Stop Already-Rewriting History is called Fiction

It’s getting absurd.

Once again, we have to suffer the annoyance of people with their “proof” that something about the church teachings is deeply flawed and that branch of Judaism now known as Christianity is off the tracks. While I may have some minor doctrinal differences (are condoms O.K. to stop Aids spreading, etc), that is not what I am talking about. There are some actually trying to confuse the facts in attempt to undermine the basic story-this time with the persuasion of a “documentary” to be aired next Sunday alleging Jesus had a kid, a wife and all of them are buried with his mother. To call it a documentary seems, to put it mildly, a misnomer.
The documentary claims that the burial boxes containing the bones of Jesus, his mother Mary, Mary Magdalene and his alleged son were found and still exist. In the words of the “church lady”: ‘Well, Isn’t that special.’
Once again we have to suffer the smarter set who proclaim that their statistics prove it and the rest of the world is just ignorant science deniers who don't get it. Notwithstanding this intellectually hubristic presumption, the chances of Jesus, his mother, his follower and an alleged son all being housed in the same place is about as likely as Anna Nicole Smith, Howard K. Stern, Danny and Grandma being buried in the same space- in the yard of the Supreme Court. The statistical probability of their being a Jesus, son of Joseph, Mary or Marie and Joshua his son all in one place depends on how big the place was. The docu-dramatists would obviously have to explain how big the statistical pool is.
For example, the chances of a Jesus, son of Joseph, Marie or Mary or Mirium and Joshua and Matthew being all together in a place where 10 boxes were is more interesting than when in a place where there are 100,000 boxes. Lets assume they explain that and the statistical pool is small enough to matter. The names Jesus, Joseph, Mary, Mirium, Marie and Joshua and Matthew at the time and place are more common than Smith, Stern, Anna, Mary, Marie, and John.
So they found a box with John Smith on it next to a box with the name Mary on it and someone named Joshua is the son of Jesus. And in Mexico City today there are about forty-thousand Jesus's. That ought to shake the foundations of all of Christendom. Catch me, I'm shaking.
No one pretends to think that this "discovery" (which has been hanging around without much attention for a decade) had anything to do with the Resurrection, because Jesus still could be resurrected and leave his bones behind (while the Resurrection body biblical understanding is a bit different) so Easter is still apparently safe from Archeology. Whew. Further, it’s hard to disprove a resurrection theory when Jesus showed people he himself resurrected people, notably Lazarus and the daughter of Jarius and Elijah even resurrected at least one person from the dead. To challenge the possibility of the Resurrection also would challenge a basic Jewish teaching of a portion of Judaism that believed in the possibility of the Resurrection of the dead (an ongoing debate with the Pharisees and Saducees). So to attack Christianity without attacking Judaism (hard to do when Jesus claimed to be the Jewish Messiah) the challengers have to go after the Assumption.
So this challenges only the “Assumption” –a rather unique event which sounds spooky while -wait-Elijiah also it is written somehow "ascended" into Heaven. Hmmm. Note that the attack on the Assumption attacks Protestant and Catholic teaching because Catholic teaching also maintains that Mary had an Assumption (celebrated every August 15th) and her remains are thus not anywhere on planet earth either.

There were people like Saint Paul at the time who converted from being one of the hardest persecutors of the church who would have laid little rocks (a Jewish custom) or flowers at any burial box site were there one any time he was back in Jerusalem. In fact, pilgrimages from all over the world would have come all the time just to see it over the years and we have no recording of any such event ever. Jesus' popularity grew like wildflowers after his resurrection in spite of the persecutions. People from every corner of the Middle East would have come to see the body if there were one. People would have robbed the boxes and sold them to cathedrals and tried to buy their way into heaven with them.

Jesus was considered, inter alia, a great Rebbi (Rabbi) and there is a belief that visiting the tomb or remains of such holy men confers blessings. This is a tradition carried on by Catholics who make pilgrimmage to the remains and relics of Saints. Peter (the first Pope, a Jew) was considered so holy that merely passing by his shadow could cure disease. The mere touching of the fringe of the garmet of Jesus cured a women who had a chronic incurable hemmhorage. A church was built on Peter's remains and the Tomb of Saint Peter currently is in the base of the Vatican itself which is built around it. Yet, in spite of the Crusades to the Holy Land and centuries of relic devotions, we are to believe that Voila! they just discovered the box with the bones of Jesus in it that no one knew about before the BBC discovered it a decade ago. Right.

There are historic recordings that indicate that Mary and John were smart enough to realize that if a lynch mob just hung her son and best friend respectively from a cross bar tree, it was a wee bit uncomfortably hostile in Jerusalem and they might be more secure if they got out of dodge. It has long been believed that they went to the Fifth largest city in the greater Middle East at the time Ephesus (in current Turkey) where they would have been more anonymous and where there was a growing church community thanks to Paul’s missionary journeys and letters to the Ephesians (one of which is in the New Testament.) John in fact wrote letters some of which are comprised in the New Testament well into his old age. Jesus charged him with taking care of Mary after Jesus' death. Someone had to because she was widowed and lost her only son. There is no writing of him or Mary, Jesus mother visiting Jesus' remains or bones at any time after he resurrected from the Tomb.

Mary Magdalene has been through the ages hailed by the French as one of their patron matron saints (hence the great Church of the Magdalene Cathedral in Paris) and she is rumored to have ventured even further North than Ephesus into Aix-en-Provence and other Southern French towns. It’s unclear whether these rumors pre-dated the efforts by the Popes to remain in Provence during the Schism when 13 Popes lived in Avignon on the Cote du Rhone trying to claim their legitimacy there over Rome. Some stories have her with a companion who was later named a Bishop. Her remains have been alleged to be in various places throughout in France.
The attempt to impose myths that Jesus had a child are to say the least wildly far fetched inasmuch as he didn’t have means to support a wife much less a child and relied, it is written on the benevolence of his followers. Neither was his widowed mother wealthy enough to support another family. He left his carpentry trade to enter full time ministry at the age of around 30 for three years of itinerant preaching, and he never stayed in the same place more than a few days and nights as he traveled the countryside preaching. There are zero accounts of his taking along with him anyone like a son and wife when he went anywhere.

Jesus cast 7 demons out of Mary Magdalene. She was a demoniac. If he was to be taken seriously, it would not make much PR sense for him to wed the former demoniac. Everywhere he went he would be known as the lover or husband of the former demoniac. It’s kind of like Howard Marshall getting ripped for marrying a young former topless dancer- he might lose a wee bit of credibility at the deacon’s meeting. Jesus had enough trouble convincing people what he was about without laying that on people. And how would the former demoniac get along with her mother in law? She would surely want to be buried with her, the Virgin pious Mary Mother of the Lord. Right. The likelihood of that is about the likelihood of Judge Larry ordering Anna Nicole to be buried with her mom Vergie.

Clearly this is all more or less crazy bunk. It makes more sense that if all these names appear together that someone tried to create an impression that they all ended up together there and did not “Ascend” anywhere to discredit the story that was growing like wildfire. In the early days Christians were rather persona non gratis, hiding in catecombs, thrown to lions and set afire to light Nero’s rose gardens like tiki torches. Jews weren’t fond of losing people to this sad martyrdom- for reasons they thought were meritless. What better way to debunk the story than to claim that Jesus had sex with the former demoniac slut, bore a son and everyone including mom Mary stayed in Jerusalem until they died. Right.

The liklihood of those boxes carrying Jesus's bones along with a son, Mary Magdalene and his Mother the Virgin Mary are about as likely as Anna Nicole Smith being canonized and Howard K. Stern dying a monk, after giving away all his money to charity.
My advice; Don't miss Church to watch the docudrama.

PROFILES IN COURAGE -All We Are Saying Is Give Peace A Chance

MARCH 16.
Put it on your calendar.

see,
www.ChristianPeaceWitness.org

There will be a huge eceumenical gathering of Christians of all stripes at the House of Prayer for all People, the National Cathedral in Washington, DC followed by a March to the White House.

People are serious folks. We are not fooling around anymore. Whatever may come of suppressing the Senatorial debate about the most misguided Foreign Policy folly based on pure deception we have ever engaged in, We the People will not be intimidated, threatened or silenced. It is our moral patriotic duty to stop the madness.

Last Sunday an unlikely opponent of the War stood before a Congregation at the Bethesda Presbyterian Church in an affluent Washington suburb where congregants who are employed by the government, contracting companies and Exxon Mobil sat in attendance. She is the Pastor. Her name, one you should not forget, is Reverend Anne Troy. She is a Chinese American, and understands persecution of the Church throughout the World. The silencing and threatening of people who oppose this war is indeed a form of persecution of the church. She insisted that the sort of witness that Christians are called to be in order to honor the mandate to be Peace Makers in this context must be bold. Christians- if you are "lukewarm" I spew you from my mouth - it is written. Boldness in a Christian Peace Witness DEMANDS we stand and be counted and heard.

You may think this not so unusual coming from a pulpit. So let me tell you more about the Reverend Anne Troy. She is also an attorney who is on a part time basis employed by the Federal Government. She is a former JAG attorney, and thus a former ranked military person, who stands to lose by her confession of faith her high security clearance and possibly her job.
She confessed that her, and indeed Christian leadership's past silence and acquiescence to this war is a form of betrayal to the character of Christ, the Prince of Peace.
There was no evidence to start this war, she insisted, speaking as an attorney.

The Administration seems completely blinded to the fact that it is the problem;
that it has engaged in policies that have directly inspired more murderous mayhem and put Americans in more danger around the globe, that its aggression and warmaking has catalyzed
our enemies to bond together against us, and that it incited the Iranians to join forces against us.
No, Mr. Gingrich, it is not the debate that is dangerous, it is the failure to debate responsibly that is dangerously irresponsible.
It is the only responsible thing to understand what is actually happening in our name because our actions are further endangering our security.

Imagine that if in our civil war the entire country of France joined the confederate army while they were being defeated. That would of course inspire the British to join the Union forces and massive bloodshed the likes of which would be characterized a "world" or global war would have followed until half the country was dead- and it would be fair in that case to blame the French for the escalation.
What we are doing in Iraq MUST be questioned because we not only have a moral obligation to see what our money is funding, but because we are being placed in far greater danger by the strategic ineptitude and policy miscalculations of a Foreign Policy so off the reservation that Congress, as co-equal to the Presidency must slam on the breaks before we all careen over the bridge.

BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS

Join us on March 16.

THE PRIVATIZATION OF EVERYTHING

THE PRIVATIZATION OF WAR
By Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.
02-06-07 © Tribune Media Services
Reprinted with permission


They guard U.S. officials. They patrol the Green Zone, the U.S. headquarters in Iraq. They supply the food, the oil, clean the barracks and fix the machines. They aren’t U.S. soldiers; they are private contractors. The Bush administration has privatized war. The second-biggest army in Iraq consists of armed security forces supplied by private contractors.
They act above the law — and with unclear lines of authority. They work abroad, so they are largely beyond the reach of U.S. law. On contract from the U.S. government, they are beyond the reach of Iraqi law, as established in an order issued by the U.S. Authority there before turning power over to the Iraqi government. When the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandals were revealed, private security forces and interrogators were at the center of it. But none was held accountable under law.

It isn’t only the U.S. that privatizes war; the British have followed suit, as well. The British charity, War on Want, reported last year that there are three British private security guards to every British soldier in Iraq.
Congressional investigators are about to unearth massive abuses and corruption in Iraq, but the mercenaries operate across the world. In 1998, for example, DynCorp security agents in Bosnia were implicated in a highly publicized sex-slave scandal. The firm quickly recalled at least 13 agents from the country; none faced criminal prosecution.
The modern-day mercenaries also operate largely free of government scrutiny or oversight. Their contracts and their activities are shrouded in secrecy. Companies, unlike government agencies, are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act and often stonewall congressional inquiry. Members of Congress have sought — thus far without success — to get an explanation of the contracts that Blackwater USA security officers have in Iraq.
Under George Bush, the use of private contractors generally has doubled to about $400 billion a year in 2006, as the administration is driven by a philosophy that would privatize everything it can. Finally, with Democrats reviving congressional oversight, questions are being asked.
Private contractors claim to provide savings and efficiency because of the benefits of competition. In fact, the GAO now suggests, in most areas, the contractors have little competition. Sole-source, no-bid contracts are the rule, not the exception. And the contractors — as we saw in the bribing of Rep. Duke Cunningham and the other scandals of the DeLay Congress – spend millions wining, dining and rewarding the legislators who provide them with their immensely profitable contracts. Instead of saving money, taxpayers are likely getting fleeced.
The Privatization of War
Page 2
The top 20 service contractors, according to The New York Times, have spent nearly $300 million since 2000 on lobbying and have donated some $23 million to political campaigns.
The whole thing gets incestuous. The New York Times reports that in June, the General Services Administration, short of employees to review cases of incompetence and fraud by federal contractors, actually hired a private contractor to do the investigation. And the contractor — CACI International — had itself barely avoided suspension from federal contracting for its role in Abu Ghraib’s crimes. For the GSA, CACI supplied six people — at $104 an hour — over $200,000 per person annually.
These private armies now may themselves become a problem. The Guardian reports on a bizarre plot in Equatorial Guinea, where 67 foreign mercenaries were arrested in what may have been a foiled attempt to overthrow the dictator of that oil-rich nation. And former Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide charged that the private guards who were supposed to be defending him instead abandoned him under orders from the U.S. government when he was overthrown.
If privatization doesn’t produce savings and offers such scope for abuse, why has it continued to grow? Part of the reason is simply the animus for government by modern day conservatives. Part of it is political grandstanding. President Clinton, for example, boasted that he had cut the size of the federal bureaucracy — even as those cuts were feeding a cancerous growth of contracting out vital services. The problem now is that the government lacks the capacity to control its contractors — and has begun contracting out that oversight. The result, too often, is costly waste. But when the government is creating private armies, often beyond the reach of war, the perils are far greater.
The Congress has begun a great debate about our policy in Iraq. But it is vital that they investigate — as Sen. Joe Biden and Rep. Henry Waxman have promised — the privatization of war. This must be brought under control before the Congress finds itself — like the Roman Senate at the end of the Roman Republic — faced with mercenary armies that are out of control.

You've Come A Long Way, Baby

So Can You Please Stop Calling Me 'Babe' Now?

Lets stop calling us “Baby” or "Babes" and please call us “Madam Senator” “Madam Speaker”, “Madam Secretary”, and maybe even “Madam President”
Let’s call babies “baby”- and OK, maybe the occasional Lover- but only if she is your lover.
We have come a long way, and people forty-ish stand on the shoulders of our mothers and sisters a decade and a generation older who made enormously needed strides for all women, but we still are apparently not all there yet.
We still are denied jobs, mortgages, equal pay and respect. We still are judged by a different standard and have to work harder to prove ourselves if we can even get the job to begin with . We still are assumed unqualified for certain jobs, passed over more frequently for partnerships, derided with comments, silent sufferers of sexual harassment and stereotypical objectifications, and our competence at times threatens the male ego which has unlimited capacity to sabotage.

Did you notice that the only Presidential candidate who is a woman is called by her first name and no one else is? Maybe that is so we don’t confuse her with the other Clinton. Or, maybe its because we insist that women are “Laura” “Condi” “Hillary” and not Bush, Rice and Clinton. Why don’t we call the men Barack, Johnny and Rudy baby?
Hillary, the one who didn’t just stand by her man like Tammy Wynette, stood by her man anyway. She has to suffer the nation wondering if it is out of strength or battered wife wimpiness. Maybe she just has unlimited capacity for forgiveness and loves her husband deeply. A decade or so ago, she announced she didn’t bake cookies as if to distance herself from a version of motherhood that didn’t look professional enough. Why she felt she had to do that means that there is still a perception that motherhood isn’t professional enough.

I can only imagine what the male cadre surrounding Hillary is telling her to become;
Soften up, lighten up, give us that belly laugh Terry McAuliffe keeps talking about but don’t let it sound too fake. Smile more, wear a pink shell under-sweater, soften the make up, wear pink lip gloss (forget the lip liner), tone down the platinum blonde with a few brown streaks. Can you see the men getting advice like: put a bit of brown through your grey hair, don’t put your hands on your hips, don’t sound so aggressive. Do you hear anyone commenting on Obama’s hairstyle?
The people who attack Hillary with irrational rage use terms like “aggressive” “angry” “mean” and “strident.” When people like John Edwards get fired up over the same issues, its righteous indignation.
Do you hear anyone saying John Edwards might just be too pretty to be President?

We have come a long way to have credible a female front runner Presidential candidate.
But we still are not there. We still have to ask if she would be the frontrunner candidate if her husband were not already a former two-term President.
Joe Biden characterizes the female Senator from Alaska’s remarks on the Foreign Relations Committee as “articulate” as if you could possibly be inarticulate and succeed in getting a whole State to send you to the Senate. Cynthia McKinney had to have press conferences on her change of hair style. And no one ever accused Bob Dole of riding on the skirt-tails of Libby, a former Cabinet Secretary Harvard educated attorney.

Hillary in her own right, could very well be, as some have concluded, smarter than Bill, have received better grades at Yale law school than Bill, received higher LSAT scores, made light-years more money in private law practice before Bill was president, and people will still accuse her of only being as highly viable a candidate because of her husband and his connections.

My advice to Madam Presidential Contender would be simple; Be Yourself. It’s great enough. Laugh when you want to and don’t force a fake laugh because someone told you to lighten up. Be angry when your ire is up and if they can’t handle it –tough. Be as kind as you are, as smart as you are as principled as you are and as driven as you are. There will always be men whose egos are threatened by smart, kind, principled, driven women.
But those are very small mean men. And we are a great, large, kind and wonderful country.

My advice to the rest of the country: Be Fair.

This time if Hillary trades on her husband's reputation, maybe later some husband will get to trade on his wife's. If there is a good woman behind every good man there can be a good man
secure enough to let his wife peddle in front once in a while. That way no one gets too tired to peddle where the bike needs to go.

A Class Act Bows Out

John F. Kerry

Today, John Kerry, with dignity and firm conviction still in tact, put to rest all speculation that he would run for the nomination of President in 2008.
John Kerry, the man who asked "who will be the last man to die for a mistake" in Vietnam, asks the same question again in his long explanation of his opposition to the troop surge and Iraq policy.
Many people to this day believe he actually won and the computers rigged it against him.
He said he came close enough to tempt him to run again. That might be the understatement of the century. There are a lot of disturbing questions surrounding his quick concession that do not rest well with people. There were rumors of "unconcession" and people who hoped against all hope and invested their own time, energy and funds for months after his election to prove the official results wrong.
For the first time in about a hundred years, a Senator and Congressperson, Barbara Boxer and Stephanie Tubbs Jones refused to accept the electoral college vote counts from Ohio before a full debate based on a phrase we haven't stopped hearing in two years "election irregularities."
Standing typically Lincolnesque today, the most handsome man in the Senate by lightyears, likely as cheated from his mantle as Gore, he can savor not quite defeat in less privacy than Gore now, because he is still fighting, still in office, still in the Senate and running for Senate re-election in Massachusetts in 2008.
So don't say Good-bye to John Kerry just yet. His second act is likely to be as effective in the Senate as he could have done in the White House in terms of stopping a war.

His race kickstarted a firestorm of election protection movements and organizations fighting for truth in reporting election tallies. His determination to end the war is something we can all stand behind.

THANK YOU JOHN KERRY.
THANK YOU for being the kind of American who takes it on the chin for all of us. The kind who
jumps on the grenade of electoral politics or the kind of authentic Purple Heart that actually hears the cry of the poor and pain of the injured Veteran.
Our hearts are a bit blue but we will get over it and buck up.

I raise my right hand to my forehead and I salute you as my Veteran father taught me as a little girl.

JOHN F. KERRY, a Great American Hero.

SAY 'AMEN' SOMEBODY

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD GOES TO JESSE JACKSON Sr.

Pilgrims, Patriots and Prophets here gives special recognition and Thanks for the Commitment, Vision and Perserverence of The Reverend Jesse Jackson, Sr.

Jesse Jackson is currently hosting his tenth annual Rainbow Coalition/PUSH “Wall Street Project” symposium, complete with workshops, networking receptions, awards ceremonies, panel presentations and press conferences in New York at the Sheraton on 53rd and 7th Avenue. Part religious revival, part Congressional Black Caucus, part financial networking summit, part peace movement, part church, part Presidential contender showcase, part job fair, this incredibly ambitious project fuses the interests of progressive black politics with main street Wall Street financial savvy aspirations with big league democratic politics in a remarkable gathering-some would even say “Spirit filled” gathering of people who walk the talk to make America a better place for everyone. The food was great also.
With his remarkable and enviable ability to network individuals in high finance, the biggest congressional power brokers, presidential aspirants, and ordinary folk to forge policy objectives, while mingling with the likes of Magic Johnson, Chris Dodd, and schmoozing at receptions at which the Platters and Temptations sing, one is left with the impression that while he did not get elected President (he ran twice; in 1984 and in 1988) he is doing a pretty good job at it anyway.

While the Rainbow Coalition is a little light on the lighter frequencies of the spectrum with a “few invited white guests” it’s goals are no less lofty than those of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. who advocated and chose peace over war, love over hate, equality of inclusion over Jim Crow divisions and the unity of brotherhood of mankind over the haves-have nots-and have more’s splitting our current culture into a national Tale of Two Cities. The civil rights era has historically defined symphonic movements and we appear to be in the fourth; the first was to abolish slavery, the second to get the right to vote by constitutional amendment, (and later enforcement teeth in the Voting Rights Act), the third to outlaw legal Jim Crow discrimination (supplemented by title VII prohibitions against other legal forms of discrimination) The current fourth is a movement for economic equality and enfranchisement through equitable lending policies, and “greenlining the red-lines” with greenbacks. Now its time to “Show us the money.” He noted that people will sell to blacks but not lend to them and the banking industry still needs reform in this regard.
With Wall Street salaries for CEOs roughly 400 times that of the average employee as opposed to fifty years ago when it was four times greater, something is spiraling out of control with notably perilous consequences on segments of our society that will affect us all. A rising tide can only raise all boats if the boats are not stuck in dry dock.
Jackson argued that the area “north of the trees” in New York, otherwise known as Harlem was a place to which blacks mostly non-home-owning renters are exploited through various predatory lending and financial policies that keep them from breaking through to vigorous entrepreneurship. He noted the tax credits/certificates previously provided to sell radio and TV stations to black owned operations have been revoked making them less competitive. Harlem is by no means unique. He believes Wall Street was built on the commodity and exchange of the slave trade and shipping industry that fed off it, so finds it particularly poignant that African Americans are excelling in the finance arena. He toasted and applauded the 75 most influential blacks on Wall Street.

“Katrina is a metaphor for the abandoned inner city”, declared Jackson. He was disappointed that no one in the first 100 days sought to formally address the plight of Katrina victims. Nancy Pelosi did dedicate a Mass at Trinity College at the kick off of the Pelosipaloosa to the children of Katrina and Darfur while Katrina does not feature into the 100 hours agenda. Other Congressional leaders noted that 9-11 victims through the compensation fund received over a million dollars per family (some Katrina survivors are still waiting on their insurance settlements and many are still displaced over a year later) Jackson applauded John Edwards (who was not in attendance) for declaring his Presidential candidacy at a Katrina site in the 9th Ward.

Aspiring Presidential personalities (some officially declared, some not) who made an appearance in the first two days, without any official premature Jackson endorsement included Hillary Clinton, Barach Obama, Dennis Kucinich, and Chris Dodd. Chuck Schumer warmly greeted people to his beloved home city over a breakfast reception. Hillary applauded the efforts of her husband in creating enterprise zones and initiatives reaching into the inner city while Kucinich railed against the War in which we have destroyed a country, killed off about 650,000 of its citizens, killed 3,000 of our own troops (more than the disconnected 9-11 caused )and created about 50,000 severely injured and suffering amputees, brain injuries, trauma victims- all people whom we have an obligation for life to care for. Kucinich has from the beginning opposed the war and he explained well his spiritual revulsion to this war.

Barach Obama, was guardedly escorted into and quickly out of a reception as if he were already a secret service protected President (or the lead singer in the Rolling Stones) and no one could get within ten feet of him to shake his hand or congratulate him on the fine ethics legislation with Feingold and Reid that he spoke about in the afternoon with the Freshman Senators before heading up to New York. He spoke about living in the city as a student at Columbia when Jesse Jackson ran for President and noted with gratitude that it was his run that paved the way for people of color to credibly run for President now.
The conference featured two of the most powerful members of Congress, Sage Deans with a lifetime of congressional experience John Conyers, Chair of House Judiciary and Charles Rangel, Chair of House Appropriations, two long time friends of Jackson. John Conyers has the task of Chairing the Committee currently charged with Congressional oversight of the Department of Justice, and a number of other serious matters of federal enforcement and could hold hearings that investigate everything from voter fraud to fraud on the country that led us into war to various other impeachable offenses and high treason if he felt like it. For that reason, John Conyers is possibly the most powerful person in the Congress right now.

The Democrats in Congress have a mandate and know it; they don’t want to let anyone down. Jackson reminded everyone that the “Democrats are us.”
The various elected representatives noted that Congress relies on the activism of the citizenry to move the agenda. There are 300 Million of us after all and just a couple hundred Congresspeople.

Against the backdrop of Surge strategic discussions in Iraq, Dennis Kucinich gave an impassioned rally cry to stop the madness now and bring the troops home. Jackson seconded that it was nonsense to say you are against the war and continue to fund it. “If you are against the war, don’t vote to fund it.”

Jackson also noted that while the minimum wage hike is a nice gesture, it is meaningless to someone without a job. He argued it is a little like building a track for a double amputee. First he needs the prosthetics to use it. Jobs, Job training programs, and affordable high quality educational opportunity have to come into the mix first or raising the minimum wage on jobs no one has because they can’t get them or because they are shipped overseas won’t help anyone.

Hillary noted no one is going to turn the clock back on globalization because we can’t get a grasp of it so we have to prepare the nation to be competitive in the world against the forces of cheaper labor and lower manufacturing costs overseas better than we are.

As will always be the case some people don’t want to play fair. The issue of electronic voting machinery which has the open-ended potential to be hacked or programmed maliciously to tilt an election with source code protected from disclosure by trade secret protection and intellectual property laws, is still a very real threat. While some people want to call Ohio the new Florida, Clint Curtis the programmer who maintains he created a vote flipping program for Tom Feeney thinking it was to test security vulnerabilities and ran against him in Congress in 2006, with a pending House challenge underway, insists that the old Florida is still Florida. He attended the conference and was pleased that people seem to be understanding more clearly the risks. He is seeking to demonstrate the degree of unreliability of the electronic machines, not just in Christine Jennings race but throughout the entire State of Florida is so tenuous that Congress has to address legislatively national standards for federal elections or our democracy is simply a sham and 2008 a pipedream. Chris Dodd in fact has with Feinstein drafted legislative initiatives addressing voting issues.

While Jesse Jackson Jr. more or less every year proposes a constitutional amendment to make the Right to vote an affirmative Constitutional Right (as opposed to a non-discrimination mandate) other Congress people noted that Congress already has the authority to regulate Federal Elections and impose uniform standards and it should pass measures with more than all deliberate speed.
On that note, John Conyers has the ongoing ability now to issue subpoenas regarding the theft of the 2004 Presidential election and more than a few people still want to see the Mitofsky exit polling raw data to disprove once and for all the “reluctant republican” myth. Others would simply like every executive, engineer, programmer, and quality control person who ever touched an electronic DRE-Direct Recording – voting machine working at Diebold to answer for their collective sins.

Al Sharpton reminded us (without trying) that above all, whatever anyone wants to say about him he has a Preacher’s heart, and a Damn good one.
Jesse Jackson, who has traveled the world freeing hostages, freed a few more people from the limitations of their egos and small vision at the PUSH conference. You can still go tomorrow and catch the last day of it which features a reception at the UN at which Hillary is promised to make a reappearance Wednesday evening. It is worth a trip to New York- you can register on the Rainbow-PUSH website or on site.

This event was a non-stop networking fete, but with something more powerful at work- receptions and meals opened with prayer and thanksgiving to the Creator Great God who makes all good things flow- and flow they did.

As ever, leave it to Jackson to Keep Hope Alive--- To which I heartily say....
Amen.

WHAT IS TRUE

ADVENT REFLECTIONS

This is True
by Allan Boesak

It is not true
that this world and its people are doomed to die and be lost.

This is true;
God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him, shall not perish but have everlasting life.

It is not true
that we must accept inhumanity and discrimination, hunger and poverty, death and destruction.

This is true;
I have come that they may have life,and that abundantly.


It is not true
that violence and hatred should have the last word, and that war and destruction have come to stay forever.

This is true:
Unto us a child is born,and unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called
Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.


Allan Boesak (b. 1945)Allan Boesak, who was a courageous and insightful leader of the Reformed Church in South Africa in the struggle against apartheid, served as President of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches from 1982 to 1991.

DO THEY KNOW ITS CHRISTMAS IN DARFUR

FATAL INDIFFERENCE AND MACY'S WINDOWS

The tree is up in Rock Center. Macy's has its window display making merriment. Sidewalk trees in Washington and New York are sprouting red bulbs flecked with gold and little white lights at night.
Condolezza Rice in five inch heels (because she is shorter than DeVito) sits four pews from the rear of the National Presbyterian Church, a whitewashed tomb like building in Washington, DC, just as she always does when she is in town. She listens to one of those Sermons meant to make you feel the world is hunky dory even if you can't stop genocide and have caused a civil war and loss of life and limb in the hundreds of thousands (and your day at the office?) if only you accept Jesus in your heart. She heartily shakes the pastor's hand with two hands as she leaves the church and he wishes her well "on all your adventures."
Downstairs in the "Alternative Christmas Market" of the Church you can buy stuff for other people to make you feel less guilty about the money you will spend on your immediate family and yourself over Christmas. You write checks to other organizations to help them for various efforts. The Sudan Refugee Relief project in Darfur in conjunction with Action by Churches Together International ("ACT") will let you buy for $80. a "family survival kit" which consists of two plastic sheets, three blankets, two mosquito nets, soap, cooking supplies, fortified cereal, oil and sugar. That ought to fend off the Janjaweed militia assassins. I ask the nice gray- haired retired government worker lady at the Africa table if she has any information or pamphlets on what the church is doing in Darfur. Nope. Nothing. We aren't doing much of anything there. Can't stop it really. Let them at it if they want to kill each other off.
OK. So that is the formal church policy or just your informed opinion? Did you happen to notice that Condolezza Rice was sitting upstairs? This might be an obvious question but what is she doing about it? I heard there was some UN Resolution or something that might get signed- know anything about that?
The National Presbyterian Church pridefully boasts connections to Abraham Lincoln and General Eisenhower, both Presbyterians who frequented the church or its precursor churchs. It has an Eisenhower chapel dedicated to him. It has hosted most the big schmukety muck Presbyterians who ever held office in town at one time or another including the Doles, Dick Thornberg, Trent Lott, Frist, John Glenn, that taller than Karim Texan Bush advisor and "soccer mom" lady Karen Hughes and, of course, Condi. Condi is one of about ten darker- than- my- freckles people in the entire church but don't tell her you noticed. If she brings a friend she is one of about eleven black people. But don't ask her to racially identify with the ethnic slaugher of black people by white people in a place where the Middle East meets Africa just South of Egypt. And don't you dare tell her she isn't black enough if she didn't notice. In fact, don't talk to her, she's not there to make friends.
Let me get this straight. The African American Secretary of State of the leader of the Free World is either (a) indifferent to (b) unimpressed by (c) incompetent towards or (d) oblivious to
the largest genocidal slaughter of black Africans by whiter Muslims in her term in office and that we have seen in that region since Rwanda. Let's give her the benefit of the doubt. She already concluded she can't do anything about it- unlike Iraq where they try anyway and no one was engaging in ongoing mass slaughter at the time of our invasion.
Maybe it doesn't have oil. Maybe no one is going to name an oil cargo freighter after her for helping. Maybe she isn't going to get to be named to the Boards of Exxon Mobil or Phillips Connoco for helping.
Excuse me if I have this wrong but rape, murder, rape of children, chopping off the arms, slicing out the eyes and burning bodies alive strike me as a humanitarian crisis that should take slight precedence over face time with Malicki, but who am I?
Let me repeat it- rape, murder, rape of children, chopping off the arms, slicing out the eyes and burning bodies alive. This apparently evaded the "axis of evil" diagram.

And how was your Christmas? I hear that you can pick up Ferragamos pretty cheap in the January post-Christmas inventory Macy sales Condi. Care to do lunch?

Follow-Up:
Of course, it has oil, only the Chinese have one up on us in getting there. It's "complicated"
and this week's Economist magazine tries to explain it: http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8380843&fsrc=nwl


In December 6, 2004 John Podesta gave an address at Yale titled "Dealing with Darfur: Can the World Act on it's responsibility to Protect". If you call the Call the Center for American Progress they would be happy to send you a copy.

Livin In The USSR- How to Re-Establish American Democracy

WHAT’S ALL THE FUSS IN FLORIDA?

Can we all agree that if voting machines screwed up and didn’t properly count votes that we should figure out a way to get them counted correctly so the right person whom the people wanted in office gets to take office?
What if you can’t properly count the votes because there is no record of them other than what the screwed up machine did? What if there was no sort of receipt, or paper ballot to count manually? What if the memory card in the machine is defective but you can’t tell because it is programmed maliciously? What if the only thing that happened is that voters touched a screen that they thought voted for someone, the screen then said “Thanks for voting!” and the voter walked away without ever knowing whether the machine screwed up or not.
What if it was worse than that. What if the computer itself was designed to eat votes or flip them. What if there was some malicious programming in the source code that caused defaults to one candidate or flipped counts after a certain number hit or allowed anyone by touching hidden points in the screen to flip votes when the voting was cast. Any baby computer programmer can do this on a voting machine. It isn’t rocket science. Just ask Clint Curtis, the Democratic Congressional Candidate in Florida’s 24th who did just that. He developed a program where if you hit a sequence of points on the screen you flipped the vote count. Instead of Kerry 50 Bush 20, zip zip zip , Kerry 20 Bush 50. Child’s play.
Clint Curtis tried to explain it to people in Congress and testified before John Conyers’ committee. For explaining simple computer science he was castigated as a looney, tin hat
publicity grubby crazy man. All he was doing was explaining computer science 101 for the technoidiots who still don’t get it.

Let me ask the question again: Can we all agree that if voting machines screwed up and didn’t properly count votes that we should figure out a way to get them counted correctly so the right person whom the people wanted in office gets to take office?
APPARENTLY NOT IN FLORIDA.

In Florida the game is all about stacking the deck and keeping the popular will from being known.
When the computer eats your vote, or flips the tallies, there are ways to prove statistically that the machines are malfunctioning (in the vernacular- rigged crap)
You can get lists of the people who showed up at the polls per precinct and look at certified official results of vote tallies per precinct and go knock on doors and actually talk to the voters themselves. You can just ask them- hey, we know you came to the polls because we have your name here so who did you vote for? It’s more reliable than an “exit poll.” If you find that in fact abundantly more people voted for a candidate than registered you have a prima facie case of machine malfunction, and some might say election fraud. You have to look at the source code to see whether it was maliciously programmed to do that—and guess what.
The source code is a proprietary trade secret protected piece of intellectual property and the voting machine companies fight tooth and nail in court to avoid showing it to anyone-in fact they intimidate anyone who looks and send cease and desist orders around to anyone prying. This, in a Democracy that relies on the transparency and fairness of the voting process is completely unacceptable.
WHO THE --DO THEY THINK THEY ARE?

Let me try to explain it another way.
With the current laws and practices concerning voting technology and the voting machine manufacturers, no one has the first assurance that where certain machines are used that their votes are properly registered. NO ONE. They may be getting it right some of the time or twice a day like the proverbial broken clock but the American public can have absolutely no assurances that these machines are working properly and correctly registering votes because the source codes are never made public and there is ZERO electronic security. So you have to go to the voters themselves and get them to swear in Affidavits how they voted.

In Florida, they don’t even give you the data on who showed up at the polls to run the numbers and hit the streets until it’s too late- until the ten days from certified results challenge period is almost or already expired. They have an unspoken rule that they should just stonewall the data to prevent people from challenging what they do there. Once you get the data you can look and say- hey, there was actually a large “phantom overvote” situation here- where more votes were counted than people who showed up at the polls. Hmmmmmmmm. How could that happen Sherlock? As Bob Fitrakis likes to say, it's the "Loaves and Fishes Faith Based" concept of vote counting.

And in Christine Jennings’ case in Florida’s 13th, she found out that unbelievably huge and unlikely numbers of voters showed up at the polls to NOT vote for their Congressional representative (“undervotes.”) Where is Columbo when you need him? Are people in Sarasota Florida so consummed with who the local school board is but they don't care who they send to Congress when all the candidate exposure on TV ads was about the congressional candidates? Give me a break!

In 2004, Wally O’Dell the head of Diebold, who was a Bush “pioneer” fundraiser putting on thousand dollar plate dinners for Bush promised he could “deliver Ohio” to Bush, it wasn’t idle boasting. He knew he could. If I say He did I am accusing someone of a crime of vote rigging. WAKE UP PEOPLE! He was the head of Diebold. No one would ever be able to see the source coding that was in the machines that allegedly counted the votes.

Here is something else that can happen. Right now as you read this glance to the bottom right of your computer screen and look at the little time indicator. What time is it? Is it the correct time? Remember when you turned your machine “off” last? Do you turn it off every night? When you turn it back on does it still register the correct time or does it lose time when you turn it “off?” It is always the correct time-right. So how does it do that when the machine is “off?” Guess what- it is never completely off even when you think you turn it off and take the plug out of the wall. That is because there are active “hot” live components/chips/elements that you can’t see that are perpetually on. The same thing can be done to voting machines. They can be “hot wired” with components that respond to wireless interface and no one would ever see it.-- Certainly not the geriatric octogenarians that run the polling station on election day, not the voters, not anyone from the Board of Elections. Someone in a van in New Zealand can interface wirelessly with a machine sitting in Columbus theoretically. No Joke Folks.

In short, the Fuss in Florida is the Fuss that should be being made loudly everywhere in the country and nationally in Congress. Because we simply have the ruse of a chimeric Democracy and not a real one at present. We have oligarchic rule of a republican party with a consortium of voting machine manufacturers with sworn Republican loyalties who are committed to making the machines work for them- and they can and will work for them unless we do something about it. Don't think this recent Democratic sweep means they don't know how to rig it in 2008 or won't. Unless this is set right in the next two years, faaagetabout a Democratic Presidency.


So what should Congress do about it? Here are a few ideas that Congress has bandied about without solid legislation of any meaning to date and a few more. Congress should of course require:

PAPER BALLOTS that can be manually inspected. This is better than “paper trail” which of course Diebold can do because they make ATMs- Duuuuuh. Diebold can also make the paper say something other than what the machine actually tallies and trick the voter into thinking it got it right.

Revise the Intellectual Property/copyright rules so that there is NO TRADE SECRET PROTECTION for source coding in any machines used in public elections as an obvious necessary exemption and
MANDATE that all source coding in voting machines be inspected and disclosed to the public at large and posted widely and publicly.

MANDATE that all voting machines be inspected and tested thoroughly by bipartisan engineers before voting day running testing and reverse engineering source coding.

MANDATE that all voting be done in rooms designed to interrupt all outside wireless signals. We might have to build some especially for elections. We might have to staff enough machines there for the numbers of people registered there also.

MANDATE that the data concerning who showed up at the polls be made available not later than 3 calendar days from voting day. It is unacceptable that people go on vacation over Thanksgiving and on Nov. 27 get back to their office to make discs of something that happened on Nov. 7. Impose severe monetary penalties on anyone and everyone connected with the reporting process if it is not done in 3 days and extend the time in which to challenge the vote a day for every day after the 3 days that the data is late. All November voting runs into Thanksgiving. The public records release stonewalling over the holiday is something that happens every year. For national elections the entire country, not just the State has an interest regarding who sits in Congress, thus it falls on Congress to set national standards, rules and regulations regarding this.

MANDATE that for any candidate for whom his contender has not conceded defeat, that he or she only be sworn in provisionally pending investigation on the challenge with the understanding that this person may be removed after the time he assumes office provisionally if it is later determined at any time that his election must be redone.

MANDATE that for all elections for which there was more “phantom over votes” in any one precinct than the percentage by which any candidate lost that the entire election must be automatically recast in a special election.
There just is no excuse for machines counting more votes than people who showed up and it indicates conclusively that someone programmed the machine to rig the vote. The entire election must be cast into doubt in such a circumstance as void for presumptively rigged and we need to adopt a ZERO TOLERANCE for it.


And so these are not all just unfunded MANDATES, audit the HAVA funding of everyone because the money is there- it was just misappropriated.

And then, and only then, can the American public believe with any confidence that their votes Count and were Counted and we have the right men and women at the helm.

Nov.13; Martin, Bill and Oprah-You Have To Come and See This

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. MEMORIAL COMING TO THE MALL

HE HAD A DREAM.
He Told Us About It On The Mall.

Now, The first and only Monument in and around the Washington, DC Mall not for a War, War Hero or President will be for a symbol of Non-Violence, Peaceful change, and the Rule of Love and Law on Earth-

Martin Luther King, Jr.

You can join President Bill Clinton and Oprah at the Groundbreaking Ceremony on November 13th- 9:00 am -12:00 noon.

To reserve tickets reserve online: www.BUILDTHEDREAM.org
or call 202-723-3471

JIM WEBB- really right for the country right now

Just A "Kind" Man

I went to a democratic victory party of sorts this evening. I ran into someone tonight I won't forget.
There is a Vietnamese man living now in Fairfax. He was wearing a Web for Senate T-shirt. He volunteered on his campaign. I asked him what caused him to come to America and become eventually involved in electoral politics.
The man's name is Tuy Le.
He told me that when he was 13 years old there were American soldiers in his village. He couldn't talk about it all. He said it was too hard to describe (and he wasn't in the mood chowing his buffalo wings.) He said he first ran into Jim Webb in the village where he lived, a place called Go Noi Island. There were American soldiers in Go Noi Island.
I asked him if he remembered Jim Webb from when he was 13. He said "of course'- he couldn't forget him. There was combat, fighting, and the American soldiers kept safe all the little children running around the village. He said Jim Webb gave him candy and befriended him. He said Jim Webb made him feel safe. "The American soldiers kept us safe." I asked him what he remembered about Webb in particular all these years later. He said "Jim Webb is a really Kind Man."

I almost cried.
Actually, I cried.

Jim Webb isn't anything like any of the Allen ads that mis-portray him. I am not from Virginia. I don't have a horse in that race.

But Jim Webb is exactly a gift to the country for this time in our history.
He is The American Good Soldier.

He should be the jr. Senator from Virgina. This is exactly the sort of person that Bush should want to help him with what we are trying to do in Iraq.
ALLEN should graciously give it up now.

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL DEMOCRATIC WINNERS AND A SPECIAL HIGH FIVE HORRAH!! TO SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE

A HISTORIC MOMENT IN AMERICAN HISTORY

THE FIRST WOMAN SPEAKER OF THE US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
NANCY PELOSI


(keep the Faith for the Senate folks and a special Bravo to Jim Webb and Bob Casey)

What War?

Just Anything But The Facts, MA'Am


There was a Harry Nielson song when I grew up with a refrain "put the lime in the coconut..." and it said something like "we see what we want to see and hear what we want to hear." People also tend to project their own psychotic obsessions on people wholly innocent of the slander.
My aunt who is diabetic likes to tell everyone to get their blood sugar level checked whether they need it or not. I have another relative who had fibroids who at the slightest sight of puffiness sends people for check ups for tumors, and yet another who is rather bonkers who tells everyone else they should see a shrink. There is an official psychiatric term for it- it's called "PROJECTION."
It is easy to see that this is exactly what is at play in the current RNC sleezy ad campaign where they throw a scummy level of dirt on candidates, accusing them of everything from 900 number sex talk solicitation, to investigating bisexual eskimos and studying dirty habits of old men, to hanging out in Playboy mansions. That of course is the classic inverted mirror projection only worthy of the party that enabled Foley frolicking, and massive corruption on all levels (don't get me started on the Vice President's daughter and his wife's depiction of graphic lesbian love affairs).

The fact that the RNC can't dredge up anything better to tar and feather these people with is indictive of the fact that they can't think of anything better to tar and feather these people with.

More intelligent reasoned debate on the issues you might find at the reptile pit of the National Zoo.

Bean Counters and Opti-Scanners

At least you could see the Chads Hanging

Hold on to your Mouse- and get ready for flipping screen checkmarks, hopping yellow screen highlights and a baffling mysterious count that bears no relation to the polls and multiple news accounts of who actually won.
Heaven Forbid-- please Heaven- forbid it this time.

One thing I love about the Dominicans, that white robed Order of Catholic Preachers is that since the 13th Century they have elected democratically their own leader. Two people were apparently nominated (OK- so they are all men, aside from that constitutional conundrum Mrs. Lincoln the play was fine).
The two people then are voted on by the friar brothers. Here is how they do it.
They count beans. I kid you not.
White beans and black beans. If you like candidate A you put a white bean in a jar, candidate B a black bean in a jar. Then they count the beans.
Let's look at the principle, while the numbers were decidedly smaller than a city, state or all 300 million of us now.
Let's just take one race- say Harold Ford's race where you know that Rove is going to try to pull every dirty little trick in the book to try to defeat him.
What if in every polling place throughout the State of Tennessee there were a Democratic
pollwatcher- could be an attorney election protection appointee- and that person had a jar the size of a large inverted water cooler. In places where there were larger numbers of registered people have 2, 3, 4 or 5 water cooler jugs depending on the numbers of registered voters. As people leave, ask them if they voted for Harold, have a huge sign above the water cooler jugs- did you vote for Harold? If they voted for Harold tell them they can take and eat a jelly bean and ask them to put one in the jug. Make sure you get an answer from everyone who leaves.
Did you vote for Harold? (Have another jug for people who would rather not say and everytime that is the answer put a jelly bean of another color in that jar.
Then each Democratic pollwatcher takes the jug to central counting. They all count the beans together.
It's an edible exit poll. It operates as a check against the hopping screens, the disappearing provisional ballots, the destroyed memory cards and the hacking switcheroo.
That my friends is how the Black Jelly Beans Rise to the Top of the Jug- and Harold Ford will be the next US Senator from Tennessee- the first African American since Reconstruction. God Bless Him.

Truth in Advertising and other things out the Window

Ken Mehlman wears his Mother's Underwear-see the CNN exclusive tonight.

I Couldn't remain silent any longer. It's getting just too wierd in Washington.

The RNC has apparently assaulted Harold Ford's good honor, and spun first an absurd piece of white-women bashing insulting tripe designed to lose him the African American women vote because some faux blonde winky bimbo thinks he's cute, followed with another equally misleading attempt to dump him into their formula whether the facts fit or not. The Republicans are fact adverse and no fact phases them apparently.
Do they think that all good looking people are too Hollywood for them? Is that just because most of their bigger wigs are uglier than mud? Take Ken Mehlman for example? Can you imagine him on a sit com? I can imagine him maybe on an ad for those extreme makeover surgeons.

In case you missed it, here is the Republican formula that they apply all across the Board pasting on anyone whether or not exactly the opposite is true:
1. They support gay marriage
2. They support extension of wild uncontrolled abortion on demand (especially for teenagers)
(and usually while it doesn't feature in this Harold attack- 3. they don't have the stomach for war and thus can't keep us safe.)

It's just ridiculous-laughable really, that this is the only thing in a time of incredibly complicated world security where we are bleeding the treasury by the billions for folly after misguided folly in Iraq, that the republicans can't think of anything better than to tar and feather every democrat with that absurd formula. How do you feel about health care, impoverished hungry children, global aids crisis creating millions of orphans, global warming us into the sea, huricaine FEMA competency, education and literacy, having one friend outside the continental US? (just to name a few other issues the Iraq obsession has obscured)

I am not surprised actually that this is the best that Ken Mehlman can do. Not to malign Franklin and Marshall College where he went to college (and where I went for a year before transferring to a school you actually had to study for to get As) but Ken Mehlman is not the brightest bulb in the florescent fixture. He's apparently just the tackiest and most below the belt base unthinking tool of Rove's evil "genius" and three fries short of a happy meal when it comes to understanding what the American people are really concerned about today.

No No No No No-- Harold Ford did not ever vote to give teenagers an after pill or encourage their abortions. Harold Ford did not vote to support Gay Marriage (whatever you might think of the proposition.) It's just more of the same formulaic hooey (as Tony Snow likes to say.)

Now here's the little legal lesson--
Basic 101 Defamation law tells us that public figures can't sue for slander or libel unless there is demonstrable "malice." That is so as to not chill people from freely speeking their minds about public figures or chilling the public debate. I think it's easy to demonstrate Malice in these sorts of bold faced lie in our faces deceptive campaigns. Further I think that there ought to be heavy FEC (Federal Election Commission) fines and penalties for totally unresearched clearly false advertising. And there out to be published FEC issued commercials airing in the same markets and times explaining that the previous Ad was pulled by order of the FEC because it contained false and misleading advertising. That might make folks a bit more honest.

The damage is typically done with these sorts of lies before any lawsuit could resolve the legal defamation issues (and who wants to pay lawyers when you would rather pay campaign people) so candidates who are typically spent out after election season don't bother if they lose- and the other side feeds the press with all kinds of crap on why they lost which has nothing of course to do with the swiftboating influence- but someone ought to give serious thought to whether there ought to be a Non Profit organization set up for the express purpose of
seeking heavy punitive damages against either side which airs clearly boldly false claims
with expedited proceedings and a redesigned injunction standard and malice threshold standard to get them off the air the day that they air and shut these factories of falsehood down.

Since when do lies ad to the public debate? When does boldly misasserting facts known to be false ever advance the public discourse?

To Harold and all swiftboated candidates everywhere I say- just sue the Bastards.

This Just In

-Finally Catching On-

VIDEO - RFK Jr. on 'MSNBC Hardball' Says Hacking an Election on E-Voting Machines 'Easy', Endorses Emergency Paper Ballot Legislation, Recommends BRAD BLOG!
UPDATED: Complete Video Now Linked!

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Mathews to discuss his recent Rolling Stone piece on Diebold's duplicity in their voting systems.
Kennedy spoke about how easy it now is to hack an election with an Electronic Voting Machine ("in just 60 seconds") as based on recent studies by Princeton, NYU's Brennan Center and the non-partisan GAO office.
He also discussed the new Congressional Emergency Paper Ballot legislation, and even recommended your friendly neighborhood BRAD BLOG as a good source for information on all of the above!
COMPLETE VIDEO LINKED HERE:http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3540
---Brad FriedmanTHE BRAD BLOG - The uprising continues...http://www.BradBlog.comVELVET REVOLUTION - The revolution begins...http://www.VelvetRevolution.us
Do you want to protect the election in November so voters at least have a chance of having their votes counted as cast, not messed up by flawed voting machines? Take action now!

Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Christopher Dodd (R-CT), and Russ Feingold (D-WI) just submitted an emergency Senate bill, S 3943, that will provide Federal reimbursement for states to make paper ballots available to all voters who want them, and Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) has submitted a companion bill, HR 6187, in the House. With only a couple more days in this congressional session, these bills have to be heard and passed immediately.

What you can do:

1. Contact your Senators and Representative immediately to ask them to cosponsor these bills and to vote for them (You can contact your particular members via this link.)

2. Contact your local media and ask them to publicize the story (You may write in support of, or ask your local media to cover this issue via this link.)

3. Forward this message to everyone you know, in every state, who cares about our democracy and wants to have a chance that the votes will be counted accurately in November.

Thanks.
Kate

Latest info on these critical bills, S 3943 and HR 6187, as of Wed, Sep 27, 1:40 p.m.:
S.3943Title: A bill to amend the Help America vote Act of 2002 to reimburse jurisdictions for amounts paid or incurred in preparing, producing, and using contingency paper ballots in the November 7, 2006, Federal general election.Sponsor: Sen Boxer, Barbara [CA] (introduced 9/26/2006) Cosponsors (2)Latest Major Action: 9/26/2006 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Rules and Administration.

H.R.6187 : To amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to reimburse jurisdictions for amounts paid or incurred in preparing, producing, and using contingency paper ballots in the November 7, 2006, Federal general election.Sponsor: Rep Holt, Rush D. [NJ-12] (introduced 9/26/2006) Cosponsors (None)Committees: House AdministrationLatest Major Action: 9/26/2006 Referred to House committee. Status: Referred to the House Committee on House Administration.



More info about the issue and the Senate bill from Brad Friedman's blog on Sep 26:

URL: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3531

BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: BOXER, DODD INTRODUCE 11th HOUR EMERGENCY PAPER BALLOT LEGISLATION IN SENATE!
Calls for 'Contingency Paper Ballots' in States, Counties this November to be Paid for Feds!
Co-Author of HAVA is Co-Sponsor of New Bill Answering Our Call for a 'LET AMERICA VOTE ACT', Makes Paper Ballots Optional to States Rather Than MandatedŠBut We'll Take it! -- Sources Say House Bill to Follow Soon!
Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) introduced emergency legislation to amend the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) this afternoon to offer funding to states and counties who make 'contingency paper ballots' available to voters to be used at the voter's option instead of electronic voting systems.
The so-called contingency paper ballots would be counted as normal ballots, as opposed to Provisional Ballots which must be vetted first to determine the integrity of the voter's registration. Provisional ballots are frequently counted only several days after Election Day, and often, not at all.
The inclusion of Dodd as a co-sponsor on this 11th hour legislation is no small coup, as he was one of the original co-sponsors of the HAVA legislation of 2002 which this bill would amend. Until now, he and the other bi-partisan co-sponsors of that original legislation have been reluctant to open HAVA to amendment.
The BRAD BLOG has further learned from Capitol Hill sources that similar legislation is currently being prepared for introduction in the U.S. House. We hope to have more details on that later today, as the legislators on the House side are working through several language issues in collaboration with colleagues in the Senate.
The legislation, filed just after 4pm ET this afternoon, would refund voting jurisdictions who offer paper ballots as an option to voters, and requires such jurisdictions post "in a conspicuous manner at the polling place, a notice stating that contingency paper ballots are available at the polling place and that a voter may request to use such a ballot at the voter's discretion."
Election integrity advocacy groups and citizens alike have been rallying members of both the U.S. House and Senate to pass such legislation since The BRAD BLOG initially called for what we had called, the "LET AMERICA VOTE ACT" last Tuesday. The act we called for would mandate emergency paper ballots at all polling places this November in light of thousands of voters having been sent without being able to cast a vote in primary after primary election so far this year when new electronic voting machines either malfunctioned or were otherwise unavailable.
The short Boxer/Dodd bill does not mandate the use of such ballots, but rather offers federal payment to local jurisdictions that choose to make such 'contingency paper ballots' available at either the voter's request or in the event of machine malfunction.
The bill is now being referred to informally as the "Confidence in Vote Act of 2006". It's a simple bill, three pages long in total, and is posted in full at the bottom this article. The final version of the bill to be filed momentarily (it may have already been) may be downloaded here in PDF format.
The bill introduced today is notable in no small part in that it's co-sponsored by Dodd - one of the original co-sponsors of HAVA along with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in the Senate and Reps. Bob Ney (R-OH) and Steny Hoyer (D-MD) in the House. HAVA was the bill which had set in motion the nationwide implementation of electronic voting systems paid for by the federal government. That bill gave states and counties some $3 billion dollars for voting systems "upgrades" around the country, and has led to a panoply of problems at polls, criticism from computer scientists, security experts and non-partisan election integrity organizations.
Dodd, and the other bi-partisan co-sponsors of HAVA, including the now-disgraced lead author Ney (R-OH), have been reluctant up until now to modify the legislation in any way, despite repeated calls from Election Integrity advocates, and a host of bills filed in both the House and Senate which have not been allowed to move forward.
The BRAD BLOG has learned that Boxer and Dodd chose to make the use of "contingency paper ballots" an option to states, rather than a mandate, in hopes that it would make the bill less contentious and easier to pass in the few days left in this legislative session before the election recess.
Both touch-screen DRE's and paper based optical scan systems have spectacularly failed across the country so far this year as well, and contingency plans have been called from both Republicans and Democrats alike to have such contingency plans in place at local jurisdictions should such machines continue to fail this November.
The downside to offering these paper ballots as an option, instead of a mandate, is that some states - such as Florida - have provisions in place making it essentially illegal for elections directors to offer such paper ballots at the polling place. For those states, it may well be that only a federal mandate would do the job of ensuring that voters would be able to vote come hell or highwater this November.
The legendary Leon County, FL Election Director Ion Sancho had previously expressed hopes that such a bill would make it "illegal to send a properly registered voter away from the polls without allowing them to cast a vote."
The latest state to have had machine problems in their primary election, resulting in voters being turned away from the polls, or being given Provisional Ballots (which are frequently not counted at all after Election Day) was Maryland. The Republican Governor of Maryland, Bob Ehrlich, called for scrapping the state's Diebold paperless touch-screen voting systems after their September 12th primary, calling on the state to impliment Emergency Paper Balloting this November. Incidents similar to the now-infamous "Maryland Meltdown" have been occuring across the country all year in states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Arkansas, West Virginia, Texas, Tennessee, and many others.
The Boxer/Dodd legislation cites a recent call from former Republican Attorney General Richard Thornburgh and former Democratic Governor Richard Celeste to have such "backup and contingency plans that anticipate a wide range of possible failures in their electronic voting systems" this November.
With just 4, or so, legislative days left in this Congress before they break for their Election Recess, it'll be no easy feat to see the bill passed by both the House and Senate before they leave. But given the stakes, and the bi-partisan call across the country for such a measure, we hope the Congress can act with the speed appropriate for a bill so important to, at least, helping to mitigate the train wreck that our democracy may be headed for this November 7th.
The BRAD BLOG would urge you to contact your Congress Members to demand they support this legislation immediately. You can contact your particular members via this link. You may write in support of, or ask your local media to cover this issue via this link.
The complete text of the Boxer/Dodd legislation and this complete story, in full at:URL: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3531
---Brad FriedmanTHE BRAD BLOG - The uprising continues...http://www.BradBlog.com

MALICE TOWARD NONE

Charity For All

Lincoln's Second Term--
American Civil War 1861-1865

Bush's Second Term--
Iraqi Civil War 2003-?


Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address:

With Malice Toward None
With Charity for all
with firmness in the right
as God gives us to see the Right
let us strive on to finish the work we are in
to bind up the nation's wounds
to care for him who shall have borne the battle
and for his widow
and his orphan
to do all which may achieve and cherish a just
and a lasting Peace
among ourselves
and with all nations.


The American Civil War ended. WWI ended. WWII ended. The Korean War ended. The Vietnam War ended. The Iraq war must have an ending. Finish It. It's time.

What if its all a Crock

Imagine there was No 9-11.

Take 'the world changed after 9-11' out of the Republican lexicon and what do you get? A hideously psychopathic deranged delusional presidential power grab and a $300 billion raid of the national Treasury as we incite murderous rage against Americans everywhere because we launched an unprovoked war killing hundreds of thousands of Muslims-for what?

Now look below at the fine citizens who think that the convenient excuse of 9-11 was a little too convenient and the 9-11 report a Whitewash cover-up of impeachment proportion:


go to:
http://www.patriotsquestion911.com.

Then tell me whether you think we need a real new 9-11 thorough investigation- and a real new Congress to do it under oath and penalty of perjury.


(plaintiff rests)

The Call To Love Thy Neighbor

Every great moral theologian, great thinker, truly great statesman and stateswoman worth his or her salt had some compelling deep concern and the need to speak for the welfare of others, the "common good" the advancement of goodness not just greatness to bless others. Today George Soros proved he is no exception. Lecturing before his Foundation and friends in Washington today he reminded us that we too must determine as a priority to care for the wellbeing of the world, not just our national or personal security as our private obsession to which we demand enscriptment of the world. If one truly does that it requires that we minimize collateral innocent casualties of war waged in the name of our national security. The call to love is a call to elevate, to enliven, to lift and redeem. It is not a call to accidentally collaterally destroy. In this case this has been a wholly unnecessary evil.
The war on poverty must be fought not just because it has repercussion on our national self interest but because it is a worthy goal in itself to eliminate the suffering of poverty because we have compassion and empathy on those suffering it. To reduce everything meaningful to strategic twists on a "War on Terror" is to live a false metaphor through which we view everything through a paranoid narcisism.
It is unacceptable to have continuing accidental collateral death in the hundreds daily in Iraq or anywhere. The only excuse for perpetuating it is if we know that to leave will be the trigger for more accidental deaths. Soros is of the view that we are sitting on a civil war in Iraq that is not "getting much oxygen now because we are sitting on it." But if we immediately leave, which he does not support, it will collapse into a civil war and threaten a larger regional conflict. He views Iran's nuclear capability as "unacceptable." But believes we have to engage them to make peace. You make peace with your enemies not your friends. Making peace requires diplomatic engagement- by definition.
Our national psyche has been perverted not merely strained by the self centered self obsessed narcisism of viewing everything in the world through a prism of what threatens our security which demeans and cripples our ability to view the world as something we need to positively engage to mutually encourage creative mutually beneficial enterprise in a positive balance of trade and creativity. Instead we are spending ourselves in a hole dug clear through to China to wage death and destruction in the name of our protection. Dieu Tout Puissant.
If each of us individually and collectively as nations and states has a limited time on planet earth; generously say 100 years a person, 100 years a leader, times all the leaders of the world, to leave the world "better of" than when we got here, what would we do? Would we destroy nations and peoples to make us more secure, or would we try -really hard- to make the world a place where instead Love ruled- on earth as it is in heaven-- Where swords were beaten into plowshares-and people shared the plowing. Plowing in tandem doesn't work if one side knocks off and out the other.
Soros envisioned a future Iraq with power sharing along lines of oil revenue licensing rights distribution. The shift from mutual self assured destruction to mutual collaborative positive growth is something that comes from moral leadership of which we can't afford to squander any more.
When you were a kid, you didn't imagine growing up to kill anyone so that your place on the planet was secure? The obsession has raped our national innocence just as much as the original tragedy that inspired it. Our national insecurity doesn't have to be healed with more killing and never will be. Or national insecurity will come by building bridges of peace through loving our neighbors all around the world as ourselves ---just as He said.



Love keeps you young
I've heard it said
- turns your grey head
It lifts your heavy wrinkled brow
- turns your glaring frown toward the clouds
Love keeps you young
I've heard it said
As you astonishingly watch God's breath
through mysteries and miracles
that couldn't be but for his eye
that guides your flight silently
and connects you to the unreachable
Love keeps you young
I've heard it said
and when you can no longer
lift a foot over the other in steady pace
love still keeps you young
in parallel time and space
where your heart exists in perfect peace
where sworn enemies
become your brothers
who share your grief in atoning
moaning
Love keeps you young
I've heard it said,
it can even raise the dead.

THE TRUTH WILL SET US FREE

NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH SO HELP US GOD

There is a lot of talk about Freedom-lipservice-claptrap-hoopla -speeches and military campaigns in its name. But we know it's source- it's in TRUTH. The Truth will set us free. Without it we are captives to illusions subject to being manipulated and deceived creating a twisted world based on the violence of lies. And that is where we find ourselves five years after September 11, 2001.

Someone very beautiful once said- I am the Way, the Truth and the Life and no one comes to the Father but through me. That means NO ONE comes to the Father without going through Foundational Truth which He is.

The questions that remain about the biggest questions- the "why" questions, which have been swept under the carpet in oppressive condemnations of alleged "conspiracy theorists" rise from the cinder dust of 9-11. How could this happen? Why, why, why.

The 9-11 Commission, declared Tom Kean it's Chair today, was "set up to fail." It was under-resourced, and ran out of time without getting all the core questions answered. It tried perhaps. These are honorable men. But they operated from the framework of assumption that was spoon fed them and they were hamstrung by some procedural constraints.
They didn't or couldn't require witnesses, including government witnesses to swear to their testimony under oath like Congressional hearings. They obtained subpoena power but didn't use it, and they were flatly denied by the White House the ability to question the detainees-or anyone allegedly connected with the plots.

So they didn't look under every rock, follow every lead and were too quick to dismiss that which seemed implausible. They viewed their task as presenting the most credible story line that would stick and coming up with some recommendations to make us safer. They ran out of time and money and Dennis Hastert wouldn't give them more of either. Following the official plot whose lines they connected after following those dots, they came up with what Lee Hamilton, Vice-Chair called common sense recommendations. Both Hamilton and Kean wonder why not many of 41 recommendations- the "no brainers" have been in five years implemented. He bemused that there does not appear to be any sense of urgency-(yet there was Urgency to get to Iraq before the inspectors declared their job done and Urgency to get every appropriations bill since passed.)
We have spent 300 billion on an unconnected war in a country that did not attack us, but we couldn't find resources in five years to put first responders on the same air wave frequency or create the systems to allow them to communicate with each other- something that could save many lives. The 9-11 families whose insistence pioneered the creation of this Commission felt not more than 25% of their questions were answered at all. And it still does not make sense.

The Washington Post recently ran a large article attempting to deride and debunk the so called "conspiracy theorists" of 9-11 . In doing so they mock themselves because the largest most elaborate conspiracy is the one passing off as normalcy.

There is a movement getting stronger by the day to get at the bottom of 9-11 truth. It has solid academics and researchers in it. It has lawyers in it. It has very credible very logical people in it who believe the country owes it to itself to get to the full Truth, and Nothing but the Truth about 9-11.

Today at the National Press Club determined 9-11 families came again to Washington, facing more mockery and scorn, to challenge the Official Story line of 9-11 and demand a new investigation. They are part of the "Press For Truth" movement. They offer a DVD movie which you can order on line. There are also Scholars for Truth, and Truth-seekers by many other names and some who prefer not to be named writing from undisclosed locations. They share one thing in common- a determined belief that this Administration isn't fully leveling with us and the facts just don't add up to the simple conclusion they preach.

This blog applauds all the courageous people who stand up and refuse to be silenced. We know that we are not going to shut up until the Truth is shouted from the Mountaintop.

News stations all day were replaying same day 9-11 news coverage broadcasting from lower Manhattan. Newscasters were repeatedly reporting they heard explosions. Explosions. Manhattanites were chased for blocks as a massive grey dust cloud enveloped everything like a hurricane tossing cars and people wildly into the air. Explosions. Did two planes really cause all this?

We will not get a thorough investigation until we get a new Congress. In two months we can make that a reality. So long as we are held captive to illusions we Americans are not a free people. We are mere patsies to the ruling oligarchic trifecta of war industry, fear peddling and republican government that binds us in its illusions for their service.

As one 9-11 family member from the Press For Truth conference stated so eloquently today-
"God blessed America, but it was men who cursed us." If we have a hope of fighting the curse, we have to know every place from where it originated and who really did the cursing.

We remember that day on the 11th of September, 2001 and the people who died in New York, Pennsylvania and Northern Virginia at the Pentagon, and also their families today with deep sadness and deeper respect.
This little blog here at www. democracytruth.blogspot.com was created in large part so they could see real Justice in their lifetime.

The Truth-it is Promised- Will Set Us Free.


Practically speaking-what can you do- consider this:

Subj:
We Are the Troops
Date:
9/12/2006 11:43:21 AM Eastern Standard Time
From:
info@johnkerry.com
Reply-to:
jk4p-0032Q03oL0@mailer.johnkerry.com
To:
butlerlawfirm@aol.com
Dear Cynthia,
I remember when I was back home from Vietnam and veterans were speaking out against the Vietnam war policy, someone yelled at the vets: "You should support the troops." One of those veterans said simply: "Lady, we are the troops."
With a war in Iraq gone horribly wrong and a Republican attack machine determined to smear those who speak out, there's nothing more important this fall than electing veterans to Congress who can speak out about Iraq with a special moral authority.
And man, do we need them. Recently, John "Randy" Kuhl, a Republican incumbent House member from New York, returned from a visit to Iraq. He reported that things were going well. In fact, he says he almost forgot he was in a war zone.
I can't tell you whether that hard-to-believe comment reflects his disconnect with reality or his refusal to level with the people he represents. But, I can tell you this: No one who knows what it really means to be in a war zone would talk like that.
If you act now to support Eric Massa, the 24-year Navy veteran running against Kuhl, there will be one less Congressman in Washington next year who blindly supports the failed Republican policy in Iraq.
Eric served in Desert Storm, Bosnia and Beirut. And he's telling people the truth about Iraq -- that there is no purely military solution to the problems there. He, three other proud veterans I'll tell you about in a moment, and VoteVets.org, a political action committee founded to support candidates like them, need your help right now.
SUPPORT OUR "FOUR VETS, FOUR VICTORIES" CAMPAIGN
Our "Four Vets, Four Victories" campaign can help change the face of Congress if you act now. Every one of these candidates has served America under fire. And every one of them can win the opportunity to serve again on November 7th if we act now.
Chris Carney, a veteran of multiple military operations, is in a toss-up race against Don Sherwood, another rubber-stamp Republican incumbent who has failed to ask tough questions about the Bush administration's aimless policies in Iraq.
Joe Sestak, a former three-star Admiral who served in the Navy for 31 years, is another veteran on the road to victory in Pennsylvania. He's running against Curt Weldon, a Republican incumbent in the Rick Santorum camp who believes the "jury is still out" on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, despite overwhelming and undeniable proof to the contrary.
The third in our trio of Pennsylvania veterans running to change the face of Congress is Patrick Murphy. He is an Iraq War veteran, former West Point professor, and criminal prosecutor. Patrick is on the verge of victory if we give him the financial support he needs to compete in the countdown to Election Day.
SUPPORT OUR "FOUR VETS, FOUR VICTORIES" CAMPAIGN
Nothing would make me prouder than to know that our "Four Vets, Four Victories" campaign helped carry these impressive candidates to Congress. That's the outcome that's within reach, but only if you rush your financial support to one or more of these candidates.
Every day it becomes more apparent how hard the Republican Party and its candidates will struggle to hold on to power in these elections. They'll throw everything they've got at our candidates. We've got to be there with our financial support.
So, pick one candidate or donate to all four. But, whatever you do, don't stay on the sidelines. This is your opportunity to stand side-by-side with veterans who have already given so much to America and who are ready to provide the leadership we need in Washington.
SUPPORT OUR "FOUR VETS, FOUR VICTORIES" CAMPAIGN
Thank you for all you are doing in the critical buildup to Election Day.
Sincerely,
John Kerry
P.S. There's one other critical way you can help veterans running for office. Support VoteVets.org, a political action committee formed by Iraq veterans to support Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who are running for Congress. VoteVets.org is providing campaigns with training and support and running TV ads critical of candidates who support the failed "stay the course" policy of the Bush administration.
So, in addition to supporting our four candidates, I hope you'll consider standing with VoteVets.org.

Paid for by Friends of John Kerry.Authorized by Sestak For CongressAuthorized by Patrick Murphy for CongressAuthorized by Carney for CongressAuthorized by Massa for CongressAuthorized by VoteVets.org