Changing Places

Heh.

Duncan can’t even protect his website – how could he protect the country ?!?!

Can’t this asshat just retire already? Sheesh.

Talking Points Memo

Earlier this week, Columbia University replaced MoveOn.org as Public Enemy #1 for many conservatives, because the school hosted a forum for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Most notably, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) announced on Fox News that he would “move in Congress to cut off every single type of federal funding to Columbia University.”

Now, Hunter clearly has an incentive to appear unhinged. He’s a faltering presidential candidate, and the GOP base is easily riled up by absurd stunts like these. Indeed, it’s a two-fer — it’s posturing on Iran and it’s blasting an Ivy League university filled with “intellectual elites.”

Part of me assumed the controversy would fade; even conservatives would realize Ahmadinejad’s appearance at Columbia made him, not the university, look ridiculous; and the right would find some new boogeyman for next week.

Alas, no such luck. Hunter meant it — he’s introduced a bill called the “Restore Patriotism to University Campuses Act.”

It’s almost as if Hunter wants to look ridiculous. I’m sure someone will get around to mentioning to Hunter the constitutional problems associated with Congress punishing colleges based on the content of political speech, but I have a hunch it won’t matter.

About the picture – this is part of my artistic evolution, which really goes back to taking Pamela Underwood’s body writing workshop. This was one of the pictures I chose that most affected me and resembles my own body image as a Rubenesque female. I actually painted in the critter on the left side into one of my works. These days, I lack a space to do art and the privacy to do it, and that is one of the things that is most bothering me. The materials are at hand and I want to do it, but time and available space seem such an obstacle. On the plus side, I’m going to the art expo in Pasadena in a couple of weeks and taking some classes there. Yay!

As I get nearer my birthday, Ive been starting to beat up on myself a bit for not even getting close to one of the goals I set for the year of dropping all the weight I had wanted to. I initially lost about 15 pounds, but have gained about five of those back again.

But perhaps that was the wrong goal anyway. I have eaten far better this year, worked out a lot more, and am far stronger and have more lean muscle mass than I did last year. While I’m still “Rubenesque” (and yes, I could have posed for the picture above), and always will be with these hips, I think I can be happy about the “gains” I have made in my overall health. I’ve even gone off one of my mainstay bipolar drugs, Effexor, since it was pushing up my blood pressure and intraocular (eye) pressure. While I haven’t found quite the right combination of nutritional replacements and supplements yet, I’m certainly paying way more attention to what I eat and gaining a lot of knowledge about what the nutritional needs are for people with bipolar disorder.

As I do my research, I occasionally run across gems like this one that remind me that I need to keep my eyes on the real prize, better health, and not on my scale.

Diet and Obesity

How easy is it to take off weight and keep it off? Unfortunately, we run into a wall when we lose 10 percent of our body weight, Dr Korner reported. Adipose tissue shrinks, which results in less leptin, which puts the hypothalamus on red alert. The body goes into survival mode, increasing hunger pangs and lowering metabolism. Within three to five years, she said, almost all dieters are back up to original body weight.

All this comes as cold comfort to those of us caught in the pincers of our illness and our meds. Depression sends many of us into the warm embrace of ice cream and chocolate while our meds can amount to hot fudge sundaes in pill form with none of the pleasures. Weight management obviously needs to be regarded as a lifetime task – eating the right foods and getting plenty of exercise, while setting realistic goals.

Setting realistic goals may mean that aiming for a Rubenesque ideal is okay for now. Trying to accomplish too much too soon is counterproductive and will only lead to disappointment.

Keep in mind that BMI (body mass index) – which purports to define ideal weight according to one’s height, gender, and age – fails to account for body fat. Muscle is heavier than fat, which may mean that working out after a certain point could put on weight (which is good, in this context). A 5′ 9′ light heavyweight boxer who tips the scales at 175 pounds is only overweight in BMI Land..

The BMI is also blind to body type. Ectomorphs – with light bones, slight muscles, and long limbs (such as marathon runners) are not going to turn into mesomorphic Tarzans – with large bones, broad chest, and well-defined muscles – simply by gulping down protein drinks and going to the gym. Likewise, medical science has yet to find a way for endomorphic Santas to stretch their soft round, short-limbed bodies into a mesomorphic or ecto-meso ideal.

Basically, we have to work with what we’ve got, but this should not discourage you. Athletically chunky is beautiful, as is pleasingly plump. Ignore the computer-enhanced cover girls that bombard our environment and pay attention, instead, to the paintings of the old masters.

Talking Points Memo

“I don’t have the time, the energy or the inclination to psychoanalyze the president’s thought process.”

–GOP Rep. Wayne Gilchrest of Maryland, one of the 45 Republicans supporting the SCHIP expansion, on Bush’s opposition to it.

OK, well I do — the President is a sociopath — he can’t be bothered to care about someone else’s children, or perhaps even his own, since he doesn’t seem to have done a very good job of raising them. But, considering his own past as a child, with his sister Robin, his favorite sibling, dying and his parents not even caring enough to bother telling him she had died, or why she was sent to a hospital when she was ill, it’s understandable. Babs is probably the worst mother in the world, really.

Denying health care for other people’s kids doesn’t bother Bush. He can’t be worried to care about people who can’t afford health care, because they don’t contribute to his political campaigns or figure into the right-wing’s agenda. So “who cares what you think”, would be his response to those who worry about such things.

I really hope that one day all those morons who vote Republican will get that THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU. The poor are poor because they deserve to be poor, according to Bush. They are stupid and lazy and didn’t pick the right parents.

Sociopaths don’t really give a shit about anyone, or about what anyone thinks of them, really. As Bush noted when asked about history’s take on him and his administration, “I’ll be dead then”.

As to Mr. Gilchrest, he ought to look into his own head and find out why he supports such an uncaring, unfeeling, unthinking president.

Why can’t conservatives be honest about what they are doing? What are we not supposed to know about their nefarious plans anyway? Are conservatives that afraid of letting people know what their ideas really are?

Salt Lake Tribune – Cheney to address secret group

Vice President Dick Cheney will speak to a super-secret, conservative policy group in Utah on Friday during his second trip to the state this year.
Cheney will address the fall meeting of the Council for National Policy, a group whose self-described mission is to promote “a free-enterprise system, a strong national defense and support for traditional Western values.”
The organization – made up of few hundred powerful conservative activists – holds confidential meetings and members are advised not to use the name of the group in communications, according to a New York Times profile of the group.
“The media should not know when or where we meet or who takes part in our programs, before [or] after a meeting,” a list of rules obtained by The Times showed. The group did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.
Czech Republic President Václav Klaus is also expected to address the Council for National Policy’s meeting in downtown Salt Lake City. After his speech, Cheney will meet with Klaus, the vice president’s office said Tuesday.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who ran the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, will also be in Utah on Friday but his campaign did not respond to a question about whether he would talk with the group.
Cheney’s visit is expected to be short, only a few hours, according to people familiar with the trip’s details. The trip coincides with fundraisers in California, Colorado, Nevada and Wyoming, Cheney’s spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride said.
All of the events on the trip are closed to the public and the news media, McBride said.
Cheney last visited the state April 26 to give the commencement speech at Brigham Young University.
tburr@sltrib.com

This is an old article, but these last few paragraphs intrigued me. My kids have no interest in even trying drugs or alcohol, and when I look back at how they were raised – all the things we exposed them to, how “toy rich” we made their environment, how much we encouraged them to read and use their minds and imagination – I guess it’s no wonder they turned out as well as they have.

Psychology Today: Addiction: Pay Attention

This urge to connect to the world and learn from it is more important than mere pleasure, says Volkow. It’s part of the most basic force in behavior: the will to live. It’s not automatic, she points out. Seriously ill or very depressed people can lose the will to survive. “What is the motivation we all have to be alive, to do things?” she asks. “It’s not pleasure. Our lives would be so much simpler if we were motivated just for the sake of pleasure.”

But dopamine sensitivity and addiction aren’t genetically determined or inevitable. One experiment with monkeys showed that the dopamine system may be influenced by social interactions: Animals that lost social status also lost D2 receptors. Context is also crucial. Obviously, it’s easier to get hooked if drugs are easy to get in your neighborhood, but it’s not just a question of supply and demand. People who grow up in stimulating, engaging surroundings are protected against addiction, Volkow believes, even if they don’t have a naturally responsive dopamine system. If you connect to the world in a meaningful way, and have more chances to get excited about natural stimuli, you’re less likely to need an artificial boost.

“If you don’t get excited by everyday things in life, if things look gray, and the drug makes things look extraordinary, that puts you at risk,” she says. “But if you get great excitement out of a great multiplicity of things, and intensely enjoy these things—seeing a movie, or climbing a mountain—and then you try a drug, you’ll think: What’s the big deal?” For those lucky enough to grow up as Volkow did, surrounded by sharp minds and fascinating history, drugs are just nowhere near as interesting as everyday life.

Via Neatorama
Someone has gone and mounted a birdcage inside a fishtank, do you call it a fishcage or a birdtank?

We have two basic choices when trying to resolve any conflict within a relationship: persuasion or coercion. Persuasion is possible only where freedom exists. If I am willing to accept whatever choice you may make, I am able to use persuasion and nothing more in my attempt to get you to do what I’d like you to do. Persuasion contains no elements of cruelty — by its very nature, persuasion contains the freedoms of both involved, and within that freedom lies profound respect even if disagreement exists. If the dog is truly free to say “No, thanks” and we are truly willing to accept that answer, then we are engaged in persuasion.

But persuasion has limits, and especially within the context of our role as guardians and caretakers, persuasion may fail. In some situations, compulsion or coercion may be justified, especially if the consequences of a failure to respond or act in a certain way can be dangerous or even deadly. Few of us would choose persuasion to deal with a child about to stick a fork in an electrical outlet or walk into traffic; most of us would simply forcefully compel the child to stop.

There are times when the simple obligations of being a dog’s keeper and guardian brings us into conflict with the dog’s impulses, needs, desires and even his instincts. How we will handle the inveitable conflict between us and the dog, how we will use coercion, is the question. And this is where we tread on treacherous ground. Cruelty does not rear its ugly head in moments of agreement; only where conflict exists can cruelty germinate. A friend of mine once noted that anger was not possible without a goal. No goal, no possibility of anger. I thought about this a long time and realized that no matter how modest or unimportant the goal, the moment I have something I want, an outcome I desire more than other possible outcomes, there arises the possibility for anger, and farther along that spectrum, the possibility of cruelty if I am willing to pursue my goal at any cost, even at the expense of another living being. We may not take the achievement of a goal to Mahiavellian extremes. But simply shaping a goal and focusing on it has the additional effect of narrowing our perspective; aimed at our goal, we may forget the dog beside us. — Suzanne Clothier, “Bones Would Rain From the Sky”

May bodhichitta, precious and sublime,
Arise where it has not yet come to be;
And where it has arisen may it not decline,
But grow and flourish ever more and more.

– Nagarjuna

Oh you must go read the whole thing.

I love this woman, she’s crazier than I am and writes way better than I do!

One Good Thing

Steve called me this morning on his way home from the post office.

“Are you expecting something from overseas?” he asked. Something heavy and metallic and rattles around?”

“As a matter of fact, I am,” I said. “Bring it on, and quickly!”

Last week I’d received an offer of a free sample from Brylka Erotic Foods, a German company interested in finding toy stores willing to carry their latest product, the Fruildo….

I’ve been in tears a good part of the day, not really knowing why.

I don’t know why I can’t remember how these things sneak up on me. The body remembers, no matter what we forget.

My mother passed away four years ago today. And remembering one loss brings up the memories of other losses as well.

While my mom wasn’t a perfect mom, and we had our differences, I loved her very deeply, of course. I’ve tried to emulate the best parts of her nature and worked hard to eliminate those things I picked up from her that I’ve learned I am better off without. The one thing everyone who knew her always brings up is how faithfully she remembered and honored everyone’s birthdays, anniversaries, and other significant events in their lives.

She was a devoted and very faithful religious woman, belonging to the Presbyterian Church where she served as a deacon and women’s circle leader, to Church Women United and to many, many other service organizations. She’s probably the inspiration for my own desire to do therapy dog work with Darwin and to eventually be able to raise and train service dogs. In going through her papers and letters, I found out she, like Mother Theresa, often doubted God’s presence in her own life and felt her faith was lacking, which really surprised me.

I suppose my own lack of faith in religion led me to the search for my own spirituality, to Tao and to many, many other writings on spirituality. I think for me there is a great deal to learn from all religions, faiths, and belief systems, and I doubt I could limit myself to just one. I think overall the ideas of the Tao are the ones I return to again and again, and find repeated over and over in other spiritual systems. My mom used to call me “the daughter I don’t know” – but I think perhaps we were far more alike than she ever realized. I think she was always searching, too, for that perfect expression of her own faith and her spirituality.

Anyway, I miss her a lot, especially when I have to deal with my sister and nephew and things she used to handle. I wish she could see how adorable her great-grandchild Evan is. I wish she and my dad could have been there to see my kids graduate from high school. Instead I ended up dropping off their ashes in Hawaii on a trip after my older son’s high school graduation in 2004.

I am glad I didn’t really remember until after my visit with my shrink today, or I might have been in tears for the whole thing. Instead I talked happily and even got a few laughs from him. He must not think I am so crazy these days, since he seems to have this idea that I ought to join a think tank or something to share my ideas. I suppose in a way this blog and the places I visit and contribute to online are already my contributions to the World Wide Think Tank. He said from a practical viewpoint I ought to be contributing more, and I said, “Well, I guess I’ll have to go all Buddhist on you”. And he said “What do you mean?” And I said, “There is nothing to attain”. He said he didn’t quite get that, and I said “That’s because you’re Jewish and not Buddhist.” And he laughed.

I guess if I were to join a think tank, it would be one working on ways to get people to live more sustainable lives. Not just in terms of using resources, but in terms of sustaining their own well being, their energy, their sheer joy in living. My mom spent so much time and energy caring for others, and so little caring for herself. I can’t help but think if she had let more people know what she needed, let us help her for a change and made sure her medical needs were met, her house cared for when she no longer had the strength to do it, and if she had turned over the care of my sister and nephew to others, she might still be with us. I’ve lost friends who considered me selfish for trying to find ways to get my needs met, and certainly I was then, and maybe still am — but there is a difference between being selfish to get what you need in your life and in just plain having too much stuff that you don’t really enjoy very much just because you can.

I look at the last four years, and how much worse we are off now in this country, in Iraq, the housing situation, the economy about to falter, and I wonder what my mom would think of it all.

But I am kind of glad she’s one more angel on our side.

Banish uncertainty.
Affirm strength.
Hold resolve.
Expect death.

Make your stand today. On this spot. On this day. Make your actions count; do not falter in your determination to fulfill your destiny. Don’t follow the destiny outlined in some mystical book: Create your own.

Your resolve to tread the path of life is your best asset. Without it, you die. Death is unavoidable, but let it not be from loss of will but because your time is over. As long as you can keep going, use your imagination to cope with the travails of life. Overcome your obstacles and realize what you envision.

You will know unexpected happiness. You will know the sorrow of seeing what is dearest to you cut down before your eyes. Accept that. That is the nature of human existence, and you have no time to buffer this fact with fairy tales and illogical explanations.

Each day, your life grows shorter by twenty-four hours. The time to make achievements become more precious. You must fulfill everything you want in life and then release your will upon the moment of death. Your life is a creation that dies when you die. Release it, give up your individuality, and in so doing, finally merge completely with Tao.

Until that moment, create the poetry of your life with toughness and determination.

Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao

“There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can circumvent or hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul.”
– Ella Wheeler Wilcox, from The Poem Will”

“Resolve to find thyself; and to know that he who finds himself, loses his misery.”
– Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)

“Resolve and thou art free.”
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?”

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God! Your playing small doesn’t serve the world! There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you! We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; It’s in everyone!! And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

– Nelson Mandela, Inaugural Speech 1994

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires … causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these — to be fierce and to show mercy toward others — both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D. 2003

Resolve that whatever you do, you will bring the whole man to it; that you will fling the whole weight of your being into it. — Orison Swett Marden

“Never act without purpose and resolve, or without the means to finish the job.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.2

Before emptying, there must be fullness.
Before shrinking, there must be expanding.
Before falling, there must be ascent.
To destroy something, lead it to its extreme.
To preserve something, keep to the middle.

Although we speak of opposites, they are not truly antagonistic elements. All opposites are part of the same entity. Like a two-headed snake, opposites are two parts of the same whole. They define one another, as black defines white. They alternate with one another, as war alternates with peace.

Whenever any phenomenon reaches its extreme, it will change toward its opposite, just as the darkness night begins to change toward dawn, and the coldest winter is followed by glorious spring. Therefore, anything that one wishes to destroy need only be led to its extreme or crushed while it is just appearing. For example, the two easiest times to destroy a tree are when it is so tall that it is about to topple or so young that it can bee easily uprooted.

The same principle holds if one wishes to nurture something. You can prevent its destruction by bringing it close to, but not over, its apex. You can take a branch from an old tree and graft it. This is the wisdom of the middle ground. Followers of Tao change a situation when it reaches its apex. By joining their efforts to a new situation that is just budding, they attain perpetuity.

Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao

In order to contract a thing, one should surely expand it first.
In order to weaken, one will surely strengthen first.
In order to overthrow, one will surely exalt first.
“In order to take, one will surely give first.”
This is called subtle wisdom.

– Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching

I suppose I’m really very yin for the most part. I’ve been more aggressive and controlling at some points in my life, though. Part of Taoism for me is really accepting the feminine in myself, since there were times when I was young I really wished I were masculine in this patriarchal, male-dominated society.

America is very much at the extreme of the yang forces right now. I’m doing what I can to accept that and be amused watching the right wing extremists pull out all the stops and take us to the edge of reason, but, at times I still find myself angered by it all. I know the change will come and the fall will happen, but not knowing when or how, it’s difficult to put up with where we are.

So I do my bit to work with the progressive forces, lending what support I can to the progressive effort, knowing it is the next force that will grow and dominate eventually. But it is so young still, and growing quickly but perhaps not soon enough to stop us from going over the edge completely. I know it is too large to be crushed, now, though. The roots are already deep, but the tree is still so young…but I think the old tree of the progressives of the past would be proud of us, even as the right keeps trying to finally topple it.

Mac points us to a great example of the dangers of abstinence only education:

pesky’apostrophe: always better than an unexpected period.

Last year in Mobile County, 4,629 new cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis were reported—enough instances of the sexually transmitted diseases to account for one out of every 87 people, according to a Press-Register review of state and federal statistics.

That was about three times the rate in New York City and more than twice as high as Washington, D.C.

[...] Statewide, syphilis cases were up 60 percent last year, compared with 2005 (from 583 cases to 931).

Chlamydia has also been on the rise, increasing 44-fold from 509 cases in 1994 to 22,560 in 2006. “And I think we’re seeing just the tip of the iceberg,” Piepho said.

Eight counties—poor and sparsely populated except for No. 2-ranked Montgomery County—had higher STD rates in 2006 than Mobile County, statistics showed.

A lack of education weighs heavily on a county’s rate, health officials said. In Alabama public schools, students are taught abstinence-based sex education as part of a half credit of health education in high school. Students learn that “abstinence is the only protection against pregnancy, HIV/AIDs and STDs,” said state Department of Education spokeswoman Edith Parten.

[...] “Your personal intimacy behavior in any population is generally not something you run around sharing with people,” Knight said, “and you don’t know—in any age group—who you are exposed to by exposing yourself to a partner who swears they’re healthy, swears they’ve never done anything, swears they are saint of the month.

“And guess what? They’re not.”

Please, educate your kids, America. Enough ignorance, ok?

More journalism like this, please – watch the clip at Crooks and Liars if you like.

Crooks and Liars

Shuster: “Let’s talk about the public trust. You represent, of course, a district in western Tennessee. What was the name of the last solider from your district who was killed in Iraq?”

Blackburn:”The name of the last soldier killed in Iraq uh – from my district I – I do not know his name -”

Shuster: “Ok, his name was Jeremy Bohannon, he was killed August the 9th, 2007. How come you didn’t know the name?”

Blackburn: “I – I, you know, I – I do not know why I did not know the name…” [Snip]

Shuster: “But you weren’t appreciative enough to know the name of this young man, he was 18 years old who was killed, and yet you can say chapter and verse about what’s going on with the New York Times and Move On.org.” [Snip]

Shuster: “But don’t you understand, the problems that a lot of people would have, that you’re so focused on an ad — when was the last time a New York Times ad ever killed somebody? I mean, here we have a war that took the life of an 18 year old kid, Jeremy Bohannon from your district, and you didn’t even know his name.”

Dudehisattva

New York, NY (Rotters)- In a vote of 3,100,000 to 100,000 yesterday, the members of a massive nationwide progressive political action group voted overwhelmingly to place a second ad in the New York Times this weekend condemning the U.S. Congress for wasting time condemning them over their previous ad condemning General David Petraeus as “General Betray us”. The ad implies that both houses of Congress, in particular the leadership, are “Ass-kissing little chickenshits”, a term which has been used to refer to General Petraeus by his superiors in the past.

Congress has vowed to convene a special session this weekend to vote on another condemnation of the latest ad. Preliminary polling of the Senate indicates that the condemnation would pass handily with 80 votes for and 20 votes against. This margin guarantees that there would be no veto from the president.

The White House refused to directly comment on either the ad or Congress’s proposed response. “Unlike the blatantly partisan smear directed at General Petraeus, they may actually have a point here,” stated White House spokesperson Dana Perino. “The President is happy to see the national dialogue gravitate towards these more important and debatable issues, but is clearly disappointed over the language.”

VIa Happening Here.

Iraq, Deep In Your BonesA war that isn’t really a war, the great humiliation that’s ours forever. Is there any upside? – CommonDreams.org

It’s the great unspoken subtext. Iraq has always been a war between our dueling national identities, a battle over how we are to move and breathe and behave in the new millennium. Are we really this violently paranoid bully, this rogue pre-emptive screw-em-all ideological war machine defined by the dystopian Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld vision of permanent, ongoing global conflict?

Or do we try, instead, to move forward and reinvent ourselves over and over again as the world’s most commited, forceful peacekeeper, ever striving for balance and cooperation and tact, even in the face of hardship and fundamentalist rage, refusing to be taunted and dragged down lest we take the bait and lose our minds and engage in torture and misprision and ultraviolence and become little better, ideologically speaking, than our taunters? Have we already made our choice?

Because the truth is, we are well past the point of salvaging anything noble or honest from Bush’s massive, historic debacle. We have only this brutal reality: Iraq is, and forever will be, one of the most extraordinary wastes in all of American history.

A waste of money. A waste of time. A stunning, almost unspeakable waste of life. A waste of resources and intellectual capital and a massive waste of national spirit. A waste of energy and hope and a giant squandering of any goodwill or empathy our former allies might’ve had for America in its post-9/11 state. Heard it all before? Sure you have.

Some scenes remain almost comical in their absurdity. Perhaps you saw that money, those enormous, ridiculous piles of American cash, the photos floating around of American soldiers guarding giant, shrink-wrapped pallets of U.S. currency known as “cashpaks,” each reportedly containing about $1.6 million in stacks of $100 bills, all airlifted by the ton straight from the Federal Reserve and set down in the Iraqi sun like rotting fruit, small mountains of your tax dollars earmarked to buy off various warlords and pay for covert, unauthorized operations all over the Middle East in an attempt to buy our way into some sort of impossible, forced stability. Right.

Or maybe it’s the bodies, the sheer waste of American flesh, not merely the thousands of U.S. dead or even the countless tens of thousands of dead Iraqi citizens but also the lesser-known horrors, like the epidemic of brain-damaged U.S. soldiers, thousands of them, so many that they’re becoming their own category of study in medical textbooks given how they’re beginning to exhibit combinations of trauma doctors have never seen before.

What a recruitment poster this is. Come fight in the American military. We’re exhausted, overstretched, bewildered, have lowered our entrance barrier to accept D-grade students and former inmates, have almost zero idea what we’re actually fighting for, and serve under a Commander in Chief who cares more about trying to shore up his wretched legacy than for the loss of American life. Oh and by the way, odds are extremely high you will return home permanently wounded, traumatized, or brain damaged. How very proud we are.

We all know the current reality: We are not safer. We are not better off in any measurable way. We are not stronger or more unified or prouder or more respected or healthier or wealthier or wiser and we have done exactly zero to stem the flood of radical Islam or the general outpouring of global disgust at what America has become under this president. This is our scar. This is our great American shame.

Gotta admit, Dubya is quite the fundraiser!

I actually gave money to MoveOn for pissing off Bush, not because the organization was under attack. But anyone who can actually get the idiot’s attention and let them know 70% of Americans disapprove of the war deserves a few bucks.

AMERICAblog: A great nation deserves the truth
Dear MoveOn member,

Yesterday, an amazing thing happened. After the Senate’s shameful vote, and after President Bush called MoveOn “disgusting,” our email started to fill up with messages like this one:

I’m currently in Iraq. I do not agree with this war, and if I did support this war, it would not matter. You have the RIGHT to speak the truth. We KNOW that you support us. Thank you for speaking out for being our voice. We do not have a voice. We are overshooted by those who say that we soldiers do not support organizations like MoveOn. WE DO.

YOU ARE OUR voice.

And then came the donations. By midnight, over 12,000 people had donated $500,000—more than we’ve raised any day this year—for our new ad calling out the Republicans who blocked adequate rest for troops headed back to Iraq.

The message from MoveOn members was loud and clear: Don’t back down. Take the fight back to the issues that matter.

Paul Begala: Democrats Should Attack Bush, Not MoveOn – Politics on The Huffington Post

Before Democrats fall all over themselves to agree with a president whose trust and honesty rating from the American people is even lower than his IQ, let’s look at the real record of Bush’s cowardice when it comes to speaking out against attacks on military heroes:

* In the 2000 South Carolina primary, George W. Bush stood next to a man described as a “fringe” figure – a man who had attacked Bush’s own father – at a Bush rally. With Bush applauding him, the man said John McCain “abandoned” veterans. McCain, who was tortured in a North Vietnamese POW camp, was incensed. Five U.S. Senators who fought in Vietnam, including Democrats John Kerry, Max Cleland and Bob Kerrey, condemned the attack and called on Bush to repudiate it. When pressed on it at a debate hosted by CNN’s Larry King, Bush meekly muttered that he shouldn’t be held responsible for what others say. Even when he’s standing next to them at a Bush rally.

* In the 2002 campaign, draft dodger Saxby Chambliss ran an ad with pictures of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, then said Sen. Max Cleland lacked courage. Max Cleland left three limbs in Vietnam as an Army captain. Mr. Bush’s political aide, Karl Rove, later refused to disavow the ad, saying, “President Bush and the White House don’t write the ads for Senate candidates.”

* Also in the 2002 campaign, the PAC for the Family Research Council, a close Bush ally, ran an ad in South Dakota that pictured Sen. Tom Daschle and Saddam Hussein. “What do Saddam Hussein and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle have in common?” the ad asked. Apparently, they both opposed drilling in the Arctic wilderness. First, I had no idea that supporting drilling in the wilderness is a family values issue. Second, I have seen no reporting on the late Iraqi dictator’s position on Alaska drilling. But I do know Tom Daschle is an Air Force veteran. Mr. Bush never disavowed the smear.

* But perhaps the worst was what was done to John Kerry. Kerry earned five major medals in combat: the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts. And yet supporters of Bush and Cheney decided to smear his war record. The despicable, dishonest Swift Boat attacks alleged that Kerry fabricated reports that earned him the Bronze Star. The Swifties also suggested that Kerry’s wounds were insignificant – and that one was even self-inflicted. Kerry’s wounds were certainly more serious than Mr. Bush’s, who suffered a cut on his finger from popping a beer can while avoiding his duty in the Alabama National Guard. At the 2000 GOP convention, rich, white Republicans were photographed gleefully putting Band-Aids with purple hearts on their chubby cheeks. Mr. Bush refused to condemn the attack – blandly noting he didn’t like 527 groups generally – and later nominated one of the men who financed the smear to be Ambassador to Belgium.

Mr. Bush is a coward and a bully. He knows he’ll never be the kind of hero his father was. He knows he lacks the heroism of John Kerry or Max Cleland, so he overcompensates with bluster and bravado. In fact, he told bloggers recently that he wishes he were fighting in Iraq. The Washington Post’s Dan Froomkin reported that Bush told a blogger in Iraq that he’d like to be carrying a 50-pound pack and an M-16, but, “One, I’m too old to be out there. And, two, they’d notice me.”

So Mr. Bush is too old to fight in Iraq, and he was too rich and well-connected to fight in Vietnam. But he’s itchin’ for a fight with a progressive interest group. Does anyone believe he’d have the same outrage if a right-wing group were attacking war heroes? Of course not.

MoveOn And the Kabuki Congress | The Agonist

Kabuki Congress: The bottom line is this. About half of Democrats (list at the bottom) just don’t like the netroots or uppity citizens. They really don’t like us. When they just go through the motions we get angry. We ask people to call them (who often don’t say nice things on the phone). They don’t really want to end the war; they don’t really want to restore Habeas Corpus. Oh sure, they’ll go through the motions, but they won’t force the Republicans to actually filibuster. They won’t work with outside groups to really put pressure on vulnerable Republicans, nor will they do anything significant to ratchet up the pressure.

Why? Because they figure they’re going to win in 2008 anyway, and they can do it without the netroots. And if the price is letting another couple hundred thosuand Iraqis die; if the price is another 1,000 or so American deaths – well, that’s an acceptable price to them. It’s certainly not worth having to get unpleasant with the Republican; having to fight hard. So a certain section of the Democratic party has come to hate the netroots for pushing them to fight. They’re going to get everything they really want without fighting, they figure – so why do more than go through the motions? Real filibusters, with the cots and so on, and maybe weeks of it, are really unpleasant. Maybe not as unpleasant as having your legs blown off by an IED, but then, these are important people.

For a while now a lot of activist bloggers have been holding onto the last shreds of the hope ignited in November of last year – that electing a Democratic Congress make a real difference. This act has dispelled most of that. Practically every blogger I know is furious. This puts them, I might add, back in the camp with their readers, most of whom, judging from comments and from the polls, have been disgusted every since the Iraqi authorization bill went through. The honeymoon is over, and the Democrats who did this will reap what they sowed. Both they, and the netroots will be worse for it, but there is no way out – the real betrayal, in the end, was of the base, by these Democrats. And as Digby would say, for us to go crawling back now would be to act to them like they act towards the Republicans – as a battered wife crawling back to her husband despite the abuse.

The job now will be to support those few Dems who deserve it, to work on primaries and recruiting candidates and get ready for 2008. Working with the leadership is off the table – I personally will no longer be asking anyone to call on anything unless I believe the leadership will fight for the bill, rather than just make a token vote and let it go down easily. No fight – no support. I know I am not the only one who feels this way.