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The Politics of Art
Go into most offices on Capitol Hill and you see many items on the wall: photos of the Member with Important People, framed newspaper clippings of special events, medals, awards, maps of the home district, and letters from schoolchildren. But most also have paintings, drawings or collages from local artists and talented high school students.
I always look at these pieces because they say a great deal about the home district/state and the Member. Artists and students embed pleas in many of these pieces; I wonder if the Members notice the messages, and if they care.
"Official" Washington has had an uneasy relationship with the arts lately; actually the tension goes back to the assasination of John F. Kennedy. The Kennedy administration embraced the arts; brought them into the White House in a way that has not been seen since. When President Johnson took over, the cultural tensions increased, but the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts, in 1965, eased the overt comparisons.
What does a country owe its artists? What do artists contribute to the soul of a country? How much direct support can a government give to the arts before the artists are co-opted and nationalized?
These are tricky questions, but as the national conversation about culture and soul has deteriorated into the collective questioning about our very survival, much less our place in the world, they are rarely discussed. I propose we have lost our way, in part, because we have stopped noticing those pleas and messages embedded in the drawings of children and the searing works that artists are producing.
Nita Penfold, "Survivor"
When people struggle and struggle to get through the day and pay their bills, it is easy to forget the weavings of the soul that can construct beauty, make meaning out of pain, and shine the spotlight on exactly where we have lost our way as a country. But such work is God's work, or at least spirit's work, and we need to honor the process of creation in ourselves, even if the nation has turned away from such processes. The national soul is dying before our eyes, probably because of the pain of seeing and the need for obliterating consciousness.
But we, the people, can find what solace there is in making. For this Memorial Day weekend, let's create our own memorials to what was, what is, and what could be. Photograph your creations and send them in to info@democracycellproject.net and let's have a showing next week.
Art therapy. Needed now.
Sounds good to me.
I don't get it. He almost quits over the seized stuff from Jefferson's office but he doesn't quit over NSA spying and illegal war and torture. Oh..that's right. Those are all a-ok with him! What an ethical AG we have! (NOT)
Times: AG, senior officials were prepared to quit over evidence seized from Congressional office
RAW STORY
Published: Friday May 26, 2006
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and other senior officials were prepared to quit over a dispute with the White House about evidence seized from a Democratic Congressman's office, according to a front page story in Saturday's New York Times.
Excerpts from the article written by David Johnston and Carl Hulse:
###
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and senior officials and career prosecutors at the Justice Department told associates this week that they were prepared to quit if the White House directed them to relinquish evidence seized in a bitterly disputed search of a House member's office, government officials said Friday.
Mr. Gonzales was joined in raising the possibility of resignation by the deputy attorney general, Paul J. McNulty, the officials said. Mr. Gonzales and Mr. McNulty told associates that they had an obligation to protect evidence in a criminal case and would be unwilling to carry out any White House order to return the material to Congress.
The potential showdown was averted Thursday when President Bush ordered the evidence to be sealed for 45 days to give Congress and the Justice Department a chance to work out a deal.
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Times_Gonzales_senior_officials_were_prepared_0526.html
Ally,
The refrence I made to Isreal was never about condoning them or not condoning them.
Honestly I love people its government that just fails us all so often. Jew, Arab, white European, black African, it does not matter. PEOPLE are the same, no matter where you go, but the ruling structure is always to some extent corruptted. I specified Isreal because their government has become.... dare I say an abomination..AND a perfect example of georgies wet dream.
My whole point is this, Isreal is a 'war state', and is literally being run by 'war profiteers'.
The corruption of it is staggering and obscene. The truth is if every Palestinian decided tommorrow to never suicide against Isreal again, it would not matter because the Mossaud will bomb their own and blame them anyway. By way of deception thou shalt do war.
Now, when trying to put yourself into the mind of a war criminal you have to understand it is almost the same as a junkie. What is the very first thing a junkie will protect even before he secures his own kids? His supply, his source.
Like an addict, war profiteers are no good unless they have a secured and reliable source.
Hence, the mossaud dressing up as Arabs and say bombing allied war ships, for no other reason than to keep the conflict going.
You know, I also find it extremly odd that in the case of george w bush, who is an infamously untreated junkie himself, he went straight for the most notorious poppyfields on earth. And now Iraq is the number one traffiking route for those very poppies. Talk about ensuring your own supply.
But yet even with all he has done, the fact is that our military can not invade Iran, nor can we hold on to Iraq for much longer at all either. Georgie is not stupid... BUT, instead of letting all that stolen oil just slip through his hands he is going to have to find a source that is closer to home. He already would have a back up plan, lest hes caught without what he needs to get high. If a junkie can help it, they will never be without a 'fix'.
There is no way in hell it ever occurred to him to just quit the addiction of it.
Enter Hugo Chavez.
Now, invading Iran, is simply in no way logistically possible without inviting immediate disaster and total exposure. Georgie himself has to understand our presence there grows more and more precarious every damn day. But he still has to get his fix.
But as I said, Iran is anything more than a game of blinksmanship that was totally designed to distract us. If he can NOT get it there, he WILL get it from... Somewhere.
Imagine how easy it would be for georgie right now. One well placed incident in say The Panama Canal, would ASSURE that we would be at war with Chavez within days. And we would take all the oil fields of Mexico, ect, all along the way.
Why would a crackhead go to a source he knows is too hot, when he can just follow a trail of 'free' crack all the way to its source.?
The New York Times | One Man's Constitutional Crisis ...
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/052706Z.shtml
"Republicans and Democrats in the House of Representatives have achieved an almost unprecedented level of bipartisanship in denouncing the FBI's search of a congressman's office." The New York Times ponders, "... where all these concerned constitutionalists have been for the last five years."
3000 people killed in Java - that's alot.
It certainly puts the news in perspective so I'll read the
rest of it later.
Just FYI...
Nevada blast put on hold indefinitely
Residents fear 700 tons of explosives could kick up radiation
From Larry Shaughnessy, CNN
Saturday, May 27, 2006 Posted: 1150 GMT (1950 HKT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The planned detonation of 700 tons of conventional explosives in the Nevada desert next month was postponed indefinitely Friday because of fears over the possible spread of radiation.
The detonation site for the blast, known as "Divine Strake," is at the Nevada Test Site, which is 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The 1,375-square-mile swath of land in southern Nevada is where the United States tested many of its nuclear weapons before President George H.W. Bush signed a testing moratorium in 1992.
The plan was to detonate 1.4 million pounds of fuel oil and fertilizer -- 280 times the amount used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
The prospect has drawn critics, who say the explosion could kick radiation-laced soil into the air, and conspiracists, who say the blast is a front for testing new nuclear weapons.
There is no indication if or when the blast will take place.
The National Nuclear Security Administration, a branch of the Department of Energy that operates the test site, initially gave the go-ahead for the test, saying there is "no radioactively contaminated soil in the vicinity of the detonation site."
The agency said Friday night it would withdraw its "finding of no significant impact" related to the test.
~snip~
Prediction: Dust cloud two miles high
Rep. Jim Matheson of Utah, a Democrat, has long been a critic of the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency's plans for Divine Strake.
"I was greatly concerned, and expressed as much to the director of DTRA," Matheson said. "I advised him to put all the health and safety data out on the table so that people's fears about being once again exposed to radioactive contamination could be addressed.
"I am very pleased to see that these agencies have acted on my advice."
The planners had hoped to dig a huge pit on a hillside, fill it with the explosives and detonate them to see if the blast would destroy an 1,110-foot tunnel directly beneath the pit.
The Pentagon predicted the explosion could send a cloud of dust two miles high into the atmosphere.
The blast was supposed to be an experiment on how better to attack underground targets like the bunkers used by North Korea and Iran to protect their nuclear facilities.
Earlier this month, the blast was pushed from June 2 to June 23 because Native Americans and other groups sued to stop the blast because of environmental concerns.
The Native Americans also claim they are the true owners of the Nevada Test Site land.
The specter of nuclear-laden dust is a sensitive subject for those living downwind of the test range in Nevada and Utah, where generations of people have dealt with health problems blamed on fallout from above-ground nuclear tests in the 1950s.
The word "strake" used in the experiment's name is a nautical term, referring to planking extending along the length of a ship.
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/US/05/26/nevada.bomb/index.html
Karen
Thanks for sharing the display!
I'm was a strugglingart student who decided to train for a day job in a different field. This turned into a career and swallowed up alot of the art (& music). After 30 years, I started to go back to it but economics meant sticking with the day job. Anyway, my whole house is pretty much a statement of irony & you know about the John Kerry room. My workplace is absolutely covered with mementos and memorabilia and comments. Then I look around and notice I've gotten carried away (compared with others) and am kind of in the wrong place. My favorite thing to look at in people's houses is what they have on (even more than in) their refridgerators. When I go to parties, I spend as much time looking at the surroundings as interacting with the people, I think! & I like to treat stores and malls as Museums of Popular Culture (including the anthropological component), like the zoo exhibit of Homo Sapiens.
Memorial Day is a special weekend. My husband has gone to a family reunion in the midwest. Time will be spent at the cemetery - both parents died young and a brother committed suicide. My mother will get my sister out of the mental institution & they will head for the cemetery where my dad is buried. He was a WW2 vet and had Parkinson's. All I have planned is the usual housecleaning, to take a serious look at the schedule for the Film Festival, & to maybe hit a little of the Folklife Festival that's running for 3 days. Thanks for giving it all more meaning.
Dwahzon
That is so scary.
They are absolutely nuts!!!
Noticed on TruthOut that Jason Leopold is supposed to have a report on Monday on Bush & Kenneth Lay. Think that should be taken with a grain of salt, after the "Rove bomb" & we know the MSM won't pick it up anyway. Doesn't mean it's not true though.
Published on Saturday, May 27, 2006 by The Progressive
Impeachment? No. Impalement!
by Will Durst
I don’t know about you guys, but I am so sick and tired of these lying, thieving, holier-than-thou, rightwing, cruel, crude, rude, gauche, coarse, crass, cocky, corrupt, dishonest, debauched, degenerate, dissolute, swaggering, lawyer shooting, bullhorn shouting, infra-structure destroying, buck passing, hysterical, criminal, history defying, finger pointing, puppy stomping, roommate appointing, pretzel choking, collateral damaging, aspersion casting, wedding party bombing, clearcutting, torturing, jobs outsourcing, torture out-sourcing, election fixing, women’s rights eradicating, Medicare cutting, uncouth, spiteful, boorish, vengeful, jingoistic, homophobic, xenophobic, xylophonic, racist, sexist, ageist, fascist, cashist, audaciously stupid, brazenly selfish, lethally ignorant, journalist purchasing, genocide ignoring, corporation kissing, poverty inducing, crooked, coercive, autocratic, primitive, uppity, high-handed, domineering, arrogant, inhuman, inhumane, inbred, inept, insipid, incapable, incompetent, ineffectual, insolent, insincere, know-it-all, snotty, pompous, contemptuous, supercilious, gutless, spineless, shameless, avaricious, noxious, poisonous, imperious, merciless, graceless, tactless, brutish, brutal, Karl Roving, backward thinking, persistent vegetative state grandstanding, nuclear option threatening, evolution denying, irony deprived, consciously depraved, conceited, perverted, peremptory invading, thirty-five day vacation taking, bribe soliciting, hellish, smarty pants, loudmouth, bullying, swell headed, ethics eluding, domestic spying, medical marijuana busting, Halliburtoning, narcissistic, undiplomatic, blustering, malevolent, demonizing, Duke Cunninghamming, hectoring, dry drunk, Muslim baiting, hurricane disregarding, oil company hugging, judge packing, science disputing, faith based advocating, armament selling, nonsense spewing, education ravaging, whiny, insane, unscrupulous, lily livered, greedy (exponential factor fifteen), fraudulent, delusional, CIA outing, redistricting, anybody who disagrees with them slandering, fact twisting, ally alienating, betraying, chickenhawk, sell out, quisling, god and flag waving, scare mongering, Cindy Sheehan libeling, smirking, bastardly, voting machine tampering, sociopathic, cowardly, treasonous, Constitution shredding, oppressive, vulgar, antagonistic, trust funding, nontipping, tyrannizing, peace hating, water and air and ground and media polluting (which is pretty much all the polluting you can get), deadly, traitorous, con man, swindling, pernicious, lethal, illegal, haughty, venomous, virulent, mephitic, egotistic, bloodthirsty, yellowbelly, hypocritical, Oedipal, did I say evil, I’m not sure if I said evil, because I want to make sure I say evil . . . EVIL, cretinous, slime buckets in the Bush Administration that I could just spit.
Impeachment? Hell no. Impalement. Upon the sharp and righteous sword of the people’s justice. Make it a curtain rod. Because it would hurt more.
Yes, political comic, writer, actor, radio talk show host Will Durst received a thesaurus for his birthday, but he didn’t need it.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0527-30.htm
I think rove is cooperating.
I think they are about to throw cheney under the bus to try to save georgie. I have no doubt that was the plan all along.
Posted by: not my president at May 27, 2006 01:06 PM
Many thanks for this. My rant exactly. (But Durst is more precise)
Christy
If Rove turns state's evidence, that would be cool (I mean, to save his own butt). It would also be a nice statement on party loyalty.
Posted by: not my president at May 27, 2006 01:06 PM
Priceless! The word-lover's verbal primal scream....
I suspect Durst, like other writers, may be starved for the opportunity to use positive adjectives to describe our government, politicians, the role of our country in the world.... I'd ask if it could get worse, but I know the answer. Yes, it can. At this second in time, I know that if things don't change very quickly, things will definitely get worse and may not improve even during my lifetime; I really want to be wrong in that thinking. Life observations tell me I'm right, but I really want to be wrong.
I'm old. I was young when John Fitzgerald Kennedy was president, and I lived in the time of the American Camelot when he and Jackie and their young family brought a cultural and artistic renaissance to our country... and I still remember his death and the ensuing week after that in vivid detail. Like most of the rest of the nation, my family was planted in front of the old black and white TV for that entire time. Re-run after re-run of the assassination, the lines of people paying respects in the rotunda, John-John's salute, the funeral march and the horse with the backward-turning boots, watching Jack Ruby kill Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV... and worse to come for the young people my age not long after with Viet Nam.
This country "felt" different to live in when JFK was president. It was just something in the air, so to speak, and there was a vibrant sparkle to the most mundane things. Yes. I know. JFK was just a man, after all, and he had faults. But he and Jackie and their young family had an ease and a grace and a charm that's not been seen in the White House since. Their culture and sophistication didn't have the fake snobbery of previous administrations and the later Reagan years. The Kennedys weren't that far removed from immigrant stock, after all, so when art and culture flourished during the Kennedy years, there was a youthful exuberance in appreciating the arts in many forms, not that old stuffy pseudo-aristocratic snobbery that existed before and after those brief Kennedy years (and certainly none of the Bu$hite anti-cultural disdain for the arts!). Multiple forms of artistic expression were born during the Kennedy years, and their influence can still be felt when one looks for it. I've always thought it was fitting that the Kennedy Center was created in JFK's memory....
The contrast is, quite frankly, the difference between seeing real talent in a child's finger painting project that oozes life and charm and perfect lines of contrast that bring it to life, realizing one must get that kid every available piece of artistic material to work with and teachers who can encourage multiple expressions of that raw talent... and looking at a badly executed painting by a talent-less adult painter who has no ability, whose brush strokes may be flawless, but there's no charm in the painting, and it looks flat and lifeless and crude....
I'm going nuts sifting through hundreds of film descriptions - so many films, so little time!! Over the next 3 weeks, these are some of the offerings at the Seattle Film Festival: There are 62 documentary offerings, of which I have excerpted a selection.
Al Franken: God Spoke (USA)
Al Franken’s transformation from Saturday Night Live performer to leading voice of Air America, the nation’s only left-wing talk radio network, is explored in this hilarious, engrossing documentary, featuring such beltway big mouths as Michael Medved, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Michael Moore
American Blackout (USA)
Filmmaker Ian Inaba uses the scandalous treatment of African American votes in the 2000 presidential election as a jumping off point for an exploration of how black political power has been systematically squelched in America.
Beyond Hatred (France)
After their gay son is murdered by a gang of skinheads, a close-knit French family tries to move toward understanding and even forgiveness in this devastating documentary.
Black Gold (UK)
From some of the most impoverished farms of an Ethiopian coffee growers' co-operative to the global marketplace, Black Gold scrutinizes the Fair Trade Coffee movement with an even hand and an eye for the facts.
Case of the Grinning Cat (France)
Chronicles the absurd, enlightening details within the unpredictable and passionate world of French political protest
The Century of the Self (UK)
Follows the dissemination of Sigmund Freud’s influential theories of man’s unconscious drives into the larger world where advertisers, self-help gurus and even politicians get ahead by catering to the selfish demands of the id
The Chances of the World Changing (USA)
Writer Richard Ogust must move out of the Manhattan penthouse he shares with 1,200 turtles. Thirty truckloads later, he’s relocated his turtles to a warehouse in New Jersey while he sleeps in a nearby cornfield, dreaming of building an institute for extinct species
Clear Cut: The Story of Philomath, Oregon (USA)
40 years ago, a lumber baron in Philomath, Oregon created a scholarship to provide all of the town’s high school graduates with college tuition. As the area’s high schools become more liberal, the scholarship’s conservative administrators threaten to withdraw funding.
Crossing the Bridge - The Sound of Istanbul (Germany)
Filmmaker Fatih Akin (Head-On) and musician Alexander Hacke explore the diverse musical landscape of Istanbul, finding everything from traditional Turkish music to modern hip hop and electronic music.
Dear Pyongyang (Japan)
Yang Yonghi has a volatile relationship with her parents, steadfast members of a diminishing, proudly pro-Communist faction of Koreans living in Japan.
A Difficult Case (Scotland)
The fascinating account of a woman whose auditory hallucinations helped lead to her own diagnosis
The Giant Buddhas (Switzerland)
In 1991, the Taliban destroyed a pair of legendary Afghanistan statues. Stemming from that somber premise, Christian Frei’s documentary delves down some surprising avenue in its ruminations on terrorism and intolerance
Gitmo: The New Rules of War (Sweden)
Following the recent unexplained detention of one of their countrymen, a pair of Swedish filmmakers visits the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay.
Heavy Metal Jr. (Scotland)
Follow “Hatred,” a heavy metal band from Scotland whose average age is 11, as they prepare for their first public gig....
How Little We Know of Our Neighbours (UK)
A revelatory history/analysis of the role of public photography and surveillance, How Little We Know of Our Neighbours takes as its primary subject the Mass Observation Movement
Huldufólk 102 (USA)
Beyond the quiet cities and towns of Iceland lies an invisible nation of mystical “hidden folk” who reveal themselves only to those who can “see beyond their stomachs.”
I for India (UK)
After moving to England in 1965, Yash Pal Suri and his family in India began communicating with each other via super-8 home movies and reel-to-reel audio recordings.
In a Single Bound (USA)
The long and colorful (and occasionally sordid) history of Superman, as told by the men who drew him.
Into Great Silence (Germany)
For this up-close look at the reclusive Carthusian Order of Monks, director Philip Gröning waited nearly two decades for permission to film the Order at their French Alps monastery,
Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple (USA)
Press images of the horrific 1978 mass suicide of 913 Temple members through poisoned Kool-Aid remain indelibly seared into our collective consciousness.
King Leopold’s Ghost (USA)
This riveting exploration of the roots of colonial exploitation shows the ways in which King Leopold II of Belgium plundered the Congo in the 1800s, putting in place a system of slavery and tyranny that has shaped not just the Congo but the entire continent
Leonard Cohen I’m Your Man (USA)
A treat for fans and newcomers alike, I’M YOUR MAN is both an intimate portrait of the great poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen and a moving concert film.
A Lion in the House (USA)
Six years in the making, this extraordinary documentary follows five patients from Cincinnati’s pediatric cancer ward as they and their families cope, adapt and ultimately come to terms with their illness.
Maquilapolis - City Of Factories (USA)
A searing anti-globalization documentary about the plight of the MAQUILADORAS—female workers in Tijiana’s multinational-owned assembly plants who are forced to deal with the hardships of environmental toxins, the abuse of labor rights, housing problems and women’s rights issues
Maria Bethânia: Music is Perfume (Switzerland)
An engaging portrait of Brazil’s feminist icon and first lady of song as she gracefully transitions from rock chick to mature chanteuse.
Maxed Out (USA)
At a time when both household and national debt is at an all-time high, MAXED OUT sheds light on the escalating dilemma of America’s “just charge it” attitude.
Mom’s Apple Pie: The Heart of the Lesbian Mother’s Custody Movement (USA)
Looks at Seattle-based Lesbian Mothers Defence Fund, founded in the early 1970s as a resource for mothers whose children were being legally removed from their care based solely on the fact that they were lesbians.
...More Than 1000 Words (Germany)
Award-winning Israeli photojournalist Ziv Koren thrives on covering the occupied territories.
My Country, My Country (USA)
Counting up to the days before the 2005 Iraqi elections, the film paints an intimate portrait of the day-to-day life of Iraqis, focusing on the life of an Iraqi doctor.
The Play (Turkey)
In a remote Turkish village, nine peasant women put on a play based on their own histories.
Playing the News (USA)
Can a video game called KUMA WAR be a new way to engage people on current events, or is it an unethical marketing gimmick that seeks to profit from the Iraq war?
The Power of Nightmares; The Rise of the Politics of Fear (UK)
One of the most provocative political films of the past decade, Emerging Master Adam Curtis’ film essay traces the ideological basis of the “politics of fear” that dominates contemporary government
The Refugee All Stars (Guinea)
In the wake of a violent civil war in Sierra Leone, thousands fled to the neighboring Republic of Guinea. THE REFUGEE ALL STARS is the remarkable story of a group of musicians
Screaming Masterpieces (Iceland)
Why has Iceland produced so much imaginative music? This ravishingly-shot documentary combines visual and sonic treats
Sentenced Home (USA)
After settling in Seattle in the ’80s, three Cambodian refugees were drawn into gang life and ultimately ended up in jail. In the wake of 9/11, Cambodia was pressured to change their policy against accepting deportees, so now these Cambodian Americans are faced with leaving their families and return
Sketches of Frank Gehry (USA)
An intimate portrait of architect Frank Gehry by his longtime friend Sydney Pollack, SKETCHES traces the renowned architect’s life and creative struggles
Small Town Gay Bar (USA)
In the Deep South, where homosexuals are often neither welcome nor tolerated, small communities have sprung up to form the only gay-friendly environments around.
Smiling in a Warzone (Denmark)
A young Danish idealist fires up her antique plane and heads to Afghanistan after reading about an Afghan girl’s desire to become a pilot
This Film is Not Yet Rated (USA)
Investigates the mysterious ratings board of the Motion Picture Association of America, asking why they feel the need to operate in secret, why big studios receive preferential treatment, why violence is judged less harshly than sex
The Trials of Darryl Hunt (USA)
In 1984, a black North Carolinian teenager was convicted of life in prison for the murder of a young white woman. What transpired over the next 19 years graphically illustrates the holes in the American Justice system.
Who Killed the Electric Car? (USA)
Launched in 1997, the EV-1 was one of the most efficient cars ever built. It ran on electricity, produced no emissions and required little maintenance. Six years later the line was scrapped. What happened?
Wordplay (USA)
THE NEW YORK TIMES’ crossword puzzle has become an American institution and a ritual for millions. Celebrity solvers (including Bill Clinton and Jon Stewart)
The World According to Sesame Street (USA)
The innovative children’s show SESAME STREET has long reached beyond the boundaries of our nation. This new documentary shows the challenges in bringing it to such troubled areas as Bangladesh, Kosovo and South Africa,
Posted by: Christy at May 27, 2006 01:06 PM
You're right. But I don't think they can save Georgie.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/052706Z.shtml
Posted by: DiAnne at May 27, 2006 10:44 AM
The supreme irony is: the FBI had a legal and lawful search warrant to go into congressman's office. Think it was reported on PBS news last night that the people who executed the warrant were on the phone with judges the entire time to make sure the only files/papers they took pertained to the bribery investigation (per the search warrant), that no other papers were taken.
So. Okay. What's the problem with congressional members or the administration then? Are they trying to forestall a search warrant for Hastert's office now that he's implicated in the Abramoff investigation? Are they trying to forestall an investigation into presidential and vice-presidential offices in the investigation involving who leaked Plame's name (or any of the other illegal activities we can at least guess have happened by people in the current administration)? Seems like they're crying over spilled milk. The administration wants it to be just fine to spy on and search the homes and offices of everyone else, no matter what, even if there is no criminal activity involved, let alone real criminal investigations when citizens would fully approve, but now they have a problem when the same rules of evidence and the same laws that apply to everyone else are applied to the offices of senators and representatives... or presidents and vice-presidents... or judges?!?!?
Nah-uh. That hypocrisy won't float.
They can't have it both ways, and they can't make themselves exempt from the laws they themselves have passed as being legal (especially if they are doing criminal things).... No president or legislator or judge is above the laws of this nation. Their oaths of office do not exempt them from laws that apply to everyone in this nation.
If they can't abide by the laws they've passed because they just can't resist the money involved with PAC bribery, they need to get out of politics and find a new occupation....
And if Congress tries to pass a law in the middle of the night that's slipped into a last minute "emergency" spending bill that makes them exempt from the law, there needs to be a howl of indignation arising from the people of this land.... and those politicians need to be voted out of office, too, if they can't be forced to resign.
It's a shame the fellow whose offices were searched labeled himself a Democrat, but if he is guilty (it's difficult to argue with finding cold cash in his freezer), I'm so tired of politicians acting like the neoCon criminal administration that I advocate also getting rid of Democrats who have the same moral values and criminal mindset of The Cretin, the Vice Cretin, and their Criminal Cabal....
Bush to Army cadets: The war will end on your watch
Saturday, May 27, 2006; Posted: 1:08 p.m. EDT
WEST POINT, New York (AP) -- President Bush, likening the war against Islamic radicals to the Cold War threat of communism, told U.S. Military Academy graduates on Saturday that America's safety depends on an aggressive push for democracy, especially in the Middle East.
The president took a subtle jab at the nuclear ambitions of Iran and the lack of democratic reform in Egypt. He chided previous U.S. administrations, saying that decades of excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make America safer.
"This is only the beginning," Bush said. "The message has spread from Damascus to Tehran that the future belongs to freedom, and we will not rest until the promise of liberty reaches every people in every nation."
more from the flamethrowing mongerfokker...
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/05/27/bush.westpoint.ap/index.html
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Kerry_still_fighting_Swiftboat_Veterans_about_0527.html
Kerry Pressing Swiftboat Case, Long After Loss
John Kerry starts by showing the entry in a log he kept from 1969: "Feb 12: 0800 run to Cambodia."
Kerry's New Evidence
He moves on to the photographs: his boat leaving the base at Ha Tien, Vietnam; the harbor; the mountains fading frame by frame as the boat heads north; the special operations team the boat was ferrying across the border; the men reading maps and setting off flares.
"They gave me a hat," Mr. Kerry says. "I have the hat to this day," he declares, rising to pull it from his briefcase. "I have the hat."
Three decades after the Vietnam War and nearly two years after Mr. Kerry's failed presidential bid, most Americans have probably forgotten why it ever mattered whether he went to Cambodia or that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth accused him of making it all up, saying he was dishonest and lacked patriotism.
But among those who were on the front lines of the 2004 campaign, the battle over Mr. Kerry's wartime service continues, out of the limelight but in some ways more heatedly — because unlike then, Mr. Kerry has fully engaged in the fight. Only those on Mr. Kerry's side, however, have gathered new evidence to support their case.
The Swift boat group continues to spend money on Washington consultants, according to public records, and last fall it gave $100,000 to a group that promptly sued Mr. Kerry, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, for allegedly interfering with the release of a film that was critical of him.
Some of the principals behind the Swift boat group continue to press their claims. John O'Neill, the co-author of the group's best-selling manifesto, "Unfit for Command," criticizes Mr. Kerry on television talk shows and solicits money for conservative causes and candidates. In a South Carolina newspaper, William Schachte recently reprised his allegation that he was aboard the small skimmer where Mr. Kerry received the injury that led to his first Purple Heart, and that Mr. Kerry actually wounded himself.
Swift boat message boards and anti-Kerry Web sites still boil with accusations that Mr. Kerry fabricated the military reports that led to his military decorations.
Mr. Kerry, accused even by Democrats of failing to respond to the charges during the campaign, is now fighting back hard.
"They lied and lied and lied about everything," Mr. Kerry says in an interview in his Senate office. "How many lies do you get to tell before someone calls you a liar? How many times can you be exposed in America today?"
His supporters are compiling a dossier that they say will expose every one of the Swift boat group's charges as a lie and put to rest any question about Mr. Kerry's valor in combat. While it would be easy to see this as part of Mr. Kerry's exploration of another presidential run, his friends say the Swift boat charges struck at an experience so central to his identity that he would want to correct the record even if he were retiring from public life.
Mr. Kerry portrays himself as a wary participant in his own defense, insisting in the two-hour interview that he does not want to dwell on the accusations or the mistakes of his 2004 campaign. "I'm moving on," he says several times.
But he can also barely resist prosecuting a case against the group that his friends now refer to as "the bad guys." "Bill Schachte was not on that skimmer," Mr. Kerry says firmly. "He was not on that skimmer. It is a lie to suggest that he was out there on that skimmer."
(snip)
Mr. O'Neill said he "would be thrilled to look at anything he wants to send." Still, he added, "I'm sorry he never apologized for his 1971 speech," referring to Mr. Kerry's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in which he told other soldiers' accounts of ravaging Vietnamese villages and citizens. "I think it would have been a very positive thing to do in terms of the many thousands of people who survived Vietnam and felt that was very hurtful."
(Interjection by me:
EXCUSE ME - I THINK THE ATROCITIES WERE THE POINT!!!!!!!!!!!!)
(snip)
The veterans group, led by Mr. O'Neill, a former Swift boat commander who was recruited by the Nixon administration to debate Mr. Kerry on "The Dick Cavett Show" in 1971, began its campaign in early 2004 by criticizing Mr. Kerry's protests against the Vietnam War. But backed by Republican donors and consultants, they soon shifted to attack his greatest strength — his record as a military hero in a campaign against a president who never went to war.
Naval records and accounts from other sailors contradicted almost every claim they made, and some members of the group who had earlier praised Mr. Kerry's heroism contradicted themselves.
Still, the charges stuck. At a triumphant gathering of veterans in Fort Worth after the election, Mr. O'Neill was introduced as the man who "torpedoed" Mr. Kerry's campaign; the Swift boat group spent more than $130,000 for a "Mission Accomplished" celebration at Disney World. The president's brother, Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, sent a letter thanking the "Swifties" for "their willingness to stand up to John Kerry." Even people within the Kerry campaign believed that the attacks had cost their candidate the presidency.
(Interjection: IS ANYONE ELSE MAD?!!!!!!)
Some of Mr. Kerry's friends and former Swift boat crew members made advertisements during the race to try to shoot down the group's charges. But the campaign declined to air them widely because some strategists said that directly challenging the charges would legitimize them.
They approached Mr. Kerry after the election with the idea of setting the record straight.
(snip)
Mr. Kerry's researcher, using Vietnam-era military maps and spot reports from the naval archives showing coordinates for his boat, traced his path from Ha Tien toward Cambodia on a mission that records say was to insert Navy Seals.
Mr. Kerry's supporters have also frozen frames from his amateur films of his time in Vietnam and have retrieved letters and military citations for other sailors to support his version of how he won the Silver Star — rebutting the Swift boat group's most explosive charge, that he shot an unarmed teenager who was fleeing his fire.
Another photograph provides evidence for Mr. Kerry's version of how he won the Bronze Star. And original reports pulled from the naval archives contradict the charge that he drafted his own accounts of various incidents — which left room, the Swift boat group had argued, to embellish them.
Mr. Kerry's defenders have received help from unlikely sources, including some who were originally aligned with the Swift boat group but later objected to its accusations against Mr. Kerry. One of them, Steve Hayes, was an early member of the group. A former sailor, he was a longtime friend and employee of William Franke, one of the group's founders, and he supported the push to have Mr. Kerry release his military files. But Mr. Hayes came to believe that the group was twisting Mr. Kerry's record.
"The mantra was just 'We want to set the record straight,' " Mr. Hayes said this month. "It became clear to me that it was morphing from an organization to set the record straight into a highly political vendetta. They knew it was not the truth."
Mr. Hayes broke with the group, ending a 35-year friendship with Mr. Franke, and voted for Mr. Kerry. He has provided a long interview to Mr. Kerry's supporters, backing their version of the incident for which Mr. Kerry received the Bronze Star.
(snip)
He was caught off guard, he says; he had been prepared to defend his antiwar activism, but he did not believe that anyone would challenge the facts behind his military awards. "We should have put more money behind it," Mr. Kerry says now. "I take responsibility for it; it was my mistake. They spent something like $30 million, and we didn't. That's just a terrible imbalance when somebody's lying about you."
My Lai
Photos Indicate Civilians Slain Execution-Style
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/052706A.shtml
Photographs taken by a Marine intelligence team have convinced investigators that a Marine unit killed as many as 24 unarmed Iraqis, some of them "execution-style," in the insurgent stronghold of Haditha after a roadside bomb killed an American in November, officials close to the investigation said Friday.
Posted by: monkey at May 27, 2006 04:28 PM
Snark Warning....
Just what we needed, eh? More warmongering and hate-filled-us-vs.-them-paranoid-xenophobic rhethoric to foster more bandwagon patriotism to enable cretin-types to attack anti-war peaceniks as unpatriotic people who don't support the military....
Well, guess what? The military personnel who carry guns kill people; that's what they're trained to do. Killing people is not "heroic." It takes very little effort to pull a trigger. Killing people to "spread freedom" (read: killing innocent people while invading and occuping an innocent country which just happens to have a lot of oil) is not my idea of "heroism." Attacking a country for no good reason whatsoever just 'cuz the paranoid "leader" of this country thinks the other country has a leader who might possibly at some point in the remote future may mysteriously be a threat for some imaginary reason known only to the paranoid "leader" of this country is not a just or 'heroic' reason to kill innocent people while invading or occupying that country.
It's a war crime.
Our congressional members participate in that war crime by enabling the "leader" of this country to order military personnel to invade an innocent country when they pass all those "emergency" spending bills that finance the illegal orders of the "leader" of this country.
I think senators and representatives do not understand that enabling war crimes makes them culpable....
Snark over....
John Kerry has a blog entry (as well as a response in the comments to earlier comments) on Brett Kavanaugh's appointment at The Democratic Daily blog:
http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=3127
Posted by: monkey at May 27, 2006 04:28 PM
Doesn't he realize that he's done more to destroy Americans' freedoms than those Muslims could ever hope to do on their own?
Ally in San Francisco
P.S. Met Fe today - she was wonderful!
Ally
Cool! She is!
Thanks Ron
I posted that on here yesterday but will go to look.
Did you see also what I posted on here this morning about
his case against the Swifties? You guys probably have
that too, as purveyors of all things Kerry.
President Bush thinks God told him to Bomb Iraq. The flock of Sheep that blindly follow him support that ideal, eager to bring on armageddon.
Did anyone really think this would not spiral into terrible tragedys?
It sickens me to see politicians talk about iraq as if it were a vase in a goods store;" you break it you buy it"
I imagine their reaction would be far different if their brother had his body burned by phosphorus bombs, their mother and father died from bomblets dropped from B52's, or were just shot to death by US Marines, numbed by War, death, and fighting an Immoral war for a delusional commander in chief.
I am afraid the worst is yet to come, what Bush started will take decades to play out.
Wow - had to go into the archives but ..
This is what democracy looks like .. on the internet!
John Kerry: (commenting amongst responses to his own post)
What can you do specifically? Other than get out your wallet and contribute whatever you can, volunteer on a race - now. Don’t wait. Things are happening now. Get involved in beating Rick Santorum and Lincoln Chafee - bottom line, they’re very different Republicans but they both stand in our way. And let me make a specific personal pitch for the vet candidates running for Congress. I’ve sat down with almost all these people. They mean everything to me. I know they can change the debate on Iraq, and I’m going to be out there for them in a big way helping them fight back when the inevitable Swift Boat style attacks surface. But help them. Some of them won tough primaries, and it doesn’t matter to me whether you backed them then or not — it’s ok if you had your own candidate then, these veterans need your support now. You will be able to follow the work we’re doing for them at johnkerry.com. Ok — back to work. Keep questions and thoughts coming and I’ll check back in when I can. JK
Ira Says: (that's our Ira)
Thanks Senator for the input. I spent a month in Denver helping you and Senator Salazar bus thousands of volunteers from Texas, Kansas, Utah and Missouri who left their families and businesses to block walk, phone bank and wave signs by their capitol, Mile High Stadium and on the Aurora Campus in Denver. Your Hispanic state co-ordinator told me that she was swamped in Pueblo and Colorado Springs with a late cash inflow of 2 million dollars targeted to conservative Hispanic voters. We could have and should have won Colorado in ‘04, came extremely close (3.5%) and I plan on returning in ‘08 but expect an all out assault on the Rocky Mountain states by you in ‘08, a place where Democrats can win as shown by Senator Salazar.
----Isn't that amazing?! Conservatives DO NOT have free speech interchanges like that with their constituents, unless you think you can count satellite broadcasts to exurban megazombie
"religious" venues!!
Subject: Re: Swift Boaters - Relentless liars
I am telling you since election 2004, these evil Republicans and it's cronies will not stop attacking us. The question now is; whether we will keep stand up fight back or we will let ourself down ?
Most people forget what they and the media treat us (Ds) from Bill Clinton, Max Cleland, Al Gore, Paul Wellstone , John Kerry .etc.,BUT not me !
I said this in 2 occassion when met with John and Teresa Kerry , Dec.05 in Boston and March this year in Westin Hotel Seattle. I am a TRUE believer and I believe one day the TRUTH will speak itself, it just a matter of when. Swift Boaters are a bunch of crooks that don't have emphaty at all, it orchestrated by Karl Rove and the gank (included Tom De Lay and Kenneth "Boy" Lay; and they shameless keep saying that God wants them to do this!! ).
Have a long Memorial weekend !
"My fellow Americans, ask not what country can do for you instead ask what you can do for your country" John F. Kennedy 1964.
"The new imperialists will not rest until governments that ape our worldview are implanted throughout the region, breathtakingly ambitious undertaking, smacking of hubris in the extreme.And with the costs to our military, our treasury and our international understanding, we will be forced to learn whether our republican roots and traditions can accomodate this Administration's imperial ambitions. It may be a bitter lesson". Ambassador Joe Wilson, March,2003
"Dissent is the biggest form of patriotism"
Thomas Jefferson
"The act of war is the the last option of a democracy, taken when there is a grave threat to our national security.For this reason, questioning the selective use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq is neither idle sniping nor "revisionist history"
George W. Bush when asked by reporter few days before US attacks Iraq March 2003.
Remember the Dubai port controversy?
Check out the video.
http://realestate.theemiratesnetwork.com/developments/dubai/world_islands.php
Isn't this where Jacko is buying an island?
& friends in France saw a documentary on The World & saw that the artificial islands were built by slave labor.
Eeeeeoowwww.... I've been creeped out.....
Doing research overnight, had TV on PBS, a re-run of someone reading Goebbels diary and film footage of Nazi Germany was on....
One of the phrases straight out of Goebbels' diary is "stay the course."
That creepy, shivery, icky feeling running up and down my spine won't go away since I heard that....
Cheney aide is screening legislation
Adviser seeks to protect Bush power
By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | May 28, 2006
WASHINGTON -- The office of Vice President Dick Cheney routinely reviews pieces of legislation before they reach the president's desk, searching for provisions that Cheney believes would infringe on presidential power, according to former White House and Justice Department officials.
Front page story in today's BOSTON GLOBE
The officials said Cheney's legal adviser and chief of staff, David Addington , is the Bush a dministration's leading architect of the ``signing statements" the president has appended to more than 750 laws. The statements assert the president's right to ignore the laws because they conflict with his interpretation of the Constitution.
For rest of article, see:http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/05/28/cheney_aide_is_screening_legislation/
Nonnyo,
That is an icky wierding-out sort of feeling.
mbk...it's good to see some news attention on that. The neocons never made any bones about the fact that they believe in unlimited pResidential power, unless it's a democrat of course!
NonnyO
Goebbels used "stay the course"?
Bush Administration Seeks to Block Suits on Spying
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/052806Z.shtml
The Bush administration has asked federal judges in New York and Michigan to dismiss two lawsuits filed over the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program, saying litigating them would jeopardize state secrets.