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Polly Sigh
This is the latest installment of my weekly series for the tired, poor, huddled masses who dot the charred American political landscape. I have read your letters and feel your pain. May god bless you all. You are my people.
-- Polly
Dear Reader:
As many of you know, this column is generally devoted to calming the troubled minds of the lumpen masses. But alas, if one is not part of the solution, then one is not part of the solution. So, this week I will begin my patriotic effort to be a part of the solution.
Our first step focuses on stimulating the economy, while answering the multitude of questions I receive each week. In order to accomplish this, I have enlisted the help of Wisconsin entrepreneur, John Johnson. Mr. Johnson has invented and begun manufacturing the “Bush Administration Decoder Ring.” With the help of Republicans who recently blocked a Democratic effort to raise the minimum wage, John Johnson has opened a much-needed factory in northern Wisconsin.
“I just got sick of listening to confused people,” said Mr. Johnson. “I mean, they are like really confused about what they’re seeing and hearing.”
The “Bush Administration Decoder Ring” will enable millions of Americans and many members of Congress to grasp the real content of Bush administration initiatives, as opposed to the pre-fab, news-like segments created by the White House and delivered to local media outlets. The factory will prohibit union representation, and in keeping with sound business practices for a stronger economy, will not offer health insurance to employees.
The decoder ring, when micro-waved for approximately 3 minutes, will reveal the actual meanings of phrases like “Clear Skies Initiative,” “The trade deficit is good,” “Iraqi Troops Make Progress,” “Social Security Crisis,” “Family Values,” and “Smaller Government.”
Democratic leaders and even some Republicans welcomed the decoder ring concept. I spoke to them on condition of anonymity.
R: “This will make committee work a lot easier!”
D: “We never know, since the White House is doing news segments now, what some of these things mean… this should help.”
R: “We’ve written purchase orders for 3 additional microwaves on the Senate floor.”
D: “I’m thinking we should buy some popcorn, too.”
And Congressional leaders are not the only ones to embrace the uniquely American entrepreneurial spirit embodied by Mr. Johnson. The employees at the new factory are thrilled to be working on such an important project.
Here’s one ecstatic employee: “I’m so happy to have this opportunity. With my other 3 jobs, I’m thinking I’ll be far enough ahead in 10 years to afford the heart attack I’m pretty sure is coming,” he said smiling. And this from a younger female worker: “Mr. Johnson is my hero. Without the minimum wage I’m receiving here, I wouldn’t be able to put away money for my son’s college education.”
There were other responses, too numerous to reprint here, that brought a tear to my eye, reader. America truly is the land of opportunity for all.
So, my lumpen friends, there is a lesson for you in all this: It is up to each of us, as Americans, to do what we can to strengthen this democracy of ours. Sometimes that means reading 10 newspapers every day, sometimes it means driving people to the polls on election day, and sometimes it means defeating the minimum wage hike to make American lives better. May God continue to bless our great land.
Yours in the healing white light,
Polly
First!
Polly, I am so sorry to be off topic........
The special session in Congress is going on in order to craft a bill to replace the feeding tube on Terri Schiavo. Hastert and Frist put out a joint messgae saying they beleive the bill will pass both houses. C-span 2 is having continuing coverage, including a news conference at 6:30 est by Santorum and Martinez, live from Florida.
Tutterfly, the whole thing is just too upsetting. And, unbelievable. Tom DeLay, my congressman, is a ring leader in the Terri Shiavo efforts by Congress. I'm disgusted.
Hey guys- im incredibly depressed to be back in Texas after a great stay in Boston!
Did you know college students in Boston have formed a "Crisis my Ass (with a picture of a donkey) Club" for discussing Social Security/bush's lies on the issue? I thought it was really cool- I took a flier they were passing out which talked about bush's ridiculous statement: "Personal accounts don't actually fix the solution." 'Fix the solution.' hmm... well if bush's solution is the solution then it WILL need fixing!
I also really enjoyed the JFK Library/Museum- I recommend it if anyone is going to Boston. ...and of course, I stopped and had a cookie from the place John Kerry opened while at law school!
Anyway, I knew I was back in Texas when our local museum of science and history decided not to show the imax film on volcanoes because it mentioned evolution, and "discussed the age of the earth." I cancelled my museum membership after that, and made sure they knew why.
*tutterfly, I didn’t get to write on the last threat but I wanted to say I thought your post was beautiful.*
*thread, not threat lol
I also saw a great bumper sticker. It said:
label jars, not people
The fact that I am hearing that there is a compromise going on, and that Democrats are going to cave in to a narrow, super focused vote that applies to one person only, is making me ill.
First of all, how does congress have the right to make a one person only bill?
How does congress even begin to say that there has been no advocacy for Terri over all these years? Do none of the other court judgments not count since every one of them favored the rights of her husband?
If a federal court action doesn't favor her parents, then what?
If Terri's husband has no right to speak for his wife, why do her parents have a right? Where is the person or people who are commenting on his behalf?
Senate is in session right now with Santorum leading the charge.........
I can't believe what I am reading.
"A Small Act of Light"
19 March 2005
Marking the 2nd anniversary of the war in Iraq, thousands of anti-war activists marched all across the U.S. today. Browsing through the slideshow on Yahoo at the photos of protests from around the world, a couple of quips about the photos caught my eye...
http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/default.asp?view=plink&id=583
~from tomorrow's NY Times
Enron: Patron Saint of Bush's Fake News
By Frank Rich
The New York Times Sunday 20 March 2005
Just when Americans are being told it's safe to hand over their savings to Wall Street again, he's baaaack! Looking not unlike Chucky, the demented doll of perennial B-horror-movie renown, Ken Lay has crawled out of Houston's shadows for a media curtain call.
snip~
The Bush administration, eager to sell the country on "personal" Social Security accounts, cannot be all that pleased to see Kenny Boy again. He's the poster boy for how big guys can rip off suckers in the stock market. He also dredges up some inconvenient pre-9/11 memories of Bush family business. Enron was the biggest Bush-Cheney campaign contributor in the 2000 election. Kenny Boy and his lovely wife Linda flew the first President Bush and Barbara Bush to the ensuing Inauguration on the Enron jet. Even as Enron was presiding over rolling blackouts in California, Dick Cheney or his aides had at least six meetings with the company's executives to carve up government energy policy in 2001. Even now what exactly transpired at those meetings remains a secret.
snip~
The enduring legacy of Enron can be summed up in one word: propaganda. Here was a corporate house of cards whose business few could explain and whose source of profits was an utter mystery - and yet it thrived, unquestioned, for years. How? As the narrator says in "The Smartest Guys in the Room," Enron "was fixated on its public relations campaigns." It churned out slick PR videos as if it were a Hollywood studio. It browbeat the press (until a young Fortune reporter, Bethany McLean, asked one question too many). In a typical ruse in 1998, a gaggle of employees was rushed onto an empty trading floor at the company's Houston headquarters to put on a fictional show of busy trading for visiting Wall Street analysts being escorted by Mr. Lay. "We brought some of our personal stuff, like pictures, to make it look like the area was lived in," a laid-off Enron employee told The Wall Street Journal in 2002. "We had to make believe we were on the phone buying and selling" even though "some of the computers didn't even work."
If this Potemkin village sounds familiar, take a look at the ongoing 60-stop "presidential roadshow" in which Mr. Bush has "conversations on Social Security" with "ordinary citizens" for the consumption of local and national newscasts. As in the president's "town meeting" campaign appearances last year, the audiences are stacked with prescreened fans; any dissenters who somehow get in are quickly hustled away by security goons. But as The Washington Post reported last weekend, the preparations are even more elaborate than the finished product suggests; the seeming reality of the event is tweaked as elaborately as that of a television reality show. Not only are the panelists for these conversations recruited from administration supporters, but they are rehearsed the night before, with a White House official playing Mr. Bush. One participant told The Post, "We ran through it five times before the president got there." Finalists who vary just slightly from the administration's pitch are banished from the cast at the last minute, "American Idol"-style.
snip~
It's against this backdrop that the returning Mr. Lay - completely unrepentant, still purporting on "60 Minutes" that he's an innocent victim of others - could be the Democrats' new best friend. A Texas tycoon who helped create the political career of George W. Bush only to be discarded when scandal struck has re-emerged at just the precise moment when he might do his old buddy the most harm.
~read entire article:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/031805H.shtml
Let me just say, Polly, I wait for your installments.
I think there is a real market for the ring, with so much deliberate confusion. The sci-fi generation needs a gimmick. Approaching the youth with their social security issue.
Maybe Leonard Nimoy can pitch it with his poetry. Shatner is always looking. I don't think we have a Buck Rogers alive, other than Sam Jones. Probably available.