War of the Worlds - New York Times

Good piece by Tm Friedman today. It's true that the Bushies totally deserve the mess they are in over this port thing, but the level of nationalist tension in the world today is reminiscent of pre-WWI. VERY SCARY. I read the other day that someone in Iran renamed Danish Patries to something Mohammed pastries in response to the cartoon mess. It was "freedom fries" all over again, which makes it clear where this xenophobia began, here, post-9/11 thanks to Bush and company. It's dangerous and it is spreading.War of the Worlds - New York Times

The Silencing Of Science

This is CLASSIC Bush administration. I've read dozens of articles over the last 5 years outlining the way this administration has politicized science more than any other administration ever has.The Silencing Of Science

Who's Hormonal? Hillary or Dick? - New York Times

Thank You Maureen Dowd for recognizing that Hilary Clinton has no clothes on - politically speaking, but she's still not as evil as Cheney and Co.Who's Hormonal? Hillary or Dick? - New York Times

Helping Bill O'Reilly - New York Times

This is AWESOME - fund a trip to Africa for Bill O'Reilly so he can see what real injustice looks like as opposed to the nonsense he complains about on his show.Helping Bill O'Reilly - New York Times

Tax Cut Lunacy

Here's an excellent op-ed piece about the need for tax increases combined with national health insurance. Both are absolutely necessary to our future and virtually impossible to achieve with today's leadership!Tax Cut Lunacy

Texas Never signed the treaty

Embarrassment may lie ahead for our embarrassment of an Attorney General, Alberto Gonzoles. Most people know him as the man who decided that the Geneva Conventions were "quaint." But his pro-torture memos weren't the first suspect legal opinions he provided for George W. While Bush was Governor, Gonzales insisted that Texas did not have to follow the terms of an Vienna Conventions signed by, among others, the USA and Mexico, that defendants in capital cases have the right to contact their nation's consular after arrest. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear this case, (article) which means that even people who don't read blogs might find out that Mr. Gonzales stated, with regard to this case, that: "Since the State of Texas is not a signatory to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, we believe it is inappropriate to ask Texas to determine whether a breach ... occurred in connection with the arrest and conviction[.]" This is an absolutely absurd statement. Anyone who has been to law school, scratch that, anyone who passed 8th grade social studies, knows that whent the United States government signs an international treaty it binds all of the individual states. For a better description of his faulty legal analysis check out this Nobember 2004 post on Democratic Blog Swarm. Perhaps Mr. Gonzales forgot that Texas is no longer an independent Republic. I admit that I often daydream that this is the case, but then I fucus and remember the reality - that Texas is a part of my country. Ah, well.

Terry Schiavo will never wake up -- will the US citizens?

This tempest in a teapot over what should be a private family issue is appalling! I want to find the list of which Democrats went along with this farcical piece of unconstitutional legislation -- they are KILLING our party. This was a perfect opportunity for Democrats to point out to the people the game that the Republicans have been playing for YEARS. Using Abortion and other "religious issues" to appear compassionate, while what they really care about is allowing the rich to get and remain richer on the backs of the working people.

The Republicans have been reducing the tax burden on the richest members of our society for 20+ years. In the 1950s the top marginal tax rate was 90% --- that doesn't mean, of course that someone subject to that rate would pay 90% of all the money they earn, only that they would pay 90% of earnings above a certain EXTREMELY luxurious level. Had we not allowed these rich people to keep more and more of their money out of the public coffers, we could have joined EVERY other developed country in providing unversal health care for our citizens. We could spend more money on our educational system so that we could stop falling further and further behind in the world in Math and Science.

I don't doubt that people have VERY strong feelings about abortion and right to die with dignity, BUT I challenge the wisdom of choosing federal officials based ONLY on these issues of personal beliefs. I resent the fact that these issues have been dominated only by extremists. I resent that conservatives like to tell people that we have "abortion on demand" in this country -when anyone knows that we only have anything resembling that for first trimester fetuses. These conservatives love to panic people into believing that fully viable children are being aborted regularly be women in this country -- they are NOT. I know that even first trimester fetuses are precious life in the view of some people, but MOST people realize there is a difference. The fact is that life is so fragile at this point that couples are often told not to tell people they are expecting until they've made it past the first trimester because miscarraige is so common during that period.

ON the other hand, I resent liberal supporters of Roe who insist on opposing even a miniscule restriction on abortion rights. Had Clinton signed the bill regarding partial birth abortions instead of leaving it for Bush, the law would have contained an exception for when the life of the mother is threatened. Democrats should have let the partial birth issue go long ago, it is far to good a PR issue for the Republicans. We have to start recognizing that most people are in the middle of these issues. If we carve out the middle, we can make the Republicans look excessively extreme and they can no longer use these wedge issues to distract!

One of the MOST appalling voices in this is Bill Frist. This man lost any credibility as a physician when he quibbled about whether tears and sweat could transmit AIDS on "This Week." Anyone with the slightest medical knowledge knows that no such transfer can or ever has happened, but Frist pandered to the evangelicals by abandoning his hypocratic oath -- OH, YEAH he did HARM! Then this week he stands up and insists that from studying some videos he can tell that Terry S. is not in a persistent vegitative state. What a joke. I can't tell whether all this nonsense is about pandering to the christian right or is designed to distract from the theiving of Tom DeLay.

BUSH -- WHAT A MORON

UNBELIEVABLE - The great thing about Bush is that you never know when he is going to display his stupidity/ignorance in an even more astounding way.

The following appeared on Howard Dean't "Blog for America" having been submitted by Jesse Jackson, Sr.

During the first weekend of March, in Selma, Alabama, marchers commemorated the 40th anniversary of the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in that city. The violence unleashed by Southern sheriffs and racial vigilantes on that day galvanized President Johnson to push through the Voting Rights Act, giving blacks the right to vote in the South for the first time since the brief reconstruction period after the Civil War.

Now, 40 years later, that right to vote is once more at risk. When President Bush met with the 43 members of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.—I report with some pride—asked him if he would support extension and strengthening of the Voting Rights Act when it comes up for renewal in 2007.

President Bush responded that he did not support voting rights for the District of Columbia. Rep. Jackson said that was not what he asked; he asked about extending the Voting Rights Act. Bush replied that he was not aware of the act and would look at it when it got to his desk. The president's passivity would enable House Majority leader Rep. Tom "the Hammer" DeLay to torpedo the act, just as he has real voting-rights reform.

For the younger people reading this, you have to remember that Bush graduated from High School the year this historic legislation was passed. It's not like it didn't make the papers, and it's not like it wasn't HUGE news. Before signing this bill, Lyndon Johnson said he was delivering the South to the Republican Party for the next 40 years.- Why? Because the white Democrats in the south would be FURIOUS with him for having signed this legislation.
"I'M NOT FAMILIAR WITH THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" what a MORON.







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Must See Movies

A young woman I work with mentioned the other day that she had never seen Tootsie. It reminded me of the need to broaden the horizons of the classic movie impaired. Long before TCM started it's series "The Essentials" I had a movie club so that my friends would have a chance to see the movies that one must see in order to keep up with good coctail party conversation. Most people have seen the best known of these, such as:

Citizen Kane
Casablanca

Other must sees, though are less universally known, such as (in no particular order):

Dr. Strangelove
Chinatown
Singin' in the Rain
The Philadelphia Story
Duck Soup
The Godfather I and II (NOT III)
The Graduate
City Lights
Born Yesterday (the real one with Judy Holiday - the remake is best not discussed)
Barefoot in the Park
The Best Years of Our Lives
Lawrence of Arabia
Gilda
His Girl Friday
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Notorious
Roman Holiday
Some Like it Hot
Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid
To Catch a Thief
White Heat
Woman of the Year

I'm not saying that these are the best movies ever, or even my favorite movies. They are however, all classic movies that many people haven't seen. Sometimes it is only one segment of the population that hasn't seen it, for example, good luck finding a man who hasn't seen both Godfather movies, but MANY women haven't. The opposite is true of Roman Holiday.

Ronald Reagan

My mother told me years ago about how when John Kennedy died one of her few Republican friends was not at all sad, possibly a little happy. She said everyone wanted to kill her. Now I'm the one in that position. Gloria is barely speaking to me. I still remember when I first learned that she had voted for Reagan -- I was appalled! Our politics are fairly similar in general moderate to liberal. I'm a little to the left of her, but not by much. The major difference, I think, was our age. She's only two years younger than me, but in this instance I think those years made all the difference. I voted against Reagan the first time in the Fall of my Sophmore year in college. She was still in Highschool then, a senior I think. I spent very little time watching or reading the news when I was in college. All I knew of Reagan before I voted was that he was VERY conservative, and that he was so stupid he confused carbon monoxide with carbon dioxide and said that trees create more pollution than cars! That was enough for me. I honestly can't remember anymore whether I voted for Carter or Anderson I was still debating on the bus on the way to the polls. When Reagan won Yale College mourned. People like the Bushies notwithstanding, Yale College was VERY liberal when I was there. It had been the Berkeley of the East during the Viet Nam war protests and the student body was overwhelmingly liberal. One guy I knew was for Reagan and we banned him from our room the day after election day because his glee was too annoying.
The next time I gave much thought to Reagan was when he was shot. I was walking past the common TV room that day and saw an inordinately large crowd, I stopped to ask what had happened, they told me Reagan was shot! Wow, I said, "Is he dead?" No, they replied, indicating that he was supposed to be OK. My response was "bummer" which got a huge laugh, not because I was so funny, but because I was about the 10th person to react in just that way. I came into the room and watched the coverage for a while and another 5-10 people after me had the same conversation with the crowd, until we started pre-empting them by answering "What happened" with "Reagan was shot, no he's not dead, and yes it is a bummer."
We didn't really wish him dead, don't come after me secret service, it's just that there was a little part of us that knew that life for the minority populations in the country would be a lot better if he were.
I am neith black nor gay, but many of my best friends are and so I relate to these two groups who will NEVER forgive RR for the suffering they endured as a direct result of his policies. There is little question that he was both mildly racist and rabidly homophobic. No doubt he comforted himself that the latter would suffer during the apocolypse that he truly believed would come to Earth some day. He steadfast refusal to do ANYTHING about AIDS, not even mentioning the word until 1985 cost millions their lives. With sufficient funding and proliferation of information, the US deaths from AIDS could have been GREATLY reduced. I will always hate him for that.
I personally felt the pinch of Reaganomics a few months after his inauguration. In my first two years of College, when you took out a student loan for $2500 you received, oddly enough, $2500. Not after Reagan. Then you recieved $2350 approximately. You were pre-paying interest, we were told. We were having to pay points like we were buying a home, we knew. It was a gyp, one of thousands that he inflicted on the people who need government the most.

Iraq I

OK, I've no idea what to do here, but lately, I've been frustrated about the news out of Iraq that is supposed to be surprising, but it seems I knew about a lot of this months if not years ago. However, I have no record of what I knew when before this stupid war. Therefore, I'm going to use this blog to keep track of my world view as it evolves then I'll be able to look back.

News for the day: Ashcroft announces lots of terrorist chatter. They know nothing concrete, of course, but they aren't even raising the alert level, so what does it mean??? who knows. Another CYA announcement. Also, some are claiming that it is politically motivated -- scare people into returning their support to Bush. NOT gonna work.

I'm not sure whether Bush will be remembered as the worst President ever, but I'm confident he will be in the bottom 5. He has no idea what he is doing. Instead he goes by his gut, which he interprets as divine inspiration!! I wonder how many decades we will suffer as a result of this Iraq folly. If we had ONLY stayed in Afghanistan, built up that country and really cripled Al Quada, think where we might be today.

Tonight I watched "The Fog of War" -- documentary about Robert McNamera (sec'y of Defense under Kennedy & Johnson). He states that we should never invade another country unilaterally. That if we cannot convince other countries with similar interests (ie: Western Europe) that what we want to do is necessary, than we should re-examine our need to go to war. Basically saying that the disagreement of major allies should be a red flag that we are NOT on the side of the angels, and might not accomplish our goal. GOD how I wish Bush would have seen that movie before he invaded Iraq. Almost 800 soldiers have died there so far, Lord knows how many have been wounded, and how many dead and wounded Iraqi's are there. Soooo sad. What must God feel when events like this occur. The sheer waste of human life must be heartbreaking!