March 6, 2008 archive

Radical Leftist Ron Paul Lone Vote Against Israel’s Occuptation.

Siding with unions and socialists groups across the European Union and the Americas, well know international leftist Ron Paul was the lone vote of dissent on a Resolution to absolve Israel of the collective punishment war crimes.

   Today Congress passed a resolution (HR 951) condemning Palestinian rocket attacks that include a strident defense of recent Israeli tactics in the Gaza Strip. The resolution also condemned Iran and Syria for “sponsoring terror attacks,” and demanded that Saudi Arabia publicly condemn Palestinian actions.

   The resolution was originally introduced in January, but contains new language including a passage saying that that “those responsible for launching rocket attacks against Israel routinely embed their production facilities and launch sites amongst the Palestinian civilian population, utilizing them as human shields” and “the inadvertent inflicting of civilian casualties as a result of defensive military operations aimed at military targets, while deeply regrettable, is not at all morally equivalent to the deliberate targeting of civilian populations as practiced by Hamas and other Gaza-based terrorist groups.

There is no word when Ron Paul while again raise the banner of solidarity with his fellow human beings demanding all human beings be protected from war crimes.

There is also no word on where the supposed “left” of the Democratic Party was during the voting.

The Resolution passed 404-1.

The agitprop of the hard-core pro-people power, and known peacemonger, Ron Paul went on to say:

Madam Speaker: I rise in opposition to H. Res. 951. As one who is consistently against war and violence (Tree Hugging Commie!), I obviously do not support the firing of rockets indiscriminately into civilian populations (Doesn’t support the troops!). I believe it is appalling that Palestinians are firing rockets that harm innocent Israelis, just as I believe it is appalling that Israel fires missiles into Palestinian areas where children and other non-combatants are killed and injured (Apologist!).

Unfortunately, legislation such as this is more likely to perpetuate violence in the Middle East than contribute to its abatement (Surrender Monkey!). It is our continued involvement and intervention – particularly when it appears to be one-sided – that reduces the incentive for opposing sides to reach a lasting peace agreement (Hates America!).

Additionally, this bill will continue the march toward war with Iran and Syria (When did Ron Paul stop beating his wife!?!!), as it contains provocative language targeting these countries. The legislation oversimplifies (Intellectual Elitist!) the Israel/Palestine conflict and the larger unrest in the Middle East by simply pointing the finger at Iran and Syria (Wants smoking gun to be a mushroom club!). This is another piece in a steady series of legislation passed in the House that intensifies enmity between the United States and Iran and Syria (Ron Paul attended a madrassa!). My colleagues will recall that we saw a similar steady stream of provocative legislation against Iraq in the years before the US attack on that country (Hates America!).

I strongly believe that we must cease making proclamations involving conflicts that have nothing to do with the United States (Isolationial Fearmonger!). We incur the wrath of those who feel slighted while doing very little to slow or stop the violence (Not with us, against us!).

As of press time, there was no word on where the “left” of the Democratic Party stood, but it was obviously to the RIGHT of Ron Paul on this issue.

The Writers of The Wire on the Drug War

The head writers of HBO’s The Wire, which I consider possibly the greatest achievement in television writing, have an excellent and important message in the latest issue of Time:

“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right,” wrote Thomas Paine when he called for civil disobedience against monarchy – the flawed national policy of his day. In a similar spirit, we offer a small idea that is, perhaps, no small idea. It will not solve the drug problem, nor will it heal all civic wounds. It does not yet address questions of how the resources spent warring with our poor over drug use might be better spent on treatment or education or job training, or anything else that might begin to restore those places in America where the only economic engine remaining is the illegal drug economy. It doesn’t resolve the myriad complexities that a retreat from war to sanity will require. All it does is open a range of intricate, paradoxical issues. But this is what we can do – and what we will do.

If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will – to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun’s manifesto against the death penalty – no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens.

Jury nullification is American dissent, as old and as heralded as the 1735 trial of John Peter Zenger, who was acquitted of seditious libel against the royal governor of New York, and absent a government capable of repairing injustices, it is legitimate protest. If some few episodes of a television entertainment have caused others to reflect on the war zones we have created in our cities and the human beings stranded there, we ask that those people might also consider their conscience. And when the lawyers or the judge or your fellow jurors seek explanation, think for a moment on Bubbles or Bodie or Wallace. And remember that the lives being held in the balance aren’t fictional.

In addition to being the head writers of The Wire, David Simon is the author of Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets; Ed Burns is a twenty-year veteran of the Baltimore City Police; Dennis Lehane is the author of Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone; George Pelecanos is the author of Hell to Pay and The Night Gardener; Richard Price is the author of Clockers and Freedomland.

Winter Soldier: Speaking truth to power

"I joined the National Guard.. didn't know it was going to be the International Guard."

Next week, veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and occupations will come together in Washington, D.C. to tell the world about their experiences.

Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan will feature testimony March 13-16 from U.S. veterans who served in those occupations, giving an accurate account of what is really happening day in and day out, on the ground.

It is not an official, government-sponsored hearing. Rather, like the 1971 hearings sponsored by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, these hearings are being organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War.

IVAW held a fundraiser in Milwaukee recently to help cover expenses of vets making the trip to DC, and this 10-minute video resulted. It's a good preview of Winter Soldier, featuring local vets,the Chicago veteran who thought of holding next week's hearings, and some footage from Iraq.

It ends with a powerful statement by Barry Romo, national director of Vietnam Veterans Against the War:

"What is great is that veterans are standing up again, and they know what's gonna happen to them … They saw what happened to [John] Kerry … There is something in terms of your souls; you are setting yourselves free from this culture of death which says you are supposed to keep your mouths shut and allow another generation to be sold down the river … You have seen what can happen from speaking truth to power and you are not afraid …

Audio and video of the hearings will be available online. Public viewing is being sponsored by veterans and peace groups in many communities.  

The ‘Owe’nership Society

That was then:

From George W. Bush’s 2005 inaugural address on January 20, 2005:

To give every American a stake in the promise and future of our country, we will bring the highest standards to our schools, and build an ownership society. We will widen the ownership of homes and businesses, retirement savings and health insurance – preparing our people for the challenges of life in a free society. By making every citizen an agent of his or her own destiny, we will give our fellow Americans greater freedom from want and fear, and make our society more prosperous and just and equal.

From the White House, Bush Discusses Home Ownership at Indiana Black Expo on July 14, 2005:

I like the idea of home ownership, and I hope you do, as well. Three years ago, I set a goal of creating 5.5 million new minority home owners by the end of this decade. And we’re getting results. We’ve already added 2.3 million new homeowners, minority homeowners, putting us ahead of schedule. Today, nearly half of all African Americans own their own homes.

Four at Four

  1. The Los Angeles Times reports Dean argues against new Florida and Michigan primaries. “The national Democratic Party won’t pay for two states to hold a second set of presidential primaries, National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said this morning. ‘We can’t afford to do that,’ Dean said on CBS’ ‘The Early Show,’ one of several media appearances he made this morning. ‘That’s not our problem. We need our money to win the presidential race… Elected officials in Florida and Michigan have mentioned the prospect of holding new primaries, estimated to cost $25 million in Florida alone… ‘The rules were set a year and a half ago,’ Dean said. ‘Florida and Michigan voted for them, then decided that they didn’t need to abide by the rules. Well, when you are in a contest you do need to abide by the rules. Everybody has to play by the rules out of respect for both campaigns and the other 48 states.'”

  2. The New York Times reports that the Torrent in the Colorado River is unleashed to aid fish.

    A torrent of water was released into the Colorado River from the Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona on Tuesday, in a disputed effort to improve the environment for fish in the Grand Canyon…

    The water poured out of the dam as if pumped through a gigantic fire hose, at the rate of 41,500 cubic feet per second – enough to fill the Empire State Building in 20 minutes. This release, which engineers call “high flow,” was meant to scour the river bottom and deposit silt and sediment to rebuild and extend sandbars and create new, calm backwater areas where the fish can spawn.

    But the superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park, Steve Martin, argued that if such high flows were not repeated several times in the next five years, the overall water management plan was very likely to impair rather than improve the fish environment.

Four at Four continues below the fold with an update on Wikileaks and a story on Big Brother.

BusyBoots Farm or Not

I am still having a hard time coming up with a good name for the farm.  The brooks that run off the property are hard to say and spell.  Some names of neighboring farms are “DejaView”, “NorthSong” and “Just-A-Mere”.  I like those and would like the name to fit in with those but still be unique.  So far BusyBoots Farm is at the top of the small list. AmberRose Farm is also up there.  

Once the website is up for the farm I thought it would be neat to let people name the trees and perennials being planted at the farm.  For instance a small sign would sit next to a Juniper and it would say “Jerry the Juniper named on April 16th 2008 by _______”.  Then a photo would go up and I could write up a little story about how Jerry did during the season.

It’s a little corny but it’s a good way to start interacting with the public regarding the farm.  Now open up your brain roofs, plug into the battery charger and let loose with some winning names if you please.

Thanks for helping.

Did Americans Make Jesus’s Photo Whiter?

  I just wanted to leave a remark about this “whiter” issue, and comments that it is somehow something that just happened in the Bible writing process. I work in creating Gods (scripture writer, [Big intergalactic firm]). I sit in the rooms where the post messiah meme making occurs, and this includes color correction.

While things look different historically, they don’t look this dramatically different. Nothing that you see in a final religious dogma is accidental. These things are looked at (or should be looked at if they are doing their jobs) second by second, psalms by psalms, edict by edict.

Scared New World

We have nothing to fear but fear itself….and those who would impose it on us as a way of life. There is no Global War On Terror. It’s a convenient money making scheme, power grab and excuse for the tyranny that small men with to impose over free people.

As they will continue to do until they are stopped. Behind all we do here, that is one of the central goals, finding a way to stop the tyranny of the small men in power. Today they are having a field day!

National Dragnet Is a Click Away

As federal authorities struggled to meet information-sharing mandates after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, police agencies from Alaska and California to the Washington region poured millions of criminal and investigative records into shared digital repositories called data warehouses, giving investigators and analysts new power to discern links among people, patterns of behavior and other hidden clues.



Those network efforts will begin expanding further this month
, as some local and state agencies connect to a fledgling Justice Department system called the National Data Exchange, or N-DEx. Federal authorities hope N-DEx will become what one called a “one-stop shop” enabling federal law enforcement, counterterrorism and intelligence analysts to automatically examine the enormous caches of local and state records for the first time.

snip

These new systems are transforming that process. “It’s going from the horse-and-buggy days to the space age, that’s what it’s like,” said Sgt. Chuck Violette of the Tucson police department, one of almost 1,600 law enforcement agencies that uses a commercial data-mining system called Coplink.

Sulfur

S : 32.065

Smells like rotten eggs, that’s how you can tell if you have it on your hands or not.  

Burnt match heads and chewed fingernails smell like sulfur too.

One of the times my family drove cross country we stopped at Yellowstone national park.  Besides the geysers I remember most vividly the sulfur pits.  The smell and heat and fumes bubbling up out of the mud.  It was like walking on a distant planet.  There were also roaming buffalo (or bison?), and like all roaming and free animals they do what they please.  One in particular followed a woman to an outhouse and just stood there.  All 900 lbs (according to Oregon Trail) just hanging out in front of the outhouse door.  She started screaming and park rangers had to rescue her from the harmless immobile buffalo by yelling at it and wishing it would move.  I didn’t really think buffalo hung around sulfur pits.  

Maybe they just did it for the laughs.  

Campaign (sp)in-fighting

Cross-posted from THE ENVIRONMENTALIST

I woke up this morning with a headache, downed two extra-strength aspirin and am finally able to open my eyes enough to read and write and listen to the telly and hear all about do-overs and Mark Penn and Harold Ickes’ Dick Cheney moment:

Penn had no real people of his own on the inside and chafed whenever Solis Doyle or Ickes got involved in his sphere. At one point, he and Ickes, who have been battling each other within the Clinton orbit for a dozen years, lost their tempers during a conference call, according to two participants.

“[Expletive] you!” Ickes shouted.

“[Expletive] you!” Penn replied.

“[Expletive] you!” Ickes shouted again.

Green Goodness

Hey all, hope you enjoy.

Why the WaPo should have published that piece

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…

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