NO WE CANNOT: A case which is being revisited by the Supreme Court and which will, if decided for the corporation, have a huge influence on our lives and not, in my opinion, for the better. As Bill Moyers on his site says: "The case, Citizens United v. The Federal Election Commission has grown from a limited question about [the showing of] a political documentary [funded by an anti Hillary Clinton corporation] to a broad challenge to the government's right to restrict corporations from spending money to support or oppose political candidates." This is about putting the free speech of a corporation on par with the First Amendment free speech of a person.

The person in this country, historically, has had to suffer at the hands of the omnipotent corporations because, as individuals, a singular person does NOT have the resources available to him with which to fund opposition. The issue of corporate person-hood has waxed and waned over time. Today we know our representatives in Washington are smothered by corporation PAC money in every sphere from health care to oil. Corporations have undue influence on our bodies and, often, our lives. Now they want to usurp one of a person’s few remaining reserved elements of political power – the free speech of the First Amendment-- as a rationale and excuse to control the whole Washington enchilada.

Mr. Abrams and the ACLU (an entity I usually adore), are arguing before the Supreme Court the corporate side of the equation that this is a free speech First Amendment issue and that the corporation’s free speech should be equal to that of a person. It is, I submit, NOT a person and should NOT be subject to the same free speech rights. Elena Kagan, the Solicitor General of the United States is arguing that point.

What ordinary human being can compete with the money that the corporation has at its disposal? The corporation behind the film against the candidacy of Hillary Clinton took Mr. Abrams and the ACLU for all they were worth to find yet another way to legally insinuate itself into Washington politics. A decision for the corporation will free up the corporation to do and say anything it pleases with as much cash as it can muster.

I believe, this is NOT what our Founders meant by free speech. They meant that right to be reserved for real, live, breathing people to espouse anything anywhere no matter how odious. They did not mean for the corporation with its billions of loot to have the right to do the same and easily override the individual’s impact on policy.

The corporation should NOT be considered a human being. It has no feelings, it has no sense of fair play, it cannot get sick and it cannot die BUT we can. The corporation if the Supreme Court decides in its favor will have unlimited capital to advance its agenda.

This important case is about FAIRNESS. It is not fair to make MY opinion any less valuable than another’s. By endowing the CORPORATION with person-hood with respect to the free speech issue, the Supreme Court will put it on the same footing as everyone else. The corporation is NOT like everyone else. This case is about nothing less than the undue influence of MONEY in politics which is what the corporation has at its disposal to influence who occupies the seats of federal power. How can an individual compete with that? If the Supreme Court rules FOR the corporation in this case, the president's new mantra may as well become NO WE CANNOT no matter WHAT we do!

This opinion was prompted by an email I received from the Wiesenthal Center about an article which they saw in alJezeera Magazine entitled "Jane Fonda Joins Boycott of Toronto Film Festival over Homage to Israel" See link below.

Jane Fonda and the Left's Error -- Its Case Against Israel: An article appeared in alJezeera Magazine entitled Jane Fonda Joins Boycott of Toronto Film Festival over Homage to Israel. The article states in pertinent part “… a letter [sent by Fonda and other artists] aimed at festival officials claims that Tel Aviv was built on violence, ignoring the suffering of thousands of former residents and descendants.” Fonda, therefore, joined a growing list of artists boycotting the festival.

Of course, no one mentions that the Jewish State emerged out of the 1948 UN mandate made because of Europe’s problem of left over suffering Jewish refugees of the Holocaust with its attendant wholesale slaughter of the six million. Nor does it mention that Jews had, for millennia, been a part of that land. Jane Fonda has gone back to being a jerk, as she joins this bleating segment of the herd without, yet again, thinking through her actions. Further, the Jewish artists who come out against Israel are shooting themselves in their own foot.

Some on the left and I part ways when it comes to Israel. I cannot, hard as I may try, understand how they would want to defend those who want to destroy the tiny state by force or by a ONE-state solution which also threatens the Jewish state AND by extension the Jewish people period. It is unacceptable.

A comparison of cultures makes crystal clear that the tyranny existing in the Arab world is staggering. Women are whipped, beaten and sometimes killed for the most minor "offenses." They are flogged because they wear pants, threatened or tortured if they go to school. They are stoned, sometimes to death, if God forbid they sleep with someone before marriage or with another other than their husband or even if they deny their husband sex. Homosexuals are killed or tortured in many of those lands in the most bestial ways. The atrocities abound as they do in Gaza itself and even between their own people. Women are treated horrifically in nearly every Arab country and Persian one as well. I cannot be blind to what my eyes see. Israel for all of its faults (and it is not without them) is an infinitely freer state. It fights to survive every single day as Jews have done throughout centuries.

Moreover, I hear nary a sound from segments of the left against the plethora of attacks committed by Islamic fundamentalists collectively against hundreds of thousands of innocents. We must bring REALITY back to planet earth and state what really IS as your eyes see it while not abandoning the many other humane and principled issues about which the left is concerned.

Israel is more advanced, freer and more democratic than any state in that mentally unhinged neck of the woods! I am not afraid to criticize Israel at times when it is not perfect but I do not know of a perfect place on earth. Do you?


See link below sent by the Wiesenthal Center: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/articles/34/Jane_Fonda_Joins_Boycott_of_Toronto_Film_Festival_.html

The genius of genius Glen Greenwald of Salon.com is my idea of a GREAT GREAT intelligent journalist and man. Read this column (link below) it is EXACTLY how I feel. Wonderful right on the money piece about why we MUST change our policy. Our tax dollar now is conducting war after war after war since after WWII and it won't work and we have killed THOUSANDS and paid TRILLIONS for nothing. Quagmires abound. We have become a belligerent state and the politics of our country shows. It is ANYTHING but it surely is NOT humanitarian. Just watch the recent town meeting where teabag nutjobs screamed at a woman in a wheelchair who needs health care.

There are some mean, hurtful, crazies out there and people who love to kill. Yes, they love war. Of course they love it as long as some OTHER guy's kid fights it. They love the flags, the marching bands and the macho hoopla but fight the war? Not so much. The policy makers don't fight and most others do not either. Only a small percentage wage our technologically crushing wars on a LOT of innocent civilians. Our public is deaf and blind to the havoc it plays. And then they wonder just why so many are down on the US. It's frightening. I thought our country was better than that! Click on or cut and paste into your browser the link below. Glen Greenwald gives a daily opinion on Salon.com.



http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

I am writing this to various Congressmen who are, as of now, against a public option.

Dear Senator: I am writing you now after Senator Kennedy’s death to appeal to what, I think, is our common ground. When I was a young woman at Boston University in 1968, I heard Senator Kennedy speak. He told an audience of young people who sported often very long hair that some would have to cut their hair if they were going to credibly reach out to persuade the American public. I think that experience then defined Senator Kennedy for me. He was about the art of compromise so that adversaries could be persuaded. Some in the audience booed at his suggestion. Much later, as a mature adult, I saw exactly what he meant. It is in that spirit of understanding that I appeal to you now.

Our Constitution is our guide to fair play. It is our compass to show us the way to govern. It has been, though, at times, opaque and has forced our nation to make choices as to the role of government. When should go vernment act and when should it not have been our history’s conundrum.

In the politics of this era those sides have become divided as the Democratic and Republican parties retreat to their separate corners. Many, of course, think that government should play a very limited role in the life of the governed. Others, at critical times in our history, have seen government as the vehicle, the only vehicle, capable of addressing often life and death issues of a nation. In this time of combined health care and economic crises government must act to provide the life jacket for a suffering people.

There is no doubt that the concerns of reducing our federal deficit and enormous debt are of consequence. Our country, however, is obviously different than the Founders envisioned. A country of over 300 million people demands government oversight. Class distinctions are widening significantly and cannot be left to just simply work themselves out. Se nator Kennedy believed that providing health care reform with a strong public option would help, among other things, provide our country a systemic as well as an economic lifeboat which ultimately would help bring the soaring deficit down . He believed that by providing life-saving health care for all we could help save our nation from further economic catastrophe in the process.

I urge Republicans and Democrats alike who are against health care reform with a strong public option to rethink your position and join with your colleagues who support it to pass the kind of health care reform that Teddy Kennedy worked so very hard for nearly all of his life in the Senate to do. As former colleagues and friends of Senator Kennedy I fervently ask you to support his version of health care reform so that, finally, on this issue at this time we can join together and find some common ground to provide for the general welfare and the common defense of our nation as our Constitution instructs.

The Lion's Roar is Silenced: I cannot remember a time when MY life and our nation's political life was not filled with and touched by Kennedys. Memories flood my mind of Jack, Bobby and Ted teaming with life, running around playing touch football in Hyannisport. Those were the best of times.

We know what the worst of times bestowed upon them but Teddy had the good fortune to live much longer than his brothers. We the people of Massachusetts, the nation and, indeed, the world have been the beneficiaries of that.

I stand in amazement at a man who suffered so much but was an example for all of us when we experience the vicissitudes of life to simply persevere and go on. I will miss him as I miss his brothers still. I am so grateful that he was on the side of the poor and the dispossessed. I continue to hope that a health care public option bill for which he so long and so tirelessly worked to extend medical care to all Americans will have his name on it.

I thank this lion of the Senate and so many in the Kennedy family for what they have given and continue to give to our nation. I extend my heartfelt condolences to them all!

I wrote this on the New York Times blog after reading Frank Rich, its genius columnist's, editorial "The Guns of August" about the president's courting of those who are trying to, truthfully, kill him (Link at the bottom). President Obama tries to reach out to those Republican members of Congress who actually make excuses for the crazies who turn out with loaded guns where the president is speaking!! Rich lays part of the blame at the feet of Obama himself who bewilderingly makes nice to those who would love nothing more than to destroy him ... LITERALLY!


http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/opinion/23rich.html#bozoanchor

The Horizon of Hope is Drifting: I am staggered and incredulous by what I read every day. I do not understand if the real Barack Obama was submerged until he reached the presidency and morphed into a different being, the one he really was or if this is a brilliant strategy carved by a phenomenally adept administration and that in the long run he will not disappoint those of us in his base who worked either by writing or on foot SO hard for him. We are not privy to the behind-the-scenes machinations and even the best journalist has no access to everything.

I still have hope. I have written many times at pinnacles of Obama's success how dazzled I was that the tide had seemingly turned. Night seemed to be turning into day. The tide, though, has gone out and I do not see it coming back any time soon. I'm depressed and I am sad. Maybe hope on the horizon but so far I don't see it.

I am sure the president is reading the New York Times especially vacationing in Martha's Vineyard while it is having a tropical storm. This is an apt metaphor.

If he sees these comments and he reads mine I say to him: Mr. President, remember us, your base, the ones who LOVED you? Like Kate Winslet said when the Titanic was sinking and her lover was floating away in the icy sea -- COME BACK, COME BACK, COME BACK!!

Tevya's Response to Roman Catholic Leaders: Tevya of Fiddler on the Roof fame has been rolling around in his brain the latest mind numbing statement out of the Holy See and the response from major Jewish groups and rabbis:

On the one hand Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport Connecticut says "While the Catholic church does not proselytize the Jewish people, neither does she fail to witness to them her faith in Christ, nor to welcome them to share in that same faith whenever appropriate."

Tevya says: "On the other hand -- There is no other hand!! NO NO NO NO NO!"

Pope Benedict, what part of that response do you not understand?

Seeing CCFILE: I have, at times, listened to and watched CCFILE online to give its view a fair hearing. While I thought CCFILE made some believable points, I generally thought it often absurd, sometimes disgusting and generally an embarrassment. Its lack of articulate excellence is most pronounced. It is imbued with propaganda for the extreme right's point of view IRRESPECTIVE of their claim that they are "only about illegal immigration." I believe, they are NOT ONLY about ILLEGAL immigration. The tenor underneath the rhetoric is a deep-seated anger against those who may oppose their political points and to the immigrant community in this town from especially Brazil (legal or illegal) for the mere sin of simply being, most especially, here. I believe those that run CCFILE harbor a threatening hostility toward those whom they perceive to be the other but would never, of course, admit to that directly.

Who is not against illegal immigration? Most are against it and some views they espouse, as said, have credence but THAT show is more than about simply illegal immigration. The racism and other messages of hate not admitted as such on the show are clear for ANYONE who wants to really hear them.

I listened to a so called historian, interspersed on one show, lecture about his view of the history of US immigration. He explained that in his view the history of immigration was about letting into this nation those from countries other than Western Europe who posed an attendant danger by subverting the heretofore American Anglo (white Christian implied) way of life. He interjected, too, an oft articulated view by many in the anti-immigration movement, an anti-Semitism which sees the Jew, too, of course, as just another part of the many forms of the other who have invaded the American culture emasculating its Anglo roots and tradition, subverting our Founders’ original intent.

I thought it humorous, too, that the mouthpieces of a show that rails against immigrants who do not speak proper English were, in fact, guilty of gross grammatical error and poor English sentence structure themselves. At least new immigrants illegal or otherwise have an excuse. Since the narrators of the programs are self professed “true Americans” what is THEIR excuse? As Christ is alleged to have said “Judge not lest you be judged … why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Matthew 7.15

CCFILE is about illegal immigration yes BUT it is also about the halt, exclusion and even erasure of the influence of the other from, as they see it, the "American way of life." It is, I believe, this etiological essence that makes me cringe. All one must do is listen to the episodic content to hear what CCFILE has to say. Its message is often bombastic and confrontational. That, I believe, is the REAL threat plaguing our nation today.

This article in The Nation by Jeremy Scahill, link below, is chilling. Another article appears in the NYTimes today regarding the CIA paid connection to Blackwater linked below as well. If you do not want to read this please at least scroll down to the Department of Defense war statistics.

Erik Prince of the Blackwater fame is the president of the mercenary army the Bush administration hired to supplement US forces in Iraq and allowed to run wild. Blackwater has been a law unto itself accountable to no one. He is the closest thing to a true American fascist (I do not use that term lightly) I have seen who is actually employed by our government in Iraq especially under Bush. How much he operates now I do not know but it would not shock me to find his nefarious fingerprints in many places. He is a Christian crusader and because of a civil suit filed by Iraqis in the US Court in Virginia is being investigated for NUMEROUS murders of innocents in Iraq and is alleged to have committed possible murders of his own men who were potential whistle blowers. He allegedly has threatened many in his own organization with death and it is alleged had others murdered as depositions which are currently being taken under oath indicate as The Nation artic le below illuminates. We do not know if a grand jury has been convened to investigate these alleged dastardly activities as secrecy laws pertaining to grand jury investigations prevail. In addition, as the article states, he is known to use a variety of money laundering techniques skimming funds off for himself eluding criminal prosecution. The tide MAY be changing emphasis on may.

One HOPES that he will get a post haste criminal prosecution. His crimes truly are reminiscent of fascistic international exploits of the Nazi variety except his crusade is against innocent Muslims in Iraq and really against Muslims no matter who they are everywhere. His hatred of and threat to those who oppose him even in his own organization are legendary. Blackwater's actions do NOT add to US interests internationally and that is an understatement, in fact, they contribute negatively to our already quite tainted image. I have seen him interviewed and he is the mind numbing prototype of a Knights Templar Christian crusader. What makes him truly frightening is he has access to a plethora of weaponry and even illegal weaponry such as grenades and explosives that detonate AFTER they are projected into the person. See Jeremy Scahill's book Blackwater:The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army for more information on this truly horrific entity that the Bush administration used with gusto and is an organization I have read which perhaps is STILL shockingly operating in Iraq and elsewhere.

All Christians, Jews, Muslims and non believers alike should be disgusted. Erik Prince is still a free man loaded for bear and he still wants to Christianize the entire world! Urge news organizations and especially news commentators to report on these issues, write the Congress, the President and the Justice Department or anyone you think to encourage bringing this man to justice for the crimes he is alleged to have committed and meet out the punishment he, in my opinion, so justly deserves!

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090817/scahill
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32484932/ns/politics-the_new_york_times/


See DOD (Department of Defense) statistics of a war in which the nation Iraq the United States invaded did NOTHING absolutely NOTHING to us to warrant it.

WAS IRAQ WORTH ALL THIS? Stats from DOD Derived from web site: http://antiwar.com/casualties/

See: http://antiwar.com/casualties/

I think most may agree with me. The Iraq War was NOT worth it and now the total number of lives it cost far exceeds the 9/11 deaths. This is an immoral, illegal horror show and those in power who began it unlawfully based on lies should be held accountable.

The fact that many of us in the beginning (including, I am sad to say, me) supported it because I believed the administration knew more than I. Most of our Congress voted to fund it (including Democrats) is a fact to be ashamed of for the rest of our lives AND it is the reason that in the future before a leader takes a country and serves up its young and its finest to be slaughtered there better be a DAMN good highly INVESTIGATED reason why we should do so! The MORAL of the story which I SHOULD have learned long ago: Never believe power. ALWAYS question it!

Evidence of a miracle?: I was in rational SHOCK as I read the August 15, 2009 Boston Globe Letter to the Editor of Judi Scherban entitled "Evidence of a Miracle." She espouses actual proof of the truth of Eucharistic adoration of the blood and body of Christ. What is this proof? Alleged by her a "miracle occurred in the year 700 in Lanciano, Italy when a priest plagued with doubt witnessed, before his congregation, the bread change into human flesh and the wine into human blood." Moreover, she says, this blood (type AB) and human flesh (muscular heart tissue)was subject to scientific analysis around 1971." So this blood Type AB and fresh human muscular heart tissue defied the laws of molecular biology and did not decay after 1277 years? I wonder, too, just who this priest was who had his vision. Perhaps he was merely schizophrenic? Perhaps, too, it was also determined that proteins were like those found in "fresh blood" because someone in 1971 tested a fresh sample? Does anyone question the events surrounding this preposterous so called "proof"?

Her belief she says is proven without question but question I do. This is yet again evidence of the dogmatic, unquestioning and blind acceptance of postulations of faith that keeps people ignorant. I hypothesize it will be the downfall of man who was given a natural cerebral synaptic brain so he can question, reason, and determine by scientific inquiry what the truth really is. Made up stories shot full of holes abound in all religions but this one, I must say, is a doosey!

Health Care Histrionics: Recently an editorial at the Metro West News decried the health care protesters as ones who are taking a page out of the left wing rants, sit ins and obstructionist tactics of the anti Vietnam War and civil rights struggle of the late 60's. I was among those who sympathized with the late 60's left wing demonstrators although I never was present at an office sit in and certainly I was NOT violent. Still, I empathized. So I rethought those days and wondered about the difference between the right obstructing at the health care forums and the left obstructing at an office sit-in of that era. I came to the conclusion that the philosophical issues of the left WERE different -- MUCH different -- BUT the ability to shut down debate whether from the right OR the left (although I am much more sympathetic to the left's cause) is still the same. It's unproductive and it gets one nowhere.

I believe the confrontational tactics of the left in the 60's was responsible for the election of Richard Nixon and a slew of right wing presidents that meant the ultimate ruination of our country. Further, it solidifies our divide as the anti bellum pre Civil War cause did. I believe, too, and said so last evening to a political ally, that the right is sewing their own demise. They may LOOK powerful as the demonstrators in the 1960's did but real power will allude them. This country is NOT extreme left or extreme right and the demographics are changing. Elections are won by winning over moderates and moderates do NOT like the health care histrionics they see on the 6:30 p.m. news. They like rational debate. That wins the day. The so called tea baggers will lose their cause for themselves.

I should not be so revelatory because, of course, I WANT them to lose. So I rephrase what I just said. Keep going, tea bags, its fun to watch you tactically hang yourself as THIS time the opposition will not be silent either. The president has tried for six months to reach out much to our liberal chagrin but his hand keeps getting slapped every single time. The definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. One thing THIS president is NOT is stupid so I am hoping he soon will learn. His base like I and millions of others count. So tea baggers keep doing what your doing, it plays right into our left wing hands!

Question Asked: The president is having forums even today and throughout August. MSNBC has a place to ask a question on the recovery. This is what I asked. It probably will not be asked of him but if I do say so myself I think it is a good one and it does not hurt to try. Even though they probably will not pose it if you happen to catch it on any station please let me know.


I am thrilled by your election. Having said that I worry about our economy. I worry because it seems you have put at the helm of our recovery efforts many of those people who were instrumental in actually causing the economic disaster you inherited. I worry that those people who were at the Wall Street pinnacles of power when the bubble burst are entrusted with our recovery. Indeed, Wall Street continues to reap enormous profits and bonuses from TARP even while most Americans on Main Street suffer. What efforts have you made to ensure that the economic policies which Mr. Geither, Mr. Summers or their mentors espoused creating the endless bubble and bursting bubble scenario we now face, will never happen again?

Happy Birthday, Mr. President: Happy birthday, President Barack Obama, indeed! Although I criticize policy from time to time I am thrilled Barack Obama is our president. I have to pinch myself every time I hear the words Mr. President and know they are talking about Barack Obama and not Bush. Bush’s nightmare is often embedded in my synapses like a recurring nightmare. I have to keep telling myself over and over again Barack Obama is president Barack Obama is president. My next nightmare would be Bush’s return in another form. THIS time Democrats EVERYWHERE must ensure, as Jews do about the Holocaust, NEVER AGAIN, NEVER AGAIN, NEVER AGAIN.

This country could not recover from the insanity of another Republican presidency. We must uncover their lies and continuing efforts to subvert democratic ideals by phony Republican bought-and-paid-for efforts to numb and control the public mind. We must stop their manipulation of town hall discussion forums and their multi-million dollar campaign to usurp the corporate media. We must contribute to Democratic causes and oppose through our own strong voices their attempts to subvert justice and promote immorality. Finally, we must ensure another Bush-like presidency with a Republican-elected Congress cost NO more in blood and treasure. Control of the American seats of power by the inundation of extremist right wing politics and its attendant Constitutional subversion must NEVER happen again. I remain ALWAYS vigilant!

Miracle in North Korea: I do not know how anyone on planet earth cannot think the release of the two journalists from a twelve-year prison sentence at hard labor is anything but great. Here is a nation with a nuclear arsenal threatening that region even threatening our west coast and former Ambassador Bolton from the Bush administration thinks it was a bad idea to negotiate with terrorists? When would he like to negotiate with a nuclear power when it has launched its first attack? If it were HIS daughter would he feel differently? I suspect so.

Bill Clinton negotiating the prisoners' release is a wonderful thing and I believe there is an opportunity opening up to talk with an enemy no matter how obnoxious the smell. The fact is lives could be saved. Sometimes nations like people simply want to be acknowledged. Let's acknowledge them. War with a nuclear armed nation is NOT an option.

Anti-Choice Hypocrisy: In Jeff Jacoby's July 26, 2009 Op ed "Abortion and the echo of eugenics," he ridiculously compares various respected progressives who have been at the forefront of the right to privacy, birth control and choice issues by equating them with racist Hitlerian types in various historical eugenics movements.

Conservatives become morally outraged at the abortion of the “unborn” because the mother may not want her child born into a life of grinding poverty or because the child, if taken to term, might be relegated to life-long grave mental or physical disability. When asked for the state or nation to provide full term human beings with social benefits they care not so much as they rant and rave against liberal social policies which try to ensure programs are adequately funded to help full term human beings who may have those very same problems. Conservatives have no problem vociferously and arduously working against social programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security or single payer health care which have created or could create programs for the elderly, sick, poor and handicapped but are morally incensed at those who may consider for health, economic and other serious reasons the termination of a fetus to be necessary.

Miracle in Metro West: A columnist (Rick Holmes) in my local newspaper had a most interesting editorial about the bell which stood atop where John Brown’s insurrection against slavery began at Harpers Ferry. I never knew the Herculean efforts it took to get it to a place in the north near where I reside. It stands there today. There has been an effort launched to try to get the bell taken back to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia under the auspices of the federal government. I worry about that and said so. The link to HIS story is below my response to it.

Thanks, Rick, for a GREAT story! I must admit to my ignorance about the location of the bell. I had no idea it sat in Marlborough, MA. I will visit that site soon. Rick, you make good points and I usually agree with you on most everything. I keep asking myself why I am reticent about returning the bell. I reflect on that.

I suppose if it will truly be under the supervision of the federal National Park Service what harm would come to it. I fear, though, an extremist secessionist or someone of that ilk doing something destructive to the bell. The blood that was shed surrounding the issue of slavery is staggering. Remnants of the entrenched racism are surely alive nearly 150 years later, despite a part African American president, as the country is divided, to a large degree, on race and cultural lines which run deep. The effort it took to transport the bell here is astounding and it preserves in minds the moral crusade of John Brown against the so called 'peculiar institution' which he paid for with his life. The bell is a symbol of initiation of that struggle.

John Brown was a religious zealot and yet so rabidly anti-slavery. Isn't it amazing how times have changed? One questions, or at least I do, whether the religious fundamentalist ideologues of our time would take the issue of slavery as their own if it existed. It’s a hypothetical I know but personally I doubt it. The Republican party loves to say they are the party of Lincoln but their constituency bears, I fear, LITTLE resemblance to it. I still maximally fear right wing extremism and I believe it has an angry violence to it that would simply love and easily could destroy that bell most especially in the south.

I like the fact that the north helped defeat the so called 'peculiar institution' although not all northerners certainly took the moral high ground and Lincoln's effort was not so much against slavery itself, although he did not like it, as it was keeping the union together.

I see your point though, Rick. I am sure if it is under supervision of the federal government no harm would come to it. I hate, though, to see the torturous efforts of those who thought enough about that bell to get it here and I am thrilled it resides, at least for now, in Metro West!

http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/opinion/x767444681/Holmes-Let-history-ring

Glen Greewald of Salon.com is, in my opinion, a master journalist and critic. He discussed today the death of Walter Cronkite whom I think he believes really was a great journalist because he reported truth to power. Greenwald says Cronkite was unlike the "journalists" of our time, including the late Tim Russert, whom he believes are bought, sold and owned by the corporation. A point to ponder and to which I concur Greenwald quotes Lewis Lapham long time Harpers editor:



"What we now know as the “news media” serve at the pleasure of the corporate sponsor, their purpose is not to tell truth to the powerful but to transmit lies to the powerless."

If you want to read more of his essay click on:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

What you can do about war crimes: What a horrendous injustice to make the lower worker bees pay for the most immoral, illegal and disgusting policies of the high command under Bush. That would be like making only the average German who did what he was told by Nazi policy pay for the price of Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, Goering, Hess, Mengele, Eichmann, and the rest of the hierarchy and of concentration camp officials and ministers who ORDERED the policy and letting those who MADE the policy go free. There were HUNDREDS or even THOUSANDS of those in the Nazi hierarchy. Many got off as we know but they did, through Nuremberg, make many of the highest pay with their lives and through prison sentences for even judges who presided over sham courts.

President Obama's policy is such a horrible policy and NO justice will ever prevail if he continues with it. I KNOW it MUST go against his instincts but he is NOT strong enough to resist the military and those who owed their allegiance to Bush. He kept TOO many from team Bush and tried this bi partisan attempt which does NOT work. Lindy England and her boyfriend can you imagine are the ONLY ones to be in prison so far for torture in an ILLEGAL war based on lies, torture and EVEN, as we know now, policies meant to assassinate leaders in other countries without informing Congress. Either we believe in our Constitution even when it is the most difficult for us or we do not.

The following are war criminals and should be tried as such: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Addington, Yoo, Bybee, Rove, Libby (the ONLY one convicted of anything but he should be in jail), even Atty. Gen. Mukasey who let the criminals continue without prosecution, even Webb who continues to employ Bush policy under Obama as Secretary of Defense. And there are many others who worked on the torture memos, ordered and employed torture or directed their underlings to do so. There are the generals like Hayden, Odierno who some have said has sadistic impulses and who President Obama still employees, General Stanley McChrystal military’s top specialist in “dirty war” tactics and others who are in the Obama admin, sanctioned and/or implemented torture.

ALL those at the top in Nuremberg fashion should be held accountable and IF the president does not order the US out of Iraq totally then HE becomes an accomplice and is NOT what we signed up for. The Iraq War was sold to us and we were dupes as so many believed what Bush, et al said including me. They lied. NEVER again will I ever believe what the American war machine tells us. They lie and have since WWII as ALL the wars after that time have been a SICK joke except not to those families whose soldiers and civilians abroad are lying in caskets for absolutely nothing.

Not ONLY are Cheney and his henchmen guilty of war crimes I believe as numbers of others do and have for MONTHS that the anthrax attacks were ordered by Cheney and that it was a secret CIA operation to sell the Iraq war now including most recently the revelation that they were employing assassination squads without informing Congress. It is why the anthrax attacks were swept under the rug so quickly and the so called sole implementer of that probably either was killed or committed suicide because of it. As Ron Suskind's book says the Bush Administration pushed ABC News and others to link the anthrax attacks to Saddam Hussein. At the VERY LEAST an investigation by Atty. Gen. Holder into this should ensue. I DON'T FORGET these things. This is why I want ESPECIALLY Bush, Cheney, Addington, Yoo, Rumsfeld and others including George Tenet to face trial and punishment (but Tenet gets not punishment but gets a medal of honor!). HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of American, Iraqi and others have been killed, more maimed for life and a Middle East with nuclear weaponry is in shambles because of this reckless policy! NOT to mention the fact that that administration was WARNED about the 9/11 attack and did NOTHING! They put OUR lives at risk.

These things are TOO important to be let off the hook. This can and MUST NEVER happen again!



See what you can do: http://www.codepinkalert.org/

An Inextricable Link: PBS Frontline asked me to take a survey on a particular episode. In doing that, as I perused the Frontline web site, I came across an old episode shown in 1985 called "Memory of the Camps" narrated by Trevor Howard. Yes, I have seen this or parts of it before but I decided to watch it again. Every single time I view it I see WHY Jews are so obsessed with the Holocaust and WHY we hold it SO imperative that it never happen to us again.

Committing horrors upon others is no answer either but as some understand the Palestinian plight I see the Jewish plight because I have a connection to it. Not only do I have a connection to it but it has also formed my politics since day one. If you cut and paste into your browser or click on the link below, if you can bear it, you again will refresh memory of the greatest perpetration of slaughter in the thousands of years of human history. Nothing so horrifically and so completely like it has been done to an entire group of innocent people. Yes, I know, the Holocaust decimated other groups as well. STILL, there is NO getting away from the fact of its deliberate attempt to eliminate, in particular, the Jew. It nearly succeeded no matter how many, because of their ignorance or their antisemitism, choose to deny it. It happened, it happened to most ESPECIALLY the Jewish people and it happened in relatively recent history.

When I hear those demonstrating against Israel and for the Palestinian cause and chanting "Jews, you belong in the camps" or "Jews, go to the ovens" or "Hitler didn't do enough" I understand why the Jewish heart is so rabidly attached to the Jewish state as again and again ALL over the world there are calls to exterminate us to finish the Hitlerian job. Israel and the Holocaust are inextricably linked most probably for all time UNLESS or UNTIL a force stronger than Israel, perish the thought, decides otherwise.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/camp/view/