The GOP likes Women -- in Their Place!

What gives you Political MEN the right -- the vaguest suggestion of an idea that YOU should have a single thing to say about the disposition of the body of any woman in this country?  You have no right to touch any legislation that controls the physical well-being of the daughters of America.

Certainly we want your support in our desire for our health and ability to live lives unhindered by situations that place us at risk. But lately you have shown that you do not understand us.  You wish to force us into lives of poverty by denying us Choice, the literal power to choose the size of the families we must forever support, no matter what our liabilities might be.  For example, I raised 2 children with bipolar disorder -- undiagnosed at the time -- I did the very very best I could, only to hear the words "You didn't raise us; we raised ourselves!" thrown at me when conversations take a dark turn during the holiday season.

If I had been forced to bear the two other children that wanted a place in my body, my rational mind would have shattered more often and my ability to care for 4 would have been nil.  I don't see that anyone outside of a person's intimate home and family should be able to control what happens  in circumstances like mine -- when there's a mental illness that is exacerbated by the stress -- physical, mental, emotional -- of bearing children.  Make no mistake -- having my babies was the best, happiest thing I have ever done -- but the angelic beings that love you without condition are temporary, and often-times replaced by those who have contempt for your weakness.  It's a "pack" thing.  We haven't evolved much.

It is clear that to refuse all women options that MEN disapprove of is neither rational nor in any way good for the future of the planet, human relationships, or the children born into circumstances where their cradle might be a bottom drawer in somebody's bedroom.  Many of these "leaders" want to lead the little ladies all the way back into the kitchen, with motherhood the only option, and yet no good way of making it on a one person salary.  What's up with this?

My mother always taught me to ask: who benefits? I hear the old Judeo-Christian desert God Yahweh bellowing through these fundamentalist Leaders of all sects, trying to get the women back into our tents again, under the stern control of men we don't even know.  Guess what?  That doesn't work for the 51%!! We women actually have the vote now -- though it took us longer than anyone else, and I don't think we're going to give the power we have achieved back.  In fact many of us think we deserve more representation by our own gender.

I think these guys are motivated by the unconscious desire to put the genie back in the bottle, by dis-empowering us further,  and it's disgusting.  They aren't God and should stop pretending.  It's literally repugnant to women, this paternalistic rule-making by the boys' club. If one stops, pay attention for a moment and takes a closer look at the faces our our representatives -- they are almost all male. Politics is, after all, quite the "blood sport" and a woman has to be tough as nails -- think of Secretary of State Clinton -- to survive the usual witch-hunts that occur when a woman is taken seriously.

But in order for we women to protect ourselves and our daughters/granddaughters, we MUST become more active politically! We must not simply glaze over, sit back and go limp as one by one our human rights, which have taken a few hundred YEARS to hammer out, are taken from us, with great glee, by those who should be our balanced and sane lawmakers.  Get out and Rock the Vote!!  If we want to see a change or thirty, we MUST act.

I personally am sick and tired of being told we are the weaker sex because our bodies are weaker.  I was told early in life that women are less intelligent because -- oh get this -- our brains are smaller.  Sigh.  Like I said, Ladies -- let's get to work.  We need US now!

Even if you did inhale!

For inspiration, and for my idea of the perfect female candidate, go check out Elizabeth Warren's speeches on YouTube.  She is the ideal combination of brains, financial acumen, guts and pure awesomeness! Oh, and she's got serious communications chops; she is the Mother of all Orators!  I hope she's the first woman president, now that Mrs. Clinton has said NO.

The Return of Imperialism/Tryanny to U.S from Within

How do you feel, my fellow Americans, as you watch the Congress refuse, over and over, to truly serve US, the people of this Republic, while they consistently polish the fat rumps of their Corporate Masters?  I fear we may be watching the beginning of the end of Democracy in the “land of the brave and the home of the free.” If we lose our Power as a People, if we are so easily fooled, if a runaway governor in Wisconsin can dictate radical, radio-active policies and get away with it despite the wishes of the bulk of his constituency, doesn’t that border on Tyranny?  If there are peaceful demonstrations being shut down violently in this country that gives us a right to them, what have we become?

The Republicans have not accepted that going against the will of the people is a very bad idea.  They favor the Imperial style of Leadership, the “my way or the high way” style of rule.  The kind of rule that likes surveillance tools, power in faraway places, and sneak policy attacks in various states that have stripped the working class of people of rights traditional to states such as Wisconsin, and for no reason that would ultimately serve the people.  

That move was part of a Karl Rovian strategy to keep tightening the GOP’s constant attempt to make this a permanently Republican nation.  The further moves to suppress traditionally Democratic (the young, the "other" and the senior citizens) voters threaten our Democracy -- and yet the GOP seems intent upon absolute rule.

Fortunately, it seems as though the people's eyes have opened and a rising tide of  "Oh NO you will NOT!!" may wipe Scott Walker out of his Governor's mansion, and not a minute too soon.

The GOP won the last election by speaking of jobs and “true fiscal conservatism.”  I don't object to  fiscal conservatism as long as it is not drained from the blood of the poor and middle classes.  The neo-cons and Mitt Romney-style businessmen who espouse this philosophy and are elected on the basis of it should not be able to serve in Congress as the lackeys of the rich, either during or after their terms are finished.  The revolving door among between Congressional employment and lobbying is way too porous, and integrity is in short supply. 

  

Congress people are obviously a commodity up for sale – Democrat and Republican, and so obviously.

After throwing all their weight behind the infamous, unnecessary tax break for the rich, Republicans are suddenly moving as one to strip the American Worker of the right to bargain with dignity for wages, hours, etc.  I was amazed that these men could argue so righteously that we must ALL share the pain of balancing the budgets!!  Nothing, said they, could be more important than that. But – wait!! WTF about that tax cut for the rich you bozos passed last year?

  
How, HOW could the richest among us possibly want more when more and more of our children are homeless, wandering the street, gathering at the various Occupy Movements because they have no other place to sleep, among other reasons, of course.

After giving this wretched tax cut to those who didn’t need it – Boehner and Mitchell fought furiously for their own, and now seek to attack entitlements – let the middle class and poor pay the price -- the American people are sinking into a less gracious and conscious form of living.  There have been one million foreclosures last year; so many  more since then -- and yet these heartless people want to place even more stress on the groaning many for the sake of the mighty few.  In such a terrible time as these years have been, the only possible reason is corruption. The latest news is that the unholy GOP voted down the middle class tax extensions, and in so doing are pushing people like me into a lifestyle where "daily bread" is now questionable.

If the GOP continues to stifle our NATURAL FREEDOMS including the right of free assembly, the right to be properly educated, to vote on the matters that concern us, to have a voice on these matters -- and continues to promote the growth of a vast underclass, stripping us of various Rights won in the past -- they will be electorally wiped out at some point—unless they can make good on the next step in their plan, which has to do with making it more difficult for folks in the Democratic demographics, i.e. students and the elderly, who typically vote the Democratic ticket, to vote.

How does that make you feel – to know that this is a nationwide effort by GOP politicos to restrain the Democratic voter-turnout, to destroy collective bargaining, to strip the Unions of all power and to make the United States of America into a dreary banana republic where only one party CAN EVER attain power? 

But who benefits?  Who would have the most to gain, however bizarre, and for what reasons?  In my opinion we are witnessing the struggle between Plutocracy and Democracy in America the Beautiful, and it is an awful sight to witness.  Somehow the de-volution of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire comes to mind.  Only we're the Roman Empire on crack, and on a quick downward slide.

In my opinion – and this is an opinion piece -- the GOP is trying to create a "new peasantry" -- a modern  breed of children raised as ready cannon fodder (“meet the new boss; same as the old Boss”), for our Orwellian cycle of endless war.  These kids are inheriting the results of our specifically human passion for unchecked arrogance/violence/blood-lust.

Failed by local schools and pre-trained by vicious games, they’ll be snatched up by the Masters of War. As educational systems begin to fail our children the culture becomes more brutal and violent.  Kids spend way too much time fascinated by blood-soaked games put out by the Military – just a little basic training, pre-high school basic training – there are so many army games out there!

How purposeful is the creation of a class of the citizenry more suited for soldiering than the manufacturing jobs we no longer have?  So many of our kids have felt and feel that a life in the military was the only option.  They go because they have to.  They are our modern-day blood sacrifice.  The high and sustained rate of unemployment has made and will continue to make great use of the “feeder pond” of kids with no hope.  These young American heroes go off to serve and fight and die.

And then the heroes come back, but they come back changed, many of them broken, some shattered beyond our help.  Because of the underlying philosophy that sends these people off to war, there’s not enough help for them when they get back --  not for current veterans, nor for the rest of the recycled vets of our many wars; there are so few options. 
 

They deserve everything from us, yet to the GOP that elite 2% is somehow more deserving than our veterans. Our veterans come home, and they have certain particular warlike skill sets.  The folks that aren’t too psychologically or physically damaged have to make a living, and naturally they will look into the U.S. prison and jail systems.  

Some go for the shadowy world of the mercenary; some readjust, go back to school and shake the traumas of War.  Some blow themselves away, too traumatized to go on. Many of them will make excellent tools of any police state, including one right here.  We watch as the armed forces busily militarize our police, and that knowledge scares the hell out of me.

I was disgusted by the presence of Blackwater/Wackenhut security forces patrolling the streets of Wisconsin while the police are on strike.  I was horrified when the peaceful Occupy Oakland protest turned violent.  Who looks like the "land of the free" now? What a bitter joke.

It is important, essential to know that right in front of our eyes we are watching an entire reshuffling of the American Opportunity, a purposeful re-sizing of the American Dream, a casual toss away of our pretense to Excellence.  This fundamental dumbing down of the culture can't be strategic, it just can't be.  Can it?  Again, who benefits?

Fascism is the union of the Military-Industrial-Congressional complex (wonderful choice of words by President Eisenhower), who told us to beware of such a government.  It is my deepest fear that our beloved country is changing in front of our eyes into a collective of little states/tyrannies run by out-of-control, power-mad governors who seem to feel Absolute Power is their Right.  I don’t understand why the GOP members of Congress don’t value their “worthy opposition” and why they seem to be trying to destroy us utterly -- electorally, militarily, and financially -- and we are the 99%!

Should the U.S. Torture? Why Did We?

Oh my god. I cannot believe that as a civil society -- or one that pretends to be a civil society when it is convenient -- we are even having this discussion. Pursuant to the adoption of the Geneva Conventions, a thorough airing of this subject was had, and it included an examination of all the methods used by the Nazis, Japanese, etc. At that point we still had a strong mythological sense of ourselves as "the good guys", and as a Nation that was our high point. "Land of the Free, Home of the Brave" -- I still remember believing that. When the Conventions were adopted, the U. S. agreed with most of the world that we would not practice such things as Waterboarding, with its roots in the Spanish Inquisition. We even executed at least one person for practicing it!

When we began to "practice" this form of torture, apparently we did it so badly I hear they routinely drowned detainees. They eventually got the bright idea of having doctors monitor their tormentees, thereby subverting those doctors relationships with the Hippocratic Oath. I've been cruising around looking at politically neutral websites and I am disheartened to see how many people in this country favor torture. My friends laugh at my naiveté. Always have, always will. So who cares -- this is what I think.

There are at least two basic concerns. One is that of the pragmatist, who simply says that the information gained by cruel methods will produce unreliable information. This is a given, a fact told to us by respected Military professionals worldwide. You might get a correct answer along with all the screaming and gasping and near-drowning, but you won't know and you'll waste time. Professionals know this.

This leads me to believe that there are those in high places that tortured because they could. Some people probably enjoyed it. Some did as they were told. But pragmatically, if it doesn't work, why bother? And if they were told by leading military authorities before-hand that it didn't work, why did they insist upon using such obscene methods? Personally, among the gang that was BushCo -- let's include W, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove and Rice.

I believe there is the possibility that at least one was a psychopath -- a person incapable of empathy -- and there were at least a few sociopaths. They ALL seem like sadists. Now I admit to arm-chair analysis, but I'd love to hear an eminent psychiatrist or two analyze THESE guys. I was relieved to hear one of Condoleeza's Legal guys say that State was anti-torture and argued against it -- but she signed off on it, so what can you say? She'll have to live with whatever her culpability is -- I doubt the others have any capacity to feel remorse. They still think that "enhanced methods of interrogation" work.

Experts know that relationship-building is a far better method for purposes of information gathering than the infliction of pain. If you are dealing, for example, with a Muslim prisoner -- far better to call in the highest Imam or spiritual counselor of HIS brand of Islam (no Sunnis for Shi'ites!) and let the Imam remind the prisoner that Islam not a violent religion, and in this fashion gain the confidence of the man. This method is one that has been used successfully far more often than getting somebody's resistance up by slamming them around as though we were no better than gorillas.

The other consideration is moral. A FOX (!) journalist put it best when he said (loose quote), slamming his fists on the table "I don't give a rat's a** if it works. We are AMERICA!! We don't f*cking torture!" And that is how I feel. We are better than that. Or we should be. If Americans get so worked up about their religions -- and we do -- then why are we so ambivalent about the issue of torture?

If you want to know what Jesus would do -- ask yourself and I think the answer will come very quickly. Torture is against all laws of Spiritual Man and also Religious Man. It is against the very Laws of Man as we have devised them in our current day Code of Law, as represented by the Geneva Conventions. War is a loathsome and primitive way of settling earthly squabbles. But since we ARE still that stupid, let's at least play fair. And that means not creating an entire subculture of goons who will scorch your testicles for fun -- these guys will end up on our local police squad or as prison guards.

Has anyone thought about that? What happens to the men and women who have, in the words of one soldier (profiled in an early article about the Iraq War in Rolling Stone magazine), done things in Iraq they'd be put in jail for the rest of their lives for in regular society? Especially the ones who develop a taste for torture? I can see them now, spreading their wisdom throughout the already hideous penal system. We absolutely MUST continue to support the International Laws that govern our behavior relative to the rest of the world. We like to pretend that we are heroic -- in between bombings of Hiroshima and fiddling around down in Latin America. Supporting such "methods" of interrogation gives the lie to that myth. I rather liked the America of my youth and innocence -- what happened to all that?

Dear Senator Boxer,

First of all -- oh how proud we are to be Californians and to have as representatives the extraordinary Senators Boxer and Feinstein, Madame Speaker Pelosi, and our Representative Lynn Woolsey -- what a group, what accomplishments!

I felt it important -- my family and I felt it important -- to contact you and present our views on the abuses of Justice by the last administration, and the proper way of dealing with such things as the illegal buildup to the Iraq war. So many lives were lost because of the ideology of a few and the passivity of the many. As I have long suspected and as we now know, we were living for 8 years in the grip of an administration with delusions as to how much power the Executive branch should have. Any President whose legal counsel tells him that he can pick me or anyone else off the street as a suspected terrorist -- even strike my home if he wished -- that his wish alone is enough -- I mean it is clear to me that somewhere a line was crossed. The result -- we Americans have bombed -- in our delicate, diplomatic way -- a wide swath through the Middle East in a paranoid display that cost the lives of how many hundreds of thousands we will never know.

We were so insulated from what was happening over there. I was in London in July 2003 or so and I bought a Guardian newspaper. I saw pictures that in one moment told me what this war was doing to our soldiers. There had been some violent interchange in the streets of Baghdad, probably a lot of frustration on our side, and a dead tank in flames -- our helicopters were flying away. But a few men came on the street dancing around the tank and our helicopter came back to shoot them and they did and there were pictures and it was ghastly and no one could see that and think what we were doing was good. An Iraqi man pleading for his life while being shot to death from above -- but we didn't get to see it, and we are knee deep in blood and WE MUST FACE THIS IN OURSELVES, WE MUST ATONE AS A COUNTRY -- WE MUST SEE WHAT WE HAVE DONE BEFORE WE CAN MOVE ON. WE HAVE BLOOD ON OUR COLLECTIVE HANDS, AND UNTIL WE KNOW HOW WE CAME TO UNLEASH SUCH DESTRUCTION ON TO OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD -- WE CANNOT LET THIS GO. WE MUST EXAMINE OUR PAST.

I have no wish to see dear delusional George II rot in jail, but look what he has done to our national integrity, our constitution, our right to due process and habeus corpus -- oh good god you know. We feel utterly strongly that our country -- our beloved country has committed criminal acts against a sovereign nation for illegal reasons. We are feared and despised -- or we were before the election!

The truth will ultimately be the best medicine for this nation, and we can't gloss over it. If we don't face it -- well, someday somebody like Sarah Palin will talk about the "special powers of the vice presidency" and decide to exercise them because nobody did a damned thing when the President of the United States took the country into a BAD war -- he ignored all of us and everyone stood helplessly by while he did as he pleased. The nation is bankrupt. We may never recover our former standing -- and you know what? That may be just as well -- look what we do with our power -- we don't plant and heal and teach -- we bomb people into submission. I was so ashamed to be from this country for 8 years; but things are looking up -- God Bless Patrick Leahey -- so we are definitely in favor of some sort of Truth Commission -- by the Justice Department if necessary -- so that whatever powers the Executive branch may have gathered unto itself can be exposed and neutralized. We want to know what happened so that necessary safeguards can be implemented.

Just our opinions -- but after 8 years of protesting and watching this thing unfold -- knowing EXACTLY where it would go, it does seem that there SHOULD BE SOME NATIONAL EDUCATION ABOUT THE WHOLE THING! SOME PROCESS OF AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING. MAYBE ABOUT HOW MIGHT DOES NOT EQUAL RIGHT.

It's not a matter of vengeance -- it's a matter of our international standing. It is a matter of national shame and healing. We are so quick to turn on tyranny in other nations -- can we bear to see our own flirtation with it?? Can we look at our culpability, our fear, our capitulation?

Thank you Senator Boxer,

and then I signed off with the usual family signature, the four of us. I know she is in agreement with us but she needs the tangible support of her constituents. Germany was made to face its period of national shame and so we must examine ourselves before others take the trouble for us. It's our responsibility -- we broke our own laws, and we must own up.