..:the turn of the tide:..

When I got home from work today, the worst thing happened to me. First a little backstory. There is a lady that lives upstairs from me who has a very annoying dog that barks, literally, all day long! So many people have complained about it that the apartment managers have threatened to evict her. So, her solution is to keep her dog in her car some of the time. Now the real story:

As I was getting out of my car, this woman asked me to help her open her car door. She was pulling on it and complaining that the doors on the passenger side just got keyed and now her driver’s side door wont open. So, I walked over and helped her open the door. When I opened it, I noticed poop on the seat that trailed down to several large piles of diarrhea on the pavement. I immediately thought that the dog had crapped in the car and that some fell out when I opened the door.

She then asked me to look at the key marks on the other side. I walked over with her and looking at the door, I noticed that there was poop all over the ground on this side too. This time I also looked at her feet and saw that they were covered in crap…crap that also ran up her leg (she was wearing a dress, so I could see it!).

I realized, then, that she had been crapping herself the whole time I was talking to her and helping her! I also noticed that not only had she crapped all over herself, but she had also crapped on MY SHOE!! The lady shit on my shoes!!!!!!!!!! Why does this happen to me? Of all people, I get crapped on by the crazy old lady upstairs!

So now, I am forced to throw away my favorite pair of shoes. SUCK! Below is a graphic recreation of the results of my adventure.

It seems that yesterday, for the very first time, a Hindu Chaplain gave the morning invocation to the US Senate. This historic event was disrupted by three protesters belonging to the anti-abortion group “Operation Save America.” Ante and Katherine Pavkovic and their daughter Kristen shouted, “Lord Jesus, forgive us father for allowing a prayer of the wicked, which is an abomination in your sight. This is an abomination. We shall have no other gods before You.” Several times Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) ordered them to be removed from the chamber, but as they were escorted out they continued shouting, “No Lord but Jesus Christ!” and “There’s only one true God!”

Personally, I completely disagree with the entire practice of having an opening prayer in the Senate Chamber. As much as the religious right tries to convince us otherwise, the United States is not a Christian nation. Yes, we have Christians. Yes, the majority of Americans claim to be Christians. Also, yes, Christians deserve the right to congregate and speak just as everyone else, but religion, in any form, does not have any place in the US Senate; whether official, or ceremonial, or simply because it is the tradition.

Operation Save America issued a press release rife with inaccurate portrayals of the Founding Fathers and their supposed “[standing] on the Gospels of Jesus Christ!” I’ll ignore how completely wrong they are, but not without saying this: The Founding Fathers did not stand on the Gospels of Jesus Christ, or any other religious text. They stood on the Constitution. That’s it. Though many of them were Christians and much of the constitution was based on Christian principals (and any number of other universal principals), they took painstaking efforts to keep organized religion out of the Constitution and to avoid the institution of an official Church of the United States.

Now, if we are going to allow Christians from a wide spectrum of Christian sects*** to serve as Senate Chaplains and invoke the name of Jesus Christ in prayer when the Senate comes into session, then we ought to extend the same courtesy to other established and credible religions. We should do this because the Founding Fathers made a point to keep religion out of the Constitution and to keep the United States from establishing an official Church.

Until the day when the only invocation allowed on the floor of the Senate is that of the Constitution, I think it is only fair to be fair.

*** - Religious affiliations of Senate Chaplains since 1789
Episcopalian - 19
Methodist - 17
Presbyterian - 13
Baptist - 6
Unitarian - 3
Congregationalist - 1
Lutheran - 1
Roman Catholic - 1
Seventh-day Adventist (current) - 1

Total Christian - 62
Other religions - 0

My favorite part of the Republican debate was this (slightly shortened) response from Rep. Tom Tancredo to the question of how he would use George W. Bush in his administration:

Some time ago, in 2003 I think it was, I got a call from Karl Rove who told me that because of my criticism of the president I should never darken the doorstep of the White House. I have been so disappointed in the President in so many ways actually in the last several years…that as President I would have to tell George W. Bush the same thing Karl Rove told me.

Yesterday, while driving to my wife’s parent’s house for an early easter dinner, I saw a minivan with the license plate “VOTEGOP.” In addition, he had a bumper sticker for the “National Republican League” and another that read “W still the PRESIDENT.” The driver was about 50, wearing a boring suit and an american flag tie. My guess is that he was also wearing one of those stupid american flag lapel pins that you always see W wearing.

So, obviously all of these factors were aggravating my liberal sensibilities, so my wife wrote “Bush Sucks Ass” on a piece of paper and held it to the window when we drove by. I honked to get his attention. He looked. His face moved from glazed “I’m listening to right-wing talk radio” to “There’s a fucking liberal burning a flag in my front yard!!!!” Then he started shaking his fist at us uncontrollably and almost ran over the curb.

Awesome. Vote GOP!! I mean, why wouldn’t you? You’ve got old man McCain who confessed to an affair with a 25 year old socialite and is divorced, Giuliani who marched in a parade with his mistress and then announced his divorce during a press conference before telling his wife, not to mention his support for gay and abortion rights, and Newt Gingrich who has cheated on his multiple wives many times; once while running for congress on the slogan “Let our family represent your family” and again while spearheading the impeachment of Bill Clinton, and who divorced his first wife while she was in the hospital recovering from uterine cancer!

Ladies and gentlemen, these are YOUR family values candidates.

I got this picture via The Weblog and I absolutely couldn’t help myself. This picture is too perfect!! Enjoy…

I really couldn’t help making W a Mexican. My appologies to all Mexicans.

Best quiz ever! Not much I can really say about this. Thanks to Adam Kotsko for the link.

I went to a peace lecture and award ceremony on Sunday where Howard Zinn was honored and gave a lecture on history and action. Here are a few pictures and video clips, as well as my lecture notes typed out and expanded a little. It is long, but very much worth reading. This man is brilliant. If you have never read is books, you should. You will be shocked by what you didn’t learn in school!! Enjoy!!

Video Clip 1

Video Clip 2

History as a Guide to Action
Dr. Howard Zinn

The administration has committed a war of aggression. They have committed war crimes. After WWII we convicted the Nazis of war crimes and hung them for what they did. I’m not suggesting that we hang them. I was thinking, maybe community service. Bush should spend a year in a homeless shelter so he can see that not everyone lives on a ranch. Dick Cheney, well he should go to the same place so that he can tell Bush what to do.

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. ~Hermann Goring - Second in command of the Third Reich, and commander of the Luftwaffe.

There is a spectrum between Totalitarianism and Democracy. We are somewhere in between. There are so many ways that we fall short. Especially in Matters of war; there is no democracy. For instance:

1. There is no check on the president when he goes to war. Historically Congress has always followed the president like sheep.

Constitutionally Congress was given the power to declare war because the President has a predisposition for war.

All wars since WWII have been unconstitutional because the President has declared war, not congress.

The Supreme Court has refused to take cases involving the constitutionality of wars.

The Supreme Court took away our right to free speech during wartime. The 1^st Amendment says that there should be no laws abridging the freedom of speech, but the Supreme Court unanimously upheld congresses right to revoke freedom of speech during wartime.

Democracy is something you have to fight for. The Constitution isn’t a list of realities; it is a list of promises that must be demanded by the people to be fulfilled.

2. The media should be the watchdog of the government, but our media has failed us.

Collin Powell’s list of WMD’s was the largest list of falsehoods ever read before the UN. Did the media ask for proof or facts to support his claims? NO! All the media had was admiration for the administration. The NY Times even went as far as saying that it is “hard to imagine that Iraq doesn’t have weapons of mass destruction.”

We have to depend on ourselves!

Problems with this:

1. US citizens haven’t had a good historical education. The public needs understand history’s truths.

• We need to learn a history where Mark Twain is a hero, not the war mongering Teddy Roosevelt.

• Where Woodrow Wilson isn’t a hero, but Helen Keller, who was a radical, anti-war socialist.

If we knew history, we would know the lies that are retold every time we go to war and we would never believe the next administration that tells those same lies.

We need to remember that Polk started the Mexican-American war because he wanted the land that belonged to Mexico. We wanted the natural resources in Cuba so we supported every dictator that violently took charge until the wrong dictator took over, and then we were against dictatorship. We need to remember the murderous occupation of the Philippines whenever they talk about occupation to bring about democracy. We should also remember that God told Wilson to invade the Philippines.

2. We are susceptible to lies.

We think government is our friend. If they do something wrong, it is just a mistake, not that they don’t really care about us. Our feeling of a “common interest” with the government makes us susceptible.

55 rich white men started this nation. Blacks, women, minorities, etc were not represented. They did not have a common interest with the US people then, and they don’t now.

There are the rich and the poor. In the middle are a bunch of nervous people.

There is always a conflict between rich and poor. The government almost always sides with the wealthy class. The only exceptions are when the working class rebels.

3. We think we are the greatest

This leads us to believe that our government does good things. We have a record of violent expansion, both domestic and foreign. What about slavery, the genocide of Native Americans, segregation, oppression of women, etc.

We have to be honest about our history and our country and about what we have done.

When you are critical, you will be called unpatriotic, which often leads us to be quiet. Being unpatriotic can now lead us to losing our rights and being taken away and imprisoned due to the new military commissions act.

To be patriotic is not to support the government. That is totalitarianism. To be patriotic is to question power. That is democracy.

The government is set up by the people. When they become destructive, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish the government. That is in our constitution. If we have the right to alter or abolish, we certainly have the right to criticize.

Whenever serious injustice occurs, it is up to the people to stand up. The power of money and guns is fragile because it relies on the obedience of the people. The government can’t continue a war when the people and the GI’s rebel against it.

We do have power. Millions of people doing small things at points in history has caused change.

After WWI, the percentage of military to civilian death shifted from almost 10 military to 1 civilian to now almost 90 civilians to every military death. Every was we fight today is a war against children.

It is not just this war or that war, but all war.

What people learn in social movements is how it enhances your life just to be involved. When you work with others to achieve a good end, it makes life worth living.

Check out the new PSA’s from Women’s Voices Women Vote.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8FxZTQ8lsc

20 million single women didn’t vote in the last presidential election.  It is estimated that 2/3 of these women are likely to vote democratic.  If you are one of these women, get out and vote!  This is probably the most important election that we will ever see.  It is about giving a voice to the opposition and creating oversight and demanding accountability from a white house that has become drunk with power, and a congress that refuses to be the checks and balances.

Many people do not realize that 2 days ago the President signed into law the Military Commissions Act.  During a speech after signing Bush said, “These military commissions will provide a fair trial in which the accused are presumed innocent, have access to an attorney, and can hear all the evidence against them.”

These are lies.  Flat out lies.

There is no presumption of innocence.  According to the bill, suspects who have not been tried or convicted of any crimes are allowed to be tortured up to the point of causing “serious mental and physical trauma.”

There is no access to an attorney.  Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift, the so called “Hero of Guantanamo,” whose story you can and should read here, has said that he was only granted access to his detained defendant, on the promise that the detainee would plead guilty.

Prisoners will not hear all of the evidence that is brought against them, and neither with their defense.  The very law that Bush had just signed specifically allows the admittance of secret evidence that will not be made available to the defense.

The oldest and most fundamental writ in our country, Habeas Corpus, which grants you the right to a fair trial, an attorney, to know why you have been charged, to not be coerced into confession, has been stripped away.  At the Presidents sole command, you or any other American citizen can now be declared an enemy combatant for reasons that do not have to be given to you or anyone else.

We jailed journalists who were opposed to the president using the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798, we use the Espionage Act of 1917 to imprison over 2000 so called “Hyphenated Americans” whose only crime was pacifism and advocating peace in a time of war, we used Executive Order 9-0-6-6 in 1942 to imprison 110,000 Americans simply because they were Japanese, saying “It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen — he is still a Japanese,” and now we have the Military Commissions Act of 2006 which I do not want to imagine what we might use it for in the name of national security as we have done so many times in our history.  You cannot say that this law will only be used against terrorists or the enemy, and that you are safe because you aren’t doing anything wrong, because under the same guise we have created similar laws in the past and used them against INNOCENT AMERICAN CITIZEN!!!!!!!!!!!

Your civil liberties are being stripped away.  If you can still vote for the people who have done these things because you believe that they share your moral values and that because you don’t agree with abortion or because you don’t want gay people to get married, then this is YOUR fault.  YOU are responsible.  The blood is on YOUR hands. This is not about politics.  It is not about being a Republican or a Democrat.  It is about your inherent civil liberties, your inaliable rights, your freedom, and your life.  Do the right thing and force congress to hold the President and his office accountable.  Those currently in charge are not doing it.  Someone else has to.  That means you NEED to vote and you NEED to get them out. 

Pictures from the World Can’t Wait Detroit protest on October 5th.

Gathering at Wayne State University at 12:30, getting ready to walk downtown at 2:30.

Walking to Grand Circus Park for the Rally at 4:30. We ended up with about 400 people.

We had a huge police escort as we walked. This guy on the bike kept threatening to arrest me because I wouldn’t stop walking in the street. I kept telling him that the streets belong to the people. And this guy next to me kept calling him a pig. He was getting really pissed! The cars in the 2nd pic were part of the “gaurd” at the park downtown.

Some awesome kids at the rally, some awesome people protesting torture on a pedestrian island of a busy corner by the park, and Rep. John Conyers who spoke at the end of the rally. The guy talking to him was wearing a t-shirt that said “Proud to be a Jew” and had a big Star of David on it. He was also handing out communist newspapers. I tried to take his picture, but my battery died right after this picture.

Amen brother, amen.