Thanks to Marsha - her awesome Bush budget post led me to the FCNL - Friends Committee on National Legislation - a Quaker lobby in the public interest.
Check out the map of Iraq on the Quaker website - it's too big for me to post here. It is interesting and alarming to see so many bases already in the process of being built. The funds to build these permanent bases are provided by Bush's supplemental funding bill.
Where is the media? Stuck on the Obama/Clinton mud wars. Meanwhile, the GOP is building bases right in front of all of us - not even quietly or discretely.
So the question of Obama or Clinton is a moot point. Will we even be able to stop the military base operation in Iraq if a Democratic president is elected? We can't know for sure. But we damn well know that McCain WILL keep the base-building operation going....fulfilling his intent to keep our troops in Iraq for 100 years "if necessary." Necessary, my blue ass.
A blog was posted earlier highlighting Hillary's admirable plan to help Veterans. A comment was made that Obama's site had no information regarding Vets....which is simply untrue. So, in fairness, the following is Obama's plans to help Veterans.
Barack Obama's RecordRecord of Advocacy: As a member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, Obama passed legislation to improve care and slash red tape for our wounded warriors recovering at places like Walter Reed. He passed laws to help homeless veterans and offered an innovative solution to prevent at-risk veterans from falling into homelessness. Obama led a bipartisan effort in the Senate to try to halt the military's unfair practice of discharging service members for having a service-connected psychological injury. He fought for fair treatment of Illinois veterans' claims and forced the VA to conduct an unprecedented outreach campaign to disabled veterans with lower than-average benefits. Obama passed legislation to stop a VA review of closed PTSD cases that could have led to a reduction in veterans' benefits. He passed an amendment to ensure that all service members returning from Iraq are properly screened for traumatic brain injuries. He introduced legislation to direct the VA and Pentagon to fix disjointed records systems and improve outreach to members of the National Guard and Reserves.
Read More »
My cycle of grief from John Edwards withdrawing - excuse me, "suspending" - from the Presidential election has officially come to a close...
1. Denial : The initial stage: "It can't be happening."
2. Anger : "Why me? It's not fair."
3. Bargaining : "Just let me live to see my children graduate."
4. Depression : "I'm so sad, why bother with anything?"
5. Acceptance : "It's going to be OK."
Read More »
For those of you who are attending the
Washoe County Democratic Convention
on Feb 23rd, here is some important info:
New Location is the Reno Events Center in Downtown Reno. 4th and Center Street.MAP
PLEASE PREREGISTER for this event! You can do so HERE. You can also Register at the County Party Office(1465 Terminal) or Web Site (washoedems.org) if you are planning to attend at a Delegate, an Alternate Delegate or Guest.
PLEASE PICK UP your credentials AHEAD of time. On Thursday and Friday( 21st and 22nd), Pre- Registered Convention attendees can pick up their Credentials and info at the County Party HQ. Early Pick up will save YOU from waiting in a HUGE line on Saturday morning, and will help the Party tremendously. Check Washoedems.org for times
Cheers and see you there!
Thank you, D.Tree for posting the FISA fight reminder.
I don't think the average American understands how important an issue this is to our freedom and liberties. Bush/Cheney/Rove - The Three Evil Amigos - have turned our government into a type of Big Brother that would disgust even George Orwell.
Listen to how Sen. Russ Feingold explains Bush's "Perfect Crime"
Here's the text.....
The telephone companies and the government have been operating under this simple framework for 30 years. The companies have experienced, highly trained, and highly compensated lawyers who know this law inside and out.
In view of this history, it is inconceivable that any telephone companies that allegedly cooperated with the administration's warrantless wiretapping program did not know what their obligations were. And it is just as implausible that those companies believed they were entitled to simply assume the lawfulness of a government request for assistance. This whole effort to obtain retroactive immunity is based on an assumption that doesn't hold water.
Read More »
Alone
Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
There are some millionaires
With money they can't use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They've got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
'Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Maya Angelou
Wow. That's about all I can say right now. My adrenaline is still pumping after an exciting day of witnessing grassroots Democracy at its best. Early predictions were that 50,000 Democrats would show up today for Nevada's first caucus in state history - over 120,000 showed up! All colors - all ages - die-hard Democrats and brand-new voter registrations filled out *today*! I am amazed. And so very proud of my newly adopted state. With everyone's support, we're going to turn this state BLUE - first the Presidential election and then onto the Governor's mansion. Blue, baby, blue!
Here's a video of John Edwards in Reno today...standing room only crowd at the Grand Sierra ballroom.
P.S. I'm in the bleachers behind him...but you'll have to guess which one! :)
If I hear the words "hope" or "change" one more freaking time. The words started out innocently enough as inspirational messages from Edwards and Obama....but now we've got Clinton, let alone ROMNEY and HUCKABEE joining the band wagon? I declare a BAN on the use of these words by all candidates and their supporters! The only change I hope to hear about is the "change in my pocket goin' jing-a-ling-a-ling..."
IMHO when it comes down to it, ALL THREE would be agents of incredible, history-making change for America.
A Populist, a Black and a Woman. I'm saying the poor/black/gender cards DO matter! Read More »
Iowa Results
Nevada will have a similar site on our big day, January 19th
Caucus Countdown
CLICK HERE to find out where YOU will Caucus on Jan 19th!
A friend sent me this great link that will remind our President exactly what he swore to uphold:
Xmas Present for W
Lovely Pink and her daddy who taught her how to harmonize and play the guitar. He is a Vietnam Vet who wrote this song which they played together for Vet's groups while she was a young girl.
See Link below
And a generation later...another War...another Republican criminal President. Like father, like daughter - here is her song.
See Link below
What is the future of this country? What type of President will we be reading, singing and blogging about in 20 years? The time to start a new era for the office of President is now - more than ever, the future generations need us to choose wisely.
Read More »Written by Nicholas F. Benton
Thursday, 22 November 2007
nfbenton@fcnp.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Equality and empathy among persons is, I can safety say, probably more at the core of my being than anything else, as no doubt it is for many others, as well. No matter how twisted some of my views may have been at certain points in my life, this one has never been negotiable.
Clearly, the current anti-immigration frenzy is not only a calculated diversion from Iraq, Iran, the energy crisis, the sinking dollar and a myriad of other pressing issues, but its instigators are exploiting nascent racist tendencies to sharpen its angry edge. The lip service might be about illegal immigration, but the sanctioning of “profiling” techniques in Prince William County and elsewhere is evidence of a more insidious underlying reality.
We are all immigrants. I grew up in the company of Hispanics and Jewish folk. My best friend in the fifth grade was the son of a Holocaust survivor, although I didn't appreciate the significance of that until years later. His mom (his father died in a concentration camp) was a large Jewish woman who was delighted that I came over after school and told stories to my friend's younger brother. I also had a friend in the Boy Scouts about that time. His name was Marty. I was the only one in the troop that he took aside to reveal his big secret, that he was Jewish. This was the 1950s, when McCarthyism was in flower. I was saddened that he felt he had to keep this secret. I guess I felt honored that he shared it with me, but it made me sad, though naturally, we remained good friends.
In those days, keeping such secrets was the honorable thing to do. It applied to the Hispanics who were prevalent in my Southern California community, too. If someone was in the U.S. illegally, the idea was to help the cover up. That's because there were many among my Hispanic friends whose families went back generations before mine did on what is now U.S. soil. They had cousins and uncles who would show up from south of the border, and no one ever thought of blowing a whistle on them, or ratting them out to the authorities. We were all struggling to get by, after all. I always liked my Hispanic friends particularly because while they had a little of the macho thing going, right beneath that they were completely loyal and would give you the shirt off their back with no questions asked.
After all, I am the grandson of immigrants, myself. Of the ones I knew best, mine came from Norway, by way of the recruitment of Scandinavians to the U.S. for the construction of the Great Northern Railroad that connected Chicago and Minneapolis to Seattle. This was after the historic Transcontinental Railroad that was built with immigrant Chinese labor, but not by long. The railroad barons looked to Scandinavia because those folks knew how to function in really cold weather. There was a massive campaign to populate Minnesota and the Dakotas, in particular. My relatives came to Valley City, North Dakota, in the 1870s. A group of four brothers and sisters came over from the "old country" over a six year period. The oldest, Olaf, was the head of the transplanted family in the U.S. The youngest sister was my great-grandmother.
Her daughter, my fondly remembered grandmother, was the same age, almost exactly, as the young daughter of Norwegian immigrants, Kathryn Forbes, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her novel, "Mama's Bank Account," that became "I Remember Mama" on Broadway, in a 1947 movie and in a TV series in the 1950s and 1960s. That book was about growing up in a Norwegian immigrant family living on the edge of poverty in San Francisco in the early 1900s, exactly when and where my grandmother was, also, as a young girl. This background, I feel, translated into her daughter’s, my mother’s, compassion. To her, people were people, and you respected and cared for them all, regardless. Like the mother in "I Remember Mama," too, my mother always made her children feel loved and secure, even as the family faced a lot of financial hardship that we never learned about until much later.
That's why when the time came, I had no hesitation identifying myself with the civil rights struggles sparked by Martin Luther King and others. I never had to think twice about civil rights issues, not for a moment.
I don't presume that my background on these matters is different than for many others, and that's the point. We are all either immigrants or born into families of immigrants sharing one small, lonely planet. Apparently there are still a lot of people who need to be reminded of that
=====0=====
Poisted on
Falls Church News Press
Nicholas F. Benton
Pag 11 on November 22 - 28, 2007
The original article: Link
Percy H Florez
January 19, 2008
evada Democratic Party
Caucus (Closed)
33 delegates at stake
On Jan. 19, party caucuses meet in each precinct to choose delegates to county conventions. The delegates selected are not bound to any candidate. At the county conventions on Feb. 23, delegates to the state convention are chosen. They are not bound to any candidate. The state convention is April 18-20, during which delegates choose 25 of the 33 delegates to the national convention. Sixteen of the 25 delegates are allocated proportionally to presidential candidates based on the support for the candidates in each of the state�s three Congressional districts. Nine delegates are allocated to candidates based on the support among all of the delegates attending the convention. The remaining eight unpledged delegates are chosen from party leaders.
Source:New York Times 11/21/2007
Posts