Code Pink at the White House (continuing)

Cool photos!

Gosh Karen... what a Mother's Day Gift!! Thank you so much for carrying on for those of us who can't make these kinds of trips. Maybe we can all just wear pink until these crooks are out of the white house and our troops are home!!

Sandy and DiAnne,

I hope it IS a gift to all the Moms here. That's why we continue to fight, isn't it I love having my son with me for this; he gets it too.

Pink is energizing and hopeful!

Those are great photos. Very inspiring to look at. Makes me wish I could wear a pink dress to work (my employees would lock me out of the office).

The Bushco Propagandists are forced to cover it. There is no getting around it.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/05/13/cheney.probe.ap/index.html?section=cnn_topstories

New court filing focuses on Cheney
Prosecutor: Cheney made handwritten references to Plame

Saturday, May 13, 2006; Posted: 9:03 p.m. EDT (01:03 GMT)

Karen:

You are making mothers around the country and world very very proud tonight.

oncall:

If you wear a pink dress to the office, I will personally fly over there to watch you walk in!

Karen, thank you... Words can't express how proud I am that you're there representing all of us.

Nice family photo Karen. Does it go out with the next holiday card?

I'm sorry Cindy and all you patriots camping out there for mothers day. The media is trying to ignore your existance. I encourage all of us who know about this to spread the word, so that everyone sees there is an ongoing record of media spin cycles.

At anyrate, here's one of the really nice articles I found.

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=16636092&BRD=1675&PAG=461&dept_id=18168&rfi=6

Editorial: Sheehan a patriot for exercising her rights
05/14/2006
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Millions of American mothers today are being showered with flowers, candy and other gifts from their children and husbands. They are being taken out to dinner, served breakfast in bed and otherwise wined and dined in salute of their maternal status.

Sons and spouses are saluting their "best girls" while daughters are dedicating the day to their ultimate role models.

Grandmothers and great-grandmothers are also being honored for their parenting skills.

But for some mothers, it is a day of sad remembrance of children lost to war.

For mothers like anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, whose soldier son was killed in Iraq two years ago, it hearkens back to the true origins of Mother’s Day in the United States.

A special day for American mothers was first suggested in 1872 by Julia Ward Howe as a day dedicated to peace. She was inspired to organize mothers after unsuccessfully attempting to assemble an international pacifist conference following the Franco-Prussian War.

"Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone bear and know the cost?" wrote Howe.

For a while in Boston and elsewhere, Howe inspired Mother’s Day celebrations of peace. But Mother’s Day wasn’t officially recognized in the United States until May 8, 1914, when Congress passed a joint resolution designating the second Sunday in May as a day for the U.S. flag to be displayed "as a public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of our county."

The resolution was a result of extensive lobbying by Anna M. Jarvis who felt children often failed to show appreciation of their mothers while they were still alive. Her mother, Anna Reese Jarvis, who died in 1905, was a community activist and a peace advocate in her own right.

"Mother Jarvis," as she was known, organized women’s brigades during the Civil War and entreated the workers to lend aid to those in need, whether they sympathized with the Confederacy or the Union. After the war, she worked to heal the bitterness between Confederate and Union neighbors.

Sheehan has perpetuated the original spirit of Mother’s Day by staging a series of anti-war demonstrations in the last week. She first was plunged into the public arena last summer when she camped outside George W. Bush’s Texas ranch during his month-long vacation, seeking an explanation from the president for continued U.S. presence in Iraq.

Her 24-year-old son, Army Spc. Casey Sheehan of Vacaville, Calif., a Humvee mechanic, was one of eight soldiers killed by rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire in Baghdad on April 4, 2004.

At a rally in Seattle Town Hall last Monday, she said U.S. troops should withdraw and all U.S. bases should be closed in Iraq with peacekeeping duties left to unarmed Arab forces.

"We are the problem. When we leave, problem solved," maintained Sheehan.

There are some who would try to paint Sheehan -- or anyone who disagrees with Bush -- as unpatriotic and not supportive of U.S. troops.

But what could be more patriotic than exercising one’s First Amendment right of free speech in criticizing the powers-that-be?

And what could be more supportive of the troops than wanting them home safely from a military presence that an increasing number of people see as an exercise in futility?

(((more at the link)))

New Zealand, New York, Delaware, Iowa, Kansas City Missouri, Op-Ed News, Australia, and China.

Those are the only listings that show the protest and talk about it.

Where is CNN? Where is abc? Where is msn? Where is Fox? Where is nbc? Where is cbs? Where is the WAPO? or the NYT?

Didn't all those sources show the band of 50 protestors in front of Terri Schiavo's case?

It's not good enough to just report what we all know. They are indeed putting a blackout on Cindy Sheehan news (just like they did with the election fraud news).

I don't care what we do. We need to do something about this! It reminds me of having a conversation with a trucker friend and I asked him, 'Why aren't the truckers refusing to drive with gas prices so high?'

His response was that there are always suggestions made, but people find excuses or reasons to not go through with them. Also he says they all disagree on what to do. So instead they end up with little one day protests of 'x' gas station instead of being able to make the larger statement.

Sparrow
This is disturbing. No wonder two press secretaries have quit.

from Xinhuanet, China

WASHINGTON, May 13 (Xinhua) -- A group of U.S. mothers started Saturday a 24-hour vigil outside the White House to call for an end to the Iraq war and voice their opposition to a military attack on Iraq.

Women for Peace, consisting of mothers and their families, met at 3:00 pm (1900 GMT) prepared to spend the night outside the White House before dispersing at the same time Sunday, Mother's Day.

"I don't want any more moms to grieve for a child lost in this unjust unnecessary war in Iraq," said Cindy Sheehan, a prominent anti-war mother who lost her 24-year-old son in the war.

Other Mother's Day events include a concert, workshops on legislative strategies, writing letters to First Lady Laura Bush, and a visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center to deliver roses to mothers and wives of injured soldiers, organizers said. Enditem

Editor: Mu Xuequan

IndyMedia, Common Dreams, One Thousand Reasons, Buzzflash, Truthout - alternative press.

Mainstream Media blackout.

Mother's Day in a Katrina trailer

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Katrina_Mothers_Day.html

Just heard an ugly headline on WINS 1010 Radio:

"Soldiers with severe psychological problems are reportedly being sent to the front lines."

Missed the story, but it's probably worth checking out.

Posted by: sparrow at May 14, 2006 09:31 AM

I think Christy's comments about blockading Fox news is the only way to get people to realize that the media is not doing its job.

Code Pink outside, Code Brown inside.

Posted by: Cyrano at May 14, 2006 10:58 AM

Report: Military Ignoring Mental Illness
Filed at 7:44 a.m. ET

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- U.S. military troops with severe psychological problems have been sent to Iraq or kept in combat, even when superiors have been aware of signs of mental illness, a newspaper reported for Sunday editions.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Military-Suicides.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

And this diary at Daily Kos...
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/5/14/1476/04842
DOD Served by Sen. Boxer, GAO, Hartford Courant

I want to wish all the moms here a happy mothers day.

And I want to wish all the moms with Cindy and Karen in DC a happy mothers day as well.

Peace be with you and God Bless You! I mean that from the deapest part of my heart.

I put something out on a list & got this:

lst person:
I just contacted a beat reporter at the Washington Post to "inquire" why they weren't getting any coverage. I'm interested to hear his answer.

2nd person:
The protest was mentioned in a headline on CNN News at the top of the hour on the radio.

another media-related observation:

Drudge didn't even pretend to acknowledge the Foggo resignation on Monday coming on the heels of Goss's on Friday, and when the Goss story broke on Friday Michele Malkin had a single throw away paragraph on it, while on the very same day she devoted at least 3 pages on the Patrick Kennedy non-story.

Making the rounds:

"The NSA wants to remind everyone to call their mother's this Sunday.  They need to calibrate their system."

Cyrano
Here is the story as went out to Vets for Peace:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/5/13/224825/389

Way to support our men and women in uniform, Mr. Commander-in-Chief. Secretary Rumsfeld, take a bow.

This is how our Republican government supports our troops:

    Paper: Military Ignoring Mental Illness

    Troops Who Show Signs of Mental Illness Are Being Forced Into Combat, Newspaper Reports

    The Associated Press
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1959215&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

    HARTFORD, Conn. - U.S. military troops with severe psychological problems have been sent to Iraq or kept in combat, even when superiors have been aware of signs of mental illness, a newspaper reported for Sunday editions.

    The Hartford Courant, citing records obtained under the federal Freedom of Information Act and more than 100 interviews of families and military personnel, reported numerous cases in which the military failed to follow its own regulations in screening, treating and evacuating mentally unfit troops from Iraq.

How bad is it? This bad:

    Twenty-two U.S. troops committed suicide in Iraq last year,
accounting for nearly one in five of all non-combat deaths and the highest suicide rate since the war started, the newspaper said.

T R U T H O U T has it up too.

I recommend watching this clip of President Gore on SNL last night. You'll laugh...and then cry...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHM7iyjMAnw

Lots more photos here:

http://news.yahoo.com/photos/ss/events/wl/031806antiwar;_ylt=Asy_260rto6ZXDO5xtc305SaK8MA;_ylu=X3oDMTA5bGcyMWMzBHNlYwNzc25hdg--

Laura in denial - doesn't believe bad polls on husband

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060514/us_nm/bush_laura_dc_2

Posted by: Hawkeye at May 14, 2006 01:49 PM

I'd be in denial too if I was married to him. Either that or in an insane asylum...

Happy Mother's Day to all -- especially to all mothers who have lost their sons & daughters in this meaningless war -- and also to those mothers taking a stand for peace in DC right now...

The original Mother's Day proclamation

Written by Julia Ward Howe in 1870 as a protest to the carnage of the American Civil War. Howe was one of the first to petition Congress for official recognition of a day to honor mothers.

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

*hymn & intro text found on this DU thread ==>
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2625601

Great Post! Mom says no to War!

Posted by: madame defarge at May 14, 2006 01:15 PM

Thanks MD, that was great. When truth is stranger than fiction....

There is hope. I just finished waving good-bye to my sister a few minutes ago. She'd come over from Mobile to bring my mom home after a Mother's Day visit, and, as she walked out the door, she said something I almost could not believe. She said-"I'm tired of seeing these news reports every day of more American soldiers dying over there- I'm almost ready to jump on the Democratic bandwagon." I've never been so shocked by a statement in my life. My sister is a Republican's Republican- the mother of two Marine sons, and a member of a deeply fundamentalist church in the heart of Mobile Alabama. She has finally come to believe that this war will accomplish nothing, and that it was a foolish idea to begin with. I asked her if her son, who went in with the first wave of Marines in the invasion, would agree with her about it. She said probably not, but that she was very happy today that her boy came home safely, because she'd wonder forever why he had to die if he hadn't made it home.
My sister IS Bush's base. It's her and her friends who have believed he could do no wrong for the last 5 years. If she's questioning his judgement now, the polls must be right. Poor Laura is only hearing what she wants to hear. The base has crumbled. I have no doubt about that now. Now all we have to do is wait on November.

Posted by: Linda Enterkin at May 14, 2006 06:42 PM

Linda,

I am very happy to hear your sister is emerging from her fog. However, I am still waiting for the Republicans to start bringing out all the other irrelevant issues which keeps their base from wandering too far from home.

Frank Rich | Will the Real Traitors Please Stand Up?
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051406F.shtml
Frank Rich writes, "Today we know who the real traitors were: the officials who squandered American blood and treasure on an ill-considered war and then tried to cover up their lies and mistakes. It was precisely those lies and mistakes, of course, that were laid bare by the thousands of pages of classified Pentagon documents leaked to both The Times and The Washington Post."
{{{Last two paragraphs... wow...!}}}

Steve Almond | Condoleezza Rice at Boston College? I Quit
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051406H.shtml
Steve Almond, adjunct English Professor at Boston College, writes his public resignation from Boston College after the school agreed to host Condoleezza Rice as a featured speaker.

"Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today;
I think he's with the NSA."

I missed the first five minutes of evening snooze... is there anything at all in Lamestream Media about the DC rally? Is there anything at all about Turd Blossom being charged by Fitz's grand jury?

The latter just HAS to make Lamestream Media, if it's true he's been served papers.... In light of the fact DumDum is supposed to address the nation tomorrow night about something or other (can't remember what - immigration, that side issue that will go nowhere after much hoo-ha and media coverage?), if Turd Blossom is/has been indicted, that just HAS to be made much ado of in Lamestream Media....

Oh, and ABC did do a story about how suicidally depressed soldiers and some suffering from PTSD and some who are on anti-depressants are being sent back to Iraq and/or forced to fight, no matter what. They interviewed the person from the Hartford paper who first got the story out there.

That's just sheer nonsense on the part of the US military and I don't think DumDum and RumDum can defend that policy.

Posted by: oncall at May 14, 2006 06:51 PM

Oncall,

My brother in law and I tap danced around the issue that there is never likely to be student grants from the gov't again. He was a Bush supporter, as he's part of the fundie-in-laws. However, he's the only one that questioned even years ago if Bush was being honest with us. (His wife is a fundy though and sadly I think he is more influenced by her than visa versa.)

They know my view though, particularly 'cause in 04 I allowed myself to wear my "Bush the Pinochio President" t'shirt for about the first 15 minutes before I changed into something less verbal.

Remember how we were talking about Fox?

Well on nolie's blog, Fox is Fake News at 9:22 asked us to take his/her challenge.

http://www.progressiveu.org/133433-more-endictments-in-the-plame-scandal-will-rove-get-what-he-deserves#comment-30865

Also, there is a question on the same thread about if Fitzgerald knew ahead of time that he may have been illegally wiretapped prior to the USA story.

"The base has crumbled. I have no doubt about that now. Now all we have to do is wait on November."

Posted by: Linda Enterkin at May 14, 2006 06:42 PM

--------------------

Actually, Linda... it seems to me that your choice of phrasing in that final sentence of your post was almost, but not quite, correct.

Your last sentence is off by five letters of the alphabet, affecting one short verb and one even shorter conjunction. They're small letters, true. But they're extremely important ones:

"Now all we have to do is WORK FOR November."

get up stand up don't give up the fight,
Otter

Happy Day and good wishes to all you muthah's... and you know who you is.

(And a poignant good night to Mr. and Mrs. Bartlet, too...)

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001376.php

You too monkey's wife.

Wonder if Mimi Kennedy (aka Dharma's mom) is in the Navajo looking blanket in front of the V for victory blonde gal.

marjorie g

If you're still up, Ken says Hi to you 2

Desperate

Bush on a nationally televised speech, to announce he's calling out the national guard, to keep out people coming from Mexico?

- bad conclusion to a good Mother's Day

The good part - I got an iPod

barf - can't stand either one

President Bush joined Australian Prime Minister John Howard for a little tree-planting and dinner Sunday

Militarization of the Border

`We've got National Guard members on their second, third and fourth tours in Iraq,'' Hagel said. ``We have stretched our military as thin as we have ever seen it in modern times. And what in the world are we talking about here, sending a National Guard that we may not have any capacity to send up to or down to protect borders? That's not their role.''

Hagel said the bill under debate in the Senate that he helped write would double the 12,000-strong Border Patrol force over the next five years. ``That's the way to fix it, not further stretching the National Guard,'' he said on ABC's ``This Week.''

Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., said there may be a need for troops to fill in while the Border Patrol is bolstered. But he did not seem confident that the National Guard could take on the extra duty.

``We have stretched these men and women so thin, so thin, because of the bad mistakes done by the civilians in the military here, that I wonder how they're going to be able to do it,'' Biden said, also on ABC.

http://www.guardian.co.uk "breaking news" - AP

Bad bad bad idea

Isn't tomorrow the day Senate was to hear about how satellite tracking spying is going on? What a diversion. What about Rove? What about the Cheney outing (I mean the dad)?

This is from top story on Kos.

Bolten plan:
DEPLOY GUNS AND BADGES. This is an unabashed play to members of the conservative base who are worried about illegal immigration. Under the banner of homeland security, the White House plans to seek more funding for an extremely visible enforcement crackdown at the Mexican border, including a beefed-up force of agents patrolling on all-terrain vehicles (ATVs). "It'll be more guys with guns and badges," said a proponent of the plan. "Think of the visuals. The President can go down and meet with the new recruits. He can go down to the border and meet with a bunch of guys and go ride around on an ATV." Bush has long insisted he wants a guest-worker program paired with stricter border enforcement, but House Republicans have balked at temporary legalization for immigrants, so the President's ambition of using the issue to make the party more welcoming to Hispanics may have to wait.

Going out for Chinese.
For now, here's Barak Obama:

This idea that somehow if you say the words 'plan for victory' and 'stay the course' over and over and over and over again and you put these subliminal messages behind you that say 'victory' and 'victory' and 'victory,' that somehow people are not going to notice the 2,400 flag-draped coffins that have arrived at the Dover Air Force Base.

I don't know about you, but when George Bush said he did not believe in nation building, I did not know he was talking about this nation.

last night some, well two of us, were speculating about Rove's imminent indictment (if ..) & Jason Leopold had been the only reporter to predict with certainty that it's really gonna happen. Kos site has a diary about Leopold, since his background is let's say..complex, but this appears to be a time filler because no one knows yet what will happen.

But, over at DU, William Rivers Pitt is sticking by Leopold's story and has made a post. See it at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1186820

& here is some of it - it's not new - it's from this afternoon but I just found it now:

WilliamPitt

I just got off the phone with Jason Leopold who clarified something for me that is pretty damned important. In his article, he said:

"During the course of that meeting, Fitzgerald served attorneys for former Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove with an indictment charging the embattled White House official with perjury and lying to investigators related to his role in the CIA leak case, and instructed one of the attorneys to tell Rove that he has 24 hours to get his affairs in order, high level sources with direct knowledge of the meeting said Saturday morning."

In point of fact, those 24 hours are "business hours," i.e. starting on Monday.

"Jeez, Jason," I said, "we might want to put that into the essay. Half the planet thought 24 hours was 24 hours. They thought the deal would go down today."

To be fair, a dozen eyes looked at that article yesterday before we published it, mine included, and none of us caught that. The word "business" has been inserted into the story after "hours" where it belongs:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051306W.shtml

So. Monday at the very earliest, but more like Tuesday or Wednesday.

I'm going to go take a nap and then go get drunk with some friends tonight. (snip) I'd repeat everything I've said about Jason's multiple independent sources, about how the MSMs failure to pick this up sounds more like more of the same old shit than anything ominous, about how no hard paper or announcements or anything will come until, at a minimum, the government re-opens for business on Monday...but I've written it all already.

The truth will out. It always does.

Tsk, tsk, tsk.... DumDum's paranoia is showing (or that of multiple people acquiring or adopting his paranoia). Besides being something for people to talk about other than Turd Blossom's indictment, it is a bad, bad, bad idea to put National Guard troops on the southern border of the US. In very real and practical terms, I can't think of a single good thing that would come out of such a bad, bad, bad idea if it were actually implimented. For that bad, bad, bad idea, DumDum is going to take up prime time TV space tomorrow night? Just how lost is his mind (aside from what we already know about, that is)?!?

Whatever "issues" there are with immigration, putting the US national guard troops at our borders isn't going to solve anything. Immigrants are not, after all, invading armies with people carrying guns and shooting at us... they're coming across our borders to work. Duh.

Now, can Lamestream Media turn to talking about something MUCH more important?!? Like: tanking ratings for the administration, DumDum's illegal war going badly in Iraq, debt increasing by the nanoseconds, impending indictment for Turd Blossom, illegal detention and torture of people at Gitmo and elsewhere, IMPEACHMENT of the whole Criminal Cabal in our nation's capital....

NonnyO

A friend in MN told me CNN & Fox have special programs lined up just to debate the merits of Bush's bad bad bad proposal.

This is probably timed to take the light off the revealed doings of Rove, Cheney & Libby plus the NSA spying without warrants & the soon-to-be-revealed additional spying with satellites.

Goofy-looking neocon Hadley:

"It's what the American people want" (militarization of the southern border).

Give me a break.

Posted by: DiAnne at May 14, 2006 10:46 PM

DiAnne,

After our discussion last night I wasn't sure if I had lost my mind. Thanks for posting that quote from Pitt. I was really starting to worry that the story was a figment of my imagination, or just wishful thinking.

Who knows, if this breaks tomorrow, Bush's speech may even cause his credibility to drop even further as it will look like a blatant attempt to change the subject from Rove's indictment to militarizing the border?

OnCall

fingers crossed! I wore my Frog March button today.

On Call

Was it a hoax or fingers still crossed?!

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/5/15/7112/15819

Many clues in this Wall Street Journal article:

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB114764954457552490-rXn

Republicans Seek to Revive Their Activists
Amid Bush's Low Ratings,
Party's Midterm Plan Focuses
On Court Nominees, Social Issues

President Bush's low approval ratings are prompting the White House and Capitol Hill Republicans to design a midterm strategy aimed at an unlikely set of voters: their own party activists.

- Senate is moving on two long-blocked judicial nominees
- Bush is expected to send nearly two dozen more
- votes coming on social issues crucial to conservatives
- Rove to the American Enterprise Institute today w/plan
- Bush with tough immigration speech today

The goal is to galvanize fiscal and social conservatives and get them to vote in November instead of sitting out the elections because of mounting frustration over government spending,

- Bush tax cuts: to rehabilitation relations with fiscal cons
- In 2 days, Bush has signing ceremony on WH Lawn
- Grover Norquist handles this part & will make Bush veto
a spending bill, his lst veto ever

- Plan to deliver conservatives their 3rd branch - the judicial
- Confirm more conservative judges in smaller federal courts
- take focus off ethics scandals and spying scandal
- watch for Brent Kavanaugh, Terrence Boyle
- spokesman of group that focusses on getting more conservative judges says "The values voters, who care about judges, are the people who gave the president Ohio."

- in June, constitutional amendment banning gay marriage
- bill on stem cell research
- antiflag burning amendment
- in summer, internet gambling
- taking woman out of state for abortion

Other nefarious schemes coming up:
- drill in ANWR not $100 rebate plan
- immigration hot button - build a fence, more penalties
(kind of like in WW2 era, for Germans who harbored Jews)

OnCall
This is all I can find. Not sure whether to chill champagne.

http://www.nysun.com/article/32727