Shut the US Senate Down

We hear from the pundits and politicians that there is nothing that can be done by the United States Congress to end our Nation’s involvement in Iraq. We have also learned now that a major supporter of George W. Bush, a supporter, the CEO of Hunt Oil, who is contributing 25 million dollars to his Library, has made an oil deal with the Kurds in northern Iraq that will most likely end any talk of solidifying the Nation of Iraq.
Ignorance is always bliss. When I read the Republican supporter Letters to the Editor I am miffed that these so called intelligent people continue to believe in George Bush’s war in Iraq and that they continue to think that the reason for the war was “weapons of mass destruction” rather than the real reason, OIL.
About a year ago the “Letter to the Editor” editor challenged me on my information regarding the cost of the war. I stated, from legitimate sources, that this war was going to cost over a trillion dollars. A trillion dollars that could have been spent on developing new energy sources, underwriting a one payer health care system, and for sure increasing taxpayer’s contributions to a terribly underfunded educational system, not to mention the environmental benefits of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.
There is a way to end the war and to bring our men a women home, shut down the Senate and authorize funds for the sole purpose of redeployment. The blood of any American troop who dies as a result of this action by Congress will be on the hands of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, both of whom were cowards during the Viet Nam war, and their privileged buddies at Hunt Oil and Halliburton.

Life is Surreal

Is anyone having the same surreal week as me? First a “Family Values” Republican is caught in a men’s room soliciting sex from another man. Next a Miss Teenage America embarrasses the education system by suggesting that US Americans can’t find America on the map because most Americans don’t have maps. Then the leader of the free world, our President, is grateful to have been invited to an OPEC meeting that is in fact an “APEC” meeting. He then goes on to thank the Austrians for the support that the Australians have given to his war and there is more but not worth repeating, indeed I think Americans have become numb and, we have all learned to live with the embarrassment. Then to top the week off Osama bin Laden sends out a message to the American people in all his beard dyed glory. So I am asking myself, is all this real, am I living in a nightmare? So I say to myself, the Republican Senator needs to come out and stop living a lie and at the least stop bothering other men in men’s rooms. Miss Teenage America, third place, needs to make her agenda about promoting education, starting with herself. Mr. President of the USA needs to spend more time in the Rose Garden thinking about all the Americans he has dehumanized while all the time he has been living a charmed life. As for Osama bin Laden he has no fear that the beard dye is poisoned, I think the CIA tried to do that with Castro and failed but he should be dead, but he isn’t. President Bush promised that to the American people a few days after September 11, 2001, but he is not dead. Instead he is still allowed to spew his arrogance. Good Job George, not.

Adultery OK- As long as it is Heterosexual

Senator Larry Craig from the great State of “I da ho” declares that he is not Gay nor has he ever been Gay, and I agree with him 100%. Identifying oneself as Gay or Lesbian is not something that should be taken lightly; doing so is for sure a “Badge of Courage”, courage that Senator Craig seems to lack. An announcement that one is Gay or Lesbian in the United States immediately secures your position as a “second class” citizen and Senator Craig has not earned that “right”. Slithering in public men’s rooms for sex while writing legislation to demean ten percent of the population does not qualify anyone for Second Class Citizenship and Senator Craig needs to re evaluate his approach for achieving the dignity of this classification. Senator Craig, from all accounts, is a homophobic homosexual, he is not gay, he is a very dangerous person, to the Gay and Lesbian Community and to himself.

All that said, as I see it Senator Craig never committed a crime. It seems, from the reports that I read, that he invited, via toe tapping and hand movements, a sexual encounter and he pleaded guilty to a “public nuisance” crime and for sure under emotional duress. Because of this he was demonized by the Republican Party, because and only because, it was a homosexual encounter. On the other hand Republican Senator Vetter, from Louisiana, who admitted to a crime of hiring and having sex with a prostitute, gets a free pass, because, and only because his encounter was heterosexual.

Every day, all across the USA, women are harassed by men in powerful positions. They have their butts pinched, they are threatened, either directly or indirectly with losing their jobs or passed over for promotions unless they submit to sexual advances. Women are constantly hit on in super markets, restaurants, bars, malls and in less courteous ways than what happened in the men’s room in Minneapolis Airport. Senator Craig never threatened anyone in that bathroom, he, from what I understand, was looking for sex but was not forcing himself on anyone, he gave a signal and the advance could have been totally ignored but because it was a homosexual encounter it became a major crime in the eyes of America’s “First Class” citizens.

Trust me I am not a Senator Craig fan nor am I am proponent of sex in public places, (get a room), but the obvious deconstruction of one Republican Senator who was “entrapped” and not caught in any real criminal act versus the acceptance of an adulterous Republican Senator who was not even censured secures the notion of a second class citizenship in this Nation.

Pandering To the Health Care Giants

My parents were poor Irish people in Philadelphia and were Republicans because the Republican Party responded to their needs. Imagine Republicans responding to the needs of the poor today. Most people, as they age, become more conservative, I on the other hand have become a progressive. Being a progressive, as I understand it, is truly in line with my Catholic Faith. Thus it is important to me that People of Faith acknowledge the failed system of rationing Health Care in our Country. Beyond life-style choices there are genetic differences that Republicans like Presidential Candidate Rudy Giuliani do not seem to understand or are so well endowed by those who profit from death and sickness that they don’t care. These differences are major health issues, heart problems, cancer, and the list goes on and on, and the costs will not and cannot be satisfied by the few puny dollars that the average American can place in a “Health Care Account”. If an Insurance Company, whose main objective is to make a profit, finds that you are suffering from a costly disease they are going to drop you like a hot potato. Mr. Giuliani suggests that we can forgo our choice of, food, clothing and shelter and place money into a “Health Care Account”. Perhaps Mr. Giuliani is preaching to the wealthy that needs tax breaks and tax shelters. He certainly is not preaching to the broader American Community, who are losing all their health care benefits because of this Republican administration and their adulation to “Corporate America”.
The United States is the only industrialized nation that has not attempted to secure Health Care as a right of its citizens. Even now as the US Congress debates securing additional Health Care for Children this Republican President has threatened a Veto. Shame on him.

Losing My Best Friend

If, during the night, I have to get up for whatever reason, I first have to look down and make sure I don’t step on my guardian. Any baby boomer boy would envy the fact that the real Lassie is not in Hollywood but living in River Club in Bradenton, FL. Ok, it is not the real Lassie, as a matter of fact, just between her and me, her real name is Mouse but publicly she is known as Lassie. She has been my buddy for twelve years now and like most pet owners the thought of her leaving me is just unbearable, but her time is near and I need to deal with it. She was recently diagnosed with inoperable tumors, big ones. I pretty much spent the few hours after being advised either crying alone, or inattentive to my surroundings. My best buddy, Lassie, my Mouse, needed me to make some decisions. I made a decision a long time ago that I would want the people who I love and who love me to allow me to die with dignity. I am not ready to make that decision for Mouse, yet, but I will when I know, and I will know, when the time is right.
Lassie will be the last pet I ever own, I am 60 years old and heading into the home stretch. My pets, all dogs, Flipper, Toto, Jeb, Mickey, Hans and yes Gretel, Daisy and Lassie the Mouse have all been a total comfort to me except for when I had to let them go.
There will be a time in the very near future when I will no longer have to look down to insure that I do not step on my guardian, Lassie. I will have to let her go and I will be certain that she leaves this world with my nose to hers, and as her little brown eyes less than an inch away close I hope that she is reassured that I love her.

Somebody Had to Say it - Thanks Keith

Olbermann: Bush, Cheney Should Resign
By Keith Olbermann
MSNBC Countdown
Tuesday 03 July 2007
'I didn't vote for him, but he's my president, and I hope he does a good job.'
"I didn't vote for him," an American once said, "But he's my president, and I hope he does a good job."
That - on this eve of the 4th of July - is the essence of this democracy, in 17 words. And that is what President Bush threw away yesterday in commuting the sentence of Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
The man who said those 17 words - improbably enough - was the actor John Wayne. And Wayne, an ultra-conservative, said them, when he learned of the hair's-breadth election of John F. Kennedy instead of his personal favorite, Richard Nixon in 1960.
"I didn't vote for him but he's my president, and I hope he does a good job."
The sentiment was doubtlessly expressed earlier, but there is something especially appropriate about hearing it, now, in Wayne's voice: The crisp matter-of-fact acknowledgement that we have survived, even though for nearly two centuries now, our Commander-in-Chief has also served, simultaneously, as the head of one political party and often the scourge of all others.
We as citizens must, at some point, ignore a president's partisanship. Not that we may prosper as a nation, not that we may achieve, not that we may lead the world - but merely that we may function.
But just as essential to the seventeen words of John Wayne, is an implicit trust - a sacred trust: That the president for whom so many did not vote, can in turn suspend his political self long enough, and for matters imperative enough, to conduct himself solely for the benefit of the entire Republic.
Our generation's willingness to state "we didn't vote for him, but he's our president, and we hope he does a good job," was tested in the crucible of history, and earlier than most.
And in circumstances more tragic and threatening. And we did that with which history tasked us.
We enveloped our President in 2001.And those who did not believe he should have been elected - indeed those who did not believe he had been elected - willingly lowered their voices and assented to the sacred oath of non-partisanship.
And George W. Bush took our assent, and re-configured it, and honed it, and shaped it to a razor-sharp point and stabbed this nation in the back with it.
Were there any remaining lingering doubt otherwise, or any remaining lingering hope, it ended yesterday when Mr. Bush commuted the prison sentence of one of his own staffers.
Did so even before the appeals process was complete; did so without as much as a courtesy consultation with the Department of Justice; did so despite what James Madison - at the Constitutional Convention - said about impeaching any president who pardoned or sheltered those who had committed crimes "advised by" that president; did so without the slightest concern that even the most detached of citizens must look at the chain of events and wonder: To what degree was Mr. Libby told: break the law however you wish - the President will keep you out of prison?
In that moment, Mr. Bush, you broke that fundamental com-pact between yourself and the majority of this nation's citizens - the ones who did not cast votes for you. In that moment, Mr. Bush, you ceased to be the President of the United States. In that moment, Mr. Bush, you became merely the President of a rabid and irresponsible corner of the Republican Party. And this is too important a time, Sir, to have a commander-in-chief who puts party over nation.
This has been, of course, the gathering legacy of this Administration. Few of its decisions have escaped the stain of politics. The extraordinary Karl Rove has spoken of "a permanent Republican majority," as if such a thing - or a permanent Democratic majority - is not antithetical to that upon which rests: our country, our history, our revolution, our freedoms.
Yet our Democracy has survived shrewder men than Karl Rove. And it has survived the frequent stain of politics upon the fabric of government. But this administration, with ever-increasing insistence and almost theocratic zealotry, has turned that stain into a massive oil spill.
The protection of the environment is turned over to those of one political party, who will financially benefit from the rape of the environment. The protections of the Constitution are turned over to those of one political party, who believe those protections unnecessary and extravagant and quaint.
The enforcement of the laws is turned over to those of one political party, who will swear beforehand that they will not enforce those laws. The choice between war and peace is turned over to those of one political party, who stand to gain vast wealth by ensuring that there is never peace, but only war.
And now, when just one cooked book gets corrected by an honest auditor, when just one trampling of the inherent and inviolable fairness of government is rejected by an impartial judge, when just one wild-eyed partisan is stopped by the figure of blind justice, this President decides that he, and not the law, must prevail.
I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war.
I accuse you of fabricating in the minds of your own people, a false implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.
I accuse you of firing the generals who told you that the plans for Iraq were disastrously insufficient.
I accuse you of causing in Iraq the needless deaths of 3,586 of our brothers and sons, and sisters and daughters, and friends and neighbors.
I accuse you of subverting the Constitution, not in some misguided but sincerely-motivated struggle to combat terrorists, but to stifle dissent.
I accuse you of fomenting fear among your own people, of creating the very terror you claim to have fought.
I accuse you of exploiting that unreasoning fear, the natural fear of your own people who just want to live their lives in peace, as a political tool to slander your critics and libel your opponents.
I accuse you of handing part of this Republic over to a Vice President who is without conscience, and letting him run roughshod over it.
And I accuse you now, Mr. Bush, of giving, through that Vice President, carte blanche to Mr. Libby, to help defame Ambassador Joseph Wilson by any means necessary, to lie to Grand Juries and Special Counsel and before a court, in order to protect the mechanisms and particulars of that defamation, with your guarantee that Libby would never see prison, and, in so doing, as Ambassador Wilson himself phrased it here last night, of becoming an accessory to the obstruction of justice.
When President Nixon ordered the firing of the Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox during the infamous "Saturday Night Massacre" on October 20th, 1973, Cox initially responded tersely, and ominously.
"Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men, is now for Congress, and ultimately, the American people."
President Nixon did not understand how he had crystallized the issue of Watergate for the American people.
It had been about the obscure meaning behind an attempt to break in to a rival party's headquarters; and the labyrinthine effort to cover-up that break-in and the related crimes.
And in one night, Nixon transformed it.
Watergate - instantaneously - became a simpler issue: a President overruling the inexorable march of the law of insisting - in a way that resonated viscerally with millions who had not previously understood - that he was the law.
Not the Constitution. Not the Congress. Not the Courts. Just him.
Just - Mr. Bush - as you did, yesterday.
The twists and turns of Plame-Gate, of your precise and intricate lies that sent us into this bottomless pit of Iraq; your lies upon the lies to discredit Joe Wilson; your lies upon the lies upon the lies to throw the sand at the "referee" of Prosecutor Fitzgerald's analogy. These are complex and often painful to follow, and too much, perhaps, for the average citizen.
But when other citizens render a verdict against your man, Mr. Bush - and then you spit in the faces of those jurors and that judge and the judges who were yet to hear the appeal - the average citizen understands that, Sir.
It's the fixed ballgame and the rigged casino and the pre-arranged lottery all rolled into one - and it stinks. And they know it.
Nixon's mistake, the last and most fatal of them, the firing of Archibald Cox, was enough to cost him the presidency. And in the end, even Richard Nixon could say he could not put this nation through an impeachment.
It was far too late for it to matter then, but as the decades unfold, that single final gesture of non-partisanship, of acknowledged responsibility not to self, not to party, not to "base," but to country, echoes loudly into history. Even Richard Nixon knew it was time to resign
Would that you could say that, Mr. Bush. And that you could say it for Mr. Cheney. You both crossed the Rubicon yesterday. Which one of you chose the route, no longer matters. Which is the ventriloquist, and which the dummy, is irrelevant.
But that you have twisted the machinery of government into nothing more than a tawdry machine of politics, is the only fact that remains relevant.
It is nearly July 4th, Mr. Bush, the commemoration of the moment we Americans decided that rather than live under a King who made up the laws, or erased them, or ignored them - or commuted the sentences of those rightly convicted under them - we would force our independence, and regain our sacred freedoms.
We of this time - and our leaders in Congress, of both parties - must now live up to those standards which echo through our history: Pressure, negotiate, impeach - get you, Mr. Bush, and Mr. Cheney, two men who are now perilous to our Democracy, away from its helm.
For you, Mr. Bush, and for Mr. Cheney, there is a lesser task. You need merely achieve a very low threshold indeed. Display just that iota of patriotism which Richard Nixon showed, on August 9th, 1974.
Resign.
And give us someone - anyone - about whom all of us might yet be able to quote John Wayne, and say, "I didn't vote for him, but he's my president, and I hope he does a good job."

No One’s Civil Rights Should Be Decided by Referendum

In the 1960’s a number of legislative Civil Rights bills that granted rights to Black Americans were passed by the United States Congress and signed by the presiding President. If any of those issues were presented as Referendums to be voted on by the majority of Americans they would have all failed. If any of them were left to the States we would today have an America similar to what we had prior to the bloody and violent Civil War.
Today, all across America individual States are amending their Constitutions to deny the Civil Rights of a small and harmless minority which is only seeking the right to be who God created them to be.
Gays and Lesbians have served our Country with honor throughout our history, and have been demonized for doing so. Gays and lesbians have served the “Church” for centuries and have been demonized for doing so.
Peter Sprigg’s response (Peter Sprigg is vice president for policy at the Family Research Council)in the USA Today’s June 25th, 2007 editorial column suggests to me that he believes that any marriage that does not result in children is null and void. I think all American’s should take note of this fanatical thinking. Peter is suggesting that seniors who marry should not be given the benefits that Government offers to married people, folks who are married and do not conceive should not be given the benefits either, indeed according to his philosophy their marriages should be ended and not recognized by the “State”.
Peter’s organization seems to want to be the “determinator” of what Love and marriage is all about, they are not. He says people in Marriage “ are happier, healthier and more prosperous than people in any other living situation”. Yet he and his organization are willing to deny Gays and lesbians a happier, healthier and more prosperous life. I don’t get it.