If you look up, "grimmace"

If you look up, "grimmace" in the dictionary, it has President Bush's picture there by the definition:



He looks like we caught him in the middle of some instant, sci-fi, Lord-of-the-Rings morph thing.

roberts email

Honorable Senator Roberts:

I am very disappointed to learn that you do not support the proposal to hold hearings in the Senate Intelligence Committee about the nature, scope, and legality of the NSA domestic surveillance programs.

Since the story uncovering the existence of the "terrorist surveillance" program was published, it has become clear that other secret domestic surveillance programs are in effect. These programs are operating without public knowledge or meaningful Congressional oversight.

Without hearings the public cannot be assured that Congress is monitoring the application of the spying activities.

Based upon earlier experience, the public is very much aware--as I am sure you are--that these programs need to be monitored closely and comprehensively by Congress. How else will you be able to prevent unauthorized, inappropriate, politically motivated surveillance of Americans?

If you aren't willing to provide the public with the assurance of active, thorough, non-partisan oversight of domestic spying by the Bush Administration, how can the public conclude that the Administration is acting lawfully? We can't.

If the Bush Administration were acting lawfully and properly in this matter of surveillance, whether it's through the NSA, the Pentagon, or the FBI, they would be only too happy to use the FISA courts or other avenues provided by Congress for public oversight.

Please hold hearings on domestic surveillance.

Unions Resurgent

You know that you're a threat when they organize to gang up on you. That's what the big corporations are starting to do (again) to unions in America.

It's bad enough that the Department of Labor has become part of the anti-Union lobby under BushCo, but now there is a new blunderbuss in the arsenal of capitalist megalomania: The Center for Union Facts.

Dear UnionFacts.com,

Congratulations on your opening and new publicity campaign. How did you raise all that money so fast? You must have very good connections with big business.

Good luck discrediting unions. Tycoons have been trying to do it since the 1860s, with some success at times. ("Success" here is defined as depressed wages, downgraded working conditions, and lack of benefits for hourly workers.) However, people with a just cause will always win--when we stand together--over people who cause injustice.

It's a free country and "persons" can say whatever they want, even if they are really corporations. Please reconsider your actions conscientiously, though, in light of the concommitant damage to society, in general, that accompanies de-unionization of the labor force. In the last 100 years we saw widespread poverty and disease eradicated by society working as one for the public good. Those are only two of the most obvious common problems resolved since the rise of organized labor. Other social acievements are an improved transportation system, improved environmental conditions, improved literacy rates, extended life expectancy, lower infant mortality rate, increase in home ownership, improved sanitation, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Certainly unions have problems--just like all other institutions in our society. Corruption is the inevitable result of wealth and power. So, I am glad that you are helping to monitor union activity. Your efforts will continue to insure that unions are honest and resurgent in popularity and membership in America.

If only we could say the same for our corporations!

Power to the People,

Florindo J Troncelliti

Now, onward to the Department of Labor!

Straighten Them Out

Somebody needs to straighten out BushCo, and if not us, then who? We need a spontaneous, unanimous blossoming of good will, courage, and vision.

Ukraine BushCo!!

Make It Bitter For Traitors

"The Patriot Act." So that's what they call it. What's the title supposed to mean?

Citizens allow government privilege and control of private information and actions?

It means the government is trying to equate "patriotism" with promoting and allowing government control on the community and personal levels.

It's another lie. That has nothing to do with "patriotism."

Patriotism is just the opposite, in fact. It's a willingness to take risks on behalf of the rights and freedoms and responsibilities and commitments that all citizens share, and to take those risks voluntarily, freely, without government coercion.

Patriotism is about people doing what's right for the country, not what the government tells us is right.

If things like the so-called "Patriot Act" were truly patriotic, then we would still be a British colony.

But the deception of the "Patriot Act"'s name is indicative of the character of the Bush administration.

As Patriots, we need to see that we are in a war--not against a small CIA-created foreign party of operatives, but against the terrorists who want to use fear to take away our liberty.

Once we give it up, we will have to fight to get it back, and there isn't any guarantee we will win--not in our lifetimes.

Fight terror by casting out fear with love of country, truth, and liberty. If our government isn't satisfied with that, then they've shown enough about THEIR CHARACTER for us to see that they need to be cast out, too.

If our leaders can't lead with anything but scare tactics and war, they are very bad leaders and need to be propelled from office immediately.

We are animated pieces of the earth, the creations of the stars, the waters, and history. We have nothing to fear. We have a job to do.

We are here to preserve and improve conditions for our children and posterity. The notion that we need to pass "patriot" acts, cut social programs, and drain the treasury to fight "al-Qaeda" is preposterous. Only brainwashed people could accept such rationale.

The traitors are those who would sell out the true riches of our country--our values, our community, our land and resources, our system of government--and pervert it into a "fear-based" war and profit-making machine.

Those leaders need to feel the bitterness of following their flawed ambition.

Let's rally to crush the Patriot Act. It's the patriotic thing to do.

War and Waste

Why is preventing terrorism now called the "Global War on Terror: the Long War?"

The answer is because the Pentagon has taken over the government and they need an imaginary enemy to maintain the stranglehold of fear on the American people and Congress.

There's money in war. Lots of it. It's up to about a quarter of the US budget. Why so much? Do we need to spend that much money? No, but the Pentagon is leveraging the entire US economy, government and citizenry by claiming to be engaged in a "long war."

If there weren't a "war" then the Pentagon couldn't argue for 7% annual budget increases while every other Department in the Federal government is being cut.

If there weren't a "war" then the American people and Congress would be seeking to redirect funding for military equipment, capabilities, modernization, experimentation, and expansion to things like education, infrastructure rebuilding, health, job creation, energy research and development, transportation, and environmental protections for the benefit of the American people and the rest of the world.

The needs of the civilian population are urgent and the Pentagon knows there is only so much of a pie to slice up.

Hence the long, global war on terror, opening funding channels from Congress to the Pentagon to Defense industries and contractors. The military coup of 2000 is becoming more and more of a fait accomplit.

Unfortunately, using the military against the survival of our own domestic political health is not a syndrome of decay unique to the United States. In fact, Norman Solomon, writing about his latest insights on the matter, said

Right now, the presidents of Iran and the United States are thriving on the belligerency of the other. From all indications, a military assault on Iran would boost Ahmadinejad's power at home. And it's a good bet that the U.S. government will do him this enormous favor.

Efficiency

The so-called "War on Terra" is being waged against an elusive, resourceful, handful of suspected terrorists.

Today Gonzales mentioned what a great job the NSA was doing preventing terror plots in the United States from succeeding. He just regretted he couldn't give us the details because its CLASSIFIED. Shucks.

Rumsfeld went out to promote the war last Friday.

The United States is engaged in what could be a generational conflict akin to the Cold War, the kind of struggle that might last decades as allies work to root out terrorists across the globe and battle extremists who want to rule the world, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday.

Rumsfeld, who laid out broad strategies for what the military and the Bush administration are now calling the "long war," likened al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin while urging Americans not to give in on the battle of wills that could stretch for years.

Not only is al Qaeda tough, but they're costing us 20 times as much as Hitler and there's only a handful of them. They are efficient at tying up our resources and public consciousness.

$439.3 billion for the Department of Defense’s base budget, a 7-percent increase over 2006, and a 48-percent increase over 2001.

The NSA hearings

The much anticipated NSA hearings before the Senate Intelligence Committee are getting underway. Today, Intelligence Director Negroponte, General Hayden, Porter Goss, and other great patriots sat in for open questioning before kicking out the press and the public.

Levin and Rockefeller went down the line and asked everybody on the panel to estimate the number of communications that the program intercepts. None of them would do it, even though they spent last week trumpeting assurances of civil liberties to the nation.

It's obvious to me, based on the character of the people involved, that the Bush Administration is using the NSA to spy on Americans who have no connection with terrorists, but are just potential political rivals of the Republican party, and, they are not divulging the information to the public because it would show they are deliberately breaking the law, lying, and violating people's rights for political reasons, not for national security.

Meanwhile, we've been crying into our cellphones and laptops, but some activists have been busy doing something to attempt to defend our civil rights.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed the latest suit in California District Court Tuesday, charging that the telecommunications giant [AT&T] violated its customers’ privacy rights by opening its records and systems to secret spying by the National Security Agency (NSA). In a statement announcing the legal action, EFF accused the NSA of recklessly snooping on US residents in contravention of existing laws.

"The NSA program is apparently the biggest fishing expedition ever devised, scanning millions of ordinary Americans’ phone calls and emails for ‘suspicious’ patterns, and it’s the collaboration of US telecom companies like AT&T that makes it possible," EFF staff attorney Kevin Bankston said.

So, some people organizing are going to save the rest of our arses again, we hope!

What we are likely never to hear confirmed in Washington the giant, octopus-like tentacles of the NSA, as described by the ACLU.

The idea is that the NSA system taps into the major industrial, corporate telecommunications switches and mines everything in order to allow the military to zero in on anybody in the country they damn well please. I can't wait to see Negroponte and General Hayden cough up that information on C-SPAN!