i've made up my mind

i want al gore to be our next president (AGAIN)

Bob Herbert: The Passion of Al Gore

Al Gore is earnestly talking about the long-term implications of the energy and climate crises, and how the Arctic ice cap is receding much faster than computer models had predicted, and how difficult and delicate a task it will be to try and set things straight in Iraq.You look at him and you can’t help thinking how bizarre it is that this particular political figure, perhaps the most qualified person in the country to be president, is sitting in a wing chair in a hotel room in Manhattan rather than in the White House.He’s pushing his book “The Assault on Reason.” I find myself speculating on what might have been if the man who got the most votes in 2000 had actually become president. It’s like imagining an alternate universe............

i was going to participate in this

then i got to thinking. do the russian government or russian 'authorities' own stoli? no, they don't. why would boycotting stoli help gays in russia then?

it would be like foreign nations boycotting spam because they don't like the us presence in iraq. IT WOULDN'T MATTER

(horrible analogy i know stoli to spam)

i just can't see any connection between stoli and the treatment of gay people in russia.

i want to post this story anyway. i want the injustices to stop. not just in russia but everywhere.

Gays Launch Stoli Boycott over Russian Homophobic Violence

(New York, NY and San Francisco, CA) - Gay equality advocates in two American cities upset over the denial of full respect for the human rights of LGBT people in Russia, and the bloody confrontation on May 27 in Moscow as gays attempted to peacefully march, today announced they are launching a boycott of Stolichnaya vodka. Vigils will be held at two Russian consulates, where gays will pour Stolichnaya vodka in the gutter. The date for launching the Stoli boycott and vigils is Tuesday, June 5............

Vodka Wars Spill into U.S.

a big fat DUH!!!

Discontent Over Iraq Increasing, Poll Finds
Americans Also Unhappy With Congress

'unhappy'????

that is far from the word i would use


WE, the american citizens, voted for a change. not for a bunch of pussys who are too afraid of their own shadows. WE voted with our hearts AND our minds. so far i'm not too very happy.....

bitch slapping back at the fcc

unfortunately the decision was in favor of FAUX and rupert murdoch but overall it's a victory for freedoms and hopefully ALL networks and ALL airwaves

i am still recovering from seeing janet jackson's partially unclad breast a few years ago but i am a strong woman. i WILL survive (that was an embarrassement. with all going on in the world and the overreactions of just a few over a breast. i still can't believe it)

Broadcasters Win Appeal Of FCC's Profanity Ruling


By Frank AhrensWashington Post Staff Writer

A federal appeals court tossed out an indecency ruling against Rupert Murdoch's Fox television network yesterday and broadly questioned whether the Federal Communications Commission has the right to police the airwaves for offensive language.
In a 2 to 1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York ruled that the FCC went too far in issuing a 2006 decision against Fox Broadcasting for separate incidents in 2002 and 2003 after singer Cher and celebrity Nicole Richie each uttered an expletive on live television............

caging. i'd never heard of it

but it's NOT legal.......... uh oh


Former White House Communications Deputy Tim Griffin Resigns after Evidence Ties Him to Alleged Voter Suppression

Posted by Jon Ponder

Big media is ignoring the story that former White House Deputy Communications Director — and former RNC Research Director — Tim Griffin resigned as the U.S. Attorney in Arkansas last week after evidence revealed he was directly involved in alleged voter suppression in the 2004 elections.
This may be the first time you’ve heard of the illegal tactic of “caging” voters, but if BBC investigator Greg Palast is correct, it will not be the last.
Caging is a form of voter suppression involving registered mail. Typically, campaigns send registered letters to voters who are are unlikely to respond — soldiers serving overseas, for example. A list is compiled of the voters whose mail is returned marked undeliverable, or “caged.” On election day, when people on the caging list arrive to vote, campaign operatives are on hand to float challenges to their residency in the precinct. Palast says caging is a felony.
Palast recently obtained hundreds of emails sent by White House officials to Bush-Cheney operatives during the 2004 campaign. Among these were emails containing caging lists sent by Griffin, apparently in his role as communications deputy..............

speaking of cronyism

(and more) i also came across THIS yesterday

it's on one of my favorite subjects, abstinance. it's also about many of my other favorite subjects. the good ol' white boy network, power, money, f**king people so badly they can't stand up and on and on



By mreyn
The Abstinence Gluttons
by Michael Reynolds
Over the past six years George W. Bush's faith-based Administration and a conservative Republican Congress transformed the small-time abstinence-only business into a billion-dollar industry. These dangerously ineffective sexual health enterprises flourish not because they spread "family values" but because of generous helpings of the same pork-heavy gumbo Bush & Co. brought to war-blighted Iraq and Katrina-hammered New Orleans--a mix of back-scratching cronyism, hefty partisan campaign donations, high-dollar lobbyists, a revolving door for political appointees and a lack of concern for results.
One of the chief cooks is a media-shy 63-year-old Catholic multimillionaire, welfare privatizer and Republican donor named Raymond Ruddy. With close ties to the White House, federal health officials and Republican power brokers that date back to W.'s days as Texas governor, Ruddy has leveraged his generous wallet and insider muscle to push an ultraconservative social agenda, enrich a preferred network of abstinence-only and antiabortion groups, boost profits for his company and line the pockets of his cronies--all with taxpayer dollars.
Following the money swirling around Ruddy offers an eye-opening glimpse into the squalor at the heart of the abstinence-only project. One top Bush adviser left to take a job at Ruddy's charity, Gerard Health Foundation, and a senior officer at Ruddy's for-profit company, Maximus, left to take a top-level position at the Department of Health and Human Services. Leaders of Christian-right organizations that are Gerard grantees have gained advisory HHS positions--and their organizations have in turn received AIDS and abstinence grants to the tune of at least $25 million. Maximus itself has raked in more than $100 million in federal contracts during the Bush era. ..

YET ANOTHER STUNNING NOMINATION

yup that's right. why toy with perfection? the king has done it again. you think i'd get tired of it, but nope. I REVEL in it. i LOVE it. it goes beyond the scope of what i can comprehend yet it still happens no matter what

and oh yes, i came across a most wonderful blog in the process



Weiwen's religion blog

and the posting: (and do go to the link, it's an amazing litany of incompetence, denial, homophobia and cronyism

Bush nominates anti-gay quack as Surgeon General

Jim gave me this, from United Methodist Daily News. I've excerpted the least complimentary passages.
President George W. Bush has nominated Dr. James W. Holsinger, Jr., 68, currently president of the United Methodist Judicial Council, to become the nation's 18th surgeon general....As word of the nomination spread, media outlets began raising questions about Holsinger's qualifications and past performance, along with questions of continued cronyism on the part of President Bush, as with his previous nominations of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court and Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General....A Kansas City, KS, native, Holsinger has a Ph.D. in anatomy and a medical degree from Duke University, along with a master's degree in hospital management from the University of South Carolina. He also has a master's degree in biblical studies from multidenominational Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, KY.Although trained in general surgery and cardiology, and described in President Bush's announcement as a cardiologist, Holsinger has no national board certification in any speciality, according to the web site of the American Board of Medical Specialities.............

............After a stint as chancellor of the medical center at the University of Kentucky, Holsinger was tapped in 2003 by Gov. Ernie Fletcher, also a physician, to serve as the commonwealth's secretary of health.Holsinger's term reached a low point in July 2005 when the Louisville Courier-Journal published a special report showing that Kentucky citizens had the worst health in the United States, primarily through poor individual health habits such as smoking, bad nutrition and lack of exercise. Kentucky ranked second worst nationally for cancer deaths, fifth worst for cardiovascular deaths and seventh worst for obesity, according to the paper.................

rant: i can watch

the last waltz a million times. there is one thing i don't get. i'll never get

WTF is neil diamond doing there?

but that's not really what i wanted to say. i wanted to say i love joni mitchell. i love her a great deal. i was lucky enough to have seen her a few times (early on).

in the movie, she sang one of my favorite songs:

Coyote (joni mitchell)


No regrets Coyote
We just come from such different sets of circumstance
I'm up all night in the studios
And you're up early on your ranch
You'll be brushing out a brood mare's tail
While the sun is ascending
And I'll just be getting home with my reel to reel
There's no comprehending
Just how close to the bone and the skin and the eyes
And the lips you can get
And still feel so alone
And still feel related
Like stations in some relay
You're not a hit and run driver no no
Racing away
You just picked up a hitcher
A prisoner of the white lines on the freeway

We saw a farmhouse burning down
In the middle of nowhere
In the middle of the night
And we rolled right past that tragedy
Till we turned into some road house lights
Where a local band was playing
Locals were up kicking and shaking on the floor
And the next thing I know
That coyote's at my door
He pins me in a corner and he won't take no
He drags me out on the dance floor
And we're dancing close and slow
Now he's got a woman at home
He's got another woman down the hall
He seems to want me anyway
Why'd you have to get so drunk
And lead me on that way
You just picked up a hitcher
A prisoner of the white lines on the freeway

I looked a coyote right in the face
On the road to Baljennie near my old home town
He went running thru the whisker wheat
Chasing some prize down
And a hawk was playing with him
Coyote was jumping straight up and making passes
He had those same eyes just like yours
Under your dark glasses
Privately probing the public rooms
And peeking thru keyholes in numbered doors
Where the players lick their wounds
And take their temporary lovers
And their pills and powders to get them thru this passion play

No regrets Coyote
I just get off up aways
You just picked up a hitcher
A prisoner of the white lines on the freeway

Coyote's in the coffee shop
He's staring a hole in his scrambled eggs
He picks up my scent on his fingers
While he's watching the waitresses' legs
He's too far from the Bay of Fundy
From appaloosas and eagles and tides
And the air conditioned cubicles
And the carbon ribbon rides
Are spelling it out so clear
Either he's going to have to stand and fight
Or take off out of here
I tried to run away myself
To run away and wrestle with my ego
And with this flame
You put here in this Eskimo
In this hitcherIn this prisoner
Of the fine white lines
Of the white lines on the free free way

i don't understand why she never achieved the fame she deserves. well, i understand she never wanted to (or did for that matter) to bend for the suits at the record companies. i know she wanted to (and did) make records HER way. i know goodbye pork pie hat isn't to everyone's taste. but c'mon. i don't understand why someone gets to be so popular and they have so little talent and someone oozing talent like joni never got her due. this upsets me. i just mentioned something like this in a recent posting and i will mention it again many other times. i have to, it eats at me.

UPDATE: it's NOT 14 at all. IT'S 17

Attacks Kill 17 U.S. Soldiers in Iraq
Dozens Sickened by Gaseous Cloud in Bombing Outside American Base


By Joshua PartlowWashington Post Foreign Service

BAGHDAD, June 4 -- A car bomb attack outside a major U.S. military base in Iraq discharged a gaseous cloud that sickened dozens of people Sunday, punctuating a flurry of violence that left 16 American soldiers dead during the first three days of June.
A 17th U.S. soldier, Staff Sgt. Juan Campos, died Friday in a military hospital in Texas, according to local news reports there. He had been injured by a roadside bomb near Baghdad in May............

freedom of speech?

not in north korea, not in venezuela, not in china and it looks like NOT IN AMERICA EITHER

not only can't we let this happen to ANYONE in america, we ESPECIALLY can't let it happen to a VETERAN

'Anti-war' Iraq veteran fights military over war protests

Nick Juliano

A veteran of the Iraq war is accusing the military of trying to stifle the freedom of speech he volunteered to fight to protect.
After serving his country in Iraq, former Marine Sgt. Adam Kokesh grew disillusioned with US involvement there and became an anti-war activist. He participated in demonstrations around Washington, including Operation First Casualty, which was organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War in March.
Kokesh's anti-war activity and his correspondence with Marine investigators has rankled the military enough that it is working to revoke the veteran's "honorable discharge" designation. Kokesh will appear before a military hearing in Kansas City, Mo., Monday to fight the military's attempt to change his discharge status to "other than honorable."............

i wanted to link up to this article

i in NO WAY am a proponent of torture. when one uses horrid methods one gets results which are NOT reliable. if you're being tortured you'll say just about anything (you think your torturers) THEY want to hear.

this article is from another point of view. it's from the point of view of "THEM"

an american solider who was in iraq, an isreali and a brit who was in northern ireland

(amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me................

i once was lost but now i'm found...........was blind but now i see............)

The Tortured Lives of Interrogators
Veterans of Iraq, N. Ireland and Mideast Share Stark Memories


By Laura Blumenfeld Washington Post Staff Writer

CHICAGO -- The American interrogator was afraid. Of what and why, he couldn't say. He was riding the L train in Chicago, and his throat was closing.
In Iraq, when Tony Lagouranis interrogated suspects, fear was his friend, his weapon. He saw it seep, dark and shameful, through the crotch of a man's pants as a dog closed in, barking. He smelled it in prisoners' sweat, a smoky odor, like a pot of lentils burning. He had touched fear, too, felt it in their fingers, their chilled skin trembling.........

..........."I tortured people," said Lagouranis, 37, who was a military intelligence specialist in Iraq from January 2004 until January 2005. "You have to twist your mind up so much to justify doing that."
Being an interrogator, Lagouranis discovered, can be torture. At first, he was eager to try coercive techniques. In training at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., instructors stressed the Geneva Conventions, he recalled, while classmates privately admired Israeli and British methods. "The British were tough," Lagouranis said. "They seemed like real interrogators.".............

14 more funerals

king george will NOT be attending. he sent them off into harm's way FOR NO REASON. yet he has not attended ONE funeral. how many more mornings are we going to wake up to news of more deaths?

one more morning is too many

Attacks Kill 14 U.S. Soldiers in Iraq
Dozens Sickened by Gaseous Cloud in Bombing Outside American Base


By Joshua Partlow Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, June 4, 2007; Page A08
BAGHDAD, June 3 -- A car bomb attack outside a major U.S. military base in Iraq discharged a gaseous cloud that sickened dozens of people Sunday, punctuating a flurry of violence that left 14 American soldiers dead over the past three days.
The bomb exploded near the main gate of Forward Operating Base Warhorse, the largest U.S. military facility in Diyala province, a restive territory north of Baghdad. An Iraqi employee on the base said the bomb unleashed chlorine gas. The U.S. military cited an "unconfirmed report of off-color smoke" that caused soldiers to complain of "minor respiratory irritations and watery eyes," according to a statement. Soldiers were rushed to the clinic on base for treatment, but there were no deaths...............

and of course the understatement of the day:

.........."This is going to get harder before it gets easier".............

a mom (whose blog i read because she is a knitter)

writes a letter to her daughter amanda, on the occasion of amanda's 18th birthday

it's a PHENOMENAL letter

and stephanie & amanda.............GRRRLS KICK ASS!

Dear Amanda

On this day 18 years ago, I was feeling pretty cocky. You were born and I sincerely thought I was equipped. I really did. Even though you were my first, I knew my way around babies and I wasn't afraid of them, and I was even pretty sure that I had fantastic baby tending skills. Moreover, this parenting thing seemed to me like it was going to be pretty straightforward.
I mean, I knew it would have its challenging moments, but overall, I thought I was going to be really good at it, and that it would be something I excelled at. I was pretty sure that with all of the books I had read and how much research I had done that I would have a great grip on it. I thought that those parents who were losing it all over the place were just not working hard enough at it. I was going to be a relaxed mother.
I think, darling girl, that we can both agree that I have been the exact opposite of relaxed in every way that there is to be not relaxed, and I now I really don't know whether to apologize or demand thanks for that. I don't know what went wrong with my plan, my plan for how easy it was all going to be, but when you screamed your way through your first night on this earth, despite everything the midwife and I could do to comfort you, I started to wonder if I hadn't received a standard issue baby. .............................

i'm not making this story up

it's true.

delay is LESS of a sodomite than eye of newt who of course is LESS of s sodomite than clinton.

yeah, right



DeLay: My Adultery Was Less Immoral Than Newt’s

In his book, “No Retreat, No Surrender,” Tom DeLay, the indicted former House Majority Leader, admits that in the days when he was drinking as many as 10 martinis a day, he engaged in extramarital affairs:......

..........In the book, DeLay attacked his former colleague, then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, for having an affair while he was leading the impeachment of Pres. Bill Clinton because he committed perjury when asked under oath about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. DeLay says Gingrich’s adultery was worse than his — due to the implicit hypocrisy:...............

.........“I was no longer committing adultery by that time, the impeachment trial. There’s a big difference … Also, I had returned to Christ and repented my sins by that time.”..............

hey delay guess what? JESUS DOES NOT LOVE YOU (newt either for that matter)

it's june 1st

and all of our men and women can come home now! whew

because why you ask?

well because late last year iraqi prime minister nuri al-maliki said THEY (the iraqis) would be able to handle things in their OWN country from june on out! yippeeeeeeeeee


so dear king george BRING OUR MEN AND WOMEN HOME NOW

Tonight's the Night: Iraq's Leader Had Told Reporters U.S. Could Start Pullout By June 1

By E&P Staff Published: May 31, 2007 4:30 PM ET
NEW YORK Last November 30, as the Iraq Study Group was about to release its report -- and talk of a U.S. escalation still a few weeks off -- the press gave a lot of weight to the words of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki when he vowed that his country's forces would be able to assume security command by June 2007, which could allow the United States to start withdrawing its troops."I cannot answer on behalf of the U.S. administration but I can tell you that from our side our forces will be ready by June 2007," Maliki told ABC television after meeting President Bush in Amman, Jordan..........

mind boggling

this is the stuff of legend i tell ya!

Baghdad embassy plans appear on Internet

By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Detailed plans for the new U.S. Embassy under construction in Baghdad appeared online Thursday in a breach of the tight security surrounding the sensitive project.....

......The images were removed by Berger Devine Yaeger Inc. shortly after the company was contacted by the State Department.....

it was

20 40 YEARS AGO TODAY

sgt pepper taught his band to play.........

this is kinda cool but at the same time, i'm of the mind, FORGET THE MUMBO JUMBO AND JUST LISTEN TO THE MUSIC

Experts discuss hit Beatles album

Forty years since the Beatles released iconic album Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, a group of academics are meeting to discuss its cultural impact.
The album, released in the UK on 1 June 1967, is regarded by critics and fans as the most influential album ever.
Experts will gather at the University of Leeds to analyse the album later this month.
Event organiser Simon Warner said the album was a "ground-breaking moment for popular music".
He added: "It's the most important album by the most important group. ............

this is what we did to one of our heros

he got a purple heart for his service in iraq

for asking a question (or two) about 9 - 11 to OTHER MILITARY PEOPLE, he lost his security clearance, he was demoted, he was fired from his job and MY personal favorite, he was ordered to have a psychiatric exam

Friendly Fire
Raising questions about 9/11 gets an Army sergeant demoted for “disloyalty.”

By STEPHEN C. WEBSTER
These days, Donald Buswell’s job is not as exciting or dangerous as it once was. For the past few months, his working hours have been spent taking care of some 40-plus wounded soldiers at San Antonio’s Fort Sam Houston medical center. The work is sometimes menial, even janitorial, but he doesn’t mind. After all, Buswell has been where these men are — three years ago, he too was recovering from wounds received in a battle zone in Iraq.
“I truly consider this an honor,” Buswell told his dad not long ago.
Still, it’s not exactly where Buswell expected to be after 20 years of well-respected service in the Army.
Since joining the Army in 1987, he had risen to the rank of sergeant first class, serving in both Gulf Wars, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Korea. He ended up with shrapnel scars and a Purple Heart and, back in the U.S. after his last tour in Iraq, a job as intelligence analyst at Fort Sam Houston.............

...........As if all that weren’t enough, Fort Sam Houston’s chief of staff penned a letter accusing Buswell of “making statements disloyal to the United States.”
His father, Winthrop Buswell, said that his son “is one of the most patriotic people I know.”
“Donald saw something that his conscience led him to dispute,” he said. “That’s just the type of man he is.”
For his dissent, Donald has paid a heavy price............

i guess we really DO want an army full of robots. forget don't ask, don't tell. it's now DON'T THINK, DON'T TALK

ANOTHER in the big ol' long list of he shurrrrrrrrre ken pick 'em!

yup king george does one thing well. his picks for positions are absolutely ASTOUNDING

here's YET ANOTHER

Senators Should Reject Bush’s Latest Nominee to 5th Circuit

President Bush has nominated Leslie Southwick to fill a seat on the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Bush previously tried to fill the seat with Charles Pickering and then Michael Wallace, both of whom faced significant opposition due to their disturbing legal records, especially on civil rights.“Regrettably, Southwick also has a troubling record and appears to be cut from the same cloth as the others,” said Ralph G. Neas, President of People For the American Way. “First Pickering, then Wallace, and now Southwick – Bush has completely struck out on the Fifth Circuit.”............

......In 1998, Southwick joined a ruling in an employment case that upheld the reinstatement, without any punishment whatsoever, of a white state employee who was fired for calling an African American co-worker a “good ole nigger.” The court’s decision effectively ratified a hearing officer’s opinion that the slur was only “somewhat derogatory” and “was in effect calling the individual a ‘teacher’s pet.’” The Mississippi Supreme Court unanimously reversed the decision...........

......In 2001, Southwick joined a ruling that upheld a chancellor’s decision to take an eight-year-old girl away from her mother and award custody to the father, who had never married the mother, largely because the mother was living with another woman in a “lesbian home.” Southwick went even further by joining a gratuitously anti-gay concurrence which extolled Mississippi’s right under “the principles of Federalism” to treat “homosexual persons” as second-class citizens........

please read this

A soldier in Iraq asks in despair: Why are we here?

.....After watching his roommate fatally wounded in a roadside bombing, an Army private wonders why the lives of good men are being lost when the Iraqis pose no threat to us and don’t want us there.
BAGHDAD, May 12 — My name is Donald Hudson Jr. I have been serving our country’s military actively for the last three years. I am currently deployed to Baghdad on Forward Operating Base Loyalty, where I have been for the last four and a half months.
I came here as part of the first wave of this so called “troop surge”, but so far it has effectively done nothing to quell insurgent violence. I have seen the rise in violence between the Sunni and Shiite. This country is in the middle of a civil war that has been on going since the seventh century.
Why are we here when this country still to date does not want us here? Why does our president’s personal agenda consume him so much, that he can not pay attention to what is really going on here?............