Because we’re doing it again.

Today is the 70th anniversary of the end of the two-day race riot known as Kristallnacht, “the night of broken glass,” when Nazi brownshirts and the Aryan equivalent of the KKK destroyed 276 synagogues across Germany, along with hundreds of Jewish businesses, with 91 Jews being killed in the process. This was in 1938, eight years into Hitler’s consolidation of power and mounting propaganda effort to blame all of Germany’s ills on the Jews (with lesser roles for Gypsies, Communists, leftists, homosexuals, labor union leaders and “race traitors”.

Two years earlier, Hitler’s regime instituted the Nuremburg Laws, stripping German Jews of their citizenship, banning them from political participation of any kind, and prohibiting Jews from marrying German citizens.

While nothing on this scale has happened in the U.S. since the decimation of Native Americans in the 19th century, Californians took a step toward their own Nuremburg laws last Tuesday, stripping a select portion of residents of one of the rights most important to human beings: the right to bind oneself, with the legal recognition of the state, to the individual of one’s choosing.

This is the first time in U.S. history that any government has stripped existing rights away from citizens who have done nothing to forfeit those rights.

And it was done with a simple majority vote, by self-identified church-goers who believe marriage is inextricably tied to the sacred rites of their faith, rather than being a simple contract recognized by the state to in order to classify the individuals involved for purposes of taxation, parental rights, and healthcare decision-making, but most of all for determining property rights and responsibility for debts.

This is how marriage started in the West: not as the solemnizing of a union under the aegis of one religion or another, but to say to the community at large “A and B are now a unit.” (And, for most of the history of marriage, and where B was female, to say “B, and all of her property, are now the property of A, to dispose of as he wishes.” Marriages before this point were all of the common-law variety: A just picked B and brought her home (or more likely negotiated with B’s father on the price to be paid for, or the dowery to be transferred with, ownership rights to B).

Then the Catholic Church got involved in marriage as it gets involved in every area of its adherents’ lives: for purposes of control. This was not just to quash divorce (which left women to be cared for by the Church, a drain on profits) and to enforce the Biblical decree to “be fruitful and multiply” (Rome was forever in need of more bodies with which to expand its Empire), but to protect the Church’s assets from the demands of wives and children. By deciding who could and could not marry, the Church could reinforce the laws of primogeniture, take 2nd born sons for priests and condemn them to celibacy, and pair up the rest to best serve the Church itself. It was not much different than breeding livestock.

As civilization progressed and the power of the Church declined with the Protestant movement and the rise of the individual both politically and commercially, it became all the more important to vest symbolic power in the sacraments and rites. You may not be a serf tending the Bishop’s fields anymore, but God would strike you down if you didn’t continue to obey His laws, as delineated by the Pope. And while the Catholic Church was more limited in the parts of the Bible they chose to enforce, the Protestants put the Bible in the hands of the flock, and the number of possible transgressions multiplied by orders of magnitude. The hellfire and brimstone of the Protestant church made sins against these newfound Biblical laws even more frightening.

Now comes the Mormon Church, with its angel Moroni handing golden tablets to his chosen prophet Joseph Smith, and old Joe - who had an eye for the ladies and had made a living knowing an easy mark when he saw one - understood the power of marriage beyond mere control of women and their property. Get control of sex, and you got control of men, as well - especially if you give them carte blanche and while keeping their wives monogamous.

So, with Joe on the brink of getting himself castrated for dallying with the daughters of his followers, God conveniently revealed to him that the men of the church were to spread their seed far and wide, “should they continue as innumerable as the stars; or, if ye were to count the sand upon the seashore ye could not number them”:

61…[I]f any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent, and if he espouse the second, and they are virgins, and have vowed to no other man, then is he justified; he cannot commit adultery for they are given unto him; for he cannot commit adultery with that that belongeth unto him and to no one else.
…
63 But if one or either of the ten virgins, after she is espoused, shall be with another man, she has committed adultery, and shall be destroyed; for they are given unto him to multiply and replenish the earth, according to my commandment, and to fulfill the promise which was given by my Father before the foundation of the world, and for their exaltation in the eternal worlds, that they may bear the souls of men; for herein is the work of my Father continued, that he may be glorified.

Now, we come to Proposition 8, passed into law last week in California.

Eighty percent of the funding in favor of Proposition 8 was provided by the Mormon Church, with much of the remainder coming from Catholics; there is no question that in the minds of those who wanted Prop 8 to pass, there was a religious reason for it.

This is, of course, completely odds with the U.S. Constitution, which preserves to all individuals from of - and freedom from - religion. But because the religious reasoning behind Prop 8 is not explicit, this all-but-overt breach of the First Amendment is not among the bases for legal challenges to this new, hateful and exclusionary part of the California state constitution.

And as to Kristallnacht, and why I brought the Nazis into this in the first place?

Because if California can, by a simple majority vote of the people, and on a surreptitiously religious basis strip a class of its citizens of their right to marry, what is to keep them from stripping other groups of their rights?

For example, atheists like me are the most untrustworthy bunch in the country, if polls are to be believed. Why not stop us from marrying, or from adopting kids and indoctrinating them into our heinous lifestyle?

Granted, it would be a challenge to write a proposition without reference to religion that stripped away the rights of an atheist; nothing is so simple as identifying a person by a physical characteristic.

And that is the true reason behind Proposition 8. As humans, we have some monkey-brain need to hold ourselves above a distinct Other; we must be King of the Hill, at least in our own minds. Most easily-spotted - and therefore easily discriminated against - groups have been protected by the 14th Amendment, at least as far as government treatment and public accommodations are concerned. But, at least at the federal level, we still get to hate on the gays pretty much at will.

This is changing, ever so slowly. But California’s vote last week has been a steel-toed boot in the nuts for those of us who care about genuine equality for all. And that the handmaidens to the passage of Prop 8 were the Catholic Church (no stranger to discrimination or homosexuality) and the Mormon Church (no strangers to discrimination on the marriage front) and African American churchgoers (no strangers to discrimination and hate crimes) is the rotten icing on this moldy and putrefied cake.

The Bible says varied and contradictory things about marriage, sexuality and relationships: it hails both wives as property and priests dismembering their concubines. The Mormon Doctrine and Covenants blesses polygamy and then denounces it.

Every religion denounces some group or another out of an existential need to be the One True Faith.

But in its better moments, religion gives us higher virtues: Judge not lest ye be judged. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

If the evangelicals are correct in saying that this nation was founded by Christian men,* then it was to these commandments that those men adhered when they wrote that all men are created equal, and are endowed with inalienable rights.

“Inalienable” means that those rights cannot be taken away by any man - or woman. Not even when they are in the majority.

The election of Barack Obama to the presidency was a beautiful step in the right direction for this country - but the passage of Prop 8 was an even larger step back, because it took away a basic right of a class of its citizens.

I never thought I would live to see an African American elected President. Now I wonder if I’ll live to see gay marriage given full faith and credit in all 50 states. It seems like such a small thing to ask.

*I don’t believe they are.

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Democrat Jeff Merkley is declaring victory over Republican incumbent Sen. Gordon Smith in the Oregon Senate race, moving Democrats one seat closer to a filibuster-proof majority in the body.

“This is the beginning of a transformational change for America,” Merkley said at a news conference at Portland State University.

He said he would be working with President-elect Barack Obama “to put this nation back on track.”
…
With 100 percent of the counties reporting, Merkley received 48.4 percent of the vote to Smith’s 46 percent, according to unofficial results from the Oregon Secretary of State’s office.

I doubt old Gordo will go gentle into that good night: he’s got smarmy lobbyist written all over him.

That is, until the 2010 Oregon Governor’s race rolls around. But Oregon hasn’t elected a Republican governor since the early 80s, so we may yet be safe from the Smith Frozen Foods millions…

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Conservative über-douchebag Richard Viguerie on November 5, 2004, celebrating George Bush’s re-election by an electoral margin of just 34 votes:

[The] network of conservative think tanks, advocacy organizations and pressure groups … Viguerie believes, has finally achieved its end with the reelection of President Bush.

“Now comes the revolution,” Viguerie recently told conservatives, according to the New York Times.

“…Now, we’ve got everything. We’ve got a president reelected based on running a conservative agenda. We’re thrilled and pleased. We’ve got a good comfortable [conservative Republican] majority in both houses. Now’s the time to do it.

…Now we have a comfortable margin. And George Bush has a mandate.”

Richard Viguerie on November 5, 2008, poor-mouthing Obama’s win by 179 electoral votes:

This was a vote against Big Government Republicanism, not a lurch to the Left.
…
Democrats will be under tremendous pressure - from their special interest groups such as MoveOn, unions, race-based groups, and pro-abortion and homosexual groups - to run the country from the Left. If they do, they will learn, like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, what happens when politicians claim mandates they didn’t earn.

Bush has an approval rating of 20% and more than 80% of the country feel that we’re on the wrong track. So spin all you want, you addled conservative crack monkey: you and yours have been soundly rejected.

Happy days are here again…

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Yesterday was phenomenal for so many reasons: Obama, Kay Hagan, Larry Kissel, both Udalls, and here in Oregon a number of critical bond measures passed despite the economic worries haunting nearly every family these days. Voters seem to be back to seeing themselves as part of a community, rather than solo artists without responsibilities or a safety net.

In California, Arizona and Florida, though, the Jesus Fascists have gotten their way yet again, putting their religion into a state contract that has nothing to do with the faith of the contracting parties.

I’ve posted time and again on the irrationality of these 1 Man + 1 Woman ballot initiatives and constitutional amendments; at its root, it’s a question of the constitutionality of inserting religion into a state permitting process. We wouldn’t allow the state to deny an OBGYN his license because he is Catholic and refuses prescribe birth control, or require that a butcher conform to Halal or Kosher rituals before issuing an operating permit from the Department of Health, so why should the state introduce religious requirements when determining the fitness of two adults who meet every other requirement for attaining a marriage license?

Thankfully, at least in California, there is a basis in the state Constitution for challenging Proposition 8, and the two wonderful women who were the first to marry in California under the short-lived California Supreme Court decision that struck down the last prohibition on same-sex marriage have already declared their intention to sue for the right to keep that door open for all California couples.

Lawyers for same-sex couples said they will argue that the anti-gay-marriage measure was an illegal constitutional revision — not a more limited amendment, as backers said.

The legal action contends that Proposition 8 actually revises the state constitution by altering such fundamental tenets as equal-protection guarantees. A measure to revise the state constitution can be placed before voters only by the Legislature.

I would also argue that the doctrine of pre-emption applies: generally when one constitutional provision directly contradicts another (as Proposition 8 directly contradicts the equal-protection clause of the California Constitution), the broader provision will overrule the narrower. This is particularly true in cases involving civil rights, as it is generally presumed that civil rights cannot be abridged by the will of the majority (otherwise, we atheists would be in a helluva lot of trouble).

As Chief Justice Ronald M. George eloquently wrote in his decision last May:

Our state now recognizes that an individual’s capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual’s sexual orientation. An individual’s sexual orientation — like a person’s race or gender — does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights.

Let’s hope the court sees it the same way when they take up the question again - and that no marriage in California will be subject to the will of the majority ever again.

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It should not be extraordinary for our country to elect a mixed-race man with a non-Anglo or Aryan name to our highest office in the 21st century, and in our third century of existence as a nation, but it is. We are still a profoundly racist and xenophobic country, but we have taken a step into the future and out of the muck with yesterday’s election.

National pride is hard for me, as it is so often tied to nationalism and belligerence, and hard to separate from the “my country, right or wrong” that has gotten us into the mess we find ourselves in today. It also usually means that the speaker believes his country is better than all others - a sentiment I abhor as much as “God bless America.”

But I am proud today for the baby step we have taken toward mature adulthood.

My country ’tis of thee
Sweet Land of liberty,
Of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims pride,
From every mountainside -
Let freedom ring.

Good luck, President-elect Obama.

Now, can I have my privacy and civil rights back, please?

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1 Comments

• At November 5, 2008, John wrote:

  I'm speechless. A person named Liam from Dublin mentioned on Hartmann about how we are all safer now. I agree but not until King George officially steps down.

  And then I received this from a local conservative,

  I fear for my children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. It is my opinion that some one has to do more than just be born in the USA or sneak in illegally to be eligible for any benefits.

  Obama is a product of a liberal press and a corrupt Chicago political system and it remains to be seen what he will do. I for one will follow his words and deeds. Last night I talked to several friends who voted for Obama. They said that it was time for a change. When I asked them what was Obama going to change, they said." I don't know but its time for a change". Enough Said.

  Obama is in my opinion a Great Con Artist.

  Funny how people perceive things so differently. I didn't feel any less safe on September 12, 2001 than I did on September 10, 2001. Hope the country and our government can finally stop letting fear trump common sense and good decision making both here and abroad.

  I am euphoricccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  

Thank You America!

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I was writing a post on Studs Terkel in my head, on my way to a meeting Saturday morning, when my Mom called to tell me that my Aunt Camilla had passed. And this afternoon, I was just getting wound up to write about Terkel again when I read this:

Madelyn Dunham, the grandmother who was the anchor in the life of the child that was Barack Obama, died today just hours before polling stations opened in America’s historic election.

“It is with great sadness that we announce that our grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, has died peacefully after a battle with cancer,” Obama said in a joint statement with his sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng.

“She was the cornerstone of our family, and a woman of extraordinary accomplishment, strength and humility.”

Dunham, 86, had been in poor health for the duration of Obama’s campaign - though he has often said that she followed politics avidly.
…
In his memoir, Obama credited Dunham for giving him the stability he might otherwise have lacked, being raised without a father and by a mother who travelled between Hawaii and Indonesia.

He returned from Indonesia to live with his grandparents when he was 10, and Dunham enrolled him in the exclusive Punahou school in Hawaii.
…
Dunham’s death leaves Obama with only one remaining link to his childhood in his younger sister, Maya, who lives in Hawaii.

It breaks my heart that she did not live to see her grandson elected President. But then, I’m sure that accomplishment was far less important to Mrs. Dunham than that she saw Barack Obama grow up to be a mensch.

So many friends and relatives are reaching the age when the time ahead must be counted in months or years instead of decades: my in-laws have just reached 70, a mark my parents will both soon reach (and that only 2 of my 4 grandparents ever saw); one uncle was diagnosed with terminal cancer last month, just weeks before his 75th birthday; other older relatives are dealing with various cancers or have challenges ranging from coronary disease to diabetes. My dear friend Ella, at 82, is frank in her desire to come to the end of a road that has left her unable to see or hear clearly - leaving her without the comfort of television, radio or books to distract her from chronic pain; she cannot walk without fear of falling, and she lacks sufficient motor control to correspond with those she loves.

In my selfishness, I want Ella around as long as possible, as I wished Aunt Camilla would be here to keep the thread to my beloved grandfather, her brother, unbroken.

But that’s the bitch of being an atheist: I can’t easily let my loved ones fall away, knowing I will see them on some cloud perch when my time has finally come. But still, I have to let them go.

And while November 4th will mean a new chance for our towns and states and country and even the world if we make the right choices and follow those choices with action, it will also be a day that Camilla and Studs and Madelyn Dunham did not live to see; they had other pivotal moments, and saw whether their generation made the most of its opportunities for equality, justice and peace.

I wonder, looking back, what tomorrow will mean to me 40 years from now, and how I will see it differently from our son L. and his cousins, and from our grandchildren.

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2 Comments

• At November 3, 2008, John wrote:

  You can be an atheist and still believe that death is not the final end. Just ask the Dalai Lama.

  My mother died 3 weeks after she made the last mortgage payment on her house and 3 weeks before a dear friend of hers was released from prison (she hired the appeals attorney who got him out, overturning a life sentence with no parole). She did die knowing her friend was about to be released from prison though, which may have been all that mattered to her.

  And let's hope that similarly Ms. Dunham died knowing her grandson was about to become President and that was enough for her.

  Life is a mystery.

• At November 3, 2008, Rosy wrote:

  Good post Missy.

Back in 1998, J. and I started collecting state quarters for our son L.; it seemed fortuitous that the state quarter program had begun the year of his birth, and that he would have long since taken over the collecting himself by the time he turned ten and the last of the state quarters - Hawaii - was about to be released.

Time flies, and here we are ten years later, with L. eagerly awaiting the coin that will complete his collection.

It seems to me very appropriate that the series, nominally undertaken for state pride and tourism but truly just a cheap and relatively painless way to knock $6 to $8 billion off the deficit, should begin under a Democratic president and end under a Democratic president-elect, with the last state represented being his birthplace.

The state motto of Hawaii is Ua mau ke ea o ka aina I ka pono: “The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.”

I am ever the cynic, but still I am hopeful that, under an Obama administration and with Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, we might begin to reclaim that ideal for the country as a whole.

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I canvassed for Obama for 4 hours yesterday in SW Vancouver, and every voter I spoke to had either voted for Obama already or was planning to.

While Washington state doesn’t loom large in either candidate’s electoral strategy, it seems like a good omen - particularly for downticket races (including the rematch of the ridiculously close Gregoire-Rossi 2004 gubernatorial race).

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The CIA can hide statements from imprisoned suspected terrorists that the agency tortured them in its set of secret prisons, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of the Washington D.C. Circuit Court declined to review the government’s assertions that the allegations of torture from men held in the CIA’s black site prisons — whether truthful or not — would put the nation at risk of grave danger if allowed to be made public.

“The Court, giving deference to the agency’s detailed, good-faith declaration, is disinclined to second-guess the agency in its area of expertise through in camera review,” Lamberth wrote, referring to a procedure where a judge looks at evidence in his chamber without showing it to the opposing side.

So the CIA says it doesn’t torture, and despite evidence to the contrary this judge depends on the Agency’s “good-faith declaration” and won’t even look at the detainees’ assertions of torture to determine if the CIA had a bona fide National Security claim (which one has to assume could not be based on the security implications of revealing of torture techniques, since torture is illegal).

But the CIA also says the detainees are lying about torture, so why not allow the release of at least the lies? How does that hurt national security? How can lies (at least detainees’ lies) be a matter of national security that needs to be classified?

The CIA made a point of noting that some of the allegations of torture were untrue, but had to be redacted anyways, because blacking out the truth and allowing false statements would let a clever prisoner paint an inverse picture of CIA torture techniques.

Judge Lamberth deferred to that argument.

“Improbable though this might seem, it is conceivable,” Lamberth wrote.

So a detainee is going to lie about torture techniques in such a way that future terrorist detainees can get a hold of the ACLU report, before they’re captured, and tell by the “untrue” reports of torture techniques what the actual enhanced interrogation techniques are used, and then steel themselves against those techniques?

The CIA obviously thinks we’re all as stupid as Sarah Palin.

Least surprising of all the above:

Judge Lamberth also served as the presiding judge of the nation’s secret spying [FISA] court from 1995 to 2002. He was reportedly the first judge to learn that the Administration was spying on Americans without following the law, but says there’s nothing to worry about.

We are so full of shit as a country it’s a wonder the rest of the world doesn’t band together to eliminate the stench.

We can’t stop working on November 5. We have to push Obama to redeem this country by reversing BushCo’s cynical and devastating culture of torture, lies and secrecy.

Approving all FOIA requests related to torture, black sites and illegal wire taps during the last 8 years would be a great place to start. What do you think, Senator Leahy?

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When William McKinley was inaugurated, a state legislator from New York who had long experience with the force of nature that was Governor (and, at that moment, Vice President-elect) Theodore Roosevelt, snarked that he wasn’t there to see McKinley sworn in, but rather to “see Teddy take the veil.” Republicans thought that by shunting Roosevelt into the ceremonial position of VP, they could effectively rid themselves of this pain-in-the-ass who wasn’t happy unless he was the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral.

Like TR, Bill Clinton can’t see a marching band without jumping in front of it and claiming he’s the drum major:

Appearing on stage with Obama, Clinton said the Democratic presidential nominee “took a little heat” for not saying very much when the financial crisis first erupted in mid-September.

“He talked to his advisers. He talked to my economic advisers,” Clinton said, listing experts such as investor Warren Buffett and former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker whom Obama consulted.

Obama also spoke to Clinton himself and Hillary Clinton, the former first lady and Obama’s former rival for the Democratic presidential nomination.

“You know why? Because he knew it was complicated. And before he said anything he wanted to understand,” Clinton said.

This isn’t about you anymore, Bill - hard as that might be to imagine.

But this gives us one more chance to thank the FSM that Obama is the candidate, with Joe Biden and not Hillary Clinton as his VP. While I didn’t support Hillary Clinton, I think she would have made a fine president on her own. But what chance would anyone have for his/her own agenda when Bill’s right there to remind the world, at every opportunity, that he’s the Best President Ever?

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Thanks to Truthout.

Here is some good news from Guardian.Uk, US election: Obama leads McCain by 19 points among early voters, Pew says.

But it also sounds like November 4th is going to be utter chaos for those states without mail-in voting.

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And Sarah Palin is their poster girl:

Federal agents have broken up a plot by two neo-Nazi skinheads to assassinate Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and shoot or decapitate 102 black people, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives said Monday.

In court records unsealed Monday in U.S. District Court in Jackson, Tenn., federal agents said they disrupted plans to rob a gun store and target a predominantly African-American high school in a murder spree that was to begin in Tennessee. Agents said the skinheads did not identify the school by name.

Jim Cavanaugh, special agent in charge of ATF’s Nashville field office, said the two men planned to shoot 88 black people and decapitate another 14. The numbers 88 and 14 are symbolic in the white supremacist community.

The men also sought to go on a national killing spree after the Tennessee murders, with Obama as its final target, Cavanaugh told The Associated Press.

“They said that would be their last, final act — that they would attempt to kill Sen. Obama,” Cavanaugh said. “They didn’t believe they would be able to do it, but that they would get killed trying.”
…
For the Obama plot, the legal documents show, Cowart and Schlesselman “planned to drive their vehicle as fast as they could toward Obama shooting at him from the windows.”

“Both individuals stated they would dress in all white tuxedos and wear top hats during the assassination attempt,” the court complaint states. “Both individuals further stated they knew they would and were willing to die during this attempt.”

For the record, I do believe that the release of this information may be timed to make people fear voting for Obama will lead to violence and carnage. An ATF run by BushCo could be expected to do nothing less 7 days from this election.

But that said: What is it about these people that the threat of equality brings them to violence?

Last night, I told J. that if Obama wins, I will finally feel like an American. I’m the whitest of white women, but I grew up in the South, and the fact that my black friends were not allowed to swim with me in the Country Club pool - that they weren’t even comfortable coming over to our side of town - made me feel like I was living in a stealth dictatorship that no one around me would acknowledge. And I have never lost that feeling, because true equality has never been a part of these United States. As far as I am concerned, until we all have a chance to reach our highest potential, we have not fulfilled the promise of this country, and it will not truly exist until we do.

But for one bright moment on January 20, 2009, I may feel what it’s like to be patriotic, for the first time.

But it seems that for others, that moment will only fill them with hate. And McCain/Palin and the whole right wing media nuthouse, from Limbaugh to Hannity to O’Reilly to Savage to Reagan, have been midwife to that rage.

Last night I heard that polling showed that race has diminished as a factor in people’s thinking - or at least what they’ll admit to - over the last five months. If that’s true, perhaps an Obama presidency will not only bring change to government, but also to the incendiary hatefest that is right-wing radio and teevee. Perhaps their audience will dwindle to just a few scared, small assholes like these two Clockwork Orange wanabees.

I live in hope.

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4 Comments

• At October 27, 2008, PUMA Pam wrote:

  It took less than 24 hours for the loony left to link the skinheads to McCain/Palin! Congrats! What, no comparing Sarah Palin to Eva Braun? I can't wait for November 5th and the egg on all your faces!!

• At October 28, 2008, John wrote:

  We will have a big on our face if this is true nationwide:

  Over the next four weeks, that growth rate continued, with another 9,275 new voters. Though voters under 35 only represent a quarter of the county's electorate, they accounted for half of this latest registration surge.

  My friend, most of these young people are not registering to vote for Caribou Barbie and the biased polls generally do not include them in the sampling.

  This, of course, assumes that the election is not stolen again by the Republicans.

• At October 28, 2008, missy wrote:

  How many times have you heard McCain or Palin denounce the catcalls of "terrorist" and "kill him" at their rallies, PUMA Pam?

• At October 29, 2008, John wrote:

  Articles out today in the news support the idea that the skinhead bust was not a serious threat.

  If the people involved were "too disorganized to carry out the plot, authorities said, and their planning was riddled with blunders", it is starting to sound like another one of these.

Video highlights:

PRIORITIES

Tax cut for 95% of working Americans

End tax breaks for “outsourcers”

Reduce health care costs

Energy independence

Better education

FUNDING

Stop $10 billion waste in Iraq

Bailout oversight

Bush/McCain tax cuts for top 2% expire

Close corporate loopholes

Audit spending and eliminate programs that don’t work

Just to have someone as President that can speak clearly and intelligently should be worth 2000 Dow Jones Industrial average points.

From HORROR is the only word to describe these last eight years and we must never minimize or repress this truth:

This is see spot run simple. STOP the money cow oil wars and STOP the working class and American infrastructure-destroying tax breaks for the elites, and (voila!) a healed economy. But our economy can NEVER be healed so long the “Bush Wars” continue, and so long as the vampire elites continue drain every last drop of wealth/blood from our dying country.

This is all about clinging to fossil fuels in order to make pig, pig rich people, pig, pig richer. If the wealth of the Earth was distributed more or less equally, NO ONE would be poor, EVERYONE would have free health care, EVERYONE could take vacations, NO FAMILY would have to have several job, etc, etc, etc.

But instead we have a 21st Century Dictatorship of the Rich. If even one person by now doesn’t realize the United States of American is 100% a Dictatorship of the Rich, that person must be a member of another species. Indeed, the supremely important fact of America is that we ARE a Dictatorship of the Rich — rapidly turning into a fascist police state. Not to see this is not to see the sun.

This list, of course, could go on and on, but the issue isn’t so much that these atrocities are unknown, but that they are muted, painted over, and repressed.

A mystic once said, “It is truth that liberates, not the effort to be free.” His meaning was that the only ACTION that counts in life is the action-response catalyzed from making eye contact with the desperately avoided.

In our case, this is making eye contact with eight years of horror, e.g., the infinite treason of 9/11, exchanging our children’s blood for oil — and so much more. In short, acknowledging the utter destruction of our “world”.

Please stop the horror.  Please vote for a better future.

Note to John McCain:  You are not “my friend”.

Gambling’s Go-To Guy video (click to show/hide)

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