The Loss Of Political Innocence

I begin to think some people in America are simply apologists. They can see no wrong by anyone in this administration.

Loyalty to a president is important. I understand this and we saw Bush have one of the strongest followings ever associated with the office of president. After 9-11 the US stood firmly behind George Bush and the polls reflected that. He came across as a strong leader.

Then the rhetoric towards Iraq started. Saddam was a bastard. He tortured and killed his own people. Was he a terrorist? No. But that's what we were told. By using 9-11 and the "War on terror" interchangably the America public began to associate Iraq and Saddam with the evil that was Bin Laden.

In my mind Bush began losing credibility with that tact. Yes, I saw pictures of the children Saddam ordered gased and there was no doubt in my mind he needed to be punished but if freedom from oppression were such an issue why were we not in other areas as well, such as the Sudan which has been largely ignored by the US? Why were we not also concerned with North Korea? Why had we ignored the human rights violations in China and courted their favor if freedom from oppression were such a political and moral concern?

Yet, Bush pressed on with his plans. I can remember the night the war started. Living alone at the time, I was actually talking to someone online who strongly supported military action when a news flash came across the TV and we knew it had started.

Then came more rhetoric and anyone who opposed this war was labeled. Unamerican. Ungodly. Not Patriotic. Those terms were repugnant to me.
When Bush declared that God talked to him I was done. All support was done. By making that declaration Bush had insinuated that God directed him to battle and anyone who disagreed couldn't be talking to God.

It was a well planned campaign of disinformation designed to silence anyone who disagreed with Bush or didn't support his war. Rove uses the English language to cloak truth and misdirect attention on portions of reality that he wants to embrace while ignoring others which reflect badly on this administration.This is why I have little difficulty in believing Plame was outted as retribution.

Whether Bush directly knew or knew after the fact, I'm not sure. I cling to the hope that a president of the United States would not take such an action. But ambitious men like Rove and Libby would easily take whatever means they thought they could get away with to further their cause.

Many will disagree with my impressions of Bush, that's fine. I believe facts support my suppositions. But whether you agree with my stance or not we all should agree that the office of President of the United States should be held to the highest possible standards. We want our president to be honorable. We want him to be truthful and honest. We want him to be MORE than an ordinary Joe. We want him to be a visionary who sees America as she can be. If we can't agree on those tenets then we are already lost.

The Vote That Could Not Fail

Our system is set up on a simple majority vote yet when working out the specifics of the constitutional vote in Iraq, TPTB decided that it would take a 2/3's vote against the constitution in three of the five provinces to say it actually failed.

If this were America a great outcry would be heard today. 2 provinces passed the constitution. Three voted against it. Of the three only two had the necessary 2/3's against vote. So despite the fact that it may well be that the majority voted against this constitution it was passed.

The pundits are saying this is still a rousing success because the sunni's actually came out to vote and be part of the process. They hope this will continue now as the elections draw near and the constitution is tweaked.

Will it? I don't know. I believe the American government is still attempting to place western values on a middle eastern culture that wants no part of our value system. The outcome of this election may well be renewed violence and opposition.

But regardless, the adminstration is saying the Iraqi's have a constitution. Of course they do. It was guaranteed not to fail.

"Mier'd" In Contraversy

When Bush first nominated Harriet Miers I took a "wait and see" type of attitude. There was a burst of opposition that didn't appear to have much of a foundation. I wasn't interested in seeing her bashed simply because Bush nominated her. He *is* going to appoint the next supreme court judge despite how much concern I and others might have for his choices.

At first glance, Miers didn't appear to be that bad a choice. She had, after all, supported gay rights before her religious conversion. Surely, I thought to myself, some of that attitude had to remain.

I now fear the indoctrination has gone too far.

The rhetoric coming from the white house leads me to believe that Harriet Miers is exactly the woman the religious right want on SCOTUS. I do believe that she would vote to overturn Roe vs Wade and believe that she would deny that the right of privacy exists or is certainly implied by the constitution.

But more than that, Miers has had close ties with George Bush since his early political days. She has been intricately involved in Bush and his policies for decades. If she were seated on the court, how many possible conflicts of interest would she face and can we trust her to recuse herself when they arise?

I'd rather have supreme court members that are free of strong political attachment but I fear Bush would rather stack the deck than guarantee democracy.

Could You Pass?

You Passed the US Citizenship Test

Congratulations - you got 10 out of 10 correct!

Could You Pass the US Citizenship Test?

Reflections

Things are quiet in blogger land. Vacations and work I suppose. (Can you people not update faster?? Surely a monkey has time to write.)

I've been in a debate concerning gay marriage. Once more I am struck by the amount of apparent fear shown by those that oppose gay rights. Allowing gays to marry will not compromise hetrosexual relationships. It won't corrupt your children or force you to teach your child to agree with gay issues (altho you could teach em a lot worse things.) I can not understand the fierce stand that many take on this issue.

But then I can't understand a lot of the thinking I see around me.
I wrote this a few years ago. The questions still echo in my mind.

I don’t understand

Why we can’t have morality without dictating religion.

Why we can’t have differences without hatred.

Why we can’t have disagreements without belittlements.

Why we can’t love a higher spirit, but each in our own way.

Why we can’t feed the homeless but can rebuild the world.

Why we can’t find charity for our neighbors but can pray for a stranger.

Why we can’t see our own faults but can so easily find them in others.

Why we can’t see the good but so readily point out the bad.




I don’t understand

Why love doesn’t return the gift of generosity.

Why we profess to value honesty then lie to protect ourselves.

Why success can’t be won without deceit.

Why we abuse the world but cherish possessions.

Why profit means more than the method that achieves it.

Why what people say isn’t what they mean.



I don’t understand

Why we complain more about what we don’t have
instead of seeing what we’ve already been given.

Why we want so much
when it’s usually the simple things that make us happy.

Why we try to be someone and something we aren’t
instead of celebrating who we truly are.

Why we aren’t more thankful for the people in our lives
instead of the things in our lives.

Why Does It Matter?

A short story taken from a friend's blog that pretty much says why I think animal rescue is important.

THE STARFISH
As dawn broke, an old man was walking down the beach
and spotted a young man flinging starfish into the sea.

The old man asked the youth why he was doing that.

The answer was that they'd die if left to the sun.

"But the beach goes for miles and there are millions of them,"
the old man countered. "What difference is it going to make?"

The young man looked at the starfish and said,
as he threw it to safety,

"It makes a difference to this one."

The NEW Fift...er....FEMA!

Okay, okay...
Slight dig at WCHS there but hey....

FEMA is reinventing itself, so they say.
New leadership, so they say.
He's a competent feller with experience in emergency response.

Yeah, so they say.

This this small bit from msnbc:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9665434/

WASHINGTON — When the history of the chaotic Katrina relief effort is written, a chapter will be devoted to ice, and to trucks that toured the country for weeks, many never delivering a single cube to victims. FEMA now says it bought 182 million pounds of ice and that only 40 percent was used. The rest, it says, is being positioned for future storms.
The rocky coast of Portland, Maine, is nowhere near hurricane territory. Yet 163 truckloads of excess ice bought for Katrina victims are now stored there, 1,600 miles from the Gulf Coast. The cost to taxpayers: $153,000.

Okay, are you seriously telling me that FEMA is storing ICE? Not close by where current victims and workers in the recovery effort can access it ice, but thousands of miles away costing us more than one hundred thousand dollars ICE??

Mr. Bush!!! Oh, Mr Bush! I think I see where we can scavenge funds to help pay for some of the reconstruction.

Seriously. Two points. #1 - What talking head decides it's better to store ice than take it to the survivors who still struggle in 90 degree heat, many who still say they haven't seen FEMA and
#2 - Who the hell stores ice 1000 miles away when even with a disaster it could be shipped in fresh from less distance?

Oh and #3 -
Who the hell hires these guys!?

I Can't Afford My Gasoline!

Too cute.

http://toccionline.kizash.com/movies/i_cant_afford_my_gasoline/

Small Injustices

I am an admitted animal lover. I have 6 of my own, three dogs, three cats, all but one were rescues or strays. I admit that I like my pets better than most people. My dogs aren't prejudice. They don't like people based on color or income. My dogs rarely argue with me when I rant about politics, probably because they're smarter than most neocons. *meoooow* My cats have yet to condemn my spiritual beliefs. I think they know more than we do.

So watching pet rescuers in St Bernard's Parish discover not one, not two, but three sites where pets had been slaughtered causes me more than a modicum of distress. I am left with a strong need for revenge and fingers that itch to reach around someone's neck. I hope whoever did this spends a lengthy degree of time in jail.

In case you haven't heard, let me set the stage:

Evacuees in St Bernard's Parish went to several public buildings: Schools, etc. They took their pets with them into the facilities. When rescue came to take them out of those schools, they were told by Sheriff's deputies that they couldn't take their animals with them and had to leave them in the shelters.

Evidently the reputation of the St Bernard Parish police was well known because owners, crying and upset, left messages about their babies on walls. They secured them in different rooms of the buildings, left food and water for them, one woman's plea on the wall saying: These are good dogs, please don't shoot them.

The cretins didn't listen. They entered all three sites and massacred all the pets inside. All of them. Regardless of breed. Puppies, nursing mothers, even the service dog of a deaf woman. All butchered. Yes, I said butchered. Those who discovered the site won't describe the complete picture of what they found because of the graphic nature of the killings. Some dogs were left to die slowly of their wounds. Some tried to run and were tied up and shot. Some huddled together in fear and were blown away by shot guns.

I don't understand. I don't know how you look at the fear and pleading in a dog's eyes and then react with violence.

Some weeks ago one deputy in St Bernard's Parish was videoed shooting at pets from the back of a truck as they ran towards the humans, tails wagging, most likely hoping their owners had returned. At that time someone attempted to argue with me that this conscienious deputy was only acting on behalf of the community, killing the dogs before they turned feral and attacked the young children of St Bernard's Parish. That was and is a crock.

Few dogs have turned feral. Hear that? FEW. Rescuers are saying dogs are still being found alive and they almost jump into the arms of their rescuers. They're scared, their lonely and some are hungry. These dogs weren't abandoned. Their owners were forced to leave them but they left them with food and water and expected to return to claim them at some time in the future. They presented no danger to ANYONE.

I hope the assholes who shot those animals are abandoned and forced to live a very long time alone, cold and abandoned by people they thought were friends.

It's difficult for me not to be emotional, but in reality we are defined in many ways by the way we treat our animals. We're not talking about free roaming wild creatures that are sometimes hunted, hopefully for food because otherwise I think that's wasteful as well. We're talking about animals that we have designed to be companions and pets. If live is worth so little that we can discard it without thought, then what does that say about our moral barometer?

It tells me that maybe we're NOT the advanced species we think we are.

If it lives and breathes it should not be disposable. If it lives and breaths we have a responsibility towards it. In regards to wild game, it means if you're gonna kill, be a responsible hunter and make it A - fast and B - as painless as possible. If you're a petowner it means you suck it up and take care of your animal and if you don't, then you need to be prepared to pay for someone else to take care of them. It also means spaying or neutering them.

But even if you don't own pets, if you are part of a thinking society you don't take life lightly. You have respect for what God puts here and get your rocks off another way.

I want Mike Minton in jail and I suspect he took part in this slaughter as well. I want them punished and then, God willing, I want America to take a good look at how we deal with pet ownership.



For those that want to know more:
http://www.pasadosafehaven.org/NEWS/NEWS.htm

the first video "Dogs killed at evacuation center" http://edition.cnn.com/video/player/player.html?url=/video/us/2005/09/30/cooper.dogs.shot.cnn
or
http://tinyurl.com/9t4lf


or directly in Windows Media Player (choose Open URL and paste the link) mms://wmscnn.stream.aol.com/cnn/us/2005/09/30/
cooper.dogs.shot.cnn.ws.wmv
the second video "Who killed the dogs?"
or
http://tinyurl.com/978g6


http://edition.cnn.com/video/us/2005/09/30/
lavandera.dogs.killed.follow.cnn/content.exclude.html
or
http://tinyurl.com/e2oas

or directly in Windows Media Player (choose Open URL and paste the link) mms://wmscnn.stream.aol.com/cnn/us/2005/10/0
1/lavandera.dogs.killed.follow.cnn.ws.wmv
or
http://tinyurl.com/dqke5