Love and Espionage at the Antler Lodge

Missouri... you show me yours, I'll show you mine.

P.S. The eagle flies at midnight.

Ah, Polly, I once had a spy who loved me...I was both shaken & stirred...

Your secret is safe with us.

Scroll down to the bottom of the page & see the real-time running tabulator:

Which Fund Has the Problem?

-- Social Security?

or

-- The national debt?

http://dontblamemeivoted4kerry.com/page17.html

(They also have some nice Tom DeLay merch & progressive links)

I don't follow sports but I do follow the UK elections, which are in 5 days! My preferred candidate, Kennedy the Lib Dem, has coined a wonderful term for pundits - "the commentariat".

Last summer, Kit Kowol came on the Forum looking for an internship experience & ended up staying with us and working at the Bellevue WA HQ for several weeks. Now he's knocking himself out for this guy, just as he did for our guy, & I wish I could be over there to help!

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/election/story/0,15803,1473767,00.html

Good luck, Kit!

Polly, you're a real patriot. Enjoy the Italian food.

Two important holidays won't make a splash in the US but are getting more press elsewhere:

April 30 (today) - 30 years from when the Vietnam War ended (ie. the US lost)

May 1 - international working people's holiday, known in the US as Loyalty Day (our worker's day was moved to Sept., to distance our workers from Commies)

May Day or Loyalty Day? Your pick.

Although in 2003 President Bush proclaimed May 1st to be "Loyalty Day" it is actually the original working class holiday.

May Day began in Chicago, 1886, and May 1st has long symbolized the struggle of the working poor in the face of the exploiting rich.

More about May Day:
http://workers.labor.net.au/51/c_historicalfeature_may.html

More about Loyalty Day (no this isn't a joke):
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/04/20030430-26.html

The May 1st date is used because in 1884 the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions demanded an eight-hour workday in the United States, to come in effect as of May 1, 1886. This resulted in the general strike and the U.S. Haymarket Riot of 1886, but eventually also in the official sanction of the eight-hour workday.

May Day is designated International Workers Day. It is indeed a thoroughly international holiday; and the United States is one of the few countries in the world where pressure from local working classes has not led to an official holiday.

There is some suggestion that Labor Day in the United States was created specifically to avoid commemoration of May Day. The adoption of May Day by communists and socialists as their primary holiday cements official resistance to Labor Day and similar non-May Day celebrations, which they view as being controlled by the ruling class.

In a separate attempt to co-opt May Day, the Roman Catholic Church added another Saint Joseph's Day in 1955 that Christianized this holiday as the day of "Saint Joseph, the Worker".

Berlin, Germany traditionally has yearly demonstrations on May Day. In today's Germany, Walpurgisnacht celebrations of pagan origin are traditionally held on the night before May Day, including bonfires and young people using this opportunity to party. It has become known for heavy rioting by radical leftists, including the punk rock scene, Autonome and others, but also "regular" youths not fond of the police and neofascist and leftwing youth have clashed.

Traditional English May Day rites and celebrations include Morris dancing, crowning a May Queen, and dancing around a Maypole. In Oxford on May Day, many pubs are open from sunrise. Madrigals are still sung from the roof of the tower in Magdalen College, but the old tradition of throwing red-hot pennies to the crowds gathered on the bridge below has been discontinued.

May Day also marks springtime celebrations such as:

* Walpurgis Night in Northern Europe, including the Finnish Vappu celebrations
* Beltane in Ireland and Scotland
* Roodmas
* Humongous parade tomorrow in Minneapolis with many political activists who have been working on it for weeks.

These holidays were also respected by some early European settlers of the American continent.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Day"

Just heard that Minneapolis grand parade for May Day will have thousands of participants.

& here's a really cool poster - I'm printing it out. The site is awesome - it links to cities all over.

http://www.euromayday.org/2005/prop.php

You can participate virtually by going to the virtual town square:

http://www.molleindustria.it/netparade/

Kerry Endorses Villaraigosa: A Day of Hopes, Dreams and Aspirations
30 April 2005

Through out John Kerry’s 2004 campaign the resounding theme was hope for the future. Today I stood at Los Angeles Valley College and listened once more as John Kerry talked about hope for the future. That hope he said, for Los Angeles residents was in Antonio Villaraigosa.

"There are the issues on the ballot when you vote for mayor of this city, and that's why I'm here to endorse your next mayor," Kerry told the thousand or more Villaraigosa supporters at the rally.

"I'm not here against anybody," Kerry said, perhaps referring to the contingent of Hahn supporters off to the side who were there to show their dissent, "I'm here for somebody -- I'm here for a set of hopes, dreams and aspirations that we know can make a difference in the quality of our lives."

“We made a difference in 2004 and Antonio will make a difference in Los Angeles,” Kerry said. “Antonio will make Los Angeles safer.”

I spent a lot of time from August ’03 through to Election Day covering Kerry events here in Los Angeles and during that time, I witnessed the mutual respect and friendship between John Kerry and Antonio Villaraigosa. Today was one of those full circle moments, when John Kerry had the opportunity to do for Antonio Villaraigosa, what Villaraigosa had done for Kerry. It wasn’t a Kerry has the limelight day, though plenty of Kerry supporters where there and more than once the crowd chanted the familiar “Kerry, Kerry, Kerry” chant.

Kerry did take the opportunity to point out the issues that are central to Antonio’s campaign and he tied them into the issues that were central to his own campaign in 2004. For truly those are the issues that important to Americans all across our country. After all, who doesn’t want healthcare, public safety and a good education for their kids? In every city and every small town across this country, we all want the same things.

While Kerry did not directly mention the Kids First Act today, which he will be holding events on later this week, he did mention the need for healthcare for kids and the fact that it can make a huge difference in the lives of kids who do not have healthcare now. No doubt, many of the millions of kids with out healthcare in this country live right here in the city of Los Angeles.

LOT'S MORE - http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/default.asp?view=plink&id=810

From the turd Michael Goodwin in the NY Daily News today:

"But he rallied himself and correctly framed the election as a contest over competing visions of national security. If he hadn't, Teresa Heinz Kerry would have been First Lady."

"And wouldn't that have been fun? "

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/305432p-261216c.html

The turd's direct email address is: mgoodwin@nydailynews.com.

The address for letters to the editor is: voicers@edit.nydailynews.com.

How about we let the Daily News and Mr. Goodwin know what we think of his remarks. Here's what I had to say.

"Pundits who attack Presidential candidates wives nearly six months after the election has ended are loathsome, and without redeeming social value. Can't you find something more useful to write about in your vacuous columns?"

Cyrano,

Why not write a letter to this guy's boss as well as to this guy?

Good morning all..Is the chat down this morning?

Now that I think of it: The paper here that supported Bush and did stuff like that had so many people cancel their subscriptions that they fired the guy and wrote a letter of apology to it's subscribers and invited them all to return.

Any Vietnam Vets here, I hope you like this site navigate all the site.

DiAnne dont know if you have seen this Its a site from the Winter Soldiers, it is beautiful

sheeeesss guys I forgot the sites sorry about that i was listening.

Sunday, May 01, 2005
REMEMBERANCE

FATHERS, BROTHERS, SONS

BUT ALL HEROES

http://4dw.net/jqueen/valor.html

MEMORIAL

http://4dw.net/jqueen/memorial.html

Go into the site navigation Christy

Happy Beltane!

Beltane, or May Day, is one of the Great Sabbats of the Wiccan calendar. Of the four Great Sabbats, Beltane is one of the most important, second only to Samhain (Halloween). Beltane is chronologically opposite of Samhain, splitting the year evenly. Most Wiccans celebrate the holiday on May 1st, however by Celtic reckoning, the actual celebration begins on sundown of April 30, because the Celts always figured their days from sundown to sundown. Like many covens around the country, we find that our lives are often too busy, and one or more of us will be unable to meet together on that actual first of May (we affectionately call this phenomenon 'Pagan Standard Time').

The word 'Beltane' is derived from the Irish Gaelic 'Bealtaine' or the Scottish Gaelic 'Bealtuinn', meaning 'Bel-fire', the fire of the Celtic god of light (Bel, Beli or Belinus). He, in turn, may be traced to the Middle Eastern god Baal. Bonfires were often lit for this holiday, and leaping the fire was a custom thought to encourage the crops to grow as high as the leaper could leap the fire. These fires, also called 'need-fires' were thought to have healing properties, thus we have the tradition of 'sky-clad' (naked) witches leaping the fire to ensure protection. Other May Day customs include walking around one's property ('beating the bounds'), repairing fences and boundary markers, processions of chimney-sweeps and milk maids, archery tournaments, morris dances, sword dances, enacting the 'Robin Hood' story, feasting, music, drinking, and maidens bathing their faces in the dew of May morning to retain their youthful beauty.

Perhaps one of the most misunderstood traditions of Beltane is the custom of free sexuality on this night. For a long time after the Christian form of marriage (and it's strict rules of sexual monogomy) had replaced the older customs of handfasting, those strict rules of monogomy were relaxed for the May Eave rites. Called 'greenwood marriages', in which young men and women who spent the night in the forest and brought back boughs of flowers and garlands to decorate the village in the morning, were especially condemned by the Puritans. Many a young woman would come back pregnant from these romps in the woods, and such children were referred to as 'merry be-got'.

These wildwood antics have inspired writers such as Kipling:

Oh, do not tell the Priest our plight,
Or he would call it a sin;
But we have been out in the woods all night,
A-conjuring Summer in!

And Lerner and Lowe:

It's May! It's May!
The lusty month of May!...
Those dreary vows that ev'ryone takes,
Ev'ryone breaks.
Ev'ryone makes divine mistakes!
The lusty month of May!

The maypole is, of course, one of the great symbols of May Day. It is a part of that fertility symbolism that is so much a part of this holiday. These days there are many people who whose sexual path makes them uncomfortable with this imagery, and because of this they choose not to celebrate the maypole. This is too bad, since the maypole is a powerful and moving experience, and is not limited by personal sexuality choices... for instance, one could view the pole as the Tree of Life instead of a phallic symbol. To join ourselves by ribbons of the colors representing different aspects of life to this sacred Tree, one can work just as powerful magick as the other person who views the pole as the more sexual phallic symbol

The aspect of Goddess represented at Beltane is the Maiden, called Maya, Maia, May or Mai in Northern Europe, Flora in Rome, or Kore in Greece. The God is the grown Son, the Lover, the Green Man. This is the time the Maiden and Lover meet and perform the Great Rite (sacred sexual union) in harmony with the fertile energies of the season. This is the beginning of Summer, of the growing season. Thus what is done on the spiritual plane is echoed on the physical plane.

There are many ways to celebrate Beltane yourself, such as:

More- The sexual symbolism of Beltane and the maypole http://ourladyprairie.home.mchsi.com/beltane.html

Happy Beltane!

Rossian
Thanks for the site - I will pass it on to Vets for Peace.

Rossian
To commemorate Vietnam, I've posted something in "Soap Box" in the Forum. You may be interested.

Pamela
Nice account! I'll also be seeing John Kerry & Teresa Heinz Kerry today (benefit for Legal Defense Fund of Governor Gregoire) and John Kerry tomorrow (public event about "Kids First" legislation.

Posted by Polly Sigh at April 30, 2005 05:33 PM

Polly, if "Missouri" wants you to take a look at his etchings, the first thing you know he'll be wanting to get into your briefcase.

Isn't that special? (Any chance he has a friend?)

 
From Vets for Peace:

Bolton avoided Vietnam duty

It should surprise none of us to learn that a bully like John Bolton, who has no qualms about chasing and threatening women in Russian hotels, is in fact a wimp and a coward at heart. When our country called, he was the one running for cover.

John Bolton, Wimp
A Vietnam hawk who remained stateside.

Scratch a saber-rattler, find a war wimp. You can just about set your watch by it, can't you? So it's entirely unsurprising to read the following about John Bolton, Yale '70, in the Yale Daily News:

Though Bolton supported the Vietnam War, he declined to enter combat duty, instead enlisting in the National Guard and attending law school after his 1970 graduation. "I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy," Bolton wrote of his decision in the 25th reunion book. "I considered the war in Vietnam already lost."

So Bolton supported sending other young American soldiers to risk their very lives in a war "already lost", while he saved his beautiful mind for better things (like stealing national elections, endangering national security by manipulating intelligence information.

Reminds me of another great patriotic chickenhawk:

"I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada," [George W.] Bush explained to The Dallas Morning News back in 1990. "So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4271520/site/newsweek/

Birds of a feather, it seems.

Yes, Bolton is a tough, no-nonsense, abrasive, "get it done" kind of guy, as long as he is sitting behind a big oak desk with a nice cushy leather chair in his spiffy, safe office. That "get it done" attitude rapidly evaporates, however, when asked to put his own precious butt on the line to face the consequences of the indulgent anger-driven blather that passes for
his conservative policy-making.

(BTW, here's a link to the most detailed - and frightening - Bolton bio I have seen yet:
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/barry.php?articleid=5192).

This matter comes up again next week, n'est pas?

John Bolton, Wimp
A Vietnam hawk who remained stateside.

Scratch a saber-rattler, find a war wimp. You can just about set your watch by it, can't you? So it's entirely unsurprising to read the following about John Bolton, Yale '70, in the Yale Daily News:

Though Bolton supported the Vietnam War, he declined to enter combat duty, instead enlisting in the National Guard and attending law school after his 1970 graduation. "I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy," Bolton wrote of his decision in the 25th reunion book. "I considered the war in Vietnam already lost."

So Bolton supported sending other young American soldiers to risk their very lives in a war "already lost", while he saved his beautiful mind for better things (like stealing national elections, endangering national security by manipulating intelligence information.

Reminds me of another great patriotic chickenhawk:

"I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada," [George W.] Bush explained to The Dallas Morning News back in 1990. "So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4271520/site/newsweek/

Birds of a feather, it seems.

Yes, Bolton is a tough, no-nonsense, abrasive, "get it done" kind of guy, as long as he is sitting behind a big oak desk with a nice cushy leather chair in his spiffy, safe office. That "get it done" attitude rapidly evaporates, however, when asked to put his own precious butt on the line to face the consequences of the indulgent anger-driven blather that passes for
his conservative policy-making.

Posted by: DiAnne at May 1, 2005 11:29 AM

Amen Dont forget attacking women he is really big on that

Rossi,

Great to see you posting again. I agree with you 100%.

..Bolton makes my skin crawl..

You may remember Andy Stephenson from his primary run for Washington Secretary of State.  You may also know Andy from his work on Black Box Voting and electronic voting issues.  Andy has been a leading advocate for electronic voting reform, and is personally responsible for much of the attention this cause has received.
 
Andy has been diagnosed with a cancerous tumor on his pancreas, and requires surgery, which will be performed the second week of May.  Because of Andy’s sacrifice for the cause of electronic voting reform, he does not have health insurance and is unable to cover the costs of this surgery. 
 
Andy is at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, and they require $25,000 upfront to schedule this surgery.  As of this writing, Beth Ferrari has negotiated with Johns Hopkins to schedule the surgery if we can provide $15,000 this Monday, May 2, and $10,000 soon thereafter.  The entire surgery is slated to cost $50,000.  Beth has done amazing work in negotiating with Johns Hopkins.
 
If you are able to contribute in any way, please don’t hesitate.
 
1) via USPS:
send a check or a money order to:
Andy Stephenson
P O Box 25624
Seattle, WA 98165-1124
 
2) via Paypal:
(You must have a Paypal account)
http://www.paypal.com/
After logging in, choose "Send Money" and enter Andy's email address
as the recipient Andy_Stephenson@comcast.net
 
3) via Amazon
http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/ts/my-pay-page/P2TRHRVBGX9KOX/102-6873839-90473\53
Just enter the amount and click "pay now"
 
!!!IMPORTANT!!!
If you can contribute, please email Beth Ferrari at info@dougzilla.com so she can track how much has been raised and report to Johns Hopkins.

Activists are working with Johns Hopkins to secure a fee reduction, and we are working with members of our Congressional delegation to secure their help in this matter as well. 
 
In the meantime, Andy needs your help.  I was contacted this afternoon and asked to spread the word about his situation, and I’m asking you to join me in helping Andy.  Please forward this email to everyone you know, and please help financially.  Over $11,000 has been raised in the last few days, and we need to keep pushing.  This is a national effort.

Ray Minchew
Executive Director
Democracy for Washington

Workers Around the World Rally on May Day

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4975159,00.html

Notably, hundreds of thousands of Japanese rally for a ban on nuclear weapons worldwide.

Meanwhile, N Korea lobs a missile into the sea.