Singing the Blue[s]

September 22nd, 2006

WHERE are the Democrats? I swear, the leadership should hold their annual convention at the Waffle House!

I’m going to a local Dem “do” in a couple of weeks; I stay out of local politics as best I can in the Pea Patch, since there is a frogs-hair of difference between the actual record of the two parties achievements. We’re a swing state, but here in the southern portion of the state … well … we’re the home of John Ashcroft and Roy Blunt, you may remember. ‘Nuff said.

Anyhow — when thinking about this shindig, I can already feel myself get hot … these people are so leaned back their spine touches their belly button. They’re not ready for me, I assure you … I will have to put on my big smile, my virtual sun bonnet and meet them as disgruntled little gal instead of fire-breathing dragoness. More flies with honey … you know. Think I can do it?

Maybe I could just channel Janet Jackson — What. Have. You. Done. For. Me. Lately? But then I’d have to listen to their response, all the lame excuses. There are few Democratic leaders in my area … and they’re behind the 8 Ball — my beating them up won’t help. Dealing with these folks is like punching at air … only one of us [me] seems to think there’s an emergency.

But they NEED to hear that message — they NEED to know how pissed the public is. At a recent summers-end party [barbecue and bonfire] here in the Patch, and after having a couple too many, I answered the question, “What do you DO, exactly?” with “I’m trying to save the world from George Bush.” Amazingly [!!!] I got a hearty round of applause, and a rush of comments about sending our kids off to die — one old gent spit in the fire, and growled, “Good LUCK!” I don’t think I’d have heard that a year ago, not here. Such an opinion would have been mumbled softly, if at all.

One pundit I appreciate, David Gergen, comes on CNN from time to time to report on the election issues … over the last month, each time he’s given his assessment he’s ended it with a warning that the Republicans are underestimating how ANGRY the public is. Well, so are the Democrats! They’d best be wise enough to use that to their advantage, lest it backfire on THEM. Frankly, I just can’t shake the feeling that there’s no “there” there … and the next few years will find us recreating this from scratch; maybe that’s the Hope we’re looking for. The Dem’s should be reminded that political party’s have come and gone, but the people’s demand for honest representation doesn’t miss a beat.

Here’s a collection — next to last piece says everything you wanted to say [but your Mother wouldn't let you] — and I saved the best ’til last; at any point that we collectively AGREE to boycott these thugs, to stop participating and let them see how many of us stand against them, we will surprise ourselves with our power … them too, I’d expect. Oct. 5th might be such a day, should you care to play. Open the link for the scoop.

What was it V [for Vendetta] said?

The people should not be afraid of the government, the government should be afraid of the people.

Jude

Déjà Vu All Over Again: It’s Not the Economy, Stupid!
Arianna Huffington
09.21.2006
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/deja-vu-all-over-again_b_29977.html

Newsflash: According to this article in Roll Call, Congressional Democrats privately admit they really want to lose the 2006 midterm elections!

Okay, the article doesn’t actually say that, but it might as well, since it is all about how Democrats have decided that the way to win in November is — I kid you not — to make the economy the central issue of the campaign.

“We’ve got to go on the offensive,” explained a senior Democratic aide, “and keep our eye on the ball — and that’s the economy”

“We’re not going to win 15 seats on the war in Iraq,” said another Democratic staffer, insisting it is the economy that will, in the words of Roll Call, “bring the party across the goal line.”

Sen. Debbie Stabenow is quoted as saying the 2006 election “is all about jobs.”

And, in a memo sent to Democratic staffers, the party’s Senate leadership claimed “while Iraq may be high among the concerns of the American people, it is a distant reality in comparison to the day to day challenges many families face filing their gas tanks, paying for college, saving for retirement and securing a job.”

A distant reality? Oh. My. God.

In poll after poll, voters place Iraq well above the economy when asked which issue will most affect their vote this year. And when you combine concerns about the war with concerns about terrorism/national security, it’s the economy that is “a distant reality.”

Yet Democrats keep returning to the same domestic-issues-uber-alles thinking that cost them the elections in 2002 and 2004. They can’t really believe that people are more interested in raising the minimum wage, middle class tax relief, and college affordability than they are in who’s going to keep them from being blown up, can they? The Dems are like a bunch of crack addicts who know that the stuff is killing them, but keep reaching for the pipe. The closer they get to Election Day, the more they desperately crave a hit of “It’s the economy, stupid!”

Or maybe they have fallen prey to the war fatigue Chris Matthews thinks is responsible for the appalling lack of Iraq coverage on TV — and the smile on Karl Rove’s face.

This is a crying shame. The 2006 election — and with it control of the House and the power to investigate the Bush administration’s abundant outrages — is there for the taking… if only Democrats would put down the economy crack pipe and put their energy into hammering Bush and the GOP for their many tragic foreign policy and national security failures, which have combined to make America far less safe.

The numbers couldn’t be any clearer. Seventy-seven percent of voters think that it’s time to give new people a shot at running Congress. But while Democrats continue to hold a lead when voters are asked which party they plan to support in November, Republicans are making significant gains in convincing voters they are better able to handle national security and the war on terrorism. According to a new LA Times/Bloomberg poll, voters give the GOP a whopping 17 point advantage on the “who’ll keep us safe?” question (nearly double the number who felt that way in June). At the same time, 56 percent of voters don’t believe that America is making progress in Iraq. (What’s more, Bush’s numbers on the economy have greatly improved in the last three months).

Which is why Democrats can’t take their eye off the real ball — making the case that Iraq is not, as Bush continues to claim, the centerpiece of the war on terror, and has, in fact, compromised America’s ability to combat terrorists and protect our homeland.

When asked by the New York Times/CBS which party takes the threat of terrorism more seriously, only six percent of those polled said Democrats while 22 percent gave the nod to Republicans.

Democrats need to close that chasm — and fast. If the next 7 weeks are spent with Democrats harping on the economy and Bush acting like he’s saving the world, the dream of 2006 becoming the Dem version of the GOP’s 1994 landslide will quickly morph into a November nightmare.

Repeat after me: It’s NOT the economy, stupid! ++

The Democrats Should Probably Lose In November
Oliver Willis
09.22.2006
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/oliver-willis/the-democrats-should-prob_b_30011.html

For the sake of America, I hope the Democrats win. In the 5+ years of solid Republican rule, the congress has abdicated its constitutional role as a watchdog. It has become just another cheerleading section for the Republican party and has overseen fraud, waste, criminal activity and the abdication of American values and the abolition of precious liberties.

A Democratic congress would at least restore checks and balances and throw a well-deserving butt or two in jail.

For the sake of the Democratic party, the party’s long-term viability, and America’s long term existence I sort of hope the Democrats lose this November. A win this Fall would be an endorsement of the party’s ridiculously idiotic posture and would reward its sniveling cowardice with power. A Democratic win would put a rubber stamp on the feckless leadership and push the party to keep it going into 2008, where we would lose yet again for the third time out of the last four elections.

The Democratic Party apparently has no clue. It seems to believe that 1994-present is just a temporal hiccup, and all they have to do is wait for the Republicans to self-destruct and naturally inherit the earth and the congress. The party is like the child who refuses to learn its lesson, even though the results of 2000, 2002, and 2004 show us that simply wishing is not a good enough strategy for winning.

I thought they would learn. I thought they would learn to keep the message simple, repeat it often and repeat it wherever the media was. The Republicans have mastered this. The phrases they come up with are not magic (as folks like George Lakoff would have you believe) but appeal to people’s gut instincts, especially with their repetition (”Head On, Apply Directly To The Forehead” is just the latest iteration of “Flip Flopper”).

Democrats refuse to aim for the gut and the heart and prefer to aim for the head. So many Democrats and progressives think simply dropping a mountain of “facts” to “refute” Republican arguments will work in the public’s eyes. But if you’re responding, you are already losing.

Ever since I’ve been able to vote, the Democrats have been in response mode. Since 1994 they have steadily tried the same old, same old stodgy techniques, acting as if still in power while the Republicans have adapted and are beating the hell out of the Dems. The Republicans identified a way to get the vote out by sending a consistent message to their base and getting the base to share that message with their friends. Democrats outsource the jobs to the unions and pray that black voters turn out to vote. One of those two strategies is viable in the long term. It’s not ours.

The Clinton folks innovated with the war room concept, responding and also introducing new media stories throughout the whole media cycle. They did this in an environment dominated by the three networks (ABC, NBC, CBS) and a handful of papers (NY Times, USA Today, Washington Post, etc.). Yet, even this concept is not being used by today’s Democrats and we face a significantly faster and news hungry media environment that encompasses 24-hour blogs, cable news, newspapers, magazines, radio and the like. This is not a question of having a progressive or conservative media, or a question of financial assets. The tools are all there and they don’t cost a lot. Democrats are just not willing to do this. Republicans regularly flood the media with new initiatives, attacks on the left, and propaganda in favor of their party and the conservative movement. If you’re lucky, sometime in the cycle a Democrat will drop off a press release or someone will say something on the floor of the House or Senate that nobody ever sees. The idea of using friendly contacts in the blogosphere and pushing the media to include a Democratic response or initiative just seems like its too much hard work.

None of this is hard to do, it certainly is not rocket science. The strategy of “hoping” has led to losing, why would it be any different this year? The President is one of the most unpopular in history, while the GOP-dominated congress is at all-time lows. Yet, the Democrats are not benefiting from this. Like the Kerry campaign not capitalizing on a President with middling approval ratings, Democrats are not presenting themselves as the alternative to the Republican brand. People are tired of Brand GOP but Brand Democrat isn’t even handing out free samples. You can’t blame the consumer for not choosing you if aren’t getting in their faces, can you? No.

The Democrats don’t deserve to win this election or the next one until they begin to show that they are willing to fight for it. They need to show that they want to fight hard and aren’t just going to sit back and relax. They need to show that they believe in their guts on the issues we hold dear (Defending America, Improving America, Uniting America) and aren’t so damn scared that Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh might say something mean about them, and choose to be so damn vanilla nobody gives a damn. America needs a strong Democratic party, but aren’t getting it. In the absence of that, Republicans will rule. Because for all their innate evil, racism, classism and cronyism - their is no denying Republicans lust for the role of leaders while Democrats barely seem to want to show up.

Do better, damn it. ++

Abandon hope all ye who vote here
DOUG THOMPSON
September 21, 2006
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/content/2006/09/abandon_hope_al.html

How many more must die because of the deceit and arrogance of the American government and its despotic leader George W. Bush?

How much deeper must America sink into the cesspool of corruption?

How much is enough?

According to the United Nations, a record 6,599 Iraqi civilians died in July and August as a direct result of the illegal American invasion of a sovereign nation on trumped up charges that have, one by one, fallen to the onslaught of fact.

Even worse, the UN report says torture of Iraqi civilians have surpassed the levels during the reign of Saddam Hussein.

This is what we call liberation?

Bush’s cold, calculated manipulation of Congress, the media and the American public allowed him to launch an invasion based on lies, an action that the previous Pope called a “war crime.” The Republicans who control Congress went along with his madness but so, too, did most of the Democrats serving in the House and Senate and too many of them are still reluctant to oppose the war and call for a withdrawal even today.

These mindless, brain-dead lemmings still follow this madman and his insane policies into the abyss, obviously unconcerned about the damage to individual liberties, civil rights and a little document called the Constitution of the United States.

Such pathetic, intellectually-challenged morons, like Bush, put political partisanship above their country and don’t give a rat’s ass about the law, morality or ethics. They, like the President they follow, are little more than scum of the earth.

Yet these cretins may actually keep control of government after the mid-term elections because the Democrats lack both usable brain matter and political savvy and have yet to offer any real alternatives to voters.

To win in November, the Democrats need to offer something with an ounce of logic and a modicum of common sense. They can’t because, like Republicans, original thought is beyond their capacity. Sadly, politicians of either party lack the ability to come up with anything that really matters to the American people. Both Democrats and Republicans are hopeless losers who couldn’t get laid in a whorehouse on freebie night.

Bush and the Republicans have their lemmings and so do the Democrats. Political partisans are foolish little followers who subscribe to the inane belief that a political party is capable of caring about the will of the people or the welfare of a nation. They lack both the capacity or the will and anyone who thinks such a system is the best we can do lost their minds years ago.

In the end, voters this fall are left with no real choice, no real hope and no real way out of the morass. The corruption of the Republican Party must be stopped but the only other choice in the battle is another collection of fucking idiots incapable of leading a Cub Scout pack out of a city park.

Maybe the best answer is to just bring the soldiers home from Iraq and then send every elected official - Republican and Democrat - along with every political wannabe to Iraq and leave their fates to the fanatics, suicide bombers and “Islamic extremists.”

Then we can start over and build a real government. ++

Founders Saw Impeachment as a Cure
John Nichols
Friday, September 22, 2006 by the Madison Capital Times (Wisconsin)
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0922-24.htm

“… it may, perhaps, on some occasion, be found necessary to impeach the President himself…”
~ James Madison

Last Sunday, Sept. 17, I appeared on the National Mall in Washington as part of Camp Democracy’s daylong session on impeachment.

Camp Democracy organizer David Swanson’s timing was, as always, impeccable. Though it is too little noted by the current guardians of the American experiment - and the media guardians of the American discourse - Sept. 17 is Constitution Day. It was on Sept. 17, 1787, that 39 of the founders signed the U.S. Constitution and took the first formal step on America’s journey as a nation of laws rather than men.

It is possible, and indeed appropriate, to debate the intentions of the founders on a host of issues. But there can be no debate about their determination that the document guarantee the most necessary of all democratic protections: the power of impeachment.

George Mason, who along with James Madison was a definitional figure in the drafting of the Constitution, said of the document’s contents: “No point is of more importance than that the right of impeachment should be continued.”

Madison’s notes from the summer when the Constitution was drafted, as well as his letters to Jefferson regarding the product of that summer, leave no doubt that the founders intended for impeachment to be utilized whenever necessary in defense of the republic. They did not want the power to impeach treated as a fetish or a fantasy, nor did they intend for its application to be seen as a constitutional crisis. Rather, they wanted impeachment to be recognized for what it is: the cure for the crisis of executive excess.

It was Madison’s view that impeachment was an “indispensable” provision for defending the American experiment - and the American people - “against the incapacity, negligence or perfidy of the chief Magistrate.” The promise of another election, at which a wrongdoing executive might be removed, was not enough to provide such protection, Madison had warned in his address to the Constitutional Convention that made provision for impeachment. “The imitation of the period of (the president’s) service, was not a sufficient security,” explained the man who would, himself, serve two full terms as the new nation’s fourth president. “(The president) might lose his capacity after his appointment. He might pervert his administration into a scheme of peculation or oppression. He might betray his trust to foreign powers. … In the case of the Executive Magistracy which was to be administered by a single man, loss of capacity or corruption was more within the compass of probable events, and either of them might be fatal to the Republic.”

Gouverneur Morris, the “gentleman revolutionary” whose pen Madison credited with providing “the finish given to the style and arrangement of the Constitution,” was even blunter than his compatriot. Speaking of “the necessity of impeachments,” Morris asserted that only the broad power to remove the president - not merely for corruption and incapacity but for the far more fluidly defined act of “treachery” - would provide the essential insurance across time that: “This Magistrate is not the King. … The people are the King.”

Two hundred and nineteen years after that first Sept. 17, Swanson and the Camp Democracy organizers brought together many of the best thinkers in the nation - including former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega and former U.S. Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman - to discuss the question of how best to maintain the mandate of the Constitution.

There was little debate about whether George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their compatriots have committed “high crimes and misdemeanors” - the deliberately broad term for executive wrongdoing that the founders intended to address both legal and political concerns. There was a good deal of frustration with the failure of Democratic leaders to accept the responsibility of the opposition party to hold out-of-control leaders to account. But there was, as well, a dawning recognition that the discussion about impeachment will be had - if not as quickly or as well as should be in Washington, then surely in the great expanses of the United States.

Polls and practices suggest that the citizenry well understands the necessity of holding this administration to account - not to punish Bush or Cheney but to restore the system of checks and balances that has been so warped in this era of executive whim and lawlessness. And 219 years into this American experiment, as we honor the Constitution that is its foundation, the message from Camp Democracy is clear: It is time to remind the politicians and the pundits that: “This Magistrate is not the King … The people are the King.” ++

A Modest Proposal
Let’s Do Fight Them Here! Right Here, On Our Own Turf!
John Hennen
Friday, September 22, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0922-32.htm

Not long ago the Majority Leader of the House of Representatives, John Boehner of Ohio, said some Democrats were more concerned with protecting terrorists than protecting Americans.

“Wow,” I thought. “That’s terrible. I didn’t know that. I wonder who they are?”

Then, just last night (September 20) right here on the Morehead campus, there was a discussion about the Bill of Rights, where I learned another startling fact—-this time from a young man in the audience: Half of the people in the United States hate the country!

I never realized this, and it upset me that so many Americans hate our country. But then, in a moment of horror and self-loathing, I knew: I was one of those terrorist-protecting Democrats.

I, who have always thought of myself as a loyal if contrarian citizen, hated my country. I was precisely the kind of person Rep. Boehner and the young man in the audience were referring to.

You see, I did not admit—-as we all must—that we have to be ready to torture suspected terrorists in our custody. I would not admit they must face secret charges based on secret evidence from secret informants and be secretly interrogated and secretly imprisoned or executed by secret tribunals if we are to preserve our freedom. Moreover, for too long I questioned President Bush’s claim that the war in Iraq is the central front in the most crucial war of the century (fortune telling is an inherent executive power), the defining conflict in the struggle between good and evil, the place where the forces of enlightenment must conquer the forces of darkness. I also questioned his belief that if we do not fight them there, we’ll have to fight them here.

For some nagging reason—traitor that I was– it always seemed to me that the invasion of Iraq was a witless distraction from the hunt for the masterminds of 9/11, that it was a calculating, voluntary, imperial war for which Ms. Rice and Messrs. Cheney, Kristol, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Bush, et. al. had long sought a catalytic element to justify—and, joila! 9/11 gave it to them. But now I am redeemed, and see that all my mad suspicion was only the latent hatred I had for my country. And I have an idea that I believe will bring all the other America-hating Americans fully back into the embrace of the mother country: Let’s do fight them here! Right here, on our own turf!

If we fight them here, everyone will drop all doubts and step forward to defend their homes and families. All that the national mobilization will require is that we withdraw U. S. regular forces and National Guard troops from Iraq and bring them home to train every able-bodied citizen in small-arms and artillery fire, air assaults, hand-to-hand combat, IED deployment, and body-bag (oops, sorry—-“transport tube”) stuffing. By the time the millions and millions and millions of insane terrorists have overrun the Middle East, East Asia, the Mediterranean region, Iberia, and Europe to establish their Islamofascist Caliphate—six months, tops– we will be battle ready when they invade the homeland. We will conscript everyone into a seamless network of neighborhood, village, rural, urban, and national militias to fight them on familiar streets and take advantage of their ignorance of our terrain, language, religious customs, and traditional culture.

When 100,000 crazed mullahs and suiciders careen into Morehead to pillage and murder, by God we will fight them! In the Student Union! On the lawn! In the gym! In the library! At the Bell Tower—–we will fight them everywhere. It may take years for us to beat back the invasion of the massive terrorist armies, but we’ll have a unified force of constant patriots and ex-America- haters like me standing shoulder to shoulder, arm in arm, in full-throated battle cry to send them to Allah if they dare come down our street. Those we don’t kill we will wear down, since this time, they will be the ones who don’t understand what the war is all about.

The logistics are in our favor. We won’t have to worry about supply lines being cut off—-supply lines will be all over the place! We won’t have to worry about giving in, forgoing the mission, or cutting and running—where would we cut and run to? The mission would be here!

Casualties? Hell, we have over ten times the population of Iraq, and the Iraqis have only been dying at the rate of about three thousand civilians a month—we can take way, way more hits than that. What’s a couple hundred thousand dead kids if it saves our way of life, like the president says?

Everyone will serve in some way. Mr. Cheney, who missed out on the Vietnam fun like I did, has a bad heart, so he could clean latrines or something and I’m sure he would donate his Halliburton stock to the cause. Mr. Bush can strap on his flight suit and be a for real war leader, swearing and spitting like Patton, visiting the front lines like Lincoln, exhorting the citizen militia like Churchill, awarding Silver Stars to Jenna and Barbara—-oh, man, what a photo op—, who will undoubtedly rush to volunteer for the most perilous duty. Rush Limbaugh can lead a brigade of his most fervent dittoheads, pharmacologically fortified, into the fray.

Oh, the majesty of it—-farmers, nurses, teachers, miners, preachers, steelworkers, computer specialists, students, the liberal media, Grandpa and Grandma, everyone welded into one white hot mass of ruthless passion for liberty. No dissent, no pesky whining about civil liberties, no deferments, and an armored Humvee in every garage.

The Great Defense of Civilization will cost a lot of dough. Naturally the patriotic benefactors of President Bush’s tax cuts will voluntarily increase their income tax rates from the current 28% to 94%. That was the tax rate on the wealthiest Americans during World War II—-and the Cold War rate was about 65%. That’s the kind of sacrifice it took to whip Hitler and Hirohito and the Reds, and by God we all know the rich will gladly cough it up now.

I feel purified already. Bring ‘em on. ++

John Hennen is Associate Professor of History at Morehead State University in Kentucky.

The Democrats: Too Clever by Half
Susan Madrak
09.22.2006
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-madrak/the-democrats-too-clever_b_30015.html

How about that new, Bush-approved Geneva Convention? Great, huh?

This is why I was yelling at Harry Reid during a bloggers conference call last week. (In response, he told me he wished I could see the list of all the people “who call my office complaining about me picking a fight.”)

Goddamn, this Democratic “leadership” is just too fucking clever by half.

Now they’re left holding their flabby dicks in their limp hands, and our democracy is slowly circling the bowl.

It reminds me of this baseball team I once knew. Even though they won their division the previous year, the know-it-all manager connived them into a lower national tournament bracket, basically telling them in so many words they weren’t capable of winning in the appropriate, more competitive bracket. Well, that show of confidence worked wonders: they lost almost every game, and dropped out early.

Deja vu all over again. But the stakes are so much higher here.

The Democrats don’t so much want to win the mid-term elections as they want to sit back and hope the Republicans lose it for themselves. This is what I was trying to tell Harry Reid: People will only believe in the Democrats again if they stop calculating every word and just stand up and fight for them. Instead, we get this.

Nice work, Harry. Nice work. Now the Democrats (surprise, surprise) look like ciphers, and the Republicans look like fucking statesmen - merely for barely shaving the definition of torture. And you sold democracy down the river by hedging your bets.

Hey, but at least no one will be calling your office today, complaining you picked a fight. Why, you’re just a regular Miss Congeniality! ++

The World Can’t Wait: Drive Out the Bush Regime!http://www.worldcantwait.org/

YOUR GOVERNMENT, on the basis of outrageous lies, is waging a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq, with other countries in their sights.

YOUR GOVERNMENT is openly torturing people, and justifying it.

YOUR GOVERNMENT puts people in jail on the merest suspicion, refusing them lawyers, and either holding them indefinitely or deporting them in the dead of night.

YOUR GOVERNMENT is moving each day closer to a theocracy, where a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism will rule.

YOUR GOVERNMENT suppresses the science that doesn’t fit its religious, political and economic agenda, forcing present and future generations to pay a terrible price.

YOUR GOVERNMENT is moving to deny women here, and all over the world, the right to birth control and abortion.

YOUR GOVERNMENT enforces a culture of greed, bigotry, intolerance and ignorance.

People look at all this and think of Hitler - and they are right to do so. The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come.

We must act now; the future is in the balance.

Millions and millions are deeply disturbed and outraged by this. They recognize the need for a vehicle to express this outrage, yet they cannot find it; politics as usual cannot meet the enormity of the challenge, and people sense this. There is not going to be some magical “pendulum swing.” People who steal elections and believe they’re on a “mission from God” will not go without a fight. There is not going to be some savior from the Democratic Party. This whole idea of putting our hopes and energies into “leaders” who tell us to seek common ground with fascists and religious fanatics is proving every day to be a disaster, and actually serves to demobilize people.

But silence and paralysis are NOT acceptable. That which you will not resist and mobilize to stop, you will learn - or be forced - to accept. There is no escaping it: the whole disastrous course of this Bush regime must be STOPPED. And we must take the responsibility to do it. And there is a way. We are talking about something on a scale that can really make a huge change in this country and in the world. We need more than fighting Bush’s outrages one at a time, constantly losing ground to the whole onslaught. We must, and can, aim to create a political situation where the Bush regime’s program is repudiated, where Bush himself is driven from office, and where the whole direction he has been taking society is reversed. We, in our millions, must and can take responsibility to change the course of history. Acting in this way, we join with and give support and heart to people all over the globe who so urgently need and want this regime to be stopped.

This will not be easy. If we speak the truth, they will try to silence us. If we act, they will try to stop us. But we speak for the majority, here and around the world, and as we get this going we are going to reach out to the people who have been so badly fooled by Bush and we are NOT going to stop. The point is this: history is full of examples where people who had right on their side fought against tremendous odds and were victorious. And it is also full of examples of people passively hoping to wait it out, only to get swallowed up by a horror beyond what they ever imagined.

The future is unwritten. WHICH ONE WE GET IS UP TO US.

[open to sign pledge] ++

What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of Democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
~ Bill Moyers

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

Entry Filed under: Political Waves