I read George Bush's final speech. One thing certainly hasn't changed. It is still September 11, 2001 where he is. It apparently always will be. He knows a lot more about September 11, 2001 than he is willing to share, but he still holds on to it as the today we are all supposed to stay in. He still says that acts of terrorism against America are the most threatening thing before us. I guess that means that he doesn't think climate change and peak oil are threatening. Or, he is still denying that they exist. That is another thing that hasn't changed, George Bush is more than happy to lie to the public. I really like the lie of his contrasting the terrorist as willing to condemn women to inferiority and kill innocents while his America is for freedom and justice. I guess the million women and children he has engineered the death of in Iraq are somehow not supposed to count anywhere. What about all the women in America who make less than 3/4ths of what an American man makes for the same job, and less than half if you include single mothers? That is not oppression? Or how about the lie that Iraq was an enemy of America? Weird considering that we were buying oil from them hand over fist until the first day of the Gulf war, that we installed Sadam as dictator to insure that oil supply. Bush says that we are the land of freedom and dignity, but he must be including warrantless wiretapping of citizens not even suspected of crimes and torture of people held without charges by government employees.
I could go on, but the main thing that the speech should provide is some backbone to those who are actively working to prosecute the traitor, our first turncoat president and vice president as well as their co-conspirators. If we want to look like America to the rest of the world again, we have to make it clear that law breakers are not allowed to walk this country free.
So we get a feint in the direction of closing the American Gulag. Obama is raising the flag saying he is planning to close it "the first day". Like most basketball players, this is a good looking move. Until you notice that he is really saying that he is going to turn it over to the torturers to decide exactly when and how they will close it. That means that it will never be closed. The fake trials will go on, the torture will go on, the illegal detentions will go on. We need to make some effort to communicate with Obama that what we were talking about is closing it. Now. There is no need for a study. We know it is illegal already. There is no need for another kangaroo trial. These guys need to either go directly to US jails in Kansas, where they can be charged like criminals, or they need to go directly back to places where we know they won't be tortured or murdered. After all, our military and the CIA know for sure where all the places are that you can outsource torture already. We don't send them back to any of those places.
Here is a link to a site that will let you send a letter asking for a simple closure plan, not from the torturers, but from people as horrified by our lawlessness as we all are.
http://action.aclu.org/site/R?i=OngZ6jq38wT6K0kpaXe4TQ..
It is wonderful that Amtrak is trying to help move people into and out of Washington for the inaguration. I have heard that lots of people have given up going because the other means of transportation are already sold out. So this effort on the part of our passenger rail is to be appreciated. But look at all the implied inadequate investments that we have been making over the years to make our passengers have to follow all the regulations below. It is a shame on America. And since this is a citizen owned railroad, it is a shame on everyone. We should try to improve the passenger rail enough that next time, in 2012, when we are coming to hear Obama's second inagural speach, these rules are laughably out of date.
January 20 Inauguration Day Travel and Security
Because of the large crowds expected, use of Washington Union Station will be limited to Amtrak, MARC and VRE passengers. Due to extraordinary security measures associated with inaugural events, as of early afternoon the food court and most retail shops in Washington Union Station will be closed. Please be mindful of the following:
Heightened front-line and behind-the-scenes security measures will be taken in stations and aboard trains, and may include:
Passengers with disabilities and/or special needs should specifically request assistance when making reservations. In addition, please notify your conductor of any special needs.
Volunteers wearing high-visibility vests will also be on hand at Washington Union Station to assist you.
The justice department is supposed to be the law enforcement part of the executive branch. For the past eight years, the justice department has functioned as the law breaking sanctioning part of the executive branch. In every way, the department has been degraded to a place where simple minded political flunkies have okayed every illegal act of the Bush administration. Now the Replutocrats are preparing to fight in the senate against Eric Holder to become the new attorney general. Aparently their brain trustee, Karl Rove, is planning to orchestrate this. Karl is especially interested because he hopes that this circus will put some legs under the racist agenda of the Replutocrats again. The beginning of a democratic society is based directly on the rule of laws instead of the rule of men. It is a little strange that we have to insist on this idea, but don't forget that we have been torturing people at government expense for the last eight years as well. That is also a Karl Rove program. Below there is a link where you can generate mail in support of confirming Eric Holder. Please go and do it today.
https://secure.pfaw.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=Confirm_Holder
At least part of the damage that the Bush administration has done has come from executive directed omissions to enforce legislative acts. Things like the signing statements, weird supreme court decisions handed down by politicalized right wing justices and politicalization of the justice department have resulted in many laws on the books being watered down or ignored. Tomorrow, the house of representatives will take up legislation to strengthen and enforce the fair pay legislations, which will belatedly attempt to insure the right to sue for equal pay for equal work. It is about time that we started trying to enter the latter half of the 20th century on this. It is essentially spelled out in the constitution. Now is a good time to start enforcing the basic fairness laws of the land. Here is a link to a place where you can mail your congressperson's email box.
http://action.aclu.org/site/R?i=fRYREUsmP1m91MKSbMTUZA..
The balloting on the ideas and solutions for the Obama Biden administration goes on. It is nice to see some democracy working. However, there are some issues that are probably never going to win a majority vote in this country, but are still worth our discussing. One of these issues concerns the protection of our yourn people's access to accurate information. I know that the constitutional defenders and the get FISA right folks don't care about people below voting age. Their agendas are bigger and more adult. But the congress should take some time while trying to untangle the mess that Bush has made with information about reproduction. Gagging teachers and programs that offer clear information about how to prevent pregnancy in favor of forcing only ineffective abstinance only programs had lead us to the place where one fourth of the young people suffer from sexually transmitted infections. There should be an official statement that we believe everyone should know and have access to effective methods to plan and choose when they decide to reproduce. Here is a site that is supporting this through some email campaign and videos. I know, the constitutional defenders are really obsessed with religious, so they may not like this. And this doens't have anything to do with Jon's agenda either. But it is worth paying attention to.
http://prochoiceamerica.org/
I know that most of this goes unread, and that the Constitution Defenders are much more interested in arguing about religion than doing anything direct, but if you see this, go to the web site. This guy has taken some direct action against the oil companies who are trying to rob the public lands. I guess there isn't any constitutional block on robbery. Bush certainly was never able to find one. He needs our support. There is no religious content on his site either, so even the one of two constitutional defenders who are always waiting to pounce will be able to go.
http://www.bidder70.org/
Weird reading experience this. The article is an excellent presentation about how useless torture has turned out to be in the bespoke state terrorism that has been the Bush administration. Well worth the read, but it is embedded in so many distracting pictures of women and their clothes or lack thereof that Vanity Fair makes its business on. Torture doesn't produce any good information. And it degrades its practicioners and government officials who sanction it, praise it. Like George Bush and Dick Cheney.
I don't know if this is a sort of self parody going back to pilgrim's progress. It does have a nice complete recursive sense to it of the pilgrim suffering at seeing the vanity fair and vanity eventually demonstrating that the suffering was empty.
http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2008/12/torture200812
George Bush is over in Iraq again today. This is the country that he lied to us about and started an executive branch war against, even though none of them had ever done us any harm. In this video a person who will soon be executed outside the building, threw his shoes at George Bush and called him a dog. These are pretty bold actions, but not so out of line when you consider that George Bush, using our money, has reduced Iraq to a chaotic death zone and set up a puppet state. Hopefully more people, perhaps even people here in the US, will begin to show their contempt for George Bush more openly. Of course the people already have in the past election, but we have been let down by our congress in not impeaching him and having him confined to a federal lock up for the rest of his miserable life.
http://www.dlisted.com/node/29748
I am alive to the concept that this community is supposed to be about the constitution, and will try to keep that in the posts. And I don't know that we can make a direct constitutional argument about torture. Maybe it is an unreasonable search. Maybe it is sort of covered by the 9th amendment that talks to the general idea that people reserve rights that can't be listed, can't be counted, but are still reserved to them. I know that we have violated that during the last eight years, and have had the president himself say that torture is fine with him. He has had little torture scripting meetings right there in the White house where high members of his administration choreographed torture sessions. He has put people on the Federal payroll through training courses in torture, and then paid their wages while they were torturing people. All that said, I think we have to insist on Obama banning torture from everything and everywhere. It is something that George Bush decided on his own, by executive order. And I think Obama should reverse that order, and then issue some explicite thing that says we don't torture people, and we imprison people who do. I know that the religious among you will object. "What about the Inquisition?" "What about the witches?" and so on. But I don't thing a secular state like the US is supposed to be looking for anything that torture helps shed light on. Here is a place where you can sign a petition asking the same thing.
http://action.humanrightsfirst.org/campaign/etn_obama/85k6uxs9ze5536k?
You may as well know that this charity appeal really touched Nancy Pelosi's heart, and she decided to sign you and your children up to sponsor thousands of these needy. It is apparently going to be made final today. You could sign up for one or two yourself, if you felt so moved. Don't forget, these are George Bush and Hank Paulson's favorite charity (with your money) as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDC0qcf0kzE
I heard some political consultants and some people in the fund raising business talking on the radio today. They were doing analysis for the last campaign. The historic one that elected Obama. First they discussed what a long shot it was, that this happened. Most of the things they mentioned, like the powerful Clinton Machine, Obama's relatively nonpartisan approach, the fact that though the Democrats have been working on a 50 state strategy they didn't really have any presence in lots of the states, several that Obama managed to win. Then one of them said a striking thing. He said that Obama's intranet fund raising was dominated by smaller contirbutors than is usual, and that many of them kept on giving and giving all during the campaign. And, that many of not all of them were people who had not contributed to a campaign or party before. That is where the three quarters of a billion dollars came from. And, this fundraising method and audience had managed to raise more money than the Replutocrats and the Democrats combined had raised in this election. So I began to wonder if this isn't the time to start a new political party? One that didn't have a stake in the civil war, or a hand in bringing on the depression, or make compromises with the corrupt Bush administration. Wouldn't it be nice to take off all these old ill fitting Democrat suits, suits that I have worn gladly for 45 years I will add, and slip into something a little more comfortable, less tainted with the imperial wars, less in bed with the lobby, less militaristic, less doctrinairaly capitalist?
Just a thought.
Apparently, the posts you make to your blog don't work the way they used to. Once, when you posted something to this blog and also posted it to other group blogs, your posting and any comments and so on would come to you by email from the summary mailed from this site and the people who were reading and commenting in the other group. That doesn't work anymore. There are no comments recorded, and nothing comes out of the digests that logically should cover this. However, people are still reading this site. And several groups that I used to read are going on and publishing digests somehow, but using email exclusively. And in those digests we see other people commenting on the listserve.
For example, yesterday I posted a link to a lot of Bush's co-conspiritors with a petition to try and stop Bush from pardoning them preemptivly. One person commented that he had looked up all but three of them and had found that all of them listed themselves as "Christian". And another guy commented that if these Bush guys look creepy to you, you should look at Obama's picks so far. Now on the first point, I think that it is not supposed to matter what religion a public official claims to follow. This is supposed to be a secular state here in America. Who cares what religion a government offical practices? I think one of the main problems we have from Bush is that he violates the establishment clause of the constitution all the time. And on the second point I pretty much like the people that Obama has selected. I wish Bill Richardson was going to be Secretary of State because he has actually shown himself to be capable of that roll. But I am sure he will be fine as commerce. And I think Hillary Clinton is really smart and accomplished and can grow into the role she has been selected for. So I suspect that the guy who was complaining about Obama's picks has some other agenda.
Part of my reason for writing this is so that people who are confused about what it happening during this transition to this great organizing site now that we don't have to be raising money all the time. It still functions, and it still gets visits. But the down stream functions are all turned off. Just so you know.
If you want to see something both scary and sickening, follow the link below. There are pictures of the rogue's gallery of the Bush administration. A thick brew of scoundrals and people who place no value on civilization or human life. These are the people that George Bush has conspired with to subvert the constitution. We all need to visit these pictures so we burn the felon's faces into our memory and sign the petition to let George Bush know that we do not want him to grant preemptive pardons to his co-conspiritors.
http://action.aclu.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Pardon_gallery
