this Law, with habeas corpus, et al., set us back pre-Magna Carta.

I won’t delve into the Law’s provisions on inhumane “commissions”/ tribunals and the legalese I don’t entirely understand. Yet regarding making the Constitutional-right-for-some-of-us of habeas corpus, another odd twist in the Law "any habeas counsel" -- meaning the private attorneys, public defenders, and EVEN MILITARY LAWYERS -- are possible “enemy combatants” themselves in attempts to get judicial review, habeas corpus rights, et al., for their enemy-combatant clients! I’m not paranoid enough to say that examples of “possible combatants” will become definite. Still , regarding “those who oppose the U.S…those who support hostilities,” think about the State of the Union Address which Cindy Sheehan attended as an invited guest -- before the Law. As soon as her T-shirt was noticed, Capitol Police ejected her. AND, minutes later, the wife of a Republican congressman was likewise escorted out - a panic over her “Support the Troops” shirt. (Go figure?) I’d like to think Cindy wouldn’t be declared an enemy combatant, but she could qualify. BUT, I’d like to think she could’ve politely remained in the seat provided for her. Her T-shirt that had nothing more than a 4-digit number printed on it (the to-date number of American dead troops). Asked of that Constitutional Scholar Friday: protest marchers? He said that the “organizers of an anti-war march” could fall under the Law, although not individual marchers (“who’d sue, if they can”). About 35 million people I’ve neglected: the various-status immigrants in the USA. The scholar said the Law jeopardizes them if participating in any way in public, e.g., a rally pro or con some immigration legislation might be a place where someone’s easily disappeared. IMMIGRANTS’ fates are up for grabs…. OVERSEAS CHARITABLE CONTRIBUTIONS, even to U.S. NGOs working in Islamic societies. Unlike problems associated with fake Muslim charities that funneled money into anti-US-policy battles, the Law’s vagueness can regard legit contributors to legit charities “enemy combatants” -- this scholar’s example: “If you give $5 to an NGO building a school in Afghanistan, and it turns out the principal’s father-in-law is ex-Taliban, your $5 is ‘supporting hostilities.’” What about tourists wearing an anti-Bush T-shirt in New York? The expert hesitated but said, “they’d better not do it at the Statue of Liberty - really! Federal government.” Don’t infer that I believe that tourist or the $5-donor will be hauled off to secret prisons; these are examples, though, of what Americans are NO LONGER protected against. The criterion "anyone who opposes the U.S." is so broad I could tally up a couple billion folks. I suppose we could be grateful that the Figurehead isn't really in charge - or exclusively so... Halliburton, et al., would have a lot of facility-building to do!

Another “breather” -- break from the Law rant -- before more intensity in my final section. A few random facts you may or may not know … #1 Re Condi Rice/Afghanistan region’s future. The media have carelessly misreported that Dr Rice is a “Russian scholar” or “expert on Russian affairs.” It’s not propaganda, just sloppy reporters who've substituted “Russia” for “USSR.” Before working at Chevron Oil, Rice was indeed a scholar of / expert on …a few specific Soviet republics, namely the less stable (oil-rich) former SSRs bordering Afghanistan. While the Cuckoo-in-Chief plays tic-tac-toe, with Iran the connector between Iraq and Afghanistan, his brighter subordinate has a more elaborate connect-the-pipeline-dots game… #2 If you heard the EPA was being dismantled, did you know it was meant literally? Moving companies have gone in without notice to employees and are currently taking - literally banging down the hallways - the library holdings and lab equipment, removing libraries and laboratories period. It’s no surprise that the anti-science (and pro-business-polluters) would make cutbacks to the agency and its low- and mid-level staff, but some of the top scientists in the world had been drawn to working at the EPA. If top scientists aren’t given labs, libraries and funds, uh, some are leaving regretfully and regrettably, without the Feds looking bad for pushing them out. …#3 Is anyone surprised that Henry Kissinger is involved in helping out on “Middle East policy“ right now?…. #4 Conspiracy theorists - I’m not dignifying this as possible - say Oct 21st is the D-Day for Iran (under cover of new moon darkness)…. #5 Here’s something that’s been said a million times but one detail bears repeating: long before this Administration the USA was respected and/or envied by most of the world. And the Administration squandered the bonus global good will and sympathy after 9/11. Pop quiz for your neocon friends: what did Iran do on 9/12? What did that axis-of-evil nation say in response? Think, think: Iran had pro-American rallies. The USA had Iran’s good will and sympathy as much as the next guy’s. Parallel to us losing our rights and our pride in America, the Administration has lost not only allies, but made many more enemies. We used to regard ourselves as the good guys - hell, most of the world thought we were too….

That seques into wrapping up the unitary executive worry, and what this means and could mean. I conjured a piece of irony: from Day 1, this President claimed that he didn’t look at polls, he wouldn’t make decisions based on poll numbers … a unitary executive wouldn’t need to! I made it this far, with so many words both in this e-mail and in many discussions, etc., without using the F-word. I’ll reiterate that our leader cannot be name-called A.H.: A.H. was unique. This particular F-word is similarly a semantic bombshell, and has been misused and overused by the gamut of politicians. (And progressives are guilty for it arising with every Republican since Eisenhower… Good ol’ DDE who warned us of precisely what's happening vis-a-vis the military-industrial complex, something our other World Wars lacked.) So I'll say it, the United States truly is approaching objectively definitive fascism. As I started this rambling rant about the Torture & Detainee Law, I’m sorry about the torturing and detaining; I'm worried about the mistreatment of human beings. But we must all be on guard, as well as mortified, about the increased power and fearful power that the Law places in the hands of a unitary executive. "Unitary executive" has been the neocon goal all along, and the Party's come closer and closer. Remember when we last heard that term overused? During the Harriet Myers’ nomination for Supreme Court and Sam Alito confirmation hearings? Both of them favored such an utter imbalance in power. Over the last few years, we've heard members of the executive branch say the judicial needed to be subordinated ("activist judges, activist judges!"), we've heard members of executive and nominees for the judicial say the legislative's power be curtailed. And vice versa. The whole bunch of 'em have concentrated in unitary executive and this Law's a further confirmation. I’m not going to get stuck with words like oligarchy, plutocracy, et al. Here is my partial list of what conditions lead to fascism and/or is fascism:A unitary executive: one-man rule without checks-and-balances of a co-equal branch of government; stripping of citizens’ rights, stripping of Constitution; legalized torture, detention and disappearing of its own citizens as well as foreigners; invading sovereign countries; blatant propaganda (paying newscasters to report Party viewpoints, planting a gay-prostitute White House correspondent - who the Secret Service shows entered the WH 100+x; paying public relations firms for government-produced video reports for local broadcasters to pick up as “news,” paying Americans to write pro-war articles to publish in Iraqi papers, etc., etc.); the “subconscious fear techniques” (I hadn’t yet used the B-word: mass brainwashing); the rise of corporatocracy (expansion far beyond a pro-business agenda; no one in history’s handed out tax cuts in wartime); no-bid contracts for corporate war-profiteering; disobeying treaties to which we were signatories; spying on citizens; the worst-possible-capitalist-cronyism; election tampering and denial of some voters' rights; control of mainstream media (initiated with Republican Chairman running Fox News); etc. It could go on, this list of pre- and proto-fascist conditions which engender actual Fear, not the other fears intentionally instilled to make us more compliant and make the president more powerful.If you know your WWII history, the Law is the equivalent of A.H’s “Enabling Act.” Both enable(d) the leaders to legally break laws as unitary executives.“The other shoe to drop” -- one thing missing from the list in comparison with Nazi Germany is the economic collapse ~ think pictures of wheelbarrows full of cash. With Bush’s wastefulness and very-anti-conservative spending spree, giving money to cronies, the corporatocracy, oil buddies, defense contractors, the USA has its highest ever national debt and highest ever deficit. More than the total of all previous presidents combined - it’s not even close. So the country’s approaching one side of the economic catastrophe. The other goal is to erase the Middle Class completely -- not forgetting the Party’s original goal of likewise erasing all of the New Deal which could’ve helped the Middle Class survive. A lot of pundits have thrown around the term Banana Republic for the past couple of years. Well, this year there’s at least one statistic to back it up. The USA now comes in 3rd on the list of income disparity (measurement of middle class between upper & lower) -- we’re 3rd right behind Russia and Mexico! I can imagine Europe beating us, but South America does too.

I’m going to quit while I’m ahead (joke!), but I was genuinely compelled to rant about the Law. The daily newspapers aren’t making the Law’s implications clear. My “PS” below is a meditation on What We Can Do (or what can we do?). More and more Americans must wake up soon and discover what’s been done to their country, realize that our military forces are weary and depleted on top of everything else, then realize that an unintelligent, seemingly medicated, utter madman has his finger on “the button.” Oh well, I take passive-aggressive consolation in the thought that he thinks he’s going to Heaven after this behavior.

Peace & love (of the 2006 variety),Vanessa

PS - WHAT WE CAN DO… sounds silly to say “vote on 11/7”? As if you won’t?? Well, my dear very progressive friends, this is not the year to take a stand and vote third-party or not at all; and those friends who are more right-leaning, hold your nose and click straight down the Democratic line: you, too, need checks and balances, even if you disagree with me on other points. People of every stripe: don’t be apathetic believing your vote “won’t count anyway.” If you aren’t registered, you’ve got time - most (all?) states registering to vote can be done online. Re stolen elections - I didn't make a big deal above with elections & “fascism” despite the Party’s tampering ever since Al Gore was elected president. The promising Ohio lawsuits won’t be publicized until after Nov 7. One voting-security expert said that “they” could steal as many as 2 million votes BUT (a big but!) that expert said “ONLY" 2 million, an infinite number cannot be stolen. A very large turn-out voting on Democratic line will cancel the abuse.BETTER MOVE: If you’re unsure if you’ll be home or don’t want to wait in line, vote absentee NOW. If you have time on your hands or an easy precinct, simply go in person and vote now… you can do that, and they must supply you with a paper ballot to do so. IF you’ve got a penny to spare, donate now for the last-minute TV ads… the Republican Party of course has tons & tons more money, they’ve got tons more to lose, tons more at stake. (If you don’t know whom to donate to, ask me. It’s the closest races with greatest money disparity.) MAKE SURE EVERYONE YOU KNOW VOTES. No, not “duh.” Non-active citizens are a zillion times more likely to show up for presidential elections, not off-year ones. There is a "convenience" factor, and apathy. Make sure they’re registered (to hell with manners, JUST BRING IT UP IN CONVERSATION: this is the most important election of our lives). Make sure they’ve got a ride to the polls, help neighbors, et al., if you can. Several nonprofit organizations are recruiting as many poll watchers as they can (ask me) -- America’s become one of those “torture states” and America’s become one of those banana republics that requires international monitors come in to oversee the counting of our votesBEYOND “JUST“ VOTING ON 11/7. This Thursday’s a nationwide protest ("worldcantwait. org) taking the form of the kind of general strikes that occur in Europe … I’m afraid it’ll fail this time because not enough people understand YET… Those of you know me really well, know that I don't throw around words like fascism lightly, i.e., I wish people could realize that we're NOT CRYING WOLF. Without checks and balances we're screwed.
Re general strikes, Ukrainians, et al., have been willing to sacrifice a day of work for the sake of their country’s liberty. The Oct 5 protest in more than 100 US cities will no doubt get minimal mainstream media coverage. That's been the problem with a lot of marches & rallies since the Party took control... the main purpose behind those events IS to "demonstrate" on television ideally how many people believe in / feel about some issue. It seems that the best TV news coverage of what’s going on in USA is coming from outside the USA now. Join organizations, if only the online variety. Rent/watch recent documentaries (I can suggest 10). EDUCATE YOURSELF - read the recent books (most libraries have many to choose from). YOU MAY PASS AROUND THIS EMAIL TO ANY/EVERYONE YOU WISH -- THE MOST IMPORTANT / FIRST STEP IS TO LEARN WHAT’S GOING ON. It can’t hurt to sign petitions, especially those where you can add your own comments. (One handy short-cut is “PetitionSite” where you can sign a batch on different issues at the same website.) Okay. I promised I’d stop somewhere. There are a million more things going on in this nation -- and world, if you think about global warming and this president -- that I could say, but I’ve more or less stayed on topic: the Law sucks.

Lovely...just lovely. And yet the "troops" still support them...??

Quote below made by Ann Coulter, Republican:

"Soldiers are just cowards... The lowest IQ men in our society, those incapable of normal careers enlist.Their choice in life: prison or the military. Some will have to die in the support of our cause."
Ann Coulter,11/06/03


RUSH LIMPBALLS ON HIS RADIO SHOW APRIL OF 2004:

"THE TROOPS ARE EXPENDABLE. THEY ARE NOT SMART ENOUGH

TO LIVE, HERE, IN THE REAL WORLD.

SO WE HAVE THEM OVER IN IRAQ

TO DO WHAT WE TELL THEM TO DO. IF SOME OF THEM GET KILLED?

IT IS NO BIG DEAL. I MEAN, WHAT ARE ANY OF THEM GOING TO

CONTRIBUTE OR AMOUT TO ANYTHING

WHEN THEY COME BACK HOME?

ALL THEY ARE GOOD FOR IS HAVING MORE CHILDREN, TO FIGHT IN FUTURE WARS?

WORKING IN GARAGES? DOING LOW MINIMUM WAGES WORK AT SOME CAR OR PROCESSING PLANT, OUT IN AMARILLO?. THEY ARE

BETTER OFF BEING IN THE MILITARY AND BEING TOLD WHAT TO DO.

IF A FEW OF THEM DIE, WE ARE ALL BETTER OFF, ANYWAYS".

SO THIS IS WHAT WE CAN NOW EXPECT? GO MIKE!

Letter from Mike Stark

Richmond Times-Dispatch
Oct 31, 2006

The following is a letter to NBC29 from Mike Stark, the man who was tackled for a comment he made at Senator Allen's campaign stop in Charlottesville on Tuesday.

My name is Mike Stark. I am a law student at the University of Virginia, a marine, and a citizen journalist. Earlier today at a public event, I was attempting to ask Senator Allen a question about his sealed divorce record and his arrest in the 1970s, both of which are in the public domain. His people assaulted me, put me in a headlock, and wrestled me to the ground. Video footage is available here, from an NBC affiliate.

I demand that Senator Allen fire the staffers who beat up a constituent attempting to use his constitutional right to petition his government. I also want to know why Senator Allen would want his staffers to assault someone asking questions about matters of public record in the heat of a political campaign. Why are his divorce records sealed? Why was he arrested in the 1970s? And why did his campaign batter me when I asked him about these questions.

George Allen defends his support of the Iraq war by saying that our troops are defending the ideals America stands for. Indeed, he says our troops are defending our very freedom.(?) What kind of country is it when a Senator's constituent is assaulted for asking difficult and uncomfortable questions? What freedoms do we have left? Maybe we need to bring the troops home so that they can fight for freedom at George Allen's campaign events. Demanding accountability should not be an offense worthy of assault.

I will be pressing charges against George Allen and his surrogates later today. George Allen, at any time, could have stopped the fray. All he had to do was say, "This is not how my campaign is run. Take your hands off that man." He could have ignored my questions. Instead he and his thugs chose violence. I spent four years in the Marine Corps. I'll be damned if I'll let my country be taken from me by thugs that are afraid of taking responsibility for themselves.
It just isn't the America I know and love. Somebody needs to take a stand against those that would bully and intimidate their fellow citizens. That stand begins right here, right now.

W. Michael Stark

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