Dear Mr. Fantasy
I’m sure some people don’t “get” this cartoon, but I bet The Rainbow Demon gets it..
And maybe Anonymoses
political, political cartoons, cartoons, satire, parody, Traffic Lyrics
The Warriors
Daily War News…http://haloscan.com/tb/yankeedoodle/114089201110807975….
Freedom Is On The March???? Can You Dig It?
political, political cartoons, cartoons, Bush, satire, parody, The Warriors, Playstation, Xbox
Ridiculous
Within a week of meeting my wife, I wanted to introduce her to my friends, my family, and everyone else, for I felt a rush that I had never felt before. I had the certainity that somehow this amazing woman who I had just met was going to be very important to me, and I wanted to share this joy and the complete bubble bath of endorphins and serotonin waterfalls that is the physical sensation of falling in love. And I was able to do so fairly quickly as she met my friends and family within three months. When I introduced her to them, all I had to fear was the typical fears of a guy bringing a girl home — my friends having long memories of all the really dumb things that I have done or said and broaching the perpetual favorites into conversations at the wrong [right] time and me without the credible threat of massive future retaliation as the relevant friends were already in long term relationships heading towards marriage, and my family being my family. Again the normal worries of introducing someone new and important to everyone.
I had it easy, as I just had to worry about these issues, which although somewhat terrifying, are minor in comparison to the great worries of life. My friends approved of my girlfriend and starting giving all the great advice that only good friends can give — mainly —”She rocks, so you better not fuck this up.” Three years later, we were married. Our wedding day was easily the happiest day of my life, and I think once I stopped trying to help my wife set up the table centerpieces, it became the happiest day of her life also. We want children in our home, and we’ll want them relatively soon. Our only worry at that point is a matter of plumbing and coming up with a good boy’s name, as we already have a girl’s name that we like a lot. These are deeply personal decisions and concerns and are respected as such by society and the state. This is how it should be.
However, this is not the case for every loving couple who wants to bring children into good homes. This is wrong. USA Today (via FireDogLake) reports that Pennsylvania is one of sixteen states that has some legislative attempt to ban gay couples from adopting children.
I look at my friends who, like my wife and I, are in loving, caring, stable, happy relationships and who want children, and I can see no valid and moral reason for some of them to be condemned and cast aside just because of whom they love. This may set me out as a flaming liberal, and on this count, I gladly plead full responsibility and acceptance of that label, as I believe that America should not discriminate, should not restrict the rights of others as long as those actions do not impinge on further individuals’ rights.
Right now Pennsylvania is trying to pass a discriminatory and rights restricting amendement to the commonwealth’s constitution, that enshrines a ban against gay marriage or any incident there-of. The PA ACLU is one of the organizations leading this fight. I know and applaud State Senator Jay Costa is with us on this one. We need to contact him and other friendly legislaturers to pressure them towards pressuring their colleagues to fulfilling the American charge of becoming a more inclusive and therefore a more perfect union.
Laying out an Iraq Scenario
I really, do try to be optimistic about Iraq, but as I read reality, it is delusional to maintain an optimistic state for all that long. The past two days of rioting, sectarian shootings, political and military escalations and isolations fall under the category of “really not good things”
Juan Cole wrote the following this morning:
Astonishingly, Sistani seems to be threatening to deploy his own militia, Ansar Sistani, if the Iraqi government doesn’t do a better job of protecting Shiites and their holy sites. One lesson Sistani will have taken from the bombing of the Askariyah shrine in Samarra is that he is not very secure in Najaf, either. But all we need in Iraq is yet another powerful private sectarian militia…………….
Abdul Aziz al-Hakim said during a press conference in Baghdad that the statements of the US ambassador in Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, had “contributed to greater pressure [on the Shiites] and gave a green light to terrorist groups, and he therefore bears a part of the responsibility.” Al-Hakim has long wanted to unleash the Badr Corps, his Shiite paramilitary, the Badr Corps, but has been checked by the Americans so far.
One of the major strategic crisis that the US military in Iraq has to worry about is it supply lines. The western route from the Red Sea to Jordan and then through the Anbar desert is not a good and stable logistical route because that is where the Sunni Arab insurgency is the strongest. Also there are few good routes and the infrastructure as a whole is not that good. The Syrian route is a no go for the US military because the Syrian government won’t allow US logistics convoys to land on the Mediterranean Coast and then pass through. This makes good Syrian strategic sense. The same applies for the eastern routes into Baghdad from Iran. The northern route from Turkey is a decent route but there are a couple of problems with it. The first is that there are few good roads, secondly Baghdad and the major FOBs are a long, long, long way from the Turkish ports that could supply the US military, and finally, the last 100 + miles of that journey go straight through Sunni Arab territory. The final, and by far the largest supply route is the Southern route, where supplies land in Kuwait City, US convoys form up at the Kuwait/Iraq border, and then drive their way up to the major FOBs that surround Baghdad. From these central distribution nodes, supplies then get pushed forward to combat units in the central part of the country.
The southern supply line carries the overwhelming majority of US supplies into the country and its capacity can not be easily or quickly replaced if those highways are cut. This is a strategic nightmare for the US, for the US military is an extremely intensive user of consumable supplies. If those supply lines are cut, then within days forward US units will be running short on fuel, ammunition, and spare parts. US airlift is sufficient to make sure that US units are not overrun or besieged, but any active presence and patrolling that forward deployed units are doing would have to be sharply curtailed if US supplies lines were severely crimped if not cut entirely.
If US units can not or will not patrol, and Iraqi government forces get their civil war on, desert, or find a damn good reason to spend the next week painting the rocks outside of the barracks as they keep their heads down, then any semblance of credibility that the US may have attempted to gain through the ink blot strategy will be destroyed. The removal of active patrols would allow an easy assaination, intimidation, and rolling up of informers, cooperators, and marginal deciders by the insurgents. Once the umbrella of public safety is pierced, the public trust in the promises of protection made by the counter-insurgent force to protect its allies loses credibility.
This is one of the things that occurred in April of 2004. The combination of the Fallujah assault and the first Sadrist rebellion forced US units to scramble. The Sadrists were the greater threat because they had the ability to sit on the US southern supply route at Najaf. It was for this reason that the 1st Armored Division was turned south and told to clear the cities that the Mahdi Army had seized. US supply lines were imperiled between the combination of ambushes, and bridges being dropped. At one point the US was within forty eight hours of having to evacuate the Green Zone due to supply problems.
The US supply lines are even more tenuous today because there are fewer international units in the south that could perform basic security functions. The Poles are pulling out, the Spanish are gone, the Ukranians have reduced their contingent. There is less “slack” today than two years ago. That slack was supposed to be taking up by the Badr Corps — I’m sorry, the super duper new Iraqi Army, but if those forces decide today is time to engage in a civil war, those supply lines become extraordinarily exposed. This may be one of the reasons why most of a US brigade was left in Kuwait as a surge force — it can pinch up the highways to clear the southern choke points while US forces can move south from Baghdad.
This is a low probability event, although the probability has increased in the past three days, but due to its high costs, it will draw a large US response.
Dubyai Port Deal
Another Tippling Point
Dubyai..I mean Dubai Ports World
Blondesense with some pictures of royalty…
The Newshog on Fixing The Facts Around The Policy
political, political cartoons, cartoons, Bush, satire, Dubai Port
Samarra Shrine Attack
I have to echo Steve Gilliard’s reaction to the news that some insurgent group blew up one of the holiest Shi’ite shrines in Iraq. His reaction was “This is bad” and “Holy shit.” It is not the deepest, or most analytical piece I have ever seen, but it is a good summation, especially as new news comes into play.
The Daily Star of Lebanon is reporting that Shi’ite crowds have attacked at least 90 Sunni mosques.
In Baghdadalone more than 50 moaques were attacked, three of which were destroyed with explosives, The Iraqi Islamic Party said. mobs killed three clerics and three worshippers in the assaults on 27 Sunni mosques.Crowds machine-gunned numerous religious sanctuaries and torched at least one, the officer added.
Elsewhere, Shiites took over more than 40 Sunni mosques, hoisting banners with new names over the sites.
In the Shiite south, a crowd stormed the Basra offices of the Islamic Party, killing two people and wounding 14 others, police said.
Grand Ayatollah Sistani silently appealed for relative peace and quiet, but for the first time that I can remember, he has been effectively ignored. At the same time the Sadrist militia, the Mahdi Army, is back out on the streets, and the Badr Brigades and other non-Sadrist, but also Shi’ite militias are rumbling that they do not trust the Iraqi government to provide basic security. This attack will continue the disintegration of the moral authority of the central government and its claims to have a legitimate monopoly on violence. Up to this point, most of its effective and quasi-effective units were reflagged Kurdish peshmerga and Shi’ite Badr Brigade militia units, but this trend is now at risk.
Beyond the probable emboldening of Shi’ite militia units, which is contrary to one of the major demands of the Sunni population, this attack, and the reaction will continue to marginalize any chance of significant Sunni Arab participation in the political process. The Washington Post reports:
In Baghdad, Shiite militia fighters converged upon at least one Sunni Arab mosque and the headquarters of the Sunni-led Iraqi Islamic Party, witnesses said. Gunfire broke out at both sites, sending families in the neighborhood diving to the floors of their homes to escape bullets. U.S. military helicopters backed Iraqi security forces as they tried to get the Shiite militia fighters there to withdraw.
Other press reports indicate several other Sunni political offices were attacked in the south. As Swopa notes;
They [Al-Quaida in Iraq] appear to have figured that out, and realized that they can accomplish the same goal (keeping Iraqi Sunnis out of nonviolent politics) by pushing the Shiites further against the wall. And so the most hard-line groups on both sides keep becoming more dominant, just as they have steadily for the past three years.
Politics work only when there is some degree of trust that allows for deals to be made. If one side does not believe that the other is credible and there are no other enforcement mechanisms in place, then participation is pointless time wasting. Right now the Shi’ite parties have no reason or political ability to even think about includind any of the Sunni Arab parties in the government, thereby contributing towards the continued spiral of chaos — Sunni Arabs are excluded, therefore they gain no benefits of governance, therefore they continue to fight, while Shi’ites have the benefits of governance, but are under constant stress and no one can afford to take the risk of engaging with publicly seen to be non-credible actors to get out of this cycle. Rinse, repeat, and continue until exhaustion sets in.
This attack is not good news because of the location of the shrine. If the attack had taken place in Karbala or Najaf, areas where the primary security responsibility is local, it would not be as damaging to the ability of the US to credibly claim that it is a legitimate provider of security. However Samarra is a city in the central part of the country and security is provided by US troops. The US is in the process of a third attempt of handing security off to Iraqi police, after the first two attempts failed miserably but the security responsibility is still the US Army’s. An attack of this sort illustrates how poor security is in the central part of the country.
There is a chance that there will be a positive upside to this attack in that there will be moral dismomemtum to the symbolic attack against the Al-Quaeda in Iraq group and fellow travelers, which then would lead to unify the rest of the country, including the home grown insurgents, in disgust and positive nationalistic feelings of unity. Therefore creating common ground and future crediblity and trust which would enhance the positive probalities of the political process. However, I find this unlikely given the immediate response by the Shi’ite communities. Everyone feels that they are under pressure, under seige and over stressed. That is not a good environment for making deals.
God Sent The IEDs!
You have to love it when blogging is this easy.
First I have to reaquaint you good folks with a single Mr. Fred Phelps. Phelps is the leader of the non-affiliated Westboro Baptist Church based out of Kansas. Phelps was also catapulted into the public spotlight a few years ago when he led a group of protestors at the funeral of young Matthew Shephard.
Matthew Shephard, if you will recall, was a young Wyoming teen who was beaten to death because he was gay. Beaten. To death. And when his grieving family went to pay their final respects they were met with picket signs proclaiming that “God Hates Gays”, and that Matthew was going to hell. All thanks to Fred Phelps.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t an isolated incident. Apparently the Phelps clan during the nineties frequented funerals of AIDS victims, and the anti-homosexual protests continued after Matthew Shephard’s. But here is where the story takes an odd twist.
Phelps now has his crew putting up protests at military funerals. And we’re not even talking about gay military members either. Just any old military funeral. In the words of the group’s lawyer, Shirley Phelps-Roper:
The scriptures are crystal clear that when God sets out to punish a nation, it
is with the sword. An IED is just a broken-up sword…
So let’s all hop on board the logic train for this one. God hates gays. America at least struggles with trying to treat gay people like they’re actually people. God doesn’t like this and so, in the words of another protest sign, “God Sent the IED’s”. Or put more frankly, the reason why our soldiers are dying in Iraq is because God wants to punish us for allowing gay people.
You should all know by now my absolute intolerence of bigotry. I can’t can’t can’t stand it. But this… this just boggles my mind. Can anyone explain to me how this is acceptable behavior? Seriously, I want to know. I want to understand the thought processes behind someone who wakes up in the morning, gets dressed, shaves, brushes their teeth, has breakfast, and thinks to themselves, “you know, I think we need to go out there and spew hate speech at a funeral.”
As a good friend of mine explained to me last night, sure, the bible can be interpreted in such a way being gay is bad. But in nowhere does it give you permission to treat gay people as such. It doesn’t say that you shouldn’t beat a hetero to death, but if the person is batting for the other side (so to speak), than feel free. The bible doesn’t tell you to cause deep emotional harm to the loved ones of a gay person by crashing the funeral. And the military thing is just… out there.
But there is a brighter side to the story. There is a rather well organized group that has mobilized to combat the disgusting displays of Phelps and his ilk. They are called the Patriot Guard Riders, and while their efforts are definitely, at least from my viewpoint, unexpected, it is most assuredly welcome.
The PGR is a band of about 5000 bikers. When they get wind that Phelps is going to crash another military funeral, they mount up and ride out. Waving flags and revving enginges, the patriots provide a barrier to keep the Phelps group from interracting with the mourners while at the same time providing enough noise to keep the grieving family from having to hear the anti-gay slurs and insults tossed at them from the protestors.
Now I say this is unexpected because culturally, I find it difficult to believe bikers would take up the gay torch. Even now don’t think I’m naive enough to believe that the bikers are engaged in a pro-homosexual movement. They aren’t doing this for the gay community, they are doing it for the military men and women whom they respect. But at the same time, we find that we’re on the same side for once. While an absolute void of decency exists, it allows us to really see the decency in others. A group of people now find themselves perhaps on a side of the fence they would have never seen themselves on, and maybe that might open some eyes.
And that, my friends, is progress. In all its infinitely slow glory; a decent person doing a decent thing-progress.
Alternative Energy???
So should we call this outside of the kennel thinking?
San Francisco, a leader in urban recycling, is preparing to enlist its canine population for a first in the United States: converting dog poop into energy.
Cash Conundrum
If the Jack Abramoff affair has accomplished anything to date, it has emphasized one of the most serious problems in government today; the infusion of private moneys in the political sphere. The way in which our government is supposed to work is that the Senate and The House of Representatives are intended to act as the voice of the common public in the federal government.
In a nation with as immense a population as ours, to have a democracy not styled after a republic structure could prove highly cumbersome as the sheer volume of voices would greatly impede the legislative process. Therefore in an attempt to create a functioning government that allows the governing body to work outside of a speed that could only be described as comatose, the founding fathers designed a legislative branch that was split into two bodies. The Senate of course was created to equalize power amongst the states despite differences in population whilst the House was designed to provide a legislative body to reflect upon the needs of the actual population.
So it was written, so it should have been. Ideas regarding the state of the state were intended to move from the citizenship to the elected officials, and if there was a consensus, into law. But as the old saw goes, the best laid plans of mice and men sometimes go awry.
Since the inception of the United States, it has been clear that there has always been some sort of wall between the people who live, and the people who govern. Whether it be race, education, or property, there has always been something to diminish the ability of the people to be represented properly by those elected to represent them.
As Jackie-Boy continues to sing in an attempt to minimize his own punishment regarding his bribery of elected officials, one is reminded that in this day and age, one of the primary walls between the representatives and the represented is money. Money, it would seem, is power after all.
And in discussing this wall, one should conclude that the bricks of which is made can be summed up in short as lobbyists.
For more in depth analysis and information regarding lobbyists, I sincerely encourage you to follow PSOTD on a regular basis. The author of the site has over the past year or so (and maybe even further back, I can only go on personal experience) taken a personal vested interest in the topic of lobbying. But for the short of it, understand that lobbyists have in effect grown to be another legislative body. And all because of money.
See, the problem lies not in the fact that lobbyists exist. It is a natural thing that a nation that contains hundreds of millions of people, a scant five hundred people would find it difficult in representing the needs of them all. And so the basic idea is not unreasonable. Pool together people with a common interest to effect political action within the political sphere. Unfortunately, the lobbyist movement is not altogether altruistic, and the clients whom they represent not only already weild a considerable amount of political power, but their interests collide with that of the common good.
And yet lobbyists hold title to a considerable amount of political wealth because they represent in their own right significant monetary wealth. Even in a legal capacity, the abundance of funds lends a considerable amount of leverage.
And it’s money.
Even the most honest of politicians must concede that money is a necessity in seeking and maintaining public office. As population has increased, as technology has evolved, and as methods of communication have changed over the decades and centuries, the role of money in political horse races has become ever increasing. In watching how the run up to the presidential election in ‘08 evolves, it is obvious that the single most important aspect amongst all the potential candidates is not their message, but their war chest.
As I say, this is understandable. One hoping to make a national run has an inordinate number of things to attend to, and they all cost money: ad buys, campaign managers, pollsters, political consultents, etc. What this means, however, is that those with the money receive the most attention.
Last week, ABC’s the Note made mention of a fundraiser at which George W. Bush was the main event. Attendance was supposed to be 80 people, and the expected haul 1.5 million dollars. I saved you the effort of doing the math; that comes to a little over $18,000 a head.
Do you have 18 grand to donate to your political movement of choice? I don’t.
So between myself, and one of those who can, whom do you think will be better represented in government? I’ll give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count.
Finally, of the two parties involved, which do you think actually requires the better representation?
And so the problem of money in politics presents itself. Money is the engine of politics, and somewhere along the line, that money is private. Therefore, private interests leverage the political playing field in their favor through the manipulation of money, thereby undermining the power of the election process as a means of ensuring that those who govern do so at the behest of the governed. Instead money enables those who govern to do so at the behest of their benefactors.
In light of all this, I wanted to take a different track than I usually do. Instead of providing some measure of definitive analysis, it was my hope to engage you all in a bit of a political riddle. How does one remove the adverse effects of money on politics?
In my own musings of this subject, I came to one assumption. There are two types of money. Private, and government. In that respect, to remove the influence, it would seem a simple action to merely outlaw all forms of private money from campaigns. Period. End of story.
All persons seeking elected office must do so on the taxpayer’s dime. Simple huh? And hey, since we’re all paying for it, it may even encourage the voting populace to take more interest in politics. But we soon see that there are other problems with this.
First, you have to design the system. The one I would propose is that anyone who wanted to run for office would be given the same amount of money, stratified based on the particular office sought.
Someone running for state representative would, therefore, receive considerably less money then someone seeking a Presidential bid.
But in so doing, we find ourselves presented with another problem. If the government is going to allot money to every candidate, the bill is going to get pretty steep pretty fast. Therefore it is necessary to narrow the field.
Anyone who is a fan of politics1.com probably is familiar with Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Jonathan Sharkey. Jonathan, or “Jon The Impaler”, is a self proclaimed vampyre (yes, with a “y”), satanist, and warlock. The idea of someone like him running on the government’s bill is a bit ludicrous. For instance his anti-crime platform involves impaling criminals. Like, with an actual stake.
And so we see a need from both a monetary standpoint, and a mental health standpoint to not necessarily let any Tom, Dick, and Harry run for office on the government bill. So how to weed out the unnecessary or ludicrous candidates?
The first part of the question is exceedingly easy. You simply limit the number of allowed candidates. After that it gets a bit murky.
One could put into place a set of standards. But I have a problem with this as well. As ridiculous as the Impaler’s campaign may be, I will always uphold his right to run. While some standards may seem okay, like say, no felonies, at some point the standards would grow to be unfair.
The only other solution I can come up with is a practice already in place in many parts of elected government, and that is the petition, but can you pick up on the problem with this? If you figured out that this would reinject private money into the political arena, you would be exactly right.
In order to get the signatures, it is gonna be a PR game, which means that we have to again resort to money. Potential candidates with more money are going to be more adept at gaining notoriety, giving them an advantage in the petition race.
And so my silly bit of circular logic comes to a dead end. And now is where I turn the discussion over to you. What would be your solution to ending the negative aspects of money in politics? Leave your answers in the comments below.
Work In Progress
Update:
Over at the forum community on the blog Drawn!, some of the folks are organizing a project to benefit The Alzheimer’s Association. The project will be an anthology of illustrations with “Memory” as the theme. I’ll be submitting this idea when I finish it, if it turns out like I want it to turn out..
Meanwhile, My thoughts and prayers go out to the Filipinos involved in the tragic mud slide.
Cheney Incident The Perfect Diversion
Last week Mr. M came out and said what a lot of people, myself included, would like to have said regarding the Cheney hunting accident. “The point is this: WAKE UP! FORGET THIS STUPID INANE BULLSHIT! FOCUS ON SOMETHING THAT REALLY MATTERS!” The bottom line is that this incident is absolutely meaningless. And while it has dominated the discourse for the last week it has effectively proven to be a gift from heaven for the administration.
Let me put it this way, when Meet the Press spends 40 of it’s 60 minutes navel gazing on this issue instead of on the illegal wiretapping scandal or any number of other REAL scandals this administration is buried in you can see what it really is, a diversion (No it was not planned that way but oh what a gift).
How do I know this is merely a diversion? When Tucker Carlson decides to perpetuate the meme that the Vice President may have been drunk when he shot his friend you know he is doing Karl Rove’s dirty work.
BLAKEMAN: Well, that’s not so. It’?s a situation where the Vice President admitted he had one beer at lunch, five hours prior to the incident. And as a matter of law, and as a matter of science, that one beer could not have had any impact on the Vice President one way or the other.CARLSON: Well, I don’?t know we know it was five hours before the incident. I don’?t think in his interview today - unless you’?ve spoken to him separately - I don’?t think he was that specific. But we don’t - and of course because we don’t have a blood alcohol reading from the Vice President, we don’t know what exactly was in his blood - But we do know, that it is considered totally unacceptable, and I’?m sure you know this and I can tell you if you don’?t, to drink before shooting. People just don’?t do it and they don’?t do it because it’s a very dangerous sport and it gets more dangerous if you drink.
Does anyone believe for one minute that Carlson gives a crap about whether the Veep had one beer five hours before the incident? If you do I have a bridge to sell you in Pittsburgh. Please people, focus on the things that matter.
As today’s Washington Post points out, under Cheney’s smoke screen the administration has been effective in blocking an inquiry into it’s warrantless domestic spying scandal and none of you have noticed.
At two key moments in recent days, White House officials contacted congressional leaders just ahead of intelligence committee meetings that could have stirred demands for a deeper review of the administration’s warrantless-surveillance program, according to House and Senate sources.In both cases, the administration was spared the outcome it most feared, and it won praise in some circles for showing more openness to congressional oversight.
As Mr. M said last week, FOCUS PEOPLE!
Who’s Your Daddy
It looks as though the Steeler Superbowl victory is still makin’ waves here in the Burgh. This is the beer menu at Mad Mex on McKnight Road. For those of you who may not know that is Seattle coach Mike Holmgren and Steeler coach Bill Cowher.
PENNACCHIO AND OTHERS RECEIVE DEMOCRACY FOR PITTSBURGH’S ENDORSEMENT
Seven Candidates Get A Thumbs Up At Endorsement Meeting
PITTSBURGH, PA – Democracy for Pittsburgh (the local coalition group for Democracy for America) announced today the results of an endorsement vote that was held on Saturday, February 18, 2006.
“Candidates need to jump a high hurdle in order to win our endorsement. They needed to receive at least 75% of the votes, not counting abstentions. I believe that no other progressive endorsing group in Pittsburgh requires this level of agreement from their membership,” said Lou Takacs, member of Democracy for Pittsburgh’s Organizing Committee and “meeting host” for the day. “Setting such a high standard also helps to ensure that winning candidates receive not only an endorsement, but a base of volunteers to draw from,” he added.
Chuck Pennacchio was endorsed for US Senate (90%). Valerie McDonald Roberts was endorsed for Lt. Governor (100%). Georgia Berner was endorsed for US Representative – 4th Congressional District (91%). Susan Banahasky was endorsed for Rep. District 20 (92%). William Sargent was endorsed for Rep. District 42 (79%). And, two longtime members of Democracy for Pittsburgh were also endorsed for the Pennsylvania House of Representatives: Dan Cindric was endorsed for Rep. District 27 (96%) and Steve Karas was endorsed for Rep. District 34 (96%).
No endorsement could be reached in the following races: 14th Congressional District, 18th Congressional District, Rep. District 21, Rep. District 24 and special election for Pittsburgh City Council District 3.
During the meeting, the host asked for a show of hands of those members who were planning on running for Allegheny County Democratic Committee and nearly a quarter of those in attendance signaled their intentions to run - most for the first time.
Priorities
“Put your money where your mouth is.” That’s how you tell the straight-shooters from the hypocrites. And see where someone’s priorities really lie.
By that standard, I’m afraid our current leadership is misleading America. Although the list of examples is endless, just consider the following:
Taxes are cut for the wealthiest Americans while the budget is cut for veterans, students, and the most vulnerable among us on Medicaid.
Pre-school is touted, quite rightly, as vital to early childhood development and, thus, later success in life, even as there is an epidemic of pre-school programs falling victim to shortfalls in funding.
Jobs are going overseas and yet we fail to fully fund the education and training of our workforce at home, to keep us competitive in the new global economy.
Human beings are suffering preventable illnesses and dying preventable deaths in the richest nation on Earth because there are too many vested interests standing in the way of some sort of national healthcare system, which most citizens demand.
Thousands of victims of the worst natural disaster in our nation’s history — exacerbated by trying to do flood-control on the cheap — are being cut off from temporary housing vouchers, thousands of trailers they were promised left standing unoccupied, six months after the floodwaters receded, despite the president’s promise on national TV to do everything required to attend to their needs.
CEOs of multi-national corporations make more every month than each of their front-line workers could make in a lifetime.
The Interior Department is preparing to give billions of dollars in federal tax relief to the very same energy companies that are making a hundred billion dollars a year in profit — the greatest net income in the history of the world — off of each and every last one of us gas-pumping, house-heating, bill-paying Americans.
Lawmakers are lavished with luxury vacations to golf tournaments and resorts around the world with money from slush funds amassed by lobbyists representing the very interests the legislators have sworn to govern.
Millions of dollars are being spent nationwide on voting machines that are vulnerable to hacking at best, rigged at worst — political allies of the owners of the voting machine companies, up to and including the president, pulling off wins that defy the exit polls and defile our democracy.
Our troops are denied the armor for their bodies and vehicles that they need to survive, even after this national scandal is brought to light.
Military contractors are being paid millions of dollars in Iraq for trucks that don’t work and services they never even render to our troops.
Attempts to repeal the “widow’s tax,” which penalizes the survivors of those killed in combat by reducing their benefits, are thwarted by the congressional leadership.
And up to a half trillion dollars that should have been invested in our people and infrastructure right here at home are being spent — along with thousands of lives and even more limbs — on a war based on a pack of lies and half truths that should have never been fought and that has no end in sight.
America is still a great nation, because of the good spirit of its people. But if we don’t wish to have history judge us unkindly, we had better demand better of those we empower.
Friday Funny
Thanks to Albert for passing this one along (via the Philadelphia Daily News).
From The Mouths Of Babes
While watching Harry Whittington’s press conference on CNN just moments ago my four year old daughter proclaimed to us, “that guy looks like he got shot.” When we explained that he had been shot, and by the Vice President she asked us, “is the bice president a bad guy?”
Luckily my wife stepped up and explained he was hunting, I am not sure how I would have responded.