Sssshhh! (Polly Sigh)

Polly,

I wear socks with sandals but you all still let me be a part of the resistance!

thanks...

viva la resistance!

Save a National Resource - Robert Byrd!!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4926250,00.html

Today, while we were driving to the beach, we passed a church on a hill. Two young women were standing near the corner by the road; one was praying while the other one waved.

While I am happy for them in their rapture (or whatever it was), I could not help but remember Jesus' words about wearing religion in one's heart, not on one's sleeve.

I find that people who are so in love with their own religiousity are quite insensitive to the concerns of others. I still remember what it felt like, as a Jewish child, to celebrate only Christmas in school, and to be told by my Christian friends that I would go to hell. It wasn't their fault; they did not know any better.

In 2005, I would have hoped that grown women would know better than to put out that same message.

I am not anti-Christian, or even anti-religion. I am pro-diversity, and pro-learning. A narrow spectrum of beliefs, along with public display of those beliefs, rarely allows for diversity or learning.

Senator's Handouts Help Dems Kerry On

http://news.bostonherald.com/politics/view.bg?articleid=77737

- helping Hillary, going to Texas to push children's healthcare, went to Italy on crutches

Good article

BTW, Polly is hysterical...Even Larry laughed at the "Self-restraint device" description.

Karen

You don't often come across me quoting scripture, but here goes:

"And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are; for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward." Matt. 6:5.

While learning others' viewpoints has caused me to stretch, it has also opened my mind to the understanding of new concepts that help me be less opinionated, and more tolerant of diversity. Matthew's Sunday column has made me think, and explore possibilities I never dreamt I would. It will, in the end, help me be more compatible with people of diversity, because I now understand the weaknesses in my system of thought, and understand the possibilities in others' thinking. I may not, in the end, agree with every possibility, but I feel like a big weight has been taken off my shoulders because I can, at least, now honestly ponder them. I find we have many more things in common than not.

You know, Polly, I don't like being told what to do by zealots or organized religion either.

Viva La Freedom!

(Skippity Doo Dah Sim Salabim?)

read entire speech~
http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2005/cr040605.htm

Posted by: on.to.victory4Dems at April 9, 2005 09:59 PM

Wow. Rep Ron Paul of Texas, you have my respect and admiration. What guts you must have. You apparently are one of those Republicans that Richard Dreyfuss was referring to when he told the audience of an Ed Schultz radio program "There are some good Republicans."

It's nice to see one sneak out from behind the pulpit.

Amy

Another Republican with a conscience.

http://wwwmiddle-east-online.com/english/?id=13180

US Representative Walter Jones, a conservative Republican, does not hide his anger when he says bad information led him to vote for the Iraq war.

"If I had known then what I know today, I wouldn't have voted for that resolution. Absolutely not," he said Thursday in an interview.

His comments reflect concerns of other Republican lawmakers in Congress, and polls show a lingering debate over the reasons for going to war have hurt the administration even as the Iraq operation shows signs of success.

A day earlier, during House Armed Services Committee testimony on the Iraq war, Jones demanded an apology from the administration of President George W. Bush.

"To me, there should be somebody that is large enough to say, 'We made a mistake'," Jones said, almost in tears with frustration. He said he and other lawmakers want to ensure they are never again asked to authorize a war with bad information.

Jones felt so bad he decided to write personal letters of condolence to the families of each of the more than 1,600 US soldiers killed.

He has so far sent more than 900.

Truth Shall Prevail

Here is my mother's latest quote:

"I will go to church tomorrow because I have to play the organ - the regular organist broke her hand. Then I'm going to stay after for coffee because I'm the Spitting Cobra of the Congregation."

(I think it has something to do with "marching to a different drummer")

Environmental Watch: Study Shows Exhaust Leaking into School Buses
10 April 2005

Who has time to worry about an environmental study about exhaust leaking into school buses when the news is riddled with “A Culture of Death, Not Life?” But that’s another story altogether, isn’t it.

Maybe it’s time we started paying more attention to the culture of life, particularly when it involves the wellbeing of the children of this country, all of the children of this country. It seems to me there is a problem with finding a story like this from Reuters, buried on the Environment News page on MSNBC, when clearly this story should be front page news. Why? Because it affects millions of children across this country who ride school buses every day.

Exhaust leaking into school buses, study finds

Children exposed to much more than people outside

Children riding on school buses are breathing in more pollution than people standing out on the streets, U.S. researchers concluded in a new study.

http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/default.asp?view=plink&id=690

Posted by: DiAnne at April 10, 2005 12:33 AM

You know, in the church I grew up in, we spent a lot of time saying things like "Lord, I am not worthy", and stuff like that.

In the church that Dubya went to, they evidently spent almost all of their time saying things like "I did the right thing" or "my will must be God's will". That and, "screw the poor so long as I get my tax cut".

Posted by: Pamela at April 10, 2005 05:21 AM

Pamela,

I'm not surprised by this news. First, when I was a student and rode the school bus I remember the smell of fumes and feeling sick. Often, I walked or rode my bike the 5 miles rather than riding the bus.

But then as a parent, I remember riding the bus with my children to go on a school field trip. I remember the fumes were awful and I went home absolutely sick. No joy riding there! That's for sure.

OP-ED COLUMNIST
A Culture of Death, Not Life
By FRANK RICH

IT takes planning to produce a classic chapter in television history. "We've rehearsed," Thom Bird, a Fox News producer, bragged to Variety before Pope John Paul II died. "We will pull out all the stops on this story."

He wasn't kidding. On the same day that boast saw print, a Fox anchor, Shepard Smith, solemnly told the world that "facts are facts" and "it is now our understanding the pope has died." Unfortunately, this understanding was reached 26 hours before the pope actually did die, but as Mr. Smith would explain, he had been misled by "Italian reports." (Namely from a producer for Sky Italia, another fair-and-balanced fief of Rupert Murdoch.) Fox's false bulletin - soon apotheosized by Jon Stewart, now immortalized on the Internet - followed the proud tradition of its sister news organization, The New York Post, which last year had the scoop on John Kerry's anointment of Dick Gephardt as his running mate.

Yet you could also argue that Fox's howler was in its way the most honest barometer of this entire cultural moment. The network was pulling out all the stops to give the audience what it craved: a fresh, heaping serving of death. Mr. Smith had a point when he later noted that "the exact time of death, I think, is not something that matters so much at this moment." Certainly not to a public clamoring for him to bring it on.

Mortality - the more graphic, the merrier - is the biggest thing going in America. Between Terri Schiavo and the pope, we've feasted on decomposing bodies for almost a solid month now. The carefully edited, three-year-old video loops of Ms. Schiavo may have been worthless as medical evidence but as necro-porn their ubiquity rivaled that of TV's top entertainment franchise, the all-forensics-all-the-time "CSI." To help us visualize the dying John Paul, another Fox star, Geraldo Rivera, brought on Dr. Michael Baden, the go-to cadaver expert from the JonBenet Ramsey, Chandra Levy and Laci Peterson mediathons, to contrast His Holiness's cortex with Ms. Schiavo's.

As sponsors line up to buy time on "CSI," so celebrity deaths have become a marvelous opportunity for beatific self-promotion by news and political stars alike. Tim Russert showed a video of his papal encounter on a "Meet the Press" where one of the guests, unchallenged, gave John Paul an A-plus for his handling of the church's sex abuse scandal. Jesse Jackson, staking out a new career as the angel of deathotainment, hit the trifecta: in rapid succession he appeared with the Schindlers at their daughter's hospice in Florida, eulogized Johnnie Cochran on "Larry King Live" and reminisced about his own papal audience with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann.

What's disturbing about this spectacle is not so much its tastelessness; America will always have a fatal attraction to sideshows. What's unsettling is the nastier agenda that lies far less than six feet under the surface. Once the culture of death at its most virulent intersects with politicians in power, it starts to inflict damage on the living.

When those leaders, led by the Bush brothers, wallow in this culture, they do a bait-and-switch and claim to be upholding John Paul's vision of a "culture of life." This has to be one of the biggest shams of all time. Yes, these politicians oppose abortion, but the number of abortions has in fact been going down steadily in America under both Republican and Democratic presidents since 1990 - some 40 percent in all. The same cannot be said of American infant fatalities, AIDS cases and war casualties - all up in the George W. Bush years. Meanwhile, potentially lifesaving phenomena like condom-conscious sex education and federally run stem-cell research are in shackles.

This agenda is synergistic with the entertainment culture of Mr. Bush's base: No one does the culture of death with more of a vengeance - literally so - than the doomsday right. The "Left Behind" novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins all but pant for the bloody demise of nonbelievers at Armageddon. And now, as Eric J. Greenberg has reported in The Forward, there's even a children's auxiliary: a 40-title series, "Left Behind: The Kids," that warns Jewish children of the hell that awaits them if they don't convert before it's too late. Eleven million copies have been sold on top of the original series' 60 million.

These fables are of a piece with the violent take on Christianity popularized by "The Passion of the Christ." Though Mel Gibson brought a less gory version, with the unfortunate title "The Passion Recut," to some 1,000 theaters for Easter in response to supposed popular demand, there was no demand. (Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that at many screens the film sold fewer than 50 tickets the entire opening weekend.) "Passion" fans want the full scourging, and at the height of the protests outside the Schiavo hospice, a TV was hooked up so the assembled could get revved up by watching the grisly original on DVD.

As they did so, Mr. Gibson interjected himself into the case by giving an interview to Sean Hannity asserting that "big guys" could "whip a judge" if they really wanted to stop the "state-sanctioned murder" of Ms. Schiavo. He was evoking his punishment of choice in "The Passion," figuratively, no doubt. It was only a day later that one such big guy, Tom DeLay, gave Mr. Gibson's notion his official imprimatur by vowing retribution against any judges who don't practice the faith-based jurisprudence of which he approves.

This Wednesday the far right's cutting-edge culture of death gets its biggest foothold to date in the mainstream, when NBC broadcasts its "Left Behind" simulation, "Revelations," an extremely slick prime-time mini-series that was made before our most recent death watches but could have been ripped from their headlines. In the pilot a heretofore nonobservant Christian teenage girl in a "persistent vegetative state" - and in Florida, yet - starts babbling Latin texts from the show's New Testament namesake just as dastardly scientists ("devil's advocates," as they're referred to) and organ-seekers conspire to pull the plug. "All the signs and symbols set forth in the Bible are currently in place for the end of days," says the show's adult heroine, an Oxford-educated nun who has been denounced by the Vatican for her views and whose mission is underwritten by a wealthy "religious fundamentalist." Her Julie Andrews affect notwithstanding, she is an extremist as far removed from the mainstream as Mel Gibson, whose own splinter Traditionalist Catholic sect split from Rome and disowned the reforms of Vatican II, not the least of which was the absolution of Jews for collective guilt in the death of Jesus.

It's all too fitting that "Revelations," which downsizes lay government in favor of the clerical, is hijacking the regular time slot of "The West Wing." Perhaps only God knows whether it will prove as big a hit as "The Passion." What is clear is that the public eventually tires of most death watches and demands new meat. The tsunami disaster, dramatized by a large supply of vivid tourist videos that the genocide in Darfur cannot muster, was so completely forgotten after three months that even a subsequent Asian earthquake barely penetrated the nation's Schiavo fixation. But the media plug was pulled on Ms. Schiavo, too, once the pope took center stage; the funeral Mass her parents conducted on Tuesday was all but shunned by the press pack that had moved on to Rome. By the night of his death days later, even John Paul had worn out his welcome. The audience that tuned in to the N.C.A.A. semifinals on CBS was roughly twice as large as that for the NBC and ABC papal specials combined. The time was drawing near for the networks to reappraise the Nielsen prospects of Prince Rainier.

If there's one lesson to take away from the saturation coverage of the pope, it is how relatively enlightened he was compared with the men in business suits ruling Washington. Our leaders are not only to the right of most Americans (at least three-quarters of whom opposed Congressional intervention in the Schiavo case) but even to the right of most American evangelical Christians (most of whom favored the removal of Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube, according to Time magazine). They are also, like Mel Gibson and the fiery nun of "Revelations," to the right of the largely conservative pontiff they say they revere. This is true not only on such issues as the war in Iraq and the death penalty but also on the core belief of how life began. Though the president of the United States believes that the jury is still out on evolution, John Paul in 1996 officially declared that "fresh knowledge leads to recognition of the theory of evolution as more than just a hypothesis."

We don't know the identity of the corpse that will follow the pope in riveting the nation's attention. What we do know is that the reality show we've made of death has jumped the shark, turning from a soporific television diversion into the cultural embodiment of the apocalyptic right's growing theocratic crusade.

Walter Jones said what our candidates should have said last October. We'd have a Kerry-Edwards presidency now if they had.
Sorry to point that out, but it's just the truth.
Here's the quote from above:

"If I had known then what I know today, I wouldn't have voted for that resolution. Absolutely not," he said Thursday in an interview."

It's a simple statement. It does not admit that you were wrong, only that you were duped. And that, had you not been duped, you would have done the right thing.
That's what we needed to say.
That's really all we needed to say.

I'm refusing to call it a culture of life...sure culture of death is more like them but I think that may backfire because it reuses their term. I'm all for calling Bushco and the neoCONS the DEATH SQUAD and let them see the starving-malnourished people here in the USA as well as abroad. Let them see pictures of people dying a slow uncomfortable death with no healthcare to pay for simple drugs that might alleviate their pain.

They are the DEATH and POVERTY SQUAD...May we all just shut up and die quietly and broke, just the way they want it.

Death sensationalization in the media - public lust for it only comparable with the Romans putting people into the arenas to be torn apart by lions because they didn't have television!
By not watching, I'm experimenting with trying to be freer of the "influences," even subtle. We didn't get a tv until I was 6 years old. We only got one channel up until I left home at 18. Since that time, just never learned to turn one on & haven't bought cable. During Gulf War I we were home sharing with a lonely old woman who would have cable news on & that's when I noticed that the news had a propagandistic slant & that there was much more commentary than content. & it has only gotten worse in the intervening years.

Linda,
I agree that Kerry/Edwards could have benefitted by saying that. They may have agreed with their vote when they made it and had their reasons at the time for voting the way they did, but this Republican Congressman has absolutely nailed the conscientious way to admit being duped! He does so with authority and conviction.

Sparrow,
The death & poverty sqad - that about nails them too! I heard a bit of Bush on the radio (another thing I studiously avoid but couldn't risk a collision while driving just to hit the button) - he was avoiding overtly naming God by calling him "the author of Life," which is even worse because he creates a new "frame" or cliche or something. I did read an article that predicted that the public who isn't convinced totally might get tired of the "life" thing because it's really too vague - it's kind of an abstraction because it tries to cover a bunch of tangentially related things.

Bush Lobbying Effort Skirts Law
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7B5E61F470-3030-48F6-B741-AE9A15AF4903%7D&siteid=mktw

The Bush administration has spent millions of dollars in the past two months on its campaign to overhaul Social Security, narrowly skirting laws that prohibit spending of taxpayer funds to indirectly lobby Congress. President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and more than 20 other administration officials have blanketed the country since early February, delivering more than 100 speeches in 37 states in an effort to rally the public behind Bush's Social Security plans. (snip)

Waxman, the top Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, asked the GAO to determine whether "the Bush administration has crossed the line from education to propaganda." Federal law prohibits spending any public funds for publicity or propaganda designed to support or defeat legislation pending in Congress. (snip)

Bush's devotion to the cause has few historical precedents. Not since Woodrow Wilson fought for the League of Nations with his last ounce of strength has an American president wooed the public so ardently for their support on domestic legislation. "There's been nothing remotely like this" in recent decades, said Stephen Hess, a scholar at the Brookings Institution specializing in presidential politics. (snip) While most recent presidents have used the "bully pulpit" to go directly to the people, no president has expended the kind of effort on a legislative issue that Bush and his administration have on the issue of crafting private investment accounts onto Social Security.

60 cities, 60 days
Bush himself has spoken at 25 events in 20 states on the topic since his State of the Union address in early February. According to press reports, Bush's audiences are carefully screened to exclude those expressing disapproval of his plans. Twenty-two other administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Treasury Secretary John Snow, three other Cabinet secretaries and four top officials at the Social Security Administration, have been on the road talking up the need to overhaul Social Security. All told, officials in the White House and other executive agencies have delivered 120 speeches in 37 states. The Bush administration is well on its way to its goal of visiting 60 cities in 60 days with the Social Security reform message. At the Treasury Department, four full-time public relations aides have been hired to run the Social Security information center, nicknamed "the war room," that tracks congressional and public opinion. (snip)

Costs of the lobbying campaign
A White House spokesman said the costs of the White House's efforts, including travel, are not disclosed to the public. (snip) One part of the total cost can be estimated. At an estimated cost of $60,000 per hour for Air Force One, Bush's 18,850 miles of travel to 23 cities and towns to lobby on Social Security have cost the Air Force about $1.8 million so far. The White House has estimated in the past that staff costs for out-of-town events run between $22,000 and $59,000 per day. White House staff costs for Bush's 13 days out of town would thus total between $286,000 and $767,000. Other costs of a presidential trip can be substantial. Typically, other planes accompany Air Force One, bringing needed security, communications and transportation equipment and personnel. Auditoriums must be rented and outfitted for the presidential visit, including extra security and secure communications. Some costs are borne by others. For example, a spokeswoman for the Qwest Center in Omaha, Neb., said the city spent about $70,000 on traffic and security arrangements for Bush's Social Security event in early February.

Cheney has delivered four speeches on Social Security in the past two months. His plane costs the Air Force about $11,000 an hour to operate, with total costs of his trips estimated at about $160,000. Treasury Secretary John Snow "flies coach," his spokesman said. One or two aides, plus security, accompany Snow on trips. Snow has delivered 10 speeches on Social Security in five separate trips. Four top officials of the Social Security Administration have delivered 42 speeches, sometimes as many as four a day.

(continue to read for long section on the several laws governing lobbying that is legal)(snip)

Typically, the courts have allowed taxpayer-funded publicity efforts as long as no overt appeal is made for listeners or readers to contact their representatives or senators about a specific bill. Bush says his goal is go directly to the people and persuade them to pressure Congress to change Social Security. He explicitly tells his audiences to write their congressman.

"My advice to you, everybody else, people watching, is write your senators and write your congresspeople," Bush said in an appearance in Pensacola, Fla. "Let them know you're concerned, let them know you're interested." In an appearance in Iowa, Bush said lawmakers who balk should be held accountable. "There's a political price for not getting involved in the process.... There's a political price for saying it's not a problem," Bush said. Bush has just begun to campaign. "My job is to confront problems," Bush said in his March press conference. "And I'll continue to talk about Social Security for the next period of time." White House spokeswoman Catherine Martin said Bush will likely continue to travel and speak about Social Security for several more months.

Presidential historians said Bush's lobbying on Social Security is the most intense presidential effort at least since Franklin Delano Roosevelt's fireside chats in the early 1930s helped establish the New Deal (including Social Security), or perhaps since Woodrow Wilson fought unsuccessfully for U.S. entry into the League of Nations in 1919. (snip) "He's devoting two days a week to it," said White House spokeswoman Martin. (snip)

"If I had known then what I know today, I wouldn't have voted for that resolution. Absolutely not," he said Thursday in an interview."

It's a simple statement. It does not admit that you were wrong, only that you were duped. And that, had you not been duped, you would have done the right thing.
That's what we needed to say.
That's really all we needed to say.

Posted by: Linda Enterkin at April 10, 2005 11:45 AM

I liked Hillary Clinton's quote too: "If we had known then what we know today, there wouldn't have BEEN a vote."

Dianne:

Bush is using the "author of life?" JEEZ...the author of life invented flies and maggots and ... Does this mean they don't smack those little buggers and squash them to smithereens?

Yes & the Guardian had a long article a couple of days ago on the guy who writes Bush's speeches. It was especially creepy because when he writes the words, he imagines Bush saying them in his nasal whining adolescent-sounding drone. I know the election has to have been "fixed," as Kerry was so much more statesmanlike and won all 3 debates. Bush's dad was a much better speaker and he got his words twisted around so much that NPR had neurologists discuss him too.

Rick Santorum: "DeLay Needs to Answer Questions"

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050410/ap_on_go_co/delay

The question is, will he have to answer them before the hand-picked partisan yes-men that now make up the ethics committee?

Spare me.