but I’m back now. Stay tuned for new posts!
December 2, 2007
Kinky News!
For you music fans out there, here’s some fantastic news: The Kinks may reunite.
According to a news item on the Associated Press, Ray Davies, the frontman of the greatest band ever, recently hinted that the legendary rock group are planning a comeback – but only if the band are able to write and record new material.
Ray, who has found success as a solo artist since the band’s split in 1996, has agreed to the idea of a reunion – but will refuse to play any of the British rockers’ past hits (You Really Got Me, Lola, Waterloo Sunset and hundreds more). Davies said, “I really would like to get together if we had new music. Otherwise it’s just a nostalgia evening: ‘Karaoke Kinks.”
I own most of the dozens and dozens of original albums this band has recorded since 1963, and it’s safe to assume that new material will not be a problem for Ray and brother Dave. Both released new albums last year (Ray’s solo effort, “Other People’s Lives,” is highly recommended). Ray has another new album to be released in the U.S. after the New Year, “Working Man’s Cafe.” I’ve only heard one track, “Vietnam Cowboys,” and it’s fantastic. I can’t wait for Santa to bring me the full CD!
November 20, 2007
Presidential Selector II
A few weeks ago, I published a link to a “presidential selector” … After my post on Michael Vick and dog fighting, it has been the most popular on this blog. Well, I really didn’t think much of that original selector and found this SelectSmart site instead.
With questions on 26 issues, it asks for your position and how important it is to you. Here are my results (with percentage of positions that match my own):
1. Dennis Kucinich (81%)
2. Joseph Biden (78%)
3. Barack Obama (77%)
4. Hillary Clinton (76%)
5. John Edwards (74%)
6. Christopher Dodd (71%)
7. Al Gore* (70%)
8. Wesley Clark* (70%)
9. Mike Gravel (65%)
10. Bill Richardson (62%)
11. Michael Bloomberg* (62%)
12. Ron Paul (45%)
13. Tommy Thompson* (31%)
14. John McCain (29%)
15. Mike Huckabee (29%)
16. Rudolph Giuliani (24%)
17. Alan Keyes (24%)
18. Tom Tancredo (20%)
19. Chuck Hagel* (20%)
20. Mitt Romney (20%)
21. Newt Gingrich* (17%)
22. Duncan Hunter (15%)
23. Fred Thompson (13%)
24. Sam Brownback* (12%)
25. Stephen Colbert* (3%)
* not running, withdrawn, not yet announced
The best feature comes at the end, when you can do a side-by-side comparison of two candidates on the issues. For the biggest laughs, compare anyone to Stephen Colbert. Amazingly funny stuff.
Visit the site here and leave a comment with your results and if you were surprised by the results.
November 13, 2007
Bush Earned Our Disapproval
The following column by Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson was forwarded to me via email. Thought it was worth sharing here …
It’s official: Bush Derangement Syndrome is now a full-blown epidemic. George W. Bush apparently has reduced more of his fellow citizens to frustrated, sputtering rage than any president since opinion polling began, with the possible exception of Richard Nixon.
That should be a pretty good indicator of where Bush will rank when historians get their hands on his shameful record – in the cellar, alongside the only president who ever had to resign in disgrace.
A new Gallup Poll released last week showed that 64 percent of Americans disapprove of how the Decider is doing his job. That sounds bad enough – nearly two-thirds of the country thinks its leader is incompetent. But when you look more closely at the numbers, you see that Bush’s abysmal report card – only 31 percent of respondents approve of the job he’s doing – actually overstates our regard for his performance.
According to Gallup, if you lump together the Americans who “strongly” approve of Bush as president with those who only “moderately” feel one way or the other about him, you end up with about half the population. That leaves a full 50 percent who “strongly disapprove” of Bush – as high a level of intense repudiation as Gallup has ever seen in its decades of polling.
Gallup has been asking the “strongly disapprove” question since the Lyndon Johnson administration. The only time the polling firm has measured such strong give-this-guy-the-hook sentiment was in February 1974, at the height of the Watergate scandal, when Nixon’s “strongly disapprove” number was measured at 48 percent. Bush beats him by a nose, but the margin of error makes the contest for “Most Reviled President, Modern Era” a statistical tie.
The Gallup Poll found that among Bush’s shrinking Republican base, he has unusually strong support. Independents, though, have joined Democrats in the Bush Derangement Syndrome clinic: They, too, “strongly disapprove” of the job the president is doing.
Bush didn’t come by this distinction with help from family connections or the Supreme Court. No, he earned it.
Look at the situation Bush’s successor will inherit. Throughout much of the world, the United States is seen as an arrogant bully whose rhetoric about freedom and the rule of law is disgracefully empty. The lawyers and students who are being tear-gassed in the streets of Pakistan’s cities will long remember that when push came to shove, Bush chose to stick with a cooperative dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, rather than live up to his words about the universal value of democracy.
The next president will be left with more than 100,000 U.S. troops still bogged down in Iraq, with an unfinished war in Afghanistan – and, between those two crises, a strengthened and emboldened Iran that hopes to dominate the world’s most dangerous region. Nice work.
Bush’s successor will, incredibly, assume control of a United States government that interrogates terrorist suspects with “enhanced” techniques known throughout the world by a much simpler term: torture. The new commander in chief will almost surely take custody of hundreds of people detained without formal charges, on questionable evidence, and held for years in secret CIA prisons or at Guantanamo. The next president will take over a government that claims the right to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens without meaningful judicial oversight.
Whoever takes office in January 2009 will be left with a more polarized economy – an America where the rich have been made richer during the last six years with generous tax cuts, while 40 million people struggle without health insurance.
The new president will be left with a government that not only failed miserably in its response to the most extensive natural disaster the nation has ever faced, but also reneged on Bush’s pledge to rebuild a better New Orleans – and make it possible for all those who lived in the city to return.
The next occupant of the White House will find the nation’s coffers depleted by Bush’s wars – the price tag doubtless will have reached $1 trillion by Inauguration Day – and by whatever it eventually costs to keep the housing market afloat.
He or she will inherit, in short, a dismal mess. It will take most of the new president’s first term to begin to set things right.
It’s easy to understand why Americans have come to think of George W. Bush as the worst president in memory, perhaps one of the worst ever. What’s hard to fathom is how we’ll make it through the next 141/2 months. But who’s counting?
November 11, 2007
Motorcycle Diaries
Today, a much-needed departure from politics…
The three-day Veteran’s Day weekend opened with an unusually beautiful Saturday, for the cold, soggy Pacific Northwest. Heidi and I were busy with errands, but that didn’t stop me from making a quick call to her dad, Joe … “We have got to go for a ride.”
All three nephews came over Saturday afternoon, and the rest of the day was spent playing video games, taking them to the YMCA, making home-made pizzas and more video games. (I learned that my “old” Xbox isn’t cool anymore)
Sunday morning, after fixing the boys a blueberry pancake breakfast, their folks picked them up and I checked in again with Joe. He was game, the weather iffy. It had become much colder and the rain had been threatening all morning.
About 2 p.m., we set out – joined by Chris, the three nephews’ dad. Our route would take us from Puyallup up the valley to Orting and following the Carbon River into the woods past Lake Kapowsin and into the Ohop Valley. Final stop would be a late lunch in Eatonville and a highway speed sprint home on Pacific.
The photo to the right shows a farm along the road between Kapowsin and Ohop Valley (taken on a much nicer day!).
Chris has a very nice 2003 Shadow Aero. Joe and I ride much smaller and much older Honda Shadows (mine is a 1985 and Joe’s is an ‘83). They’re nearly museum pieces, but what the heck? I’ll work on getting a newer bike next year.
Back to today … Two words: Damn cold! But very fun. The rain held off and we caught some glimpses of the mountain. The roads were sufficiently windy and there was no ice to be found.
Today’s ride paled in comparison with our ride two weeks ago. Then, it was crisp and sunny with bright blue skies and fall colors. Our route then took us to the little-used Carbon Glacier entrance to Mt. Rainier National Park. A stop at a Carbonado biker bar for chili cheeseburgers capped that day.
Funny thing is, we had intended to make trips like this all summer – when the weather was actually nice. Now that winter is closing in, we’re finally hitting the road. Better late than never. This may well be the last ride for the winter.
November 8, 2007
Will Bush Cancel The 2008 Election?
The following article was written by Harvey Wasserman & Bob Fitrakis and published on Commondreams.org
It is time to think about the “unthinkable.”
The Bush Administration has both the inclination and the power to cancel the 2008 election.
The GOP strategy for another electoral theft in 2008 has taken clear shape, though we must assume there is much more we don’t know.
But we must also assume that if it appears to Team Bush/Cheney/Rove that the GOP will lose the 2008 election anyway (as it lost in Ohio 2006) we cannot ignore the possibility that they would simply cancel the election. Those who think this crew will quietly walk away from power are simply not paying attention.
The real question is not how or when they might do it. It’s how, realistically, we can stop them.
In Florida 2000, Team Bush had a game plan involving a handful of tactics. With Jeb Bush in the governor’s mansion, the GOP used a combination of disenfranchisement, intimidation, faulty ballots, electronic voting fraud, a rigged vote count and an aborted recount, courtesy of the US Supreme Court.
A compliant Democrat (Al Gore) allowed the coup to be completed.
In Ohio 2004, the arsenal of dirty tricks exploded. Based in Columbus, we have documented more than a hundred different tactics used to steal the 20 electoral votes that gave Bush a second term. More are still surfacing. As a result of the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville federal lawsuit (in which we are plaintiff and attorney) we have now been informed that 56 of the 88 counties in Ohio violated federal law by destroying election records, thus preventing a definitive historical recount.
As in 2000, a compliant Democrat (John Kerry) allowed the coup to proceed.
For 2008 we expect the list of vote theft maneuvers to escalate yet again. We are already witnessing a coordinated nationwide drive to destroy voter registration organizations and to disenfranchise millions of minority, poor and young voters.
This carefully choreographed campaign is complemented by the widespread use of electronic voting machines. As reported by the Government Accountability Office, Princeton University, the Brennan Center, the Carter-Baker Commission, US Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and others, these machines can be easily used to flip an election. They were integral to stealing both the 2000 and 2004 elections. Efforts to make their source codes transparent, or to require a usable paper trail on a federal level, have thus far failed. A discriminatory Voter ID requirement may also serve as the gateway to a national identification card.
Overall, the GOP will have at its command even more weapons of election theft in 2008 than it did in Ohio 2004, which jumped exponentially from Florida 2000. The Rovian GOP is nothing if not tightly organized to do this with ruthless efficiency. Expect everything that was used these past two presidential elections to surface again in 2008 in far more states, with far more efficiency, and many new dirty tricks added in.
But in Ohio 2006, the GOP learned a hard lesson. Its candidate for governor was J. Kenneth Blackwell. The Secretary of State was the essential on-the-ground operative in the theft of Ohio 2004.
When he announced for governor, many Ohioans joked that “Ken Blackwell will never lose an election where he counts the votes.”
But lose he did….along with the GOP candidates for Secretary of State, Attorney-General and US Senate.
By our calculations, despite massive grassroots scrutiny, the Republicans stole in excess of 6% of the Ohio vote in 2006. But they still lost.
Why? Because they were so massively unpopular that even a 6% bump couldn’t save them. Outgoing Governor Bob Taft, who pled guilty to four misdemeanors while in office, left town with a 7% approval rating (that’s not a typo). Blackwell entered the last week of the campaign down 30% in some polls.
So while the GOP still had control of the electoral machinery here in 2006, the public tide against them was simply too great to hold back, even through the advanced art and science of modern Rovian election theft.
In traditional electoral terms, that may also be the case in 2008. Should things proceed as they are now, it’s hard to imagine any Republican candidate going into the election within striking distance. The potential variations are many, but the graffiti on the wall is clear.
What’s also clear is that this administration has a deep, profound and uncompromised contempt for democracy, for the rule of law, and for the US Constitution. When George W. Bush went on the record (twice) as saying he has nothing against dictatorship, as long as he can be dictator, it was a clear and present policy statement.
Who really believes this crew will walk quietly away from power? They have the motivation, the money and the method for doing away with the electoral process altogether. So why wouldn’t they?
The groundwork for dismissal of both the legislative and judicial branch has been carefully laid. The litany is well-known, but worth a very partial listing:
The continuation of the drug war, and the Patriot Act, Homeland Security Act and other dictatorial laws prompted by the 9/11/2001 terror attacks, have decimated the Bill of Rights, and shredded the traditional American right to due process of law, freedom from official surveillance, arbitrary violence, and far more.
The current Attorney-General, Alberto Gonzales, has not backed away from his announcement to Congress that the Constitution does not guarantee habeas corpus. The administration continues to act on the assumption that it can arrest anyone at any time and hold them without notification or trial for as long as it wants.
The establishment of the Homeland Security Agency has given it additional hardware to decimate the basic human rights of our citizenry. Under the guise of dealing with the “immigration problem,” large concentration camps are under construction around the US.
The administration has endorsed and is exercising its “right” to employ torture, contrary to the Eighth Amendment and to a wide range of international treaties, which Gonzales has labeled “quaint.”
With more than 200 “signing statements” the administration acts on its belief that the “unitary executive” trumps the power of the legislative branch in any instance it chooses. This belief has been further enforced with the administration’s use of a wide range of precedent-setting arguments to keep its functionaries from testifying before Congress.
There is much more. In all instances, the 109th Congress—and the public—have rolled over without significant resistance.
Most crucial now are Presidential Directive #51, Executive Orders #13303, #13315, #13350, #13364, #13422, #13438, and more, by which Bush has granted himself an immense arsenal of powers for which the term “dictatorial” is a modest understatement.
The Founders established our government with checks and balances. But executive orders have accumulated important precedent. The Emancipation Proclamation by which Lincoln declared an end to slavery in the South, was issued under the “military necessity” of adding blacks to the Union Army, a step without which the North might not have won the Civil War. Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Order #8802 established the Fair Employment Practices Commission. Harry Truman’s Executive Order #9981 desegregated the military.
Most to the point, FDR’s Executive Order #9066 ordered the forcible internment of 100,000 people of Japanese descent into the now infamous concentration camps of World War II.
There is also precedent for a president overriding the Supreme Court. In the 1830s Chief Justice John Marshall enshrined the right of the Cherokee Nation to sovereignty over its ancestral land in the Appalachian Mountains. But President Andrew Jackson scorned the decision. Some 14,000 native Americans were moved at gunpoint to Oklahoma. More than 3,000 died along the way.
All this will be relevant should Team Bush envision a defeat in the 2008 election and decide to call it off. It’s well established that Richard Nixon—mentor to Karl Rove and Dick Cheney—commissioned the Huston Plan, which detailed how to cancel the 1972 election.
Today we must ask: who would stop this administration from taking dictatorial power in the instance of a “national emergency” such as a terror attack at a nuclear power plant or something similar?
Nothing in the behavior of this Congress indicates that it is capable of significant resistance. Impeachment seems beyond it. Nor does it seem Congress would actually remove Bush if it did put him on trial.
Short of that, Bush clearly does not view anything Congress might do as a meaningful impediment. After all, how many divisions does the Congress command?
The Supreme Court, as currently constituted, would almost certainly rubber stamp a Bush coup. If not, like Jackson, he could ignore it as easily as he would ignore Congress.
What does that leave? There is much idle speculation now about what the armed forces would do. We also hear loose talk about “90 million gun owners.”
From the public side, the only conceivable counter-force might be a national strike or an effective long-term campaign of general non-cooperation.
But we can certainly assume the mainstream media will give lock-step support to whatever the regime says and does. It’s also a given that those likely to lead the resistance will immediately land in those new prisons being built by Halliburton et. al.
So how do we cope with the harsh realities of such a Bush/Cheney/Rove dictatorial coup?
We may have about a year to prepare. Every possible scenario needs to be discussed in excruciating detail.
For only one thing is certain: denial will do nothing.
November 6, 2007
Kucinich Stands Tall Today
Dennis Kucinich is not a new political figure to me. I supported Edwards and then Kerry in the last election. But little by little (that’s not a height joke, folks), this man is winning me over. Several weeks ago, he was the only Presidential candidates with the cujones to face three hours of unscreened calls on the Ed Schultz Show. I tuned in at lunch … and was mesmerized. Well, okay, I was very, very impressed.
As much as he lacks in physical stature, Mr. Kucinich towers in his command of language, his vision and his command of the issues that face our nation. He is a man who would not only bite the kneecaps of those who would throw away our Constitution; he would tear their friggin’ legs out from beneath them.
Mr. Kucinich is right on trade. He’s right on the Iraq war. He’s right on the coming Iran war. He’s right on universal healthcare. He’s right on Social Security. He’s right on impeachment. He’s just plain right.
That brings me to today. The mainstream media will ignore this news, but Mr. Kucinich today forced the full House to vote on his bill to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney. Next step? A hearing in the House Judiciary Committee.
Read more here, and consider supporting this towing figure of a man for President.
November 2, 2007
SLC Mayor Calls for Impeachment
Buzzflash – The mayor of Salt Lake City calls for impeachment; says the Bush Administration and the majority of Congress have led the United States to the brink of fascism … and asks Americans to fight in every way possible to stop the Bush Administration’s insanity and moral depravity. Read more here.
