US Vets refused the right to vote?

Almost. Secretary of the Dept. of Veterans Affairs, James Peake, continues to refuse to allow non-partisan groups from helping vets register to vote. Like everything else being revealed about the real treatment our vets receive when they come home, this is a national disgrace.

Peake, if this order stands, you’re nothing but a pig just like your boss.

Wounded vets and amputees who have no mobility and thus cannot get out of the VA hospitals to register are shit out of luck. Because Peake will not allow even The League of Women Voters to assist them to register. His reason? It would interfere with the quality of their medical care! I guess Peake hasn’t been following the news which has told us repeatedly that there IS NO quality medical care in the VA facilities.

What is the real reason? These vets, like all the Iraq and Afghanistan vets are volunteers, every one. We must assume that they supported the war. Why not let them register to vote?  Um, it couldn’t be that the administration is worried that these tens of thousands of wounded vets might be having second thoughts about the war, could it? That maybe now that they have been there, seen it up close and personal, experienced the truth of the Iraqi horror, that they might vote for someone who promises to end it? That maybe they will vote for anyone who might spare their buddies from possibly becoming victims like them?

I don’t know the reason. I’m just a dumb old fart with a computer. But I do know that we should be bending over backwards to insure that our vets have access to every single American right and priviledge that they have volunteered to fight and die for. And, as I understand it, despite administrations attempts to manipulate it, voting is still an American right.

Absurdity Within the Catholic Church

Three devoted women, who have taken a lifelong vow to become Catholic Priests, were immediately excommunicated by the church. But if you are a MALE priest and you rape a child, no prob. Your status in the church is solemnly and sacredly secure.

There is just no way that I can say it more succinctly than this:

…Sunday in Boston all three were “ordained” in a ceremony run by a pro-women priest organization. The Archdiocese of Boston promptly declared that the women had automatically excommunicated themselves by such action. Their excommunicable sin: yearning to dedicate themselves to the church and faith they love.

Meanwhile, here’s who hasn’t been excommunicated: hundreds of priests and bishops who’ve admitted to or been accused of multiple sexual assaults on children and teenagers. Some resign. Some are defrocked. But many more remain Catholics in good standing or even retain their titles, their pay, their clerical trappings and the support of the church.

“I’m not sure I’ve heard of anybody (in the sex scandal) being excommunicated for raping a child,” said someone who follows these cases nonstop. “But a woman who wants to say Mass?”

Off with her head! Clearly, the priest’s behavior is considered minor compared to these three women who have the gall to want to serve their local people by becoming priests. Here’s an example of who the church believes is more fit to preach to your children than these three women.

Francis E. Bass, a former bishop in the Davenport, Iowa, diocese, was accused of abusing many boys and of sharing them with multiple priests in group sex orgies. He settled a lawsuit with the archdiocese after the statute of limitation ran out for criminal prosecution. The archdiocese, by the way, asked the Vatican to defrock Bass. The Vatican said no, leaving him free to say Mass every day.

The list of perverts that have been protected by the Church seems endless. Just read the article.  Not to mention their complicity during the Holocaust and acceptance of slavery. Their arrogance knows no bounds.

And now, the pope is in Australia of all places, apologizing for the sexual rape and abuse of children by his priests and bishops there! He’s doing a goddamn world apology tour! I know he’s trying to use his papal aura to convince victims not to sue, but I sincerely hope they are not swayed by his insincere mumblings of regret. Go for the money folks, while there’s still some left.

How about a new victim’s slogan. “They got the sucks, NOW we get the bucks.”

Has a nice ring to it. Not bad for a three martini idea.

Deleting comments

I have only deleted comments to my posts once in the past that I can remember. In that instance, I was emailed by the attorney for a young divorced woman whose exhusband had killed  their two children and himself in a desparate rage that has yet to be explained. I had followed and written about him because he was an untreated PTSD veteran of Iraq. The comments, mostly by family members, had become heated and even petty, and the attorney asked if I would consider removing the worst of them as they were disturbing to the exwife and the one surviving child. I agreed to do just that.

But today I deleted a series of comments left recently by someone who calls him/herself the ignorant American. This person somehow found my tiny blog and decided to stop by - and I will put this as respectfully as I can - to ridicule my more liberal views and to promote the conservative agenda of Mr. Bush and Mr. McCain. How’s that for respectful!

In any case, I deleted his/her comments because I don’t believe what he/she had to say, think he/she is utterly and completely wrong, and let him call me an idiot and a moron one time too many already. I’m pretty sure my IQ is greater than his and I’m damn sure my experience is much more broad, but neither is the point.

The point is, it’s my blog. I will delete who and what I want and write what I want. If Mr./Mrs./Ms ignorant American doesn’t like it, he/she can go comment somewhere else or he/she can go fuck him/herself.

It’s time for some campaignin’

Absolutely classic…..

A Common Sense Republican

I know. It sounds like an oxymoron. But this is the most sensible commentary on the election and it’s probable impact that I have read from either side of the isle.

I’m a lifelong Republican - a supply-side conservative. I worked in the Reagan White House. I was the chief economist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for five years. In 1994, I helped write the Republican Contract with America. I served on Bob Dole’s presidential campaign team and was chief economist for Jack Kemp’s Empower America.

This November, I’m voting for Barack Obama.

Larry Hunter offers up a brief but down to earth, reasonable argument for his decision to switch sides for the good of the country. I like it and I think it’s well worth a read by repubs and dems alike. It’s about time that we crawled out of our political party boxes and started thinking about what is ultimately the best for the nation at this absolutely critical point in time.

These past eight years, we have spent over a trillion dollars on foreign soil - and lost countless lives - and done what I consider irreparable damage to our Constitution.

If economic damage from well-intentioned but misbegotten Obama economic schemes is the ransom we must pay him to clean up this foreign policy mess, then so be it. It’s not nearly as costly as enduring four more years of what we suffered the last eight years.

Here here. Read it. Pass it on.

Alive and kicking

I know I’ve been remiss about posting. Just very busy right now. I’ll get caught up this weekend. The candidates are giving us so much juicy material to post about and of course Bush provides a neverending supply of noteworthy raw sewage. Catch you in a couple days

A Last Throw of the Dice…?

I rarely read the US press anymore as I find that, when the biased reporting isn’t downright outrageous, it is often just plain silly. It’s also frequently behind the times. I read first about Tony Snow on the BBC Online. It was another hour before I saw the first article from a US source.

New Zealander, Bob Rigg, writing freelance for The Asia Times, sums up the US strategy in Iraq-Iran very nicely. In 13 paragraphs, his summary puts it in a perspective that even I might understand.

…architects of the Project for a New American Century, including luminaries such as John Bolton, Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz.

The neo-conservative scenario was clear: a devastating military strike would knock out Iraq’s powerful armed forces, and its population would welcome US liberators with open arms. The US would then immediately strike at Iran…Before the world could collect its wits, both Iraq and Iran would have been under direct US control. But the best laid plans of mice and men …

He explains how the Middle Eastern countries, instead of kowtowing to the US since the invasion of Iraq, are doing exactly the opposite. They are flexing their muscles and becoming bolder.

…its [US] pre-eminence has been eroded by misguided neo-conservative adventures in the Middle East, and by the emergence of a new international constellation of powerful and assertive states, including in the region. Their assertiveness has increased in proportion to the decline in the political and moral standing of the US, which is now less in control of the world and the Middle East than at any time since the turn of the new century.

This entire master plan for control of Middle Eastern oil reserves, which has been in play and passed down from one administration to the next since the Shah, finally settled in the incapable hands of one George W. Bush. He surrounded himself with those who were already involved in the plan, indeed I’m sure they are the same ones who worked behind the scenes to insure his election,  and he gave them free reign to finally complete it.

But now that the plan is falling apart, what with the Iraqi government demanding a timetable, the American public strongly against expansion, the economy going in the toilet while Bush continues to spend millions daily in Iraq, and the incompetence and impotence of the Bush White House, he is becoming desparate to make something happen before he leaves office. Or I should say, the powerful repubs who pull his strings, fearful that the Bush clone, McCain isn’t going to pull off the election, are scrambling to position the US so there will appear to be no alternative other than war with Iran.

I think we better be careful in these final days of Bushco just what we believe about Iran, Iraq, Israel, Syria and everyone else in that region. The propoganda and fabrications are going to get heavy. I don’t think ANY major decisions should be allowed in these final few months before the next president. The chances of Bush actually improving the situation are nil. He hasn’t done one positive thing for the country yet. Don’t believe he is going to start now.

Obama: Speak more than just English speech causes uproar

Well, at least it caused an uproar in the usual republican circles.

In what I thought was a very good, down to earth speech, Obama suggested that American children should learn a foreign language along with English. OMG! NOT A FOREIGN LANGUAGE! AMERICANS?

Yeah, pretty ridiculous idea. Why should Americans, the rulers of the world - the superior race - the most intelligent people on the planet - the chosen people by God, have to learn someone else’s - anyone else’s language. DAMN THOSE HEATHENS! If they want to talk to us, they damn well better be able to speak our language. Even if we are in their country!

Guess what? Many of them already do speak your language. Because they have such a better public school system than exists in the US, because they understand the advantages of being bi-lingual, because they have a clue about being prepared for international business, their syllabus includes English.

Because Obama suggested that it might be a good idea for American people to be able to say more than Merci Beaucoup, or Si Senor when they are in a foreign country, the right wing biased, drippingly wealthy, racist msm jumped on it and tried to make it sound as if that was a bad thing. And the Americans will go, “OOOOO…” what a bad suggestion! He wants us all to be Mexicans! Or Chinese! Or some such idiotic ignorant bullshit.

You know what, gang? It’s a damn good idea for American children to be required to speak a second languadge. You know, like almost all of the other modern countries require. It’s a small world and who knows what business is going to look like even 20 years from now? We currently are teaching our children how to do the jobs that exist today. But many of the jobs, indeed about 50%,  that will need filling in 20 years don’t even exist now.

Not to mention the fact that, if the US stays on its current course, if it continues to sink into economic depression, if it continues to produce failure after failure internationally and to lose respect around the world, if it’s weakened knees finally give out and it crumbles, your children would be well served to be able to communicate with foreign people from perhaps the new, more powerful nations.

Republicans: Our President is our WORST NIGHTMARE

I know I’ve been remiss about posting here but my schedule during the week just got crazy and I just don’t have any energy when I get home, especially after a martini or two. Hell, it’s 5:14 am right now and this is the only chance I have to post.

For now, if you haven’t seen the video of the 61 year old librarian who was thrown off a public street for carrying a sign that said McCain=Bush, go here and take a look.

The key phrase is at the end where this very polite lady asks, Why is McCain = Bush so offensive to republicans who voted for and defend Bush?

I think we know the answer and now the republicans have blown their own cover. By this action against a little old lady, they have proven that even they know Bush is a disaster and they can not allow their new candidate, to even have his name on the same sign with him. I just love it!

AMERICAN WOMAN

While Serena and Venus Williams get ready to face each other AGAIN for the championship at Wimbleton, Dara Torres won the women’s 100 meter freestyle at the US Olympic trials, setting a world record in the process. Not earth shattering in and of itself until you find out that she is 41 years old and this will be her 5th Olympic games.

When she climbed out of the pool, American Woman was blasting over the loudspeakers.

She’s not the only one, of course. The American swimming contingent is looking extremely strong and I just can’te wait to see them perform. But as an ex swimmer, I gotta tell you - still being able to compete, let alone being competitive, let alone winning, and let alone setting a world record at the age of 41 is absolutely spectacular and unprecedented.

These awsome performances by our outstanding young athletes just make me damn proud. And it’s good to feel that again for a change and after so long.