Washington - White House officials are telling associates they expect Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to quit early next year, once a new government is formed in Iraq, sources said yesterday.
Rumsfeld's deputy, Gordon England, is the inside contender to replace him, but there's also speculation that Sen. Joe Lieberman - a Democrat who ran against Bush-Cheney in the 2000 election - might become top guy at the Pentagon.
Once again the "Christian" Right is showing it's true colors. Not content with having a church on every corner where they can practice their rituals without fear of government intervention or taxation; not content with the right to organize politically and influence elections; not content with the right to run Christian schools where they can indoctrinate their children to their hearts' content and discriminate on the basis of religion; not content with references to their god in the pledge of allegience or on our money and public buildings; not content with the opening of our Congressional sessions with prayer; not content with a President who is "born again" and who has gone to unprecedented lengths to support "faith based" organizations with taxpayer monies; not content with unprecedented religious influence in our military - no, they must inflict their religion upon everyone in the public arenas of our taxpayers' school system and meeting places; we must all ACKNOWLEDGE their god; we must all bow down to the CORRECTNESS of their beliefs. It is not enough that they have more religious freedom and more political power than they have ever had - it is not enough ! ANY attempt to diversify the holiday season to include all faiths, or no faith, any secularization of the holiday season constitutes an ATTACK on their faith and their god. We cannot celebrate without SAYING their god's NAME. WE MUST SAY THEIR GOD'S NAME !!!!!SAY IT !!!! SAY IT !!!
How stupid, how petty, how un-christian.
Ah, I see that the religious right is at it again, demanding that stores display signs saying “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays”, and boycotting those that do not comply with their demands. Knickers are in a twist over President Bush sending out Christmas cards that read “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”, and some people have reported throwing theirs away as soon as they saw its more generic message, since Bush claims to be an evangelical, born again Christian, and by gosh, ought to know better than to wish people “Happy Holidays”! The gauntlet has also been thrown down at the White House to rename its decorated tree a “Christmas tree” instead of a “holiday tree”. Could President Bush be harboring secret religious tolerance toward non-Christians by his actions this year? Perish the thought! His allies on the Religious Right won’t settle for anything less than a completely total Christian theocracy in this country!
I fail to understand why these same Bible totin’, Bible quotin’ people won’t stop for a minute to consider their demands for Christmas to be put back into the season when the bigger picture seems so lost on them. They keep making these religious demands for Christianity to be taught as science in the guise of Intelligent Design, for religious documents to be displayed in public buildings and for other blatantly Christian symbols to be part of everything from city seals to courthouses. Do they for one minute think that by doing this, that society will suddenly experience mass conversion to Christianity, thereby becoming upstanding and moral in the way they imagine? Have any of them ever opened their Bibles to see what hypocrites and Pharisees they have become? I may be a Unitarian Universalist now, but I was raised Roman Catholic, know the Bible and I see first hand that the message of the Christ has been lost on far too many who claim to be so-called “Christians”.
...
So it seems to me that rather than waste tons of money and energy on worrying about whether we call this time of year “Christmas” or just the “Holidays”, I would suggest instead that these same people who are getting their knickers in a twist over that whole issue go to some social service agency, sign up to volunteer and spend a day in a soup kitchen doling out meals to the homeless, or sort clothing that goes out to the needy, or spend time in a nursing home visiting some lonely elderly people whose family might live too far away to visit regularly, or go to a prison and talk to some of the prisoners and make them feel a bit of dignity despite their incarceration. Social service agencies have experienced massive budget cutbacks in these cruel times we live in that seem to so favor the well heeled, and as a result, more and more people are falling through the cracks of “the system”. If people truly want to put the “Christ” back in Christmas, remember the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Pay heed to the words of Matthew 25: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”
WWJD?
Named TerriPAC after his wife, the PAC will raise and spend funds to educate voters on where their elected officials stood when they had a choice between individual freedom and personal privacy and overreaching government action. TerriPAC is a federal political action committee and will be able to endorse or oppose candidates for federal office – including members of Congress.
TerriPAC will request donations through its Internet site (www.TerriPAC.org) from the majority of Americans who were horrified by the political intrusion in Michael’s personal family tragedy. TerriPAC.org will also encourage citizens to obtain advance medical directives (living wills) and allow voters to learn how their own members of Congress voted and their public comments on this issue.
“If our political leaders have taken no lessons from their shameless exploitation of Terri, and the public outcry against it, I have,” Schiavo said. “I have taken my sadness, anger and worry and channeled them into a personal resolution: I will do everything in my power to keep another unsuspecting American family from re-living our private national nightmare.”
It would be easy to dismiss my actions as partisan. But I was a life-long Republican before Republicans pushed the power of government into my private family decisions. And it is not so simple to forget those politicians who shamelessly sought to squeeze political leverage out of my family’s most emotional hour.
Secretary of State Condi Rice is off to Europe to neither confirm nor to deny that the U.S. government in an operation known as rendition kidnaps people, often the wrong ones, and flies them to foreign countries to be tortured.
"Trust me" is her line. According to Reuters, "Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern said Rice told him in Washington she expected allies to trust that America does not allow rights abuses."
Who will trust this woman who, as President Bush's national security adviser, said that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction capable of producing a "mushroom cloud" over an American city?
Who will trust this woman who, as national security adviser, said Saddam Hussein sheltered al-Qaeda terrorists in Baghdad and helped train some in chemical weapons development (CNN report, Sept. 26, 2002, 1:28 PM EDT)?
Who will trust this woman who won't answer a question but says "trust me"?
On Nov. 14, 2005, Middle East expert Juan Cole reported that the 9/11 Commission Report revealed that captured al-Qaeda members Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Abu Zubayda informed the U.S. government that Osama bin Laden prohibited al-Qaeda operatives from cooperating with the secular Arab nationalist Saddam Hussein. In the run-up to the Iraqi invasion, this critical information was withheld from Congress and the American people. Instead, the Bush administration worked to create the belief that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks.
The Bush administration has made it abundantly clear that it believes, with no apologies, that the ends justify the means. Lying is simply a means to an end. What Condi Rice is telling Europeans is "pay no attention to our lies; just accept that we are liars for a good and proper cause."
Well, let's see what the latest scandal in Iraq is. You may have heard about this. It seems the Pentagon has been paying Iraqi journalists to write and promote a pro-White House view in Iraqi newspapers. See, luckily we don't have that kind of thing here. We have Fox News.
There is a common psychological principle known as projection. Projection is a defensive mechanism by which people attribute their own undesirable traits and impulses to other people; they perceive motives in others that they deny having themselves. The liar, for example, is sure everyone else is lying. The aggressive person accuses others of being belligerent. When Cheney recently called anti-war voices "dishonest," "irresponsible," "corrupt," "shameless" and "dangerous," it sounded like a classic case of projection at work. Our administration appears to suffer from mass-projection—they attribute countless evils not only to Saddam and terrorists (who are of course guilty of heinous acts) but to the peace movement and anyone else who dares to question their motives. All the while, they are unwilling and unable to look at themselves in the same mirror.
The paragraph is from White House Snow Globe by Gayle Brandeis.
Twenty five years ago today, December 2, 1980, four North American churchwomen were killed by U.S.-trained and funded death squads in El Salvador. I remember exactly where I was when I first heard the news. I was a senior at Duke University, with plans to enter the Jesuits the following year. I bent down to pick up the Durham Morning Herald, and was shocked by the headline: “Four Churchwomen Killed in El Salvador.” Their bodies had been found in a shallow, unmarked grave in a barren countryside not far from the San Salvador airport.
The deaths of these four women changed my life. They gave me--and thousands of church people around the country--new strength and courage to stand up against U.S. warmaking. Three of them were nuns--Sister Ita Ford, a Maryknoll nun who spent years in Chile; Sister Maura Clarke, a Maryknoll nun who spent years in Nicaragua; and Sister Dorothy Kazel, an Ursuline nun from Cleveland who worked in El Salvador. The fourth woman, Jean Donovan, was not a nun. She had volunteered to go to El Salvador through a church mission program in Cleveland.
Twenty five years later, El Salvador has become Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Colombia, indeed, the whole world. Not long ago, some Pentagon general announced that the United States was now using the same strategy it employed in El Salvador on Iraq. In El Salvador, we helped to kill some 75,000 people, including Archbishop Romero, the four churchwomen and the six Jesuits. We trained the death squads at the School of the Americas. We supported the torture and rape of thousands. We rewarded the generals, the junta, and the handful of millionaires who stole the nation’s resources. Instead of repenting of the evils it did in El Salvador--and so many other places--our government is now intent on turning the rest of the world into the killing fields of El Salvador. It could care less about the innocent lives lost in El Salvador, Iraq or anywhere else.
But I take heart in the life and example of Jean Donovan and the other churchwomen. They renounced First World greed and nationalism, entered the world of the marginalized and destitute, shared their powerlessness and pain, stood up in their defense and gave their lives in loving solidarity for them.
In these dark times, Jean and the church women inspire us to stand up in solidarity with the victims of our government and its wars, regardless of the consequences to ourselves, and to give our lives so that some day, the killing will stop.
Liberals believe that everyone is better off when everyone is better off.
Deck us all with Boston Charlie
Walla Walla, Wash, and Kalamazoo!
Nora's freezin' on the trolley,
Swaller dollar cauliflower Alleygaroo!
Don't we know archaic barrel,
Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou.
Trolley Molly don't love Harold,
Boola Boola Pensacoola Hullabaloo!
The paper ballot, hand counted under scrutiny by all the parties... is the closest thing to foolproof you can possibly have. You might be able to subborn one or two of the scrutineers but ALL of them? I think not. Wouldn't need but a few whistleblowers to blow the whole thing apart.
I am anything but computerphobic. I wrote my first program on punch cards when I was 15 in 1971 and am currently heavily engaged in computer programming, networking, and general use of technology. I have background in database, several computing langauges, software design in general, various forms of Windows, UNIX and several other proprietary operating systems.
I KNOW that practically any computer program can be hacked depending on how badly you want to do it. However, based on what I have read about the voting software in use, I do not believe that adequate security precautions have been taken, and EVEN IF THEY HAD BEEN, IT DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE RESULTS ARE SAFE.
What I know about computers makes me very nervous about using them to record and tally votes. The complexity of modern software is so enormous that complete scrutiny is impossible.
So please don't accuse me of having my head filled with moronic mumbo jumbo when I say that there are some things for which computers are patently not suited: particularly not anything to do with the election of public officials.
Justice Department lawyers concluded that the landmark Texas congressional redistricting plan spearheaded by Rep. Tom DeLay (R) violated the Voting Rights Act, according to a previously undisclosed memo obtained by The Washington Post. But senior officials overruled them and approved the plan.
The memo, unanimously endorsed by six lawyers and two analysts in the department's voting section, said the redistricting plan illegally diluted black and Hispanic voting power in two congressional districts. It also said the plan eliminated several other districts in which minorities had a substantial, though not necessarily decisive, influence in elections.
I am an expatriate living and working in Belgium. I have traveled widely over the last 30 years and have lived in three countries besides my native America. I am presently the Director of an International Residence House. One of my students asked me the other day whether I consider myself "proud" to be an American.
I responded by saying that I love my country's founding values, its natural beauty and so, so many people in it, but that I can no longer say that I am proud to be an American. Here are ten reasons why.
1. The War in Iraq was Illegal, unjust, and unnecessary. I am not proud of the doctrine of "pre-emption" because I don't think America should start wars needlessly, especially if they are based upon lies.
Our "leaders" chose to take our country into an illegal, unjust, and unnecessary war by hyping intelligence and scaring people into fearful submission. This war has now killed tens of thousands of Americans and Iraqis and wounded tens of thousands more, while costing us nearly $300 billion dollars and making us far less safe and far more hated than we were before this debacle. The American people may not know the "real" reason for this radical policy, but here are some of the stated reasons:
"Saddam Hussein has WMD"; "Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator;" "Saddam Hussein had a role in 9/11;" "Saddam Hussein has ties to al-Queda;" "We want to bring democracy to the Middle East;" "We are going to fight the terrorists abroad so we don't have to fight them at home;" "Iraq is the front-line of the War on Terror;" (and my personal favorite) "He tried to kill my daddy."
And of course, there was the unstated reason, widely supposed, but rarely acknowledged: "They've got a lot of oil and gas in that region and we use a lot of it in America."
2. America has acted as a rogue nation, even a pariah state, over the past five years, and I am not proud of our "my way or the highway" unilateralism. If this were elementary school, this Administration would receive an "Unsatisfactory" grade for "Gets along well with others."Our current Administration has thumbed its collective nose at all forms of multilateralism and international cooperation, withdrawing from the land mine treaty, the Kyoto protocol, the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty (so the warmongers will be free to design "mini-nukes", "bunker busters" and the desire to control outer space), the World Court, many of the Geneva conventions against torture and prisoner abuse, and are one of two countries which have not signed the Rights of the Child document (the other being Somalia)! The U.S. has now committed many of the same acts for which the "war criminals" at Nuremburg were tried and convicted.
3. The country I love practices respect for human rights, and I am not proud of the fact that we have become a nation of torturers.
Our present rulers seem to find it perfectly acceptable to torture other human beings, hold people without charge or legal representation indefinitely, and is now accused of using chemical weapons (white phosphorus and a new form of napalm) against a country that was alleged to have WMD, but, in fact, did not. How ironic is it that the CIA uses abandoned Soviet Gulags and that we used the same chemical weapon on Iraqi civilians in Fallujah that Saddam used on the Kurds in 1991!
4. I am not proud of the reverse Robin Hood syndrome that has recently gripped our economy. Our cyrrebt rulers have been recklessly looting our countries wealth and resources, stealing from the poor and giving the spoils to the rich. No "welfare queen" ever had it as good as these "pigs at the trough" who never met a tax cut for the rich or a pork project in their district that they didn't love. The result has been the largest income redistribution in our history, revealing shameful poverty in the world's richest nation, and budget deficits as far as the eye can see.
Has anyone seen a car with one of those 2004 "Bush/Cheney" bumper stickers on it lately? It's been days since I've noticed one.
My community, which is about 50 percent Republican, used to be full of them, mostly pasted on the backs of hulking SUVs and brightly colored Hummers.
Suddenly, I'm just not seeing the things anymore. I suppose it's possible that they all just fell off, but then why am I still seeing Kerry/Edwards bumper stickers? Did Democrats use better glue?
No, I suspect something else is at work: buyers' remorse, or maybe shame.
At this point, it must be a little embarrassing to have a sticker on your car broadcasting the fact that you voted for those two clowns.
The Zogby poll conducted between Oct. 29 and Nov. 2 found that even among Republicans, 29 percent say that they think Bush should be impeached if he lied about the reasons for going to war against Iraq. The percentage can only have risen since then, as more evidence comes out that there's no reason for the "if."
It's too early to predict how this tectonic shift in political attitudes will play out in the November congressional races across the country, but I'm guessing that my neighborhood is not that different from much of the red and purple parts of America, and that there are going to be a lot more contested House and even Senate races than people were expecting a few months back.
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
1. Offer An Honest Assessment
2. Define Success
3. Decide: Is "Success" Still Possible?
4. Announce a Contingent Timetable for Withdrawal
5. Commit the Needed Troops and Resources
6. Give Up Permanent Bases In Iraq
7. Promote Transparency in the Iraqi Oil Industry
8. Accept the New Constitution and Government, Come What May
9. Prioritize the Resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian Crisis
10. Apologize
Current and former military and intelligence officials have told me that the President remains convinced that it is his personal mission to bring democracy to Iraq, and that he is impervious to political pressure, even from fellow Republicans. They also say that he disparages any information that conflicts with his view of how the war is proceeding.
Bush’s closest advisers have long been aware of the religious nature of his policy commitments. In recent interviews, one former senior official, who served in Bush’s first term, spoke extensively about the connection between the President’s religious faith and his view of the war in Iraq. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the former official said, he was told that Bush felt that “God put me here” to deal with the war on terror. The President’s belief was fortified by the Republican sweep in the 2002 congressional elections; Bush saw the victory as a purposeful message from God that “he’s the man,” the former official said. Publicly, Bush depicted his reëlection as a referendum on the war; privately, he spoke of it as another manifestation of divine purpose.
The former senior official said that after the election he made a lengthy inspection visit to Iraq and reported his findings to Bush in the White House: “I said to the President, ‘We’re not winning the war.’ And he asked, ‘Are we losing?’ I said, ‘Not yet.’ ” The President, he said, “appeared displeased” with that answer.
“I tried to tell him,” the former senior official said. “And he couldn’t hear it.”
...
Many of the military’s most senior generals are deeply frustrated, but they say nothing in public, because they don’t want to jeopardize their careers. The Administration has “so terrified the generals that they know they won’t go
public,” a former defense official said. A retired senior C.I.A. officer with knowledge of Iraq told me that one of his colleagues recently participated in a congressional tour there. The legislators were repeatedly told, in meetings with enlisted men, junior officers, and generals that “things were fucked up.” But in a subsequent teleconference with Rumsfeld, he said, the generals kept those criticisms to themselves.
The Wal-Mart Watch campaign, a labor-environmental group highly critical of America's mega-mega retailer, recently launched more than 1,000 events nationwide for its "Higher Expectations Week."
"Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price," a scathing documentary by independent filmmaker Robert Greenwald with a focus on Wal-Mart's business tactics and treatment of workers, began to play to audiences across the country.
Wal-Mart is fighting its critics with waves of television ads celebrating happy workers and the company's gifts to local charities.
But the action goes much further. Across state capitals, legislators are into spirited debates over whether Wal-Mart should be forced to pay adequate health benefits or leave it to the states to subsidize its low-paid workers through Medicaid and other public benefits.
Scene of the biggest current fight: Maryland, where Gov. Robert Ehrlich vetoed a measure to require any company with more than 10,000 workers -- only Wal-Mart qualifies -- to spend at least 8 percent of payroll on health benefits. Or, alternatively, to contribute significantly to the state's health insurance program.
An override vote on Ehrlich's veto is set for January. Wal-Mart has deployed at least a dozen lobbyists to Annapolis, offering goodies such as a $10,000 gift to underwrite a conference of black legislators.
In one sense, all of this is predictable: With annual sales of $288 billion and 1.6 million employees, Wal-Mart is now the world's biggest corporation. Its footprint on American communities and retailing is so vast that some opposition to its tactics is virtually inevitable.Current debates about proposed Wal-Mart stores in Cornelius, Gresham and Beaverton -- with the typical protests by many local citizens and smaller retailers -- are par for the course. Usually Wal-Mart wins, though not always; it has experienced some dramatic rejections.
But something even bigger seems to be happening. Wal-Mart has become the poster child for an era of unfettered globalized corporate operations -- "a destabilizing business model, a dangerous detriment to America's local and national economies and to the middle class," in the words of critic Leo Hindery Jr. He's former CEO of the telecom carrier Global Crossing and an active figure in Democratic Party politics.
At a recent Washington conference organized by the Center for American Progress, Hindery noted that as recently as 1992 (the year of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton's death), the Business Roundtable of top business leaders was saying that corporations had a major responsibility not just to stockholders but to their employees, society at large, and the nation's economy.
But now, Hindery says the Business Roundtable -- and most of the corporate world -- focuses almost exclusively on profits for stockholders.
