December 31, 2003

Check it out here.


Here are just a few excerpts from letters to Michael Moore by soldiers in Iraq, and there are many more moving letters on his website. From Michael Moore:
First, a poem written by a soldier in Iraq preparing for his death:
Your hero is talking
I didn’t die for my country, I died for his greed.
Blaming some [...]


From Moveon.org’s new campaign ad site:

1. It appears that the Bush Administration has consistently misled the American public about Iraq , most significantly regarding Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction and his ties to al Queda and Osama bin Laden.
[...]


From the Washington Post:
Consumer confidence, home sales and Midwestern manufacturing all slipped below economists’ expectations in reports released today, amidst persistent concerns over the labor market and worries that the economy’s recent robust gains may be easing.
Sales of existing single-family homes dropped in November by 4.6 percent from October’s level and were off even more [...]


From the ACLU:
What is Section 215?

Section 215 allows the FBI to order any person or entity to turn over “any tangible things,” so long as the FBI “specif[ies]” that the order is “for an authorized investigation . . . to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.” 
Section 215 vastly expands the FBI’s power [...]


From The Nation:
[Business Week in "Waking up from the American Dream"] said that we are becoming a society in which the poor tend to stay poor, no matter how hard they work; in which sons are much more likely to inherit the socioeconomic status of their father than they were a generation ago…
Now for the [...]


December 30, 2003

From the San Francisco Chronicle:
Attorney General John Ashcroft removed himself Tuesday from the investigation into whether the Bush administration leaked a CIA operative’s name to a newspaper columnist, and a career federal prosecutor from Chicago was named as special counsel to take over.
In a move cheered by Democrats, Deputy Attorney General James Comey announced [...]


December 29, 2003

From the Los Angeles Times:
Lisa Gluskin has had a tough three years. She works almost as hard as she did during the dot-com boom, for about 20% of the income… It’s been a fragmented, hand-to-mouth life, one that she sees mirrored by friends and colleagues who are waiting tables or delivering packages. In the [...]


Faces of the Fallen in Iraq.
And a recent report on the wounded.


From the New York Times:
After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Gen. Pervez Musharraf made a bold choice to reverse his country’s support for the Taliban government in neighboring Afghanistan, and instead to ally Pakistan with the American campaign against terror.
But the general has since cracked down on Islamic militants in Pakistan selectively and [...]


December 27, 2003

The people who vote for George W. Bush should know exactly who and what they are actually supporting. Here is a good article to pass along about the neoconservatives and Project for the New American Century (PNAC) – from Asia Times:
While most of the world is still trying to come to terms with the [...]


December 24, 2003

From the latest wire reports:
The Bush administration opened up undeveloped areas of the largest U.S. national forest to logging on Tuesday, scrapping a Clinton-era rule aimed at protecting the wilderness.
The U.S. Forest Service announced that it will exempt the Tongass National Forest in southeastern Alaska from a national rule prohibiting timber cutting in roadless [...]


December 22, 2003

Americans Dead in Iraq War & Occupation
Another site listing Americans Dead and Wounded in Iraq War & Occupation:
464 Dead, 2,657 Wounded (many permanently disabled)
Civilians Dead in Iraq War & Occupation:
Estimates between 8,000 & 9,800 Dead, 20,000 Wounded


December 20, 2003

From Common Cause:
Under pressure from the Bush White House, House and Senate negotiators last week agreed to a compromise that cancels a reform approved by both the House and Senate. Congress had agreed to roll back a rule imposed by the Federal Communications Commission that would have allowed one company to own TV stations that [...]


December 19, 2003

Too bad Bush Jr. didn’t listen to Bush Sr. – he could have told him “trickle down economics” is really “voo doo economics.” From Mother Jones:
…Americans share a common goal: a stable, equitable, and democratic society that does not suffer from recession, unemployment, inflation, gross waste of natural resources, or the grinding misery of [...]


From The Economist:

…One cold wind blowing across this particular recovery is that Americans are up to their necks in debt. With short-term interest rates at a 45-year low, households are spending some 13% of their disposable income on servicing their debts?a higher number even than in the sharp recession of the early 1980s, when [...]


December 18, 2003

From The New York Times:
While President Bush was careful to remind Americans that even with Saddam Hussein behind bars, “we still face terrorists,” the White House and Pentagon have characterized the arrest as a major victory in the war on terrorism. But is Iraq really the central battleground in that struggle, or is it diverting [...]


On the Diane Rehm Show this morning, there was a discussion about the over-the-counter availability of an emergency dose of birth control pills, which an FDA panel overwhelmingly recommended this week (and more than 98% of OB/GYN’s think it is a good thing.) Ms. Rehm normally exercises good control over the games some guests [...]


December 17, 2003

From Michael Moore:
Chickenhawk n. A person enthusiastic about war, provided someone else fights it; particularly when that enthusiasm is undimmed by personal experience with war; most emphatically when that lack of experience came in spite of ample opportunity in that person?s youth.
There isn?t enough irony in the world to explain away [...]


December 16, 2003

Mayor O’Malley endorsed Howard Dean for President today. From the Maryland for Dean press release:
“The more I considered this decision, the clearer it became that Howard Dean is the one candidate I’m excited about. He’s bringing new ideas and people into American politics,” said Mayor O’Malley.
Governor Dean responded to the Mayor’s endorsement: “I’m very [...]


From David Corn of The Nation:
It is not unheard of for good to come from bad. George W. Bush misled the United States into war and occupation. His administration was recklessly negligent in its planning for the post-invasion period. It has poorly managed the challenges of nation building in Iraq, ensnaring the United States in [...]


December 13, 2003

From The Boston Globe:
…the Bush Thanksgiving extravaganza showed only one tiny slice of the daily, ugly reality of war and its aftermath for thousands of US service personnel and those who care for them.
She does not want her name published. She is a nurse for the Department of the Army in Landstuhl, Germany, where casualties [...]


The Bush Administration is getting sloppy with their con jobs to defraud the American taxpayer of late. They’ll have to try just a little harder. Even Fox News can’t ignore Dick Cheney’s Halliburton overcharging the American taxpayer by $67 million while executing their no-compete contracts in Iraq (contracts provided courtesy of one George [...]


The Bush Administration is fighting the wrong war in the wrong place for the wrong reasons. And Americans are less secure than ever from terrorism. From The Christian Science Monitor:
With a bitter winter chill and the largest US ground offensive in nearly two years afoot in Afghanistan, Taliban commander Maulvi Pardes Akhund and [...]


December 10, 2003

Cheney’s Halliburton is making a killing in Iraq. From the New York Times:
The United States government is paying the Halliburton Company an average of $2.64 a gallon to import gasoline and other fuel to Iraq from Kuwait, more than twice what others are paying to truck in Kuwaiti fuel, government documents show.
Halliburton, which has [...]


From Barry Bearak in the New York Times Magazine:
As the guerrilla war against Iraqi insurgents intensifies, American soldiers have begun wrapping entire villages in barbed wire.
In selective cases, American soldiers are demolishing buildings thought to be used by Iraqi attackers. They have begun imprisoning the relatives of suspected guerrillas, in hopes of pressing the insurgents [...]


We have been so badly distracted by the Iraq invasion that we lost focus on the real terror hotspot, Afghanistan. Remember 9/11? A guy named Osama bin Laden? Instead of finishing the war we started in 2001, we let terror networks regain their hold in Afghanistan. From the New York Times:
For [...]


…the more they remain the same. This is from 2001, but could be from today for all that the thinking of the Bush Adminstration has progressed. From Asia Times:
“The Arab is a patriot, not a whore,” the hardline Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky used to warn his leftwing colleagues back during the 1920s. “He [...]


December 7, 2003

From the Guttmacher Institute:
…In a far less subtle attempt to appease the conservative wing of his party, the president proposes to eliminate the requirement that all federal employees’ health insurance plans include coverage for contraception. The contraceptive coverage requirement, which has enjoyed bipartisan support since it was first enacted in 1998, was targeted without explanation. [...]


From The Nation:
…To represent this country to the world, Bush has replaced career diplomats with career ideologues: John Klink, a former chief negotiator for the Vatican, has been on nearly every US delegation to a UN meeting, joined by Jeanne Head of the National Right to Life Committee, Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America-the [...]


December 6, 2003

From the Naples Daily News:
…Meanwhile, there’s old Dean, causin’ excitement. I went up to Vermont and talked to a bunch of liberals there. They all said Howard Dean is no liberal. Funny, that’s what Howard Dean says, too. And indeed, he isn’t, but in politics, everything’s relative. The conventional wisdom first dismissed Howard Dean (the [...]


Thanks to a war that never should have been, U.S. military forces are stretched thin. And the neoconservatives have plans to invade more countries. From the New York Times:
…military officials are worried that the large-scale deployment will leave the United States “strategically fixed,” that is, tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan and short [...]


December 5, 2003

Bill Clinton was into balanced budgets. Not so George W. Bush and the Republicans who control both houses of Congress. From the Atlanta Journal Constitution:
This nation’s long-term fiscal situation is by every knowledgeable account a disaster, with the federal deficit this year alone expected to hit $500 billion. Here is how that looks [...]


From the Boston Globe:
…poll abuse also occurred in September. On “Meet the Press,” Vice President Dick Cheney cited a Zogby poll commissioned by the conservative American Enterprise Institute as “very positive news.” Cheney singled out a question that asked what kind of government Iraq should replicate. Cheney said, “The US wins hands down.”
That was another [...]


December 4, 2003

What do you do with a drunken sailor? Throw him out of office. From USA Today:
Congress is throwing away astonishing amounts, “spending money like a drunken sailor,” and President Bush shares the blame…
“The numbers are astonishing,” McCain said on Fox News Sunday.
“Congress is now spending money like a drunken sailor,” said McCain, [...]


From Cato’s David Boaz in the Washington Post:
In 2000 George W. Bush campaigned across the country telling voters: “My opponent trusts government. I trust you.”
Little wonder that some of his supporters are now wondering which candidate won that election.
Federal spending has increased by 23.7 percent since Bush took office. Education has been further [...]


While the Bush Administration is away chasing Halliburton profits in Iraq, the Chinese are playing – and winning – the game in Asian markets. From the New York Times:

…what
Southeast Asia sells, China buys. Oil, natural gas and
aluminum to build bigger bridges, taller buildings,
faster railroads to serve the country’s flourishing
cities, like Shanghai, which is [...]


December 3, 2003

From Sandhya Jain in Daily Pioneer:
…It is, therefore, not surprising that faced with growing American hostility to his misadventure in Iraq, President Bush should seek a face-saving exit from the saga of daily deaths that his people dread so much. His London visit for ‘consultations’ with Prime Minister Blair reflects this search for an honourable [...]


December 2, 2003

From the Seattle Times:
…Since the largest U.S. Army hospital in Iraq opened its doors on April 10, nearly all U.S. casualties have passed through its first-floor emergency room. Some come already dead. Some arrive with one arm instead of two, a shattered leg or a face wiped away by an explosion.
Assaults on U.S. troops [...]


December 1, 2003

From John L. Graham, Professor of International Business, Graduate School of Management, U.C. Irvine in the OC Register:
It was in an article in the National Interest in 1989 that Francis Fukuyama boldly asked if we had reached “The End of History.” His notion was that free-enterprise democracy had finally defeated both communism and fascism…
But now, [...]


Someone asked me about this, so I thought I’d enter some information here for the record. Information is on the web in several locations, some are: TomPaine.com article, Scans of Bush’s Records, Scans of Articles, and Democrats.com article. What follows is some of the The Boston Globe’s investigative article:
…160 pages of his records, [...]



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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