| The Mugging Continues |
[Mar. 22nd, 2005|05:07 pm] |
A lot of the problem I have with accepting proposals from President George W. Bush has always had to do with his character. He's never been a man of the people or a hardworking success of any kind, especially in financial matters. Then, there are his family, friends and associates, namely, his brother Neal, the Saudi royal family, and Ken Lay, to name the most conspicuous birds in the flock.
Would you trust them with your money? So what makes Bush the credible spokesperson for the largest legislative reform proposal of the most successful social program in American history?
Nothing. He's got nothing behind him. That is precisely why the "Presidential Roadshow" has become nothing but a sales pitch.
As Jim VandeHel and Peter Baker wrote, These meticulously staged "conversations on Social Security," as they are called, replicate a strategy that Bush used to great effect on the campaign trail. There's a strategy to this sale, and the closing is still a long way off. This is the "set up." Meanwhile the "President" is all about making "the pitch." The White House follows a practiced formula for each of the meetings. First it picks a state in which generally it can pressure a lawmaker or two, and then it lines up panelists who will sing the praises of the president's plan. Finally, it loads the audience with Republicans and other supporters. So, there is never a dissenting voice in the crowd, only a group think monologue that does not approach a public discussion. The "finalists" on the town hall meeting panels insist they are not told what they have to say: "It was just a matter of learning," [one citizen-speaker] said. "We just really talked about what was going on, what the president was proposing and what did we think about it. . . . They didn't prompt me what to say or how to say it." But they don't have to. The few dissenting voices ... [are] quickly silenced or escorted out by security.
The carefully screened panelists spoke admiringly about Bush, his ideas, his "bold" leadership on Social Security.
If the presentations sound well rehearsed, it's because they often are. The guests at these "Oprah"-style conversations trumpet the very points Bush wants to make. Anybody who the White House screening team is unsure of gets dropped. Each "candidate" is examined and re-examined numerous times before they are allowed to speak with the President, to ensure that their words and ideas support his position.
If we are insulted by the unanwered questions of the 9/11 attacks that implicate -- passively or otherwise -- Bush administration complicity, if we are bruised by the recurring newsleaks about the human rights violations in GTMO and through the rendition programs, if we're horrified by the devastation of Iraqi cities like Ramadi and Fallujah and the scores of thousands of women and children who have been killed and maimed for "freedom," hold on to your seats, folks!
The Presidential roadshow is coming to a town near you. In it you will see and hear President Bush and his sidekicks regurgitate the most prepackaged, freeze dried serving of bullshit that ever flew in the face of democratic dialogue in the public interest.
As horror movies go, though, this has been pretty boring for us. But as the mugging of the American mind goes on, Bush and his advisors tell us to wait, there's much much more to come. And if you know anything about George Bush and his crowd, you know the ending is going to be really bad -- worse than you could have imagined. |
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| the siren of Social Security |
[Feb. 17th, 2005|05:25 pm] |
Our old friend, Grover Norquist was quoted today by Peter Wallsten and Joel Havemann in an LA Times article, Bush Shifts Pension Stance.
In the article about a recent statement Bush made to the regional press in New Hampshire, Wallsten and Havemann quoted Bush as saying, "I've been asked this question a lot, and my answer is that I'm interested in good ideas," Bush said, according to the Birmingham (Ala.) News. "The one thing I'm not open-minded about is raising the payroll tax rate, and all the other issues are on the table, and that's important for people to know."
He was drawing a distinction between the amount of earnings subject to the Social Security tax and the 12.4% tax rate, paid half by workers and half by employers, which he is opposed to raising. Then Wallsten and Havemann spelled it out a little more, for those of us Blue staters and other who don't speak Bush, In telling the regional newspapers that he was open to raising the $90,000 wage cap, Bush appeared to contradict previous statements by him and his staff. Does he appear to or does he actually contradict himself?
This is where our helpful and informative authors weighed in with Grover Norquist. Who better with whom to raise George W. Bush's apparent self-contradiction than his greatest ideolgical mentor (besides, of course, Jesus and George H.W. Bush, his dad)? The Director of Americans for Tax Reform is known to heavily influence all Bush's economic plans, goals and policies, to much the same extent the Project for a New American Century influences W.'s foreign policy.
Our reporters, Wallsten and Havemann, set up their quotation from Grover Norquist with a reasonable premise. But Bush's potential embrace of a higher wage cap could anger conservatives who have pushed for private retirement accounts.
Grover Norquist, a leading anti-tax activist and advisor to the White House on Social Security, said he did not believe that Bush would agree to raising the $90,000 cap, despite the apparent shift in his public negotiating position. But he acknowledged that the president's remarks would rattle some conservatives.
"Should it make us nervous when somebody says, 'I would think about cutting off your fingers,' even if you don't think he really would? Yes. It makes one nervous," Norquist said. "I understand that it's his job to say, 'Let's come to the table and have a conversation.' He's counting on the fact that once you get in the room, the American people will demand personal savings accounts, and they will not demand higher taxes." George Bush will do ANYTHING to get people to support his privatization scheme. That's what he's good at. If you look at George W. Bush's record since he was in the Texas Air National Guard, you will see the record of someone who has never done anything well enough or honestly enough to earn the people's trust.
But, he just keeps going. His Social Security Privatization Tour (also known as the "Bamboozlepalooza"), has been extended to nine, now, from the originally scheduled four states! George is talking, talking, talking his was up and down the whole country, telling the people to get private social security accounts.
True, the other details of his plan are murky, and, as Wallsten and Havemann show, appear to shift from time to time. But anybody who knows George W. Bush knows he's not going to shift at all. That's what Grover Norquist said today, and he knows George W. Bush as well as anybody.
There isn't going to be any tax increase, tax-cut rollback or tax cap rise to pay for the corporatized Social Security accounts George W. Bush is selling to the good people of the United States right now. He's so sure people won't want more taxes that he can appear to entertain the idea, but just long enough to get the needed handful of wavering Democrats to the table.
"This reminds me of an old story," a certain old Republican president used to say.
I wonder what Lincoln would have thought of Bush's proposal, and of Bush himself, for that matter.
But surely both Grover Norquist and Bush are familiar with Homer's description in Book XII of the Odyssey: First you will come to the Sirens
who enchant all who come near them. If any one unwarily draws in too
close and hears the singing of the Sirens, his wife and children
will never welcome him home again, for they sit in a green field and
warble him to death with the sweetness of their song. There is a great
heap of dead men's bones lying all around, with the flesh still
rotting off them. Therefore pass these Sirens by, and stop your
men's ears with wax that none of them may hear... |
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| X-files Meets Punchinello |
[Jan. 7th, 2005|12:36 pm] |
Tom DeLay stole the show on Thursday during the challenge to Ohio's electors. He made his curtain call, introduced by "coach" Denny, and sang a paen of outrage. I was moved as I watched him gesticulate on CSPAN streaming video on my office computer. Never has a Republiclown looked and sounded more ridiculous.
Tom DeLay doesn't get it. They accuse the president — who, we are told, is apparently a closet computer nerd — of personally overseeing the development of vote-stealing software. This is probably the least salient point -- if it can be indirectly deduced at all -- from the Conyers report. I just searched the PDF for "nerd" and it came back: 0 matches. So, Honorable Mr. DeLay, didn't you have time to read the report? It was dated January 5, 2005: yesterday. It was only 102 pages!
"Closet computer nerd?"Many observers will discard today’s petition as a partisan waste of time, but it is much worse.
It is an assault against the institutions of our representative democracy; it is a threat to the very ideals it ostensibly defends. Tom DeLay, this sounds like a claim of extra-legal actions on the part of the challengers, when, in fact they followed the letter of the law. Where's the threat to ideals: rigorous honesty, accountability, equal rights?The Democrat Party was once an idealistic, forward-looking policy colossus.
The New Deal, the Marshall Plan, the Great Society, the space program, civil rights … And yet, today, one is hard-pressed to find a single positive, substantive idea on the left.
Instead, the Democrats have replaced statecraft with stagecraft, substance with style, and not a very fashionable style at that. Well, as majority leader, Tom is going to be putting forth more colossal Democratic policies, just not about voting rights, this year.The petitioners claim they act on behalf of disenfranchised voters, but no such voter disenfranchisement occurred in the election of 2004 or for that matter, the election of 2000.
Everybody knows it. The voters know it. The candidates know it. The courts know it. The evidence proves it. This is the coda to Tom DeLay's Vesti la Giubba of January 06, 2004. Not only is history written and erased and then rewritten with a sweep of a sweaty palm, but it's okay with America because voting doesn't matter. And besides, there wasn't any disenfranchisement.
Yes, Mr. DeLay, this is serious. But you made me laugh, in spite of everything. No matter how grave the issue, I just can't take you seriously. You are the Prince of the Republi-Clowns!
Looking forward to your next schtick. |
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| Headbangers |
[Jan. 6th, 2005|10:26 am] |
The Informed Citizen's Guide To The 2004 Election, by Georgia, yesterday, on Daily Kos.
It's unbeleivable how wimpy Americans are. Nobody wants to challenge Bush's reelection: but the evidence shows that Ohio was dirty. Because it was dirty, no one can truly say what the outcome actually was or would have been. Why? Because the authorities have been arguing over "if" and not "how" ever since November 3rd. They ran out the clock, but the fact remains that Ohio's election was tainted and should be thrown out, like Ukraine's. How can the American people and their representatives stand for this?
Gonzales: Must be a joke I just don't get. After all, nobody seems to get my jokes either. Oh well, I guess I'll just keep smiling ... |
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| Energy < Demand = collapse |
[Jan. 4th, 2005|03:10 pm] |
Peak Oil
There is a great film at http://911busters.com/video/IQ1_20_END_OF_SUBURBIA_VIDEO_24.2_.html.
I heard about it on "Morning Sedition."
Of course, the problem has been explained for at least two decades already, to anybody who is interested, on sources such as Culture Change. Those of us who voted for Barry Commoner, the Constitutional Party candidate in 1980, had the whole story early.
George Soros mentions in Chapter 4 of The Bubble of American Supremacy, The true motives for the Bush administration's determination to overthrow Saddam Hussein remain shrouded in mystery. It is possible to conjecture what these motives were, but it is impossible to identify them with certainty, because they have never been discussed.
... the real motives [for the invasion of Iraq] remain shrouded in mystery but nation building could not have ranked high among them.
Everybody knew it was oil, even though we told them weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, freedom and so on. The point is that we are at peak oil now. Without an increase in our source of energy, we can have no economic growth.
Social Security
So, since the administration never came clean about their true motives for going into Iraq, is there any reasonable expectation of truth behind other public programs, like "saving" social security.
Edmund L. Andrews gave us some vivid foresight into what the Bush administration's lines of credible reasoning and justification for colossal decisions in his editorial White House officials say it is reasonable to treat the expected transition costs separately, because they will eventually be repaid as the government's obligation to pay benefits declines sharply after 30 or 40 years.
"These aren't costs, they are savings," said Scott McClellan, Mr. Bush's spokesman, at a recent news conference.
This deliberate misleading of the public is a familiar pattern now, but can anyone see where these blind men are leading us?
privatizing Social Security may get the government off the hook for having to repay the Social Security Trust Fund after the economy collapses due to Bush's energy policy. People won't be able to blame Bush for not paying money that his friends on Wall Street have blown speculating on phony energy companies with inflated balance sheets. And maybe when the crunch comes he'll be able to raise taxes on the rich in order to keep up the corn dole. But it may also be that he's trying to prop up the financial services industry in order to shore up ebbing capital in the American global financial marketplace.
As Bob Somerby noted today, discussing Bill Frist's appearance on the Sunday talk shows But so what? Frist--presented with a mark--just kept misleading the voters.
Yes, Frist was eager to "mislead non-experts" when he played the pimp on This Week. But then, it's something the "press corps" has allowed Bush to do on every sort of budget matter--a fact which explains why he's willing to pimp that ludicrous plan for "halving the deficit."
So, Bush may not be orchestrating a meaningful dialogue and planning for solutions to the upcoming energy and financial trainwrecks, but he is working very hard at one thing, at least as important as anything else (from a GOP perspective): avoiding the blame for the collapse! |
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| back to the main issues |
[Dec. 28th, 2004|10:23 pm] |
The Star Tribune has a nice summary of questions and comments about recount observations in Ohio:
Last update: December 28, 2004 at 7:11 PM
Mark Halvorson and Kirk Lund: We may never know what happened in the Ohio vote
Halvorson and Lund introduce their thesis in the first paragraph by stating: The right to vote and to have each vote count is the cornerstone of democracy, but deep cracks are showing in this cornerstone.
This is an interesting remark. Their subsequent recitation of facts lends a lot of support to the "deep cracks" part of their thesis. Those facts are well known and summarized very succinctly by the Nashua Advocate. Many others have detailed this list of offenses to the American electorate, so I don't want to revisit familiar ground ad nauseum.
The particulars of the Ohio election legal battle are still being contested in lawsuits by some dedicated Americans, including the Green and Libertarian candidates. Today the Columbus, Ohio Free Press ran this column -- faithfully keeping us informed about the latest legal developments and voter complaints. While the "little people" battle it out in the trenches below the radar of the national media and beyond the ennui threshold of the average American, some stunning -- and perhaps historically significant -- cultural shaping is taking place.
The question is, "Is the right to vote the 'cornerstone of democracy?'" If it is, does our apathy about voting signal the death of democracy in America?
Clearly, the state of voting in America is substandard, as evidenced by this past election. Does it matter? To whom?
Many of us believe that it is our individual responsibility as citizens to actively participate in community self-government at the local, state and federal levels. This participation goes beyond voting, to actively communicating with elected officials, participating in campaigns and all aspects of fair elections. Otherwise, this mandate for citizenship marches beside the banner of "Civic Duty." It can mean volunteer work with children or the environment, auxiliary police, any community service work or public activism. This is the ingredient in American society that de Tocqueville saw as the sine qua non of our vital civilization. Without volunteer citizen action, we would be indolent and vulnerable to corrupt political and economic forces.
So, public action is important. Public involvement is key in preserving a healthy society. Does that necessarily mean we have to bust our chops about elections? Can't we delegate that to "the proper authorities?"
As quoted before on this weblog, Alexander Keyssar documents the contested history of democracy in America. In the flood of suffrage expansion throughout our history, racist and sexist beliefs and attitudes, ethnic antagonism, partisan interests, and political theories and ideological convictions, along with class tension, linked the health of the state to a narrow franchise. (Keyssar, Alexander, The Right to Vote, Basic Books, NY 2000; p. xxi).
The forces of "voter suppression," as they are termed today, are associated with the Republican party and are considered by most as partisan. But these are embodiments of historically important and powerful forces that have worked to limit voting throughout our history. In other words, the "right to vote" has always been a matter of strong contest in the United States. The "suppression" we experience now is only a flickering shadow of the gloomy blackness of disfranchisement that covered the country in past centuries.
So we are living in a cross section of dynamic conflict over suffrage that has played on the stage of American politics since the beginning of the colonial era. The wealthy have always sought to limit the right to vote and the poor have always tried to expand it. One group fears the loss of responsibility and commitment among the voting population, the other fears exclusion from the political process.
This conflict is very much an element on the landscape of the 2004 election. To pretend that it isn't a factor in Ohio, Florida and all the swing states -- if not in the red and blue states -- would be blindness to history.
So the issue is, "How do we monitor the process of these historical forces at work today in our election?"
Is there any way to get an objective bearing on what the events of the 2004 election say about fairness, justice and progress in the United States?
We rely on the media. |
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| mooning the u.s. government |
[Dec. 27th, 2004|11:59 am] |
Yahoo news offered this tidbit about the Washington Times. It is a profile of News World Communications, Inc. News World is the publisher of the WT.
The question everyone should be asking, but of course isn't, is, "What is the relationship between Sun Myung Moon  -- the owner and publisher of the Times -- and the Republican Party?
Perhaps there's an explanation in this report about an incident in the Dirksen Office Building last Spring. Gorenfeld's Moon watch is still surviving here.
There are some inscrutable but fascinating remarks from Rev. Kwak on what took place in the Senate office building last May. These remarks come to us courtesy of True Parents
I'm beginning to suspect that driving the vast majority of Americans into poverty and destitution through loss of medical insurance, social security privatization, environmental destruction, and war is to provide membership for Reverend Moon's family.
More on Fascism
Tomtech is continuing his informative series over at Dkos. His offering this week is the abbreviated for the holidays version. The highlights are about the ACLU email discovery linking the White House to sanctioning torture. He points out that if the President issued an Executive Order permitting use of certain torture techniques, then use of the techniques was "within the law."
The blogger also does some introspective blogging on the question of exploitation of women, women's rights and sexism in the Bush regime. What he will have to say on this subject, he admits, depends somewhat on his own education and sensitizing to the issues women are dealing with now.
Of course, the great contribution to this school of thought is still the Orcinus treatise, or "essay," as he calls it. I have continued to read it, and find it engrossing. I will have to go back to the beginning of Part I and start all over again, as soon as I am finished. His links serve as a kind of bibliography, but there are too many to follow right away. So there will be at least one additional course through the essay for running through the links, too. |
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| sounds like ... |
[Dec. 22nd, 2004|04:44 pm] |
According to OpEd News, our President has taken to quoting a former German Chancellor:"Protect the homeland" is the SAME phrase that Hitler used when he proposed the creation of the Gestapo in Nazi Germany. Hitler said, "An evil exists that threatens every man, woman and child of this great nation. We must take steps to ensure our domestic security and protect our homeland."
All American Patriots
This new website looks like a CIA storefront for the Republican Veterans of Desert Storm. Supposedly, they are not officially launched yet, but I would appreciate your checking them out and getting back to me on who they hell you think they are and what the hell you think they're doing on the internet.
Election Reform 
FairVote.org is launching a Right to Vote Initiative along with a number of other grass roots, non-partisan, public activist organizations. This is clearly the issue of the decade and will be -- as it has been for the last two months -- the main line of this writer's screed. The FairVote initiative is originating under the auspices of Right to Vote Initiative, The Center for Voting and Democracy, contact Andrew Kirshenbaum at vote@fairvote.org / (301) 270-4616 /
www.fairvote.org.
I first read about the Initiative in an editorial by Steven Hill and Rob Richie at Truth Out. They posted Kerry and Brokaw's comments on the need to fix the election system, and then included detailed versions of the Fair Vote Initiative's points.
I will have much more to say on this in the days ahead, holidays notwithstanding, but for now a couple of salient features stand out and require comment.
The Fair Vote Initiative does not mention anything about campaign finance reform. In my view, campaign finance reform is an indispensable ingredient to any formula for fair elections in America. Right now, the people are voting on the corporate candidates, not the peoples' candidates. Congress is supposed to be our lobbying organization, but they have been completely bought off. Without meaningful campaign finance reform -- taking corporate money out of the elections -- we will not be to "pry open our democracy" to more representative candidates.
The other issue is that voting in the United States is a state-level right. Enfranchisement is not guaranteed by the Federal government because originally, the union was formed by compromises that left a lot of questions of sovereignty and liberty to the states. Otherwise, the framers of the Constitution would never have been able to cobble together a deal. Every state had different rules for who gets to vote.
Eventually, as states competed for settlers, taxpayers, professionals, farmers, tradesmen, and skilled and unskilled laborers, they began expanding the franchise. First it went to anyone who owned enough property, then people with the correct pedigree who paid enough taxes, then people who fought in the army, then people of color, then women, and then young adults. This movement was seen as a way of insuring involvement of local interest groups in politics, as well as insuring the state credited constituencies for the contributions they made.
To propose a Federal law guaranteeing the right to vote will be such a revolutionary departure from the expansion process that the franchise has thus far undergone that it will be very hard to force it to gain traction in Washington. Indeed, Washington is the last place we can expect any support for such a movement. Washington is the locus of the most concentrated political and economic power in the country. Any dilution of that concentration is going to be rejected by lawmakers. The only way the right to vote has ever expanded in the United States is by local and state governments seizing upon the issue through grass roots activism, and then indirectly forcing other localities and states to do likewise by a form of "confederate pressure."
One of the main obstacles to popular reforms in any area of American society since Vietnam has been the disparate effort of reformers in the teeth of an ever more unified conservative, corporate financed and media controlled public discourse. If we try to change the system from the top down, we may play right into the hands of the Republican/corporate hegemonies. Freedom is messy. Let's keep it that way and start the national movement for fair elections on the state and local level, so we can REALLY bury the powers in Washington beneath an irresistible and surging tidal wave of popular support for democratic reforms. |
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| charity |
[Dec. 21st, 2004|05:39 pm] |
I had to search for ten minutes before I was able to find the key quotation by Jesus about humility and self. I was looking for the teaching about being a guest at a great feast, where the lesson is to sit in the lowest place and be called up to a higher one by the host. Don't sit in the highest place and then be asked to move to a lower one by the host when someone of greater dignity and virtue than you arrives.
Then in Luke 14:11 we read the verse that we should all remember, but that I only record here because I stumbled upon it in my search for the teachings about where to sit at the feast.For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
How could I have forgotten this?
Todd Huffman jogged my memory with This Christmas, Where is Our National Conscience? in Common Dreams. This is one of the more penetrating essays I have read this season. Huffman begins by invoking God and the blessings He is commonly understood to have bestowed upon the United States, and that we have learned to take our good fortune for granted. But the essayist goes on to inveigh thatas a nation obsessed with money and possessions, celebrity and sport, we are not advanced morally or spiritually. He iterates that we have "established monetary criteria for success or failure ... and increasingly misuse[] religion as justification for intolerance and division."
He criticizes us for "silently tolerat[ing] widespread poverty and blatant inequalities."We give tax cuts to the wealthy, and budget cuts to the poor. We allow forty percent of our fellow citizens to go without health care. We demand lower levels of government spending, thereby allowing higher levels of economic inequality. All this, even thought he provision of decent subsistence, shelter, and health care are well within our national capacity to provide.
He tries to remind us that religion is for helping us "rediscover" the value of each individual, our inter"connectedness" and "the common good." He wants us to be conscientious about caring for each other, not about assuming a holier-than-thou posture from which to accuse one another of immorality or unworthiness.
He quotes Jacob Marley, Ebeneezer Scrooge's old, haunting business partner in his claim that living on earth, "Mankind was my business."
Huffman opens the piece with FDR's statement that, "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much. It's whether we provide enough for those who have too little."
These are ideas that have vanished from the national conscience today in America. We seek to defend ourselves, to righteously vanquish our enemies no matter the cost in suffering and misery to them. We seek to hold others to an ideal standard of morality that we choose for ourselves but seek to impose by any means necessary upon those who disagree with our "moral values."
But love, generosity, or what the Apostle Paul called, "charity," is only something that can be given by those who feel an abundance of grace. If we live in the richest country in the world, blessed beyond proportion of any people in history, we can still live like scrooges and act like curmudgeons. Being good requires being grateful to God for what we have, and for the less fortunate with whom we can share and know God better by becoming more like Him. |
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| Ohio Election Challenge Refiled |
[Dec. 21st, 2004|11:41 am] |
Cliff Arnebeck and 40 Ohio voters have refiled a challenge to the state's November 2, 2004 election results. The Free Press has a page with both filing links, the second of which is this one.
Medina County
It's looking as if most of the counties in Ohio are trying to skimp on the recount. This blog records just such an instance in Medina County yesterday.
Mahoning County
Counterpunch has a very comprehensive article by Ann Harrison from December 8th, in which she mentions numerous electronic voting irregularities. The one that seems to be the story with the biggest impact is the Mahoning County counting anomaly. That story is picked up for detailed analysis by our old friend, the lyric poet, Dr. Phillips. |
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| Something you can enjoy complaining about |
[Dec. 20th, 2004|10:51 am] |
Please call Roosevelt in Hyde Park, Lyceum in Red Hook, and New Paltz Cinemas to register your outrage!
This amazing letter was transmitted in an email digest from MediaChannel.org. As a part-time resident of New Paltz and a progressive Democrat proud of the gay marriages performed there, I am very offended by this.
The whole thing has an I Love Huckabees (which I saw at the rival New Paltz Plaza Cinemas) flavor to it. I am really looking forward to the fight over this one:
MOVIE THEATERS ON THE RIGHT
Hilary Kramer, from New Paltz New York:
"Some of you may be aware that a few weeks ago WGHQ-Kingston, 920 AM, formerly an American Pop Standards-type music station owned by Clear Channel, was converted to a 24-hour far-right talk format (Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, etc.). Having subjected myself to a few hours of close listening over the past 2 days, I have stumbled upon some very disconcerting news. The prime local sponsor of the new format is our own New Paltz Cinemas, and they are not advertising in a benign "enjoy the movies" type manner. Here is the text of their ad, allowing for the fact that this transcription cannot convey the obnoxious tone of the announcer:
"'Here is some important news for movie lovers in the Hudson Valley: Hollywood has gone insane, and our values are not often reflected on the silver screen. But three locally owned movie theaters in our area are looking out for you. While we can't bring back the Hollywood of John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, or Ronald Reagan, the Lyceum Cinemas in Red Hook, the Roosevelt Cinemas in Hyde Park, and the New Paltz Cinemas all refused to play Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 this year. We promise to provide the best family film fare that we possibly can at prices you and your family can afford. So when it is movie time, remember who's looking out for you at the Roosevelt Cinemas in Hyde Park, the Lyceum in Red Hook, or the New Paltz Cinemas on Route 299. (contact info removed) And we'll see you at the movies. Hollywood may be insane, but the Lyceum Cinemas in Red Hook, the Roosevelt in Hyde Park, and the New Paltz Cinemas are looking out for you.'
"Right now only one other regional sponsor has ads on the station, Hannaford, although their ad is a simple "shop at Hannaford's, our prices and quality are good" sort of thing without political content. The rest of the ads are the usual baldness cures, eat-without-getting-fat pills, "invention" kits, Vioxx lawsuits, Walmart, etc. associated with the national syndication of these programs. The New Paltz Cinemas and its sister theaters Lyceum and Roosevelt are the sole local account supporting this radio station, and the ad shows they actively support the station's new content.
"Further, as any local resident can attest, the NP Cinemas doesn't restrict itself to Disney movies. It is clear that they are actively blocking progressive political speech as a business practice, and soliciting customers on that basis. Considering the political leanings of our community, this hardly seems like a sensible business practice, unless they are relying on us not finding out about it by placing the ad only on a station they assume we will not hear. I urge you to contact the owner and tell them that you will withhold your business until they change their advertising and movie booking policies."
The owner/operator is:
Independent Cinemas
7270 South Broadway
Red Hook, NY 12571
I have not yet been able to discover their phone number. However, here is a listing of Hudson Valley Cinemas.
Please call Roosevelt in Hyde Park, Lyceum in Red Hook, and New Paltz Cinemas to register your outrage! |
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| NY Press |
[Dec. 16th, 2004|01:42 pm] |
The New York Free Press is an interesting little weekly that is distributed free in New York City.
Their cover story this week examines raising environmental consciousness in the U.S. Christian political voting block.
Alexander Zaitchik pens a thoughtful and comprehensive analysis of why environmental stewardship hasn't been a big issue to mainstream Republican Christians. In one of the most well-crafted pieces of journalism I have found on this emerging concept, Zaitchik deftly steers a path through the layers of subject matter, from the Biblical mandate in Genesis 2:15 to the UN Climate Change conference in Buenos Aires. He shows some very incisive evidence about the divisive nature of Christian denominations in America, especially as such divisions apply to reasoned discourse, the larger community of faith and political wedge issues, such as Environmentalism.
Zaitchik eases us along in the transitions from issue to issue and interest group to interest group, pinpointing hopeful spokesman Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), who points out how the minds of evangelicals are opening up, slowly and cautiously.
"Care for the created order is indeed one hallmark of evangelicalism," he says. "If we outline a policy that says that climate change is real, and that it poses a sincere threat to the earth, then you can no longer say, 'This is just hokum,' if you're an evangelical and you want to be with the leadership.
As optimistic as Cizik's view may be, as illustrated in the above paragraph, Cizik sets off a couple of deafening alarms. The first one screams that Cizik seems to be drawing a distinction between 'evangelicalism' and "Christianity." The second red-alert is the familiar paean that Cizik doesn't consider 'evangelicals' to be capable of thinking critically about important social issues without guidance from other 'evangelical' policymakers.
All Christians are evangelical. Anyone purporting to be a follower of Jesus Christ is charged with the "Great commission": "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation." (Mark 16:15)
Although Protestantism in the United States has become divided and subdivided between a spectrum of more or less autonomous groups, all are "evangelical" by virtue of being Christian. Common parlance refers to Baptists, non-denominational Congregationalist or independent Protestant churches and most fundamentalist denominations, such as Pentecostal, as the "Evangelicals." This is a misnomer. The more moderate, liberal "main line" or mainstream Protestant churches, such as the Presbyterians and the Methodists. Evangelism or, spreading the gospel, is the sine qua non of the Christian life. For "evangelicals" to refer to themselves as such, in opposition to other Christian denominations, speaks volumes -- as Cizik does in Zaitchik's quotation, above, about how uninformed Americans are about religious groups, politics, and probably everything else (alarm no. 1).
The second cause for concern in Cizik's statement is the "Big Brother" paternalism among so-called evangelical policymakers who want to tell their unthinking, uneducated or otherwise naive brethren how to think and vote. After all, anyone who calls some Christians "evangelicals" based on their denomination is clearly in the habit of peddling falsehoods and stereotypes. Therefore, the Ciziks of the Christian universe have to micro manage the thinking of their lambs lest they stray into the swamp of Reason and Enlightenment. Under the current organization of Protestantism in America, this would be catastrophic. Artificial distinctions between believers and non-believers would no longer frighten church members into unquestioning loyalty to pulpit and party.
This is one of the powerful trademarks of this Zaitchik piece. He pinpoints people, organizations, cultural tendencies and thought patterns by laying them delicately and plainly before the reader, like an onion waiting to be diced on a gourmet chef's cutting board. The reader is free to behold the facts in all their living, palpable horror.
Zaitchik caps this missile with a monstrous warhead. In piecing together a "chicken or egg" question to ask if it is industry or religion that drives the Republican right, he mentions that Christian Right advocacy groups' favorite Republicans are the League of Conservation Voters' nemeses. But he probes this dichotomy further.
A better explanation of this synchronicity between God and chainsaw is found in Michael Lind's pithy description of the current Republican Party coalition: "A Frankenstein operation [has] stitched the bodiless head of Northeastern neoconservatism onto the headless body of Southern fundamentalism. Though incomplete, the image explains the rough flow of ideas in today's Republican Party. Southern evangelicals set the social agenda at the grassroots level, while secular forces in the north (and west) set he economic and foreign policy agendas. These policies are then fed back to the religious base through industry-subsidized Christian Right leaders in Congress and the media, who reinforce the idea that pollution controls are part of the same godless liberal plot that wants gay porn and home-abortion kits distributed in the public school system.
Instead of using Madison Avenue to sell democracy to Islamic fundamentalist cultures, we're packaging Corporatism to God fearing, law abiding Americans.
Zaitchik doesn't mention television and the corporate media publicity and information monopoly on behalf of corporate interests. But again, he shows the reader the soft underbelly of the Republican axis.
Christians such as the Reverend Jim Ball of the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN) started the "What would Jesus Drive?" campaign. Zaitchik reports:
This past July, Rev. Ball gathered evangelical pastors to a weekend conference at Chesapeake Bay, VA.... The conference concluded with attendees committing to the goal of forging an official evangelical consensus on climate change within the next year."In dismissing environmental activism, many Christians are just going along with what their allies are telling them," says Ball. "They haven't really taken a serious look at issues like climate change. but when they hear people ... who can talk to them as a brother and a scientist, they think, 'Well if a brother is saying it, there's gotta be something to this.'"
The New York Press shows the kind of clout, reasoning and informative value in this piece that are so desperately lacking in mainstream media. Another hopeful facet to this article is that we're all waking up to reality. If more Americans read articles like Zaitchik's and supported newspapers like the Press, maybe then more progressive Christians could sing gospel overtures to the secular, unsaved progressives.
He who has ears, let him hear (Mt 13:9). |
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| Phuquew |
[Dec. 13th, 2004|04:09 pm] |
Feeling like I'm reverting into an adolescent. The weekend was grueling at home.
Greg Palast is reported to have spoken on election fraud at NY Society for Ethical Culture on December 10, 2004. I link to daily Kos story re same. Why didn't I read about this in the paper? What did Richard Clarke say?
Fascism
Here is a link to Society of Secular Humanism article on fourteen characteristics of fascism in a society. How many can you identify from your hometown, state, or country in 2004? |
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| nyc's scheduled protest event for tomorrow |
[Dec. 10th, 2004|03:53 pm] |
Saturday, December 11th. Black Box Tea Party, New York, New York. 12:15 pm to 2:00 pm. Times Square, S.E. Corner, Broadway & 42nd Street. Bring black box, indignation, and a sign. For information: http://www.solarbus.org/stealyourelection/articles/1211-nyc-protest.html or email alexisact@earthlink.net or sharon.lynch@verizon.net
...Then ...
POLITICS n' POERTY: "Bush The Aftermath"
Saturday, December 11th @ 7pm - Free
Spit your shit & support youth voices of why we're pissed off, inspired
and ready for action. This month's theme is the connecting elections to
grassroots movements. Hosted by YA-YA Network @ Bluestockings, 172
Allen St. btw. Stanton & Rivington. 1 block below Houston & 1st Ave. Info:
Call Sayde (917) 756-7842 or
http://action.indyvoter.org/ctt.asp?u=3546454&l=70850 |
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| Please forward *** VERY URGENT *** |
[Dec. 9th, 2004|01:05 pm] |
Please copy and forward the contents of this message to everyone you know:
Got this from Mark Crispian Miller:
SEND TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!
John Conyers is trying to collect a couple million emails on the voting investigation..
He has set up a special form for you to ask questions of the committee..
Please send off an email with a question for the Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee Hearing on the Ohio Vote.
Click below and take a moment to write your opinions of the 2004 Presidential vote.
http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/contact.html
Also ...
Like pygmies on the battlefield of history, we cower like whipped dogs in the face of political pressure when it comes to issues like intelligence reform. -- Sen. Roberty Byrd, December 8, 2004.
There is a litany of complaints about the bill and the run-up to its passage in the U.S. Senate. Given the content of the criticisms, for example, The 9/11 Commission recognized that its recommendations call for the government to increase its presence in people's lives, and so it wisely endorsed the creation of an independent Civil Liberties Board to defend our privacy rights and liberties. The Senate-passed bill embraced this recommendation and included additional protections to help ensure that executive agencies could not exert undue influence on the Board. This conference agreement scuttles those protections by burying the Board deep inside of the Office of the President, subjecting Board members to White House pressure it's hard to imagine that this bill passed so easily!
The text of Byrd's critique from the Senate floor can be found here.
More hits by the "Great One-O-Eight": The Nethercutt Amendment
Then there's the Omnibus Budget Bill that was held up for two weeks because of the Congressional tax return snooping clause that wasn't supposed to have been noticed to have been inserted by Istook. Well, it turns out there are some other nasty provisions in there, only these provisions didn't get flagged before Dubya got his meathooks on it.
There's another provision in there that authorizes Congress to cut aid to allies who support the World Court authority to try U.S. soldiers for war crimes.
Did Somebody say, "Voting?"
The Baltimore Sun has the best mainstream media editorial I have seen yet on the Ohio problem. |
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| the matador |
[Dec. 8th, 2004|03:56 pm] |
Looks like an opera during curtain call between the acts. I couldn't resist this.
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| Election 2004 |
[Dec. 8th, 2004|01:56 pm] |
There is a database website on "voting incidents" that I just found out about in connection with the hearings that Conyers is holding in Washington today.
I listened to the hearings. They are not official Judiciary Committee "hearings" because only the Democrats -- and not even all the Democrats -- sanctioned them. In any case, it was the most riveting, inspiring thing I've heard in American politics since Kerry's acceptance speech.
After listending to the "hearings," I heard about this Associated Press article on Democratic Underground. In the article, journalist Brent Kallestad writes:
More than nine in 10 respondents said they had no problems, other than having to wait in long lines, according to the Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday.
While 75 percent of voters described themselves as "very confident" or "somewhat confident" their vote was correctly counted, the degree of satisfaction varied between winners and losers, according to assistant poll director Clay Richards.
He said 95 percent of the Republicans quizzed said they were very or somewhat confident in the result, compared with only 58 percent of Democrats. President Bush (news - web sites) carried the state with 52 percent of the vote over Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites).
This all under a headline: Poll: Fla. Voters Had No Voting Problems. This strikes me as blatant mendacity. So I wrote the AP this email in response:
I am amused by the article you published today under the headline:
Poll: Fla. Voters Had No Voting Problems.
Then Brent Kallestad went on to state:
"only 58 percent of Democrats" said they were very or somewhat confident in the results.
No problem?
You are the problem. This is blatant deception of the American public, whitewashing, and disinformation.
Ha! Ha! Ha! you hypocrites! You're supposed to be the last line of defense against tyranny in this country, but instead you're the first to betray your responsibilities.
You are responsible for the anger and fallout that could result from millions of fed-up, disfranchised Americans.
whenever Rumsfeld gets into trouble making people believe he isn't lying, he has to start waving his arms around for emphasis. That's the psychological gesture he got from Adolph Schickelgruber. By the way ... is that a little mustache on his upper lip?
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| Bev Harris on Wayne Madsen |
[Dec. 7th, 2004|12:51 pm] |
Bev Harris at Black Box Voting provided a reasonable criticism of the Curtis and Madsen stories.
She coolly reminds us that audits take time and that jumping to conclusions about a large and intricate process is unwise.
In addition, she is careful to note that Madsen and Curtis attract a lot of attention but don't really speak to the hard issues of Votergate 2004, namely Ohio, voteswitching, specific programs and systems, and auditing.
She's not always agreeable, and she can also seem like a grandstander. At least we know her and her work. I think she has more credibility here than any of the other parties. The clincher is that she - recognizes the impact of the Madsen articles and the Curtis Affidavit,
- sagaciously points out what's credible and what's questionable and why,
- demonstrates how disinformation [in this instance] distracts, and
- sounds logical and eminently cogent throughout.
The thing to do now is not take the bait, wait for the legitimate processes that are in place to work themselves out: the Conyers hearings, the Ohio recount, the Ahrenbeck challenge, Bev Harris's research. Jumping at a red herring could undermine the whole voting - investigative venture. Err with caution. |
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