October 31, 2003

For American workers, it was clearly a trick.
Happy Halloween!


October 30, 2003

From Charles Peters’ latest column in the Washington Monthly:
Remember how Wall Street’s Charles Schwab urged Bush to cut or eliminate taxes on dividends, saying this would be a sure prod to jobs and growth. Bush followed his advice. A year or so later, The Wall Street Journal reported that Charles Schwab had saved $5.4 [...]


From Fair Economy:
…Half of all Americans will receive less than $100 from the tax cut in 2003, according to Citizens for Tax Justice. But Americans making $1 million or more will receive $93,500 from the tax cut, according the Tax Policy Center.
Over the next four years, the bottom 60 percent of taxpayers will receive [...]


October 28, 2003

News of more suffering and death in Iraq today. From The Guardian:

On the cynical basis that one should believe nothing until it is denied, the US government has confirmed that relief workers in Iraq are in greater danger than ever before.
The US, through its secretary of state, Colin Powell, has appealed to international [...]


The commission to find out why 9/11 happened (and how to prevent it from happening again) has been stonewalled repeatedly by the Bush Administration. And the commission may not be able to complete its report because of the delays. Business as usual for the Bush Administration and their secret government.

The head of the [...]


October 24, 2003

If you aren’t watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central, you’re missing some of the best news coverage going in the United States (and it’s a fake news show!) Here’s an excerpt from host Jon Stewart’s interview with Bill Moyers on Now (this includes a transcript of the Bush vs. Bush [...]


From CNN:

Two former CIA operatives, Larry Johnson and Jim Marcinkowski, have asked the Senate to investigate the leak and discussed the situation with CNN’s Bill Hemmer.
JOHNSON:The problem with this is a lot of the damage that has occurred is not going to be seen. It can’t be photographed. We can’t bring the bodies out [...]


Bush has held the fewest press conferences of any president, and the rare times he holds them, they are often scripted. US journalists are so afraid they won’t get a chance to play ball with the president, their questions are far from the challenging ones that are normally asked of leaders in democracies. [...]


From The Boston Globe:

…the news from College Station, Texas, this week – that the First Father, former President George H.W. Bush, has given his own most treasured award to Senator Edward Kennedy – is nearly as astonishing.
When it was announced (with amazingly little fanfare) that the pugnaciously anti-Iraq war Democrat Kennedy had been awarded the [...]


October 23, 2003

From a New York Times review of John Newhouse’s book “Imperial America”:

Mr. Newhouse begins with the ideas that inform policy, exposing the dangers in the Bush doctrine’s twin pillars of preventive war and pre-eminence. By embracing the principle of prevention, Mr. Bush risks mayhem by setting a precedent that individual countries can decide for themselves [...]


Here is a chilling article from Asia Times:
…With the recent announcement of plans to sell all but a few of Iraq’s crown jewels for dirt-cheap prices, other countries can’t afford to miss the post-war garage sale…
…The rhetoric about helping Iraqis rebuild their country will hopefully drown out the fact that the people who will be [...]


October 22, 2003

The Senate passed a law yesterday that was the first limitation on a constitutional right since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. The new law bans a very rare procedure that was performed to protect the health and life of pregnant women. But the law is written is such a way as to [...]


Over 200 cities and states – including cities like Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, Denver, Oakland, Flagstaff, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and San Francisco and states like Hawaii, Vermont, and Alaska – have passed resolutions denouncing provisions of the Patriot Act.
Here is a full list from the ACLU.
From the Associated Press:
Some of the fundamental changes to Americans’ [...]


October 20, 2003

From the AFL-CIO:
The day after President George W. Bush announced the U.S. economy is “looking up” and proposed making most of his millionaire tax cuts permanent, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) confirmed that working families are enduring the worst jobs loss crisis since the Great Depression.
The BLS announced Sept. 5 that the economy [...]


There’s an interview in Truthout.org today that explains some of the issues. And you can take action to help before the October session of congress recesses here:
Representative Rush Holt and over 40 cosponsors have introduced a bill that would require a voter-verifiable audit trail on every voting system. It’s called the Voter Confidence and [...]


October 19, 2003

Ted Kennedy made a bold speech before the Senate on Thursday, concluding with quotes from Bush Sr. on his Iraq policy that condemn Bush Jr.’s later policy in the same country. From Kennedy’s speech:
Nearly six months have elapsed since President Bush flew out to the aircraft carrier and declared “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq. Today, [...]


October 17, 2003

Separation of church and state be damned. Not content with imposing his faith (a faith strangely not resembling anything Jesus taught) upon all other aspects of government, George Bush has turned the military into crusaders, led by a Muslim-bashing general. From the Telegraph:
The general leading the hunt for Osama bin Laden and Saddam [...]


October 16, 2003

From Max Cleland, former U.S. senator and head of the Veterans Administration in the Carter administration in the Atlanta Journal Constitution:
…Unfortunately, the people who drove the engine to get into the war in Iraq never served in Vietnam. Not the president. Not the vice president. Not the secretary of defense. Not the deputy secretary of [...]


After the news earlier this week that suicide rates among our troops in Iraq are three times the normal rate, there is news that morale among troops is low. From The Washington Post:

A broad survey of U.S. troops in Iraq by a Pentagon-funded newspaper found that half of those questioned described their unit’s morale [...]


October 15, 2003

From a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll:
Bush vs. Unnamed Democrat:
Democrat 49%, Bush 44%
Bush:
Men 50%, Women 44%
Democrat:
Men 42%, Women 50%
Independents:
Democrat: 47%, Bush 41%
Moderates:
Democrat: 53%, Bush: 38%
Among individual candidates, of Democrats and those who lean Democratic:
Dean 17%, Gephardt 13%, Clark 12%, Kerry 10%, Lieberman 9%
Leakgate footnote:
More than eight in 10 continue to see the alleged White House [...]


October 14, 2003

From the Washington Monthly:
Bush tells us defeating our remaining enemies “will take time and sacrifice.” Sacrifice by whom? Certainly not by those who had their taxes cut and whose sons and daughters do not serve in the military. For 34 years this magazine has harped on the American elite’s disdain for service. Not long ago, [...]


From Frontline’s interview with Greg Thielmann, a career foreign service officer who spent 25 years as a diplomat, and most recently spent two tours in the Intelligence Bureau, totaling seven years, with full access to US intelligence:
Q- Was there an imminent threat? Was there a grave and growing danger, in your view?
A- … I thought [...]


From Jim Hightower:
… Like a demented street preacher whacking his Bible and shouting damnations at libertines, Ashcroft seems to hate America’s liberties. This is the guy who crudely threw a blue burka over the justice department’s “Spirit of Justice” art deco statue shortly after he took office. This is the guy who rammed through the [...]


October 12, 2003

Both liberals and conservatives are alarmed at Bush’s mishandling of foreign and fiscal policy. From The American Conservative:

The administration?s U-turn decision to ask for United Nations help in Iraq, and President George W. Bush?s request that Congress appropriate $87 billion to fund the occupation and reconstruction of that country send a very clear message: [...]


From The Guardian article by Michael Moore:

…Perhaps the biggest success in the war on terror has been its ability to distract the nation from the corporate war on us. In the two years since the attacks of 9/11, American businesses have been on a punch-drunk rampage that has left millions of average Americans with their [...]


October 11, 2003

From Howard Dean’s Statement on the Anniversary of the Authorization of Iraq War Resolution:
365 – Days since Congress authorized a unilateral war
324 – American Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines dead in Iraq
1,767 -American military casualties in Iraq
164 – Days since President Bush declared the war was “over”
184 – American Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines dead [...]


I mp3-ed Bill Clinton’s speech at the Senator Harkin Steak Fry in Iowa on the 13th, and the link is below.
Clinton’s speech – mp3
Clinton cited of some of the things the Bush Administration has proposed/implemented to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest 1%, and said to pass the information on to our friends:
Cutting [...]


October 10, 2003

John Dean (former counsel to President Nixon) has been writing some very interesting articles on Leakgate. Must see the full article excerpted below, which is a great summary of events to date and discusses the potential charges involved:

…Among other questions, [columnist Bob Novak] wondered why the Bush Administration had sent a former member of [...]


October 8, 2003

From CBS New York:
The Houston Chronicle reported Tuesday that in 1992, Rove was dismissed as a consultant for the Bush-Quayle Texas campaign after he was suspected of leaking a story to Bob Novak and then-partner Roland Evans about problems in the campaign.


October 4, 2003

A study by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) from October found Fox News viewers have far more misperceptions about the Iraq war than viewers of other networks. From Asia Times:
…Based on several nationwide surveys it conducted with California-based Knowledge Networks since June, as well as the results of other [...]


From TomPaine.org:
…
$87b Is More Than The Combined Total Of All State Budget Deficits In The United States
The Bush administration proposed absolutely zero funds to help states deal with these deficits, despite the fact that their tax cuts drove down state revenues. [Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities]
$87b Is Rougly The Total Of Two Years [...]


BlackBoxVoting.com has released PDF’s from the new book by Bev Harris for free download (her book can be pre-ordered here as well.) Read about how your vote in Maryland, using the new touch screen voting machines Governor Ehrlich just purchased, may be very easily tampered with.
Election 2000 was just the beginning. [...]


October 3, 2003

From Washington Monthly:

If anything merited an independent inquiry, it was the attacks on 9/11. But not in Bush’s Washington.
The families of those killed in the attacks began a push for an independent commission with a much wider scope than the Senate inquiry. “We thought the investigation into our husbands’ deaths would be a no-brainer,” says [...]



Reference
Recommended Sites
Quotations
Women

"Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear." ~ Zora Neale Hurston

"Life can be wildly tragic at times, and I've had my share. But whatever happens to you, you have to keep a slightly comic attitude. In the final analysis, you have got to not forget to laugh." ~ Katharine Hepburn

"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song." ~ Maya Angelou

"If only we'd stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time." ~ Edith Wharton

"Mistakes are the dues one pays for a full life." ~ Sophia Loren

"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman." ~ Virginia Woolf

"Woman must not be awed by that which has been built up around her; she must reverence that woman in her which struggles for expression." ~ Margaret Sanger

"Probably, hanging onto the past brings more destruction than any other single cause. ...It's the Muslim fundamentalists who worship the past and ignore the reformist spirit with which Muhammad viewed women. It's the backward-looking Christian literalists who interpret religious teachings in a way that consolidates their power..." ~ Gloria Steinem

"'Inherent differences' between men and women, we have come to appreciate, remain cause for celebration, but not for denigration of the members of either sex or for artificial constraints on an individual's opportunity." ~ Ruth Bader Ginsberg

"Feminism is and always has been about women acting in the world as full-fledged citizens, as real participants in the world of ideas and policy and history." ~ Susan Faludi

"As a woman, I have no country. As a woman, my country is the world." ~ Virginia Woolf

"...remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors... If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation." ~ Abigail Adams

"Bloody treason, murderous act
Not by women were designed.
Bells o'erthrown nor churches sacked
Speak not ill of womenkind."
~ Gearoid Iarla Fitzgerald

"We are coming down from our pedestal and up from the laundry room. We want an equal share in government and we mean to get it." ~ Bella Abzug

"Too often the great decisions are originated and given form in bodies made up wholly of men, or so completely dominated by them that whatever of special value women have to offer is shunted aside without expression." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

"There cannot be true democracy unless women's voices are heard. There cannot be true democracy unless women are given the opportunity to take responsibility for their own lives." ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton

"If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse gift will find a fitting place." ~ Margaret Mead

"Of my two 'handicaps' being female put more obstacles in my path than being black." ~ Shirley Chisholm

"Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company?" ~ Zora Neale Hurston

Nature

"Eventually, all things merge into one; and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs..." ~ Norman Maclean

"There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example - where had they gone?... It was a spring without voices." ~ Rachel Carson

"If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men." ~ St. Francis of Assisi

"I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men." ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

"God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but He cannot save them from fools." ~ John Muir

"The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders." ~ Edward Abbey

"We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it... Our delight in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass to-day might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years which still live in us, and transform our perception into love." ~ George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)

"Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life." ~ Rachel Carson

"When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world." ~ John Muir

Freedom

"The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood of ideas in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." ~ John F. Kennedy

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." ~ James Madison

"When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion." ~ C. P. Snow

"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth." ~ Albert Einstein

"Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." ~ William Pitt

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." ~ Benjamin Franklin

"No matter how big a nation is, it is no stronger than its weakest people, and as long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you might otherwise." ~ Marian Anderson

Truth

"Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are." ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

"If somebody tells you you ought to quit, it's because they're afraid you won't." ~ Bill Clinton

"The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." ~ Robert F. Kennedy

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Find things that shine and move toward them." ~ Mia Farrow

"The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me? But the good Samaritan reversed the question: If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?" ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Abuse of Power

"We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth in a few hands, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis

"Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things." ~ Russell Baker

"O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; But it is tyrannous to use it like a giant." ~ William Shakespeare

"I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be." ~ Thomas Jefferson

Violence

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

"When men talk about defense, they always claim to be protecting women and children, but they never ask the women and children what they think." ~ Patricia Schroeder

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity." ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

"What difference does it make to the dead whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?" ~ Mohandas Gandhi

"Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind... War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today." ~ John F. Kennedy

"Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God." ~ Jesus

"Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

"When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?" ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

"I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent." ~ Mohandas Gandhi

"The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Hypocrisy

"And thus I clothe my naked villany with odd old ends stol'n forth of holy writ, and seem a saint when most I play the devil." ~ William Shakespeare

"And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing... in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men... But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret..." ~ Jesus

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, ... legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"Persecution is not an original feature in any religion, but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law." ~ Thomas Paine

"I believe a woman has a right to an abortion. That's a decision that's up to the pregnant woman, not up to the pope or some do-gooders or the Religious Right.... There is no place in this country for practicing religion in politics." ~ Barry Goldwater

"Being pro-choice is trusting the individual to make the right decision for herself and her family, and not entrusting that decision to anyone wearing the authority of government in any regard." ~ Hllary Rodham Clinton

Politics

"I never was surer of my position that no self-respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party that ignores her political rights." ~ Susan B. Anthony "In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take." ~ Adlai Stevenson

"On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." ~ H.L. Mencken

"All political movements are like this - we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility." ~ Doris Lessing

Pretended Patriotism

"Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism." ~ George Washington

"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!" ~ Albert Einstein

"True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else." ~ Clarence Darrow

"When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them." ~ George Orwell

"To (say) that we are to stand by the president right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile, but it's morally treasonable to the American public." ~ Theodore Roosevelt
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