The Religious Right's Paranoia and Victim Complex

Answer me this: How can Christians, who are the primary religious group in America and are in charge of the White House, Congress and Supreme Court, be victims? The Religious Right held a Conference in DC yesterday peddling this fabricated nonsense.

Yet another non-existent, faux "War on Christmas" - only this time its being called "The War on Christians".

I would imagine mainstream America is quite sick of these people by now. I know I am.

Woman ticketed in Dekalb County, Georgia for obscene bumper sticker

This happened right in the county where I live. The bumper sticker said, "I had enough bushit!" Now, I've seen this bumper sticker many times and thought nothing of it after snickering a few times. I've also seen far worse t-shirts, signs and bumper stickers that said the same about Bush.

As I recall, the first time I saw this bumper sticker was about 2 years ago. Can't remember if I was in Georgia or Michigan. Basically, the cop that wrote this woman a ticket is full of bushit. His intention is to silence this woman's voice of political dissent. Sound familiar? That's basically the intention of the entire right wing media machine which operates as an attack dog for the GOP.

I applaud this woman's willingness to stand firm and defend her right to free speech. Our return to the McCarthy era will only be complete if we allow it.

Georgia bill that allows Bible to be taught in public schools goes to Governor

Ok. I was raised up in the Congregational church in Detroit, but I find this bill distasteful. If a parent wants their child to learn the bible then the kid needs to learn it at home or in church. End of story. Biblical instruction has no place in public schools. This is yet another attempt to bust up our the separation between church and state provision in our US Constitution.

Election time can't come too soon this year.

Latino Sleeping Giant Awakens!

A new Civil Rights Movement seems to be brewing...There are protests rippling all over the country. Latinos are upset over the draconian House bill put forth by Republican Congressman George Sensenbrenner.

Immigration is a tough issue. My main concern is the attack on the working and middle class Americans going on in this country. The American Dream is being obliterated for everyone except the richest 12% percent of Americans. Therefore, I believe whatever immigration policy is adopted needs to be thoughtful, take into account why Latinos are entering this country illegally and break down the ability of business owners to economically exploit the illegal immigrants and native working and middle class Americans. I tend to favor the Kennedy-McCain immigration bill.

Russ Feingold for PRESIDENT!!!

Yesss! And the Goddess God has shown us who to support for president in 2008!!! I thank the heavens for makin' it plain. I am so disgusted by the DC Beltway Dems I could spit fire. Cowards! All of them!:
Feingold Assails Dems on Bush Censure

By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer

Wisconsin Sen. Russell Feingold accused fellow Democrats on Tuesday of cowering rather than joining him on trying to censure President Bush over domestic spying.

"Democrats run and hide" when the administration invokes the war on terrorism, Feingold told reporters.

Feingold introduced censure legislation Monday in the Senate but not a single Democrat has embraced it. Several have said they want to see the results of a Senate Intelligence Committee investigation before supporting any punitive legislation.

Republicans dismissed the proposal Tuesday as being more about Feingold's 2008 presidential aspirations than Bush's actions. On and off the Senate floor, they have dared Democrats to vote for the resolution.

"I'm amazed at Democrats ... cowering with this president's numbers so low," Feingold said.

The latest AP-Ipsos poll on Bush, conducted last week, found just 37 percent of the 1,000 people surveyed approving his overall performance, the lowest of his presidency.

Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., tried to hold a vote Monday on Feingold's resolution but was blocked by Democrats. He said Tuesday that Feingold should withdraw the resolution because it has no support.

"If the Democrats continue to say no to voting on their own censure resolution, then they ought to drop it and focus on our foreign policy in a positive way," Frist said in a statement.

Feingold's resolution condemns Bush's "unlawful authorization of wiretaps of Americans within the United States without obtaining the court orders required" by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The only president ever censured by the Senate was Andrew Jackson, in 1834, for removing the nation's money from a private bank in defiance of the Whig-controlled Senate.

Ex-Supreme Court Justice warns of "beginnings of dictatorship"

NPR's Nina Totenberg aired an amazing story this morning about a talk that just-resigned Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor gave at Georgetown University. The first woman to serve on the High Court wouldn't allow her actual words to be broadcast, and that's a shame, because -- based on Totenberg's report -- every American needs to hear what she said. The Reagan appointee who became a moderate and an American icon -- Bush v. Gore notwithstanding -- all but named names in thinly veiled attacks on former House majority leader Tom DeLay and Texas Sen. John Cornyn, and ended with a stunning warning.

O'Connor told her Georgetown audience that judges can make presidents, Congress and governors "really really mad," and that if judges don't make people angry, they aren't doing their job. But she said judicial effectiveness is "premised on the notion that we won't be subject to retaliation for our judicial acts." While hailing the American system of rights and privileges, she noted that these don't protect the judiciary, that "people do":

Listen:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5255712

When the same Republican Supreme Court Justice who awarded the presidency to Bush in 2000 rises up and sounds the alarm to tell us that American Democracy is in trouble, I think that is a powerful message that needs to be heeded.

Censure President Bush!

From Moveon.org:

Yesterday, Senator Russ Feingold introduced a resolution to censure President Bush for breaking the law by illegally wiretapping American citizens.

When the president misleads the public and the Congress and willfully and repeatedly breaks the law, there need to be some consequences --that's how the law works for everybody else.

Censuring the president is a reasonable first step in condemning the president's actions. Now it's up to us to show broad public support for Senator Feingold's resolution. Can you sign this petition asking Congress to join the call for censure?

http://political.moveon.org/censure/
Thanks!

Senator Russ Feingold calls for censure of Bush

It's about time. Democratic Senator Russ Feingold formally initiated a call for censure of Bush for illegally wiretapping Americans and betraying the US Constitution as well as national security.

I am disgusted by the other Democratic senators if they don't get behind Russ Feingold who is a rare bird in the Senate -- a Democrat with a Backbone!

As much as the republicans would like Dems to nominate Hillary Clinton for president, I am repelled by Clinton, Joseph Biden, John Kerry and all the rest of the Establishment Dems who spend most of their time worrying, and disassociating themselves from a solid progressive platform that will heal the country. These Dems want to do everything BUT the right thing. They allow the right wing to define them and seem to despise themselves.

I am totally impressed by Russ Feingold. He alone voted against the rights-robbing Patriot Act, didn't vote for the War in Iraq and has taken a clear stand regarding exiting Iraq.

He is one of the few Democrats I respect. In my book, he is the front-runner for the Dem Presidential nomination of 2008.

More of Bush's base is abandoning him

Well, some genuine red staters are waking up to the fact that the man who resides in the White House has no business being there. Country stars Faith Hill and Tim McGraw express rage over the horrible way that Katrina survivors have been treated. Unfortunately, they've made their realizations too late to save this country from the unnecessary damage that's being done to it:

Faith Hill, Tim McGraw Blast 'Humiliating' Katrina Cleanup

Country Stars Lash Out in Anger Over Conditions in Storm-Ravaged States
March 8, 2006 — - Faith Hill and Tim McGraw -- two stars who usually stay out of politics -- blasted the Hurricane Katrina cleanup effort, with Hill calling the slow progress in Louisiana and Mississippi "embarrassing" and "humiliating."

The country music artists -- who are natives of the storm-ravaged states -- were at times close to tears, and clearly angry when the subject of Katrina came up during a news conference today. They had met with reporters in Nashville to promote their upcoming Soul2Soul II Tour, but when asked about the hurricane cleanup, the stars pulled no punches.

"To me, there's a lot of politics being played and a lot of people trying to put people in bad positions in order to further their agendas," McGraw, a 38-year-old native of Delhi, La., said after ABC News Radio's Dan Gordon asked about Katrina.

"When you have people dying because they're poor and black or poor and white, or because of whatever they are -- if that's a number on a political scale -- then that is the most wrong thing. That erases everything that's great about our country."

McGraw specifically criticized President Bush. "There's no reason why someone can't go down there who's supposed to be the leader of the free world … and say, 'I'm giving you a job to do and I'm not leaving here until it's done. And you're held accountable, and you're held accountable, and you're held accountable.

"'This is what I've given you to do, and if it's not done by the time I get back on my plane, then you're fired and someone else will be in your place. '"


Hill: 'I Fear for Our Country'
The president had actually spent the day in New Orleans, getting a close-up look at boarded-up buildings and mountains of debris, noting that the city still suffers "pain and agony."

Along the president's route, some frustrated residents held up signs in protest, one asking "Where's my government?" and another telling the president to "cut the red tape and help us."

Hill, who grew up in Jackson, Miss., echoed those sentiments. So overwhelmed, she uncharacteristically unleashed an epithet, calling the situation, "Bull- - - -"

"It is a huge, huge problem and it's embarrassing," she said.

"I fear for our country if we can't handle our people [during] a natural disaster. And I can't stand to see it. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out point A to point B. . . . And they can't even skip from point A to point B.

"It's just screwed up."

Earlier in the day, McGraw and Hill had reason to celebrate. Their duet, "WLike We Never Loved At All," was nominated by the Country Music Association as the Vocal Event of the Year.

The couple rarely voice political opinions, though they've been active in raising money for Katrina victims.

McGraw is a member of the American Red Cross National Celebrity Cabinet, and in the days after the hurricane, he and Hill joined a mission to take supplies to Gulfport, Miss. At the Sept. 2 "Concert for Hurricane Relief," he appealed to fans to reach out with donations.

But under most circumstances, McGraw relies on easy charm when dealing with the media. In 2004, he actually told Time magazine, however lightheartedly, that he was thinking of going into politics. "I want to run for the Senate from Tennessee … Not now, but when I'm 50, when the music dies down."

"Wouldn't Faith make a great senator's wife?" he joked.

Then again, maybe he wasn't joking.

Reported by ABC News Radio's Dan Gordon in Nashville, and written by ABCNEWS.com's Buck Wolf in New York.

GOP Senate Refuses to Defend the US Constitution

The New York Times picks their battles and I still hold it against them that they did Bush's bidding on the run-up to the Iraq War.

But I have to say that during these past few months, the New York Times Editorial Page has been getting after it regarding all of Bush's appalling failures of duty.

They rightly continue to sound the alarm regarding the GOP-led Congress that refuses to check a President on illegal warrantless wiretapping:

March 9, 2006
Editorial
The Death of the Intelligence Panel

The wrenching debate in the 1970's over the abuse of presidential power produced two groundbreaking reforms aimed at preventing a president from using war or broader claims of national security to trample Americans' rights.

One was the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which struck the proper balance between national security and bedrock civil liberties, and the other was the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, a symbol of bipartisan leadership. They endured for a quarter of a century — until George W. Bush and Dick Cheney left FISA in tatters and the Senate Select Committee on its deathbed in just five years.

The Senate panel has become so paralyzingly partisan that it could not even manage to do its basic job this week and look into President Bush's warrantless spying on Americans' international e-mail and phone calls. Senator Pat Roberts, the chairman, said Tuesday that there would be no investigation. Instead, the committee's Republicans voted to create a subcommittee that is supposed to get reports from the White House on any future warrantless surveillance.

It's breathtakingly cynical. Faced with a president who is almost certainly breaking the law, the Senate sets up a panel to watch him do it and calls that control. This new Senate plan is being presented as a way to increase the supervision of intelligence gathering while giving the spies needed flexibility. But it does no such thing.

The Republicans' idea of supervision involves saying the White House should get a warrant for spying whenever possible. Currently a warrant is needed, period. And that's the right law. The White House has not offered a scrap of evidence that it interferes with antiterrorist operations. Mr. Bush simply decided the law did not apply to him.

It was no surprise that Mr. Roberts led this retreat. He's been blocking an investigation into the domestic spying operation for weeks, just as he has been stonewalling a promised investigation into how the White House hyped the intelligence on Iraq. But it was disappointing to see a principled Republican like Senator Olympia Snowe go along. The Democrats are not blameless, either. Too often, their positions seem like campaign tactics, and Senator John Rockefeller IV fumbled by not consulting Ms. Snowe, who is up for re-election and under intense White House pressure.

But the Republicans deserve the lion's share of the blame. It was Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney who hyped the intelligence on Iraq — and the Senate Republicans who helped them evade accountability. And it was Mr. Bush who approved the warrantless wiretapping, which is part of Mr. Cheney's crusade to expand presidential powers. (Unlike the rest of us, Mr. Cheney thought the lesson of Watergate was that the president was not strong enough.)

Ms. Snowe said she would still support an investigation if the new panel uncovered more wrongdoing. But that's hardly likely to happen because the Republicans on the panel are Mr. Roberts, Orrin Hatch, Mike DeWine and Christopher Bond, who march in lock step with the White House.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is still looking into the wiretapping. That committee should have plenty of incentive to go forward — its chairman, Senator Arlen Specter, was righteously angry when he received a letter in which Attorney General Alberto Gonzales implied that there was more warrantless spying we don't know about. Mr. Gonzales won't even say that Mr. Bush understands it is blatantly illegal to spy on communications within the United States without a warrant. Nevertheless, there's not much cause for hope: Mr. Specter has a sad habit of bowing to the right wing when the chips are down.

There are moments when leaders simply have to take a stand. It seems to us that one of them is when Americans are in danger of the kind of unchecked surveillance that they thought had died with J. Edgar Hoover, Watergate and spying on Vietnam protesters and civil rights leaders.

I hope America is watching. We need a new Congress in November. A Congress that is willing to do their job and correct an out-of-control president while defending the U.S. Constitition and our national security.

We Will Not Be Silenced, Dubya!

Here's a powerful video that's going viral. You gotta check it out!

Katrina Survivors establish new church home in Georgia

Well, it had to start happening. Katrina folks are slowly beginning to establish roots in their new homes across the country.

God bless them. They know help ain't coming on Bush's watch.

Watch Katrina Video Here: Bush saw it coming and did nothing

I'm numb. I’ve watched so many appalling failures on Bush’s watch that my anger has settled into a slow burn.

See video

A few days ago, this videotape was released. It visually solidified the fact that Bush was warned about how massively deadly Hurricane Katrina would be. Yet, Bush and Brownie peacefully slept through the night as the Gulf drowned.

As I write this, Katrina survivors – our young children, mothers, fathers, and elderly – scattered throughout the country are being evicted and their unemployment checks cancelled. Meanwhile, the GOP-led Congress is holding fake hearings and thousands of brand new government trailers sink in Arkansas mud unused.

Although Bush has yet to be held accountable in a significant way, you can change this. Now more than ever, we need real congressional oversight in our government in order to guarantee effective national security by hiring qualified professionals who can keep us safe, not Bush’s incompetent political cronies.

JOIN THE CALL TO CENSURE BUSH! CONTACT YOUR U.S. REPRESENTATIVE HERE

Been out of town

Sorry about the lack of posts for the last week, but I've been out of town at this AMAZING progressive political training program called the New Organizing Institute in Washington, D.C.

I got a chance to fellowship with all kinds of progressive and liberal activists from all across the spectrum - Greens, independents, Democrats and everything in between.

We talked politics and organizing all day every day and no one got tired of it! How rare is that?

Folks, it may not seem like it but there's new, rebellious, courageous and energetic blood placing serious pressure on the spineless Democratic leadership - and this is a HUGE thing!

There's hope for tomorrow!

Support Katrina Victims in Washington March 14th!

Our folks are being kicked out of hotels/housing, kicked off of unemployment - Demand Justice:

Media Alert - For Immediate Release

KATRINA SURVIVORS, MEMBERS OF CONGRESS, CLERGY, COMMUNITY ACTIVISTS, STUDENTS AND NATIONAL ORGANIZERS TO MARCH FROM CONGRESS TO WHITE HOUSE TO DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY FROM GEORGE BUSH AND RALLY FOR JUSTICE FOR THE DISPLACED

WHEN: March 14, 2006 1:00 p.m.
WHERE:
- Press Conference: Rayburn House Office Bldg, Rm. 2237 1:00 - 2:00 p.m.
- Mardi Gras Style March for Justice:Capitol South Metro Stop to the White House, 2:00 - 3:00 p.m.
- Rally & Vigil at the White House: Lafayette Park, 3:00 -11:59 p.m.

For More Information, please contact: Diane Shamis 845-661-3754 or 202-545-0113