Several days from what Republican and Democratic campaign strategists expect to be a close election, the legal machinery of a messy fight is shifting into high gear as both parties begin sending their largest concentrations of lawyers to states with the tightest races like Maryland, Missouri, Ohio and Tennessee.
An editorial scheduled to appear on Monday in Army Times, Air Force Times, Navy Times and Marine Corps Times, calls for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The papers are sold to American servicemen and women.
Pierce Brosnan (above) and Halle Berry with Gabriel Aubrey at the Paddle Out protest against the development of a Liquid Natural Gas pipeline
BHP Billiton, the largest mining company in the world, is seeking approval to build a massive floating Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Terminal called Cabrillo Port off the Southern California coast near Malibu and Oxnard.
This gigantic facility (14 stories tall and three football fields long) would be moored for a minimum of 40 years near the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, one of the richest and most productive marine ecosystems in the world.
Tell Governor Schwarzenegger to reject the dangerous and dirty Cabrillo Port liquefied natural gas (LNG) project. Send the Governor an e-mail and urge him to Terminate the Cabrillo Port Terminal Project. http://www.govmail.ca.gov/
The Cabrillo Port terminal will cause air and water pollution, harm wildlife and the environment, and has the potential for catastrophic accidents that could threaten public health and safety. It would discharge tens of millions of gallons of heated waste water into the ocean each year.
Along with this thermal waste, the intake of massive amounts of sea water each year to cool the plant's generators will directly kill millions of larval fish and billions of other microscopic marine organisms crucial to the health of marine mammals and fisheries.
Marine mammals, including the endangered blue and humpback whales, and federally protected gray whales, commonly travel through the area and feed where the terminal would be located. These endangered marine mammals could be harmed if there was a significant release of LNG. They would also face an increased chance of injury or death from collisions with ships due to the increased tanker traffic.
The likely impacts on marine habitat and wildlife, which will be severe, are unacceptable
Constant noise from the tankers, the terminal and the pipeline construction would be audible from miles away and could harm whales and dolphins by reducing their ability to communicate and find food.
This is just one of many LNG projects being rushed through the permitting process right now in California and in coastal communities around the US and beyond. The Cabrillo Port LNG terminal project is not a sensible choice for our environment or the environment we share with our friends in the marine world. An industrial facility of this magnitude has no place in pristine waters hosting such a diversity of sensitive and, in some cases, endangered marine life. It must be stopped.
The governor of California has the ability to veto this project but he won't do so unless he hears from you. So please, send an email to the governor and ask him to “Terminate the terminal”. Urge him to consider all the alternatives before approving any LNG terminals on or off our precious coast. http://www.govmail.ca.gov/
For the animals and for our oceans, let’s Terminate the Terminal.
This is the shameful consequence of ignoring Republican Dwight Eisenhower's honorable warning against the military industrial complex.
Notice the officer's self-preserving state of delusion, nevermind his underling government representatives in military fatigues who LIE to accomplish their tasks.
Now that the enlistment age has been raised so high, maybe we'll see the Iraq occupation's proponents with no more excuses to watch from a safe distance.
Lying to recruit.
Violating the Constitution's requirement to declare war.
Drafting taxpayers to the cost of $40,000 sign-up bonuses multiplied by 80,000 new recruits, equalling $3,200,000,000?! $3.2 BILLION dollars? Can this really be?
This is what some Republicans still call "conservative"!
Lou is 42. He was born in Africa but came to the United States as a 2-year-old and has spent most of his life in New Mexico.
For years he was subjected to risky, often painful biomedical experiments there. One additional biographical detail — that Lou is a chimpanzee — should not diminish the sympathy that viewers feel because of his ordeal.
Allison Argo, who wrote, directed and produced “Chimpanzees: An Unnatural History,” the season premiere episode of “Nature,” has made a touching and persuasive political documentary. She begins by reminding viewers that more than 98 percent of chimpanzee DNA is the same as human DNA. Which makes Lou 98 percent human. Or, if you prefer to look at things from the other side, it makes Albert Einstein, Catherine Deneuve, the Kennedys, the British royal family, the Dixie Chicks, the New York Philharmonic, the pope and, of course, Charles Darwin 98 percent chimpanzee.
“Chimpanzees,” which will be shown on most PBS stations tomorrow night, tugs at the heartstrings, but tastefully. Sad, slightly sentimental music and luscious nature photography drive home the story of the thousands of chimpanzees who have been brought to the United States, mostly for human profit in medical research and the entertainment industry. (There are short film clips of two small chimps in a boxing ring and of Cheetah in a trailer for an early Tarzan movie.)
Happily this is also the story of humans who are dedicated to making the chimpanzees’ remaining years far less traumatic.
Some of the animals’ stories are told individually. Ham was shot into space by NASA, paving the way for Alan B. Shepard Jr., John H. Glenn Jr. and their fellow astronauts. Billy Joe, whose favorite meal is spaghetti, was in show business. Then he was sent to a research laboratory where he was inoculated at least twice with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. Tom spent decades at the same place.
The narrator and various experts talk about the animals’ intelligence, emotions, psychological needs and tendencies to live in families and other social groups. Then one chimpanzee delicately wipes his mouth with paper napkins as he eats an ice cream cone, making all the explanations unnecessary.
These chimpanzees cannot be returned to the wild because they don’t have the necessary survival skills. But organizations like Save the Chimps are making efforts to care for them and to have new homes built for them where they can run free.
The final scene shows Tom, after 30 years in a steel cage, exploring his new island habitat. He runs, he holds his head high and he purposefully, elegantly climbs a tree to survey the landscape. The dignity and elation are palpable. He might as well be a Shakespearean king.
NATURE
Chimpanzees:
An Unnatural History
On most PBS stations tomorrow night (check local listings).
Directed, written, produced, and narrated by Allison Argo; produced by ArgoFilms. Produced by Thirteen/WNET New York; Fred Kaufman, executive producer; William Grant, producer at large.
Watch the fabulous PSA that Peter Dudar and Sally Marr put together for GSFP for our action in DC next week. Peter & Sally are the filmmakers who produced the film Arlington West: http://www.arlingtonwestfilm.com Also, go to: http://www.gsfp.org/article.php?id=273 - for more info on our action. Please distribute the video widely...thanks!
Love and peace real soon,
Cindy Sheehan
Gold Star Families For Peace http://www.gsfp.org
Sit Down for Change and Stand Up for Peace: Day 3 By Cindy Sheehan I haven't met anyone who likes to go to funerals. Attending a funeral must be one of the last things anyone of us would ever choose to do. Here in America we are even more distanced from death than we are from birth. Both natural activities have been made abnormal and something that only happens in hospitals.
Even though I had my babies at home, I am totally like the average American who has an aversion to death and funerals. So, can you imagine the feeling of panic and immeasurable pain when I awoke on April 13, 2004, the morning of my son's funeral? Can you imagine how I was feeling when I took a shower that morning, a morning just like every other morning, except I was burying my oldest child? Can you imagine the surreal feeling of putting on a new "mother of a hero" suit and walking out to the limo that picked us up for the very well traveled trip to our church, where I had spent so many happy hours with Casey? My surviving children looked so beautiful in their funeral clothes and Casey's dad was so handsome in his new black suit. It took all my energy to not throw up.
This week how many more Iraqi mothers and American mothers have had to so needlessly walk in the same sad shoes that I had to walk in two and a half years ago? To the people who say I should just "get over it," the tears are pouring down my face right now recalling that awful April day, but also for the families who will have to go to their loved ones' funerals because of the clown in chief.
Yesterday, in his press conference, George said that he has been to "rodeos" before. Was he the one in the clown suit diving into the barrel right before the bull gored him in the buttocks? What George has done to our country is not a "rodeo" it is one long funeral of death and misery and the rodeo clown has presided over the demise of our democracy and abolishment of our security.
America and humanity won huge victories this week, but peace wasn't the victor, change was.
To have true peace we need more than Rumbo to resign. Congress needs to do their Constitutional duty to impeach the rest of the war criminals and remove them from office. Like Saddam, George, Darth Cheney, Rumbo, Condi, and the rest of the warniks need to be tried for crimes against humanity.
Yes, we won some battles this week, but we need to stay on the offensive and work for true change and peace. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid need to know that we voted in record numbers to bring our troops home. The democratic leadership also need to know that we stood in long lines and sometimes in the rain to vote for accountability and justice. We can't relax now that we have the upper hand.
When the 110th Congress is sworn in in January, we will need to be there in the halls of Congress demanding that the people we just elected represent us and not the war machine.
Our responsibilities as American citizens do not end on election day. True democracy happens between elections and the time between elections is where the real work gets done.
We Americans are a formidable force when we unite and work together and, in the past, we have engineered and have been responsible for amazing change in our nation.
Let's make history and do it again.
Cindy Sheehan is the mother of Casey Sheehan who was KIA in Iraq on 04/04/04. She is the president and co-founder of GSFP and the author of Peace Mom.
Americans have a harder time than residents of several other countries getting after-hours appointments with a nurse or primary care physician without going to an emergency room, a study released yesterday found. Only forty percent of US primary care doctors said they had arrangements for after-hours care, compared with 47 percent in Canada and 87 percent in the United Kingdom.
President Bush's administration is seeking world permission to produce thousands of tons of a pesticide that an international treaty banned nearly two years ago. Methyl bromide has been used for decades by farmers to help grow plump, sweet strawberries, robust peppers and other crops, but it also depletes the Earth's protective ozone layer.
If fishing around the world continues at its present pace, more and more species will vanish, marine ecosystems will unravel, and there will be "global collapse" of all species currently fished, possibly as soon as midcentury, fisheries experts and ecologists are predicting.
The New York Times weighs in on the Stern report on the economic disaster that climate change will cause, saying that solutions require either "a carbon tax or a mandatory cap on emissions. But the administration has refused to ask Congress to impose either." The administration appears to believe "that calamity can be avoided on the cheap."
Will Pitt, stunned by the revelation that the Bush administration put nuclear weapons details on a web site, puts it in context for us: "Translation: On the three-year anniversary of the catastrophic decision to invade and occupy Iraq, Congressional Republicans, terrified that their comprehensive failures would come back to haunt them in the November midterms, cajoled the White House into publishing incredibly sensitive information in a rhetorically empty attempt to cover their backsides."
The Bush administration's military adventurism and the economy are two issues expected to impact next week's US midterm vote. We ignore their interplay at our peril.
The agency says an additional 50,000 Iraqis a month are fleeing their homes but remaining within Iraq, which classifies them as "internally displaced" rather than as refugees who have crossed an international border.
In the United States, what we call fundamentalism has very deep roots, from the early colonists. There’s always been an extreme, ultrareligious element, more or less fundamentalist, with several revivals.
It is the aim of the United States to inflict collective punishment on the Iranian people. The Bush White House, successfully invoked Chapter VII, Article 41 of the Charter of the United Nations stipulating a threat to peace (the pot calling the kettle black) subjecting Iran to sanctions. The compliant United Nations Security Council drafted the Iran Resolution, paragraph 15 of which is as follows: http://informationclearinghouse.info/article15481.htm
The only reason the Democratic Party is against the fiasco in Iraq is because the U.S. is losing the war. It’s all about “bad planning,” or “bad timing,” or whatever. If Bush and Co. had easily subjugated the nation and controlled the oil fields, the entire U.S. ruling class and their paid politicians would be joyous.
"Hey America, Stop your Bellyaching and get to Work"
By Mike Whitney
What can we expect in the midterm elections? The real question is: What should we NOT expect in the elections. We should not expect dramatic change from our present trajectory. Whether Karl Rove engineers another electoral-coup or not, is beside the point. The system has been reshaped to meet the needs and aspirations of the ruling mandarins.
We the people once owned our democracy. We elected “representatives” to run it for US. Have you noticed? Somewhere along the way we lost our democracy. It was foreclosed by wealthy and power elites that corrupted our “representatives” who literally sold us out. Our homeland was foreclosed right in plain sight.
One of the most devastating consequences of unearned privilege -- both for those of us on top and, for very different reasons, those who suffer beneath -- is the death of empathy.
After 3 and a half years of violence and mayhem we still know as little about the Iraqi resistance as we did in March 2003. This is inexcusable. In addition, there’s been no attempt to engage the representatives of the resistance in political dialogue. How can we possibly reach a political solution without dialogue and negotiation?
It was pure war-nography. The front page of the New York Times yesterday splashed a four-column-wide close-up of a blood-covered bullet in the blood-soaked hands of an army medic who’d retrieved it from the brain of Lance Cpl. Colin Smith.
The United States promised a democracy when the Civil Rights Act became law in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act the following year finally ended slavery. For the next decade, the civil-rights movement joined the great popular movement to end the slaughter in Vietnam, and Congress legislated to restrain the CIA's secretive parallel power. It was a fleeting intermission.
Reporting for The New York Times, David Cay Johnston says, "The increase in incomes of the top one percent of Americans from 2003 to 2005 exceeded the total income of the poorest 20 percent of Americans, data in a new report by the Congressional Budget Office shows."
With the Mark Foley scandal still troubling Republicans, one of the nation's top evangelical leaders is now accused of paying for gay sex. Heading into Tuesday's election, when voters in eight states will decide on gay marriage bans, liberals and some con...
Unexpected TEARS watching FRANK GONZALEZ's Congressional campaign VIDEO
The last thing I expected when I started to watch this video was that it would evoke such emotions in me.
If I were to try to find the source of my reaction it was probably witnessing a courageous example of what made our country great before "interest & corporate groups" high jacked our Representative Democracy.
It is candidacies, such as the one Frank represents, which brings me and others hope for a future in which we can change the course of our nation.
In the same token, we are as fortunate to have 2 other Democratic congressional candidates who mirror the same struggle and efforts trying to get a message of genuine traditional civic values to South Florida voters... without the stings of powerful groups.
If someone where to make a video of their campaign efforts, they would surely demonstrate the same quality as those of Frank's.
PLEASE SHARE THIS NOTE & VIDEO FAR AND WIDE for I BET THERE ARE ARE MANY OTHER "FRANK GONZALEZ" RUNNING UNDER DEMOCRATIC TICKETS ALL OVER OUR COUNTRY!
Jack Topel
Hey, activists and voters!
PLEASE FORWARD THIS MESSAGE AFTER YOU READ IT.
We sent out this video last night at 5:40pm. Just 17 hours later, we have over 300 clicks on it! This doesn't even include the many new names to whom I have copied it this second time around now that I see how much interest there has been for it!
People are sick and tired of the same crap from leaders of both parties, and we're spearheading the effort to define ourselves in District 21 according to our local vision.
This video is a compilation of great moments throughout our campaign at about 20 honk & wave events when our volunteers distributed 20,000--that's twenty thousand---4"x6" palm cards containing our campaign's name, issues and contact information at strategic locations within District 21.
We've already uploaded this video to our campaign website on the very first page ( http://www.electfrank.org ), right below the hilarious Jon Stewart clip where Stewart lampoons Lincoln. If you haven't seen THAT clip, make sure you visit the website!
Don't say I haven't been warning about this extensively since back in 2000 when I was just a "conspiracy theorist" libertarian.
We are the frogs and this is the simmering temperature rising.
Yes, it IS happening here in Amerika.
Every year that passes, fewer principled nuts willing to run for office, like me, remain. All you'll have left are the whore leaders of the big two political parties--Hillary, the Bush Dynasty, Kerry, DeLay, Pelosi, McCain, Gore, etc.--all willing to say whatever's necessary to win, including shredding the Constitution that is designed precisely to force them to limit their authority! But you'll still wonder why things only get worse because you think YOUR exceptions to the Constitution are acceptable!
There's a time to fight, like in my race, but there's also a time to retreat to survive to fight another day, exactly as the exiled Albert Einstein, a German Jew, explained when Hitler took power.
This is why I have been worrying and thinking about leaving this "free" country if I can't win this election or come close--my way of defending freedom--to put us back on track.
The first people eliminated in the beginning of tyranny are those who stand in diametric philosophical opposition to the existing regime. After that, the remaining sheep are easy to abuse at will. The government will divide and conquer according to many subgroups--subversive internet bloggers, pot smokers, "deadbeat" dads, tax "evaders", non-compliant small business owners, etc.--all in a phony pursuit of "security".
If YOU are one of those people who, out of convenient comfort or cowardice, agrees but says nothing, you are as guilty as those who carry out the orders.
Like Orwell said of the word games government and its apologists play, "Slavery is freedom".
Words cannot express adequately the importance of turning out to vote against the neoconservative disease in the demonic Republican Party leadership.
"I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical."
"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state."
--founder of the Democratic Party, 3rd President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
Here it is from the horses mouth, in this case Congressman Peter King of New York. In the 2004 elections, when asked how he knew we ( "we" here meaning the Republicans) had won he replied that its all but the counting and we'll take care of the counting. When you couple that Wally O'Dells ( he was CEO of Diebold Voting Machines at the time) written statement that he was committed to delivering Ohios electoral votes to Bush, it is obvious to me that we have to be very vigilant about the vote counting. In California, as in most states, this is a function of the secretary of states office. The current appointed Republican secretary of state has certified voting machines based mainly on their manufactures assertions that there are no security problems with these machines. Remember most of these machines are manufactured by companies such as Diebold with strong ties to the Republican party. All software is "proprietary" which is another word for secret. That is why I consider this years secretary of state race one of the most important things on the ballot, and consider it extremely essential that Bruce McPherson is not returned to this job. As I see it the only serious chance of ousting him is to vote for Debra Bowen. My most recent indication is that she has a slight lead in a tight race.
Dean Ruby
----- Original Message -----
From: YouTube Service
To: Dean Ruby
Sent: Thursday, November 02, 2006 4:19 PM
Subject: dean sent you a video!
YouTube™ – Broadcast Yourself I want to share the following video with you: Video Description
New York Representative Peter King in a candid moment admits that the 2004 elections are "already over--the election's over, we won." When the camera woman asks "How do you know that?" Congressman King replies, "it's all over but the counting, and we'll take care care of the counting."
I've just completed a short (one page, 2-sided) list of quotes by experts and famous persons on the problems of electronic vote counts - including references to original sources:
Please feel free to use it as a handout or copy and paste it into an email and forward it.
US Count Votes' programmer, Brian, has been working lately to get our national election data document archive system up and running ( http://electionarchive.net) for our election data forensics project, should any state election activists or candidates chose to use it. Please read this: http://electionarchive.org/ucvInfo/US/WeCount2.pdf
There are a few new sample letters from MD addressed to political candidates and from PA addressed to election officials to obtain the data, and I hope to post another one soon: http://electionarchive.net/public/ucv_select_info.php
If someone could help write a press release to explain this project and the rationale for doing it, to the public, please contact me. I know a lot of you are busy doing election integrity work of some type or other now. We have the candidates' contact information for CO, FL and MD for both Repubs and Dems, but no one has yet mailed a letter to all the candidates there (of all parties) if anyone can do mail merge and wants to volunteer.
Regards,
Kathy Dopp http://electionarchive.org
National Election Data Archive
Dedicated to Accurately Counting Elections
"Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day," wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1816
Trump and His Allies...
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/06/21/trump-and-his-allies-are-clear-and-present-danger-american-democracy?utm_source=daily_newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=daily_newsletter_op
rudkla - 22. Jun, 05:09
The Republican Party...
https://truthout.org/articles/the-republican-party-is-still-doing-donald-trumps-bidding/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=804d4873-50dd-4c1b-82a5-f465ac3742ce
rudkla - 26. Apr, 05:36
January 6 Committee Says...
https://truthout.org/articles/jan-6-committee-says-trump-engaged-in-criminal-conspiracy-to-undo-election/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=552e5725-9297-4a7c-a214-53c8c51615a3
