Rev. Jim Wallis Delivers Dem Radio Address

This week, Reverend Jim Wallis delivered the Democratic Radio Address.

To listen to his remarks, click here.

I'm Jim Wallis, author of God's Politics. I was surprised and grateful when Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid called to say his party wanted to set a new tone and invite, for the first time, a non-partisan religious leader to deliver their weekly radio address and speak about the values that could unite Americans at this critical time.

So, I want to be clear that I am not speaking for the Democratic Party, but as a person of faith who feels the hunger in America for a new vision of our life together, and sees the opportunity to apply our best moral values to the urgent problems we face. I am not an elected official or political partisan, but a religious leader who believes that real solutions must transcend partisan politics. For too long, we have had a politics of blame and fear, while America is eager for a politics of solutions and hope. It is time to find common ground by moving to higher ground.

Because we have lost a commitment to the common good, politics is failing to solve the deepest crises of our time. Real solutions will require our best thinking and dialogue, but also call us to transformation and renewal.

Most Americans know that the important issues we confront have an essential moral character. It is the role of faith communities to remind us of that fact. But religion has no monopoly on morality. We need a new, morally-centered discourse on politics that welcomes each of us to the table.

A government that works for the common good is central. There is a growing desire for integrity in our government across the political spectrum. Corruption in government violates our basic principles. Money and power distort our political decision-making and even our elections. We must restore trust in our government and reclaim the integrity of our democratic system.

At this moment in history, we need new directions.

Who is left out and left behind is always a religious and moral question. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the health of a society was measured by how it cared for its weakest and most vulnerable, and prosperity was to be shared by all. Jesus proclaimed a gospel that was "good news to the poor."

I am an evangelical Christian, and a commitment to "the least of these" is central to my personal faith and compels my public actions. It is time to lift up practical policies and effective practices that "make work work" for low-income families and challenge the increasing wealth gap between rich and poor. We must find a new moral and political will to overcome poverty that combines personal and social responsibility with a commitment to support strong families.

Answering the call to lift people out of poverty will require spiritual commitment and bipartisan political leadership. Since the election, I have spoken with leaders from both parties about creating a real anti-poverty agenda in Congress. We need a grand alliance between liberals and conservatives to produce new and effective strategies.

This week, President Bush met with Prime Minister Maliki of Iraq, seeking solutions to the rapidly deteriorating situation in that civil-war torn nation. Nearly 3,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died. The cost and consequences of a disastrous war are moral issues our country must address. Leaders in both parties are acknowledging that the only moral and practical course is to dramatically change the direction of U.S. policy, starting with an honest national debate about how to extricate U.S. forces from Iraq with the least possible damage to everyone involved.

Our earth and the fragile atmosphere that surrounds it are God's good creation. Yet, our environment is in jeopardy as global warming continues unchecked and our air and water are polluted. Good stewardship of our resources is a religious and moral question. Energy conservation and less dependence on fossil fuels are commitments that could change our future- from the renewal of our lifestyles to the moral redemption of our foreign policies.

A culture that promotes healthy families is necessary to raise our children with strong values, and the breakdown of family and community in our society must be addressed. But we need serious solutions, not the scapegoating of others. And wouldn't coming together to find common ground that dramatically reduces the number of abortions be better than both the left and the right using it as an issue to divide us?

We need a new politics inspired by our deepest held values. We must summon the best in the American people, and unite to solve some of the moral issues of our time. Americans are much less concerned about what is liberal or conservative, what is Democrat or Republican. Rather, we care about what is right and what works.

The path of partisan division is well worn, but the road of compassionate priorities and social justice will lead us to a new America. Building that new America will require greater moral leadership from both Democrats and Republicans, and also from each and every one of us.

I'm Jim Wallis. Thank you and God bless you.

Who Knows Why Cambone Goes?

The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights charged, in a lawsuit two years ago in Germany, that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld bears direct responsibility for the torture of U.S. detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and the U.S. Navy prison at Guantanamo by approving illegal interrogation techniques. His undersecretary of Defense, Stephen Cambone, who resigned yesterday, was also named in that lawsuit.

The Washington Post leads us to believe Cambone has quit because of the spying he's previously authorized on Quakers and other non-threatening American citizens who were involved in anti-war groups. That was bad enough, but I think it's something else. I think Bush is now trying to distance himself from the Defense Department people he kept on for too long while trying to shield himself and his Vice President (Cheney) from political attack about the Iraq mess - the torture, the post-war disaster, et al. If Bush had canned these people when they should have been canned (in Spring 2004 when Abu Ghraib scandal first erupted), Bush would have lost the people's confidence (the little confidence he still had in 2004 about Iraq) and my bet is that he knew he would have lost the 2004 election. So Bush kept all of his administration's "errors" close to his circle, where they could continue the string of failure and deception.

In the most current news, it's said that eleven Iraqis who were held at Abu Ghraib prison and other U.S.-run facilities in Iraq and a Saudi detainee at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, would file a criminal complaint on Nov. 14, according to Michael Rattner of the Center for Constitutionals Rights.

At a May, 2004 Senate Armed Services committee hearing on Iraqi prisoner abuse, the undersceretary of Defense Stephen Cambone said:

"...with respect to the application of the Geneva Convention to detainees in Iraq, from the outset of the war in Iraq, the United States government has recognized and made clear that the Geneva Conventions apply to our activities in that country. Members of our armed forces should have been aware of that."

We know now that his statement isn't true at all. Former Army Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski has said that the case of prisoner abuses in Abu Ghraib wasn't just a case of a few bad apples and that the knowledge and responsibility clearly "goes all the way to the top of the chain of command to the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, and to the Vice President, Dick Cheney."

The Center for Constitutionals Rights' spokesman Mr. Rattner has said,

"Now that Rumsfeld has resigned he no longer has the type of immunity typically given to heads of state and high-ranking government officials."

Since the Military Commissions Act signed by Bush last month gives immunity to U.S. officials in connection with detainee interrogations, "the German courts no longer have the excuse of saying these cases are going to be prosecuted in U.S. courts," Rattner said.

A TIME magazine article has more on the German lawsuit. I don't see any way that Cambone could have remained welcome to stay in a White House that will likely want to make this entire Iraq mess look like it was always (and solely) the Defense Department heads' fault. We know better - we followed Dick Cheney's role in the "shadow-CIA" Office of Special Planning all throughout the lead-up to the biggest mistake our nation has ever made. Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales may also be taking a lot of heat if this lawsuit has any legs - and perhaps a permenent vacation.

World AIDS Day -December 1

When asked to write something for December's International Carnival of the Pozitivities, a cooperative blog effort to help others understand how HIV/AIDS effects real human beings, I immediately agreed. I've lost (and am losing) too many friends and loved ones to a disease that no one talks about because of pride, fear, embarrassment, depression, or pain. We need to open up and talk about HIV/AIDS and how it effects our lives and the lives of those around us.

December 1, 2006 is World AIDS Day. On this day, I'll tell you about Chuck, a boy I grew up with and called a close friend. He was always a joyous person. A gifted musician and a gay male living in a town where his prospects for happiness with openness about his true self were dulled by prejudice and fear, he moved to San Francisco in the late 70s. Chuck was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in the days when the public barely knew what the heck it was. Those were the days when President Reagan's response to the easily forseeable oncoming public health crisis was "halting and ineffective," according to his biographer Lou Cannon. "Those infected initially with this mysterious disease -- all gay men -- found themselves targeted with an unprecedented level of mean-spirited hostility." [source of quote]

I knew Chuck's mother and father all my life. They were good friends to my own parents and Chuck was more to me like family than just a friend. He was like a big brother to me. An only child, Chuck was luckier than some others of his time. He was "out" from the beginning. None of us who knew and loved him ever questioned his personal choices. He had wonderful, loving and supportive parents.

The disease took him quickly once the opportunistic infections begin to emerge. At that time, medicine could do little for him. There just wasn't enough known about the disease except what you'd hear from the so-called "moral majority" - that it was a punishment from God for the sin of homosexuality. When I speak about real values today on this blog - love, compassion, understanding, human rights, justice - I speak about the memory of the lack of compassion and the outright fear-mongering of the Religious Right toward a disease that stole someone I knew and loved.

Looking back, I wish I could have been mature enough to have been an effective listener in the many times when Chuck and his mother must have needed to talk to someone confidentially. I wasn't old enough, nor was I educated enough at the time. I remember my own parents explaining it all to me. I didn't learn about HIV/AIDS from my own government. Instead, I learned it the hard way, and believe me, I realize it was a lot harder for those who had to suffer the night sweats and the never ending body pains - hardly realizing what was slowly killing them. I made a journey West ten years ago just to visit Chuck's grave. I wish to God Chuck could have been standing there - alive. Thankfully, there has been good progress in medical research that allows for HAART (anti-retroviral therapy) that can improve the quality and length of life for many HIV-positive people. The importance of early detection is key to survival. If you are not sure, please go and get tested today.

On December 1 - World AIDS day - I see that there are many people in this world who have taken up the cause because our leaders abdicated their responsibilities so long ago. President Reagan could have chosen to end the homophobic rhetoric that flowed from so many in his administration. Dr. C. Everett Koop, Reagan's surgeon general, has said that because of "intradepartmental politics" he was cut out of all AIDS discussions for the first five years of the Reagan administration. On June 1 1987, after being booed at an AIDS conference, then-Vice President George HW Bush wondered aloud in front of a live mic: "Who was that? Some gay group out there?" We're way behind the eight-ball, but I give former President Clinton credit for really opening up the gates of knowledge about HIV/AIDS during his administration. With a foul scent of the old "moral majority" foolishness, the current Bush administration seems to have closed some doors and brought back some of the fear and ignorance about birth control and how it can stop the deadly disease in our own nation as well as overseas.

A leader who understands values from the most human perspective would scramble to push an agenda that would include real and complete sex education for the protection of the children of this world. If you think that frank talk about sex causes children to lose their innocence, just wait until you see what the effect of AIDS will do to their sense of innocence. I was no more than an innocent child when Chuck died of AIDS-related complications. It is realizing that Chuck was an innocent child that makes me so sad as I write these words today. We're all innocent children.

Break the silence.
If we want to know all we can about HIV/AIDS, go to the World AIDS Day website.

Please say a prayer for Chuck and promise me you'll teach your children well.


________________

See Royce Hardin's moving, honest and beautiful testimony to the trials of HIV/AIDS, along with the mysteries and wonders of love, life, death, and the spirit.

See outgoing UN secretary-general Kofi Annan's statement for World AIDS Day.

Cindy Sheehan on The Draft

"Why would we force feed this monster that steals our children and bleeds our pocketbooks dry? We should never force our children into the mouth of the behemoth, but we should also do everything in our power to stop them from volunteering for the same duty. Putting more of our bodies under the control of irresponsible maniacs, is just, well, irresponsible!"

- Cindy Sheehan on the topic of military conscription in the age of the Bush Wars

I got a note from Cindy Sheehan on MySpace today with her opinion of the recent chatter about reactivating the draft. Here's an excerpt:

Although, I admire Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY), who himself, served during the Korean conflict and has been serving America , honorably, as a Congressman for many years, I am 100%, categorically opposed to forced conscription and think that Mr. Rangel is seriously misguided on this issue.

First of all, we had forced conscription during the entire outrage that was the Vietnam War. That war lasted 13 years and cost the lives of millions of people. A draft didn’t stop that war and, in fact, provided fresh and continual cannon fodder for the war profiteers. Escalation of that conflict was horrific as the proposed escalation of Iraq will only beget new slaughter on a heretofore unprecedented and unimaginable scale. Forced conscription deals out the death and destruction at a greater and more deadly pace.

Secondly, a draft will never be fair and balanced. The children of the wealthy (who oftentimes are war profiteers themselves) will always be able to get out of war. Children of presidents, future presidents, Congressional Reps and Senators will never be forced to serve in the wars that their fathers and mothers commit other children to. A draft will not equalize what we have for the most part in our country, now, a poverty draft. The children of the poor and marginalized of our society are the ones who always have to pay for the greed of a very few.

Finally, a draft will only give the war machine more of our children to consume to generate its wealth. As Rep. Rangel said, we can’t fight wars in North Korea and Iran without a draft. I say “Amen!” We can’t fight wars in North Korea and Iran without a draft! More bullet sponges for two more needless wars: Please, God, no!

Jacksonville Daily News Boldly Defends Goliath Wal Mart

I give the editors at The Daily News in Jacksonville, N.C. credit for at least not letting Wal Mart's spreading of a false and misleading story about John Edwards last week go any further with more lies. Too many newspapers shamelessly jumped on conjecture borne of smear propaganda that was initiated last week by Wal Mart's coroporate headquarters after Edwards fiercely criticized their policies toward their employees.

I have a big problem with the Jacksonville Daily News editors' rationale regarding Senator Edwards support for the American worker.

I'm trying to figure out why these editiors would choose to defend the corporate behemoth with such lame rationalizations.

First example:

Employees in this nation have choices. If a Wal-Mart employee doesn’t think he or she is getting paid a fair wage, the employee is free to negotiate better pay and benefits. If that doesn’t work out, the employee can seek employment elsewhere.

Perhaps these news editors are out of touch because they make a decent wage and enjoy company benefits and forget that they're speaking about Wal Mart jobs with inadequate health care benefits for the employee and their children - - sometimes no health benefits at all.

In essence, this is what these editors are suggesting for the Wal Mart employees with horrible (or no) benefits and inadequate pay:
-
- Love your job - you're lucky to have it, you low wage peons. Ask, then shut up and accept it when Wal Mart tells you "no" and don't complain about the inequity. (This is not the American tradition.)
- Let the little Davids try to fight the corporate giant alone with no moral support from their government leaders, (This is not the American expectation.) or
- Leave your job if you dislike the pay and beneifits so some other David can come and be used up by Goliath. (This is not the American way)

Those kinds of ideas sound too close to pre-labor union America to sound "American" to me. Moral leadership is necessary in this particular situation. Wal Mart isn't some small business - they are a giant and they've rolled over small businesses and reduced choice in this nation (for shoppers and job seekers) in the name of low prices (which really aren't all that low if you consider the negative value of the dumb-down trade offs in our communities, with Wal Mart destroying or driving out the local classes of entrepreneurs and community leaders.) Our government has been sitting back and letting it go on for too long. The low wage American worker feels morally abandoned by their leaders. Is it any wonder they have become resigned to having to keep these economically unfair job packages? To argue had been hopeless for those with no voice..until leaders like Senator John Edwards came along and spoke for them.

..which brings me to the next decidedly misbegotten theory from the Jacksonville Daily News editors:

WakeUpWalMart.com claims that many of Wal-Mart’s practices are un-American. Of course, millions of Americans who shop at the retailer would beg to differ.

That's a hoot. What makes an American innately and undeniably "American" is certainly not Wal Mart and we should be aware of what they are implying and resent and reject the ridiculous implication. The Smiley Face is not the Red, White and Blue.

Here's another hoot: these editors speak as if Americans have a wider choice on where to go these days for their sundries and household needs. The strangest part, for me, is to see the editors assuming the playing field is even for Wal Mart and the few "moms and pops" that are still left competing with Wal Mart stores in this country. Mom and Pop have been steamrolled - flattened like pancakes by Wal Mart.

I'd wager, if you explained to the son of a recently-hired Wal Mart worker who'd lost his textile mill job and health benefits to "outsourcing" (and who can't even afford to get his son to the doctor when he's sick) that people are buying goods made of textiles from Pakistan at a low price because Dad no longer works for the American textile company that once supplied his own family with all the benefits and pay they'd needed to get by, the young son would "get it." The son would "get" the fact that Dad will no longer be able to afford college for him while those shoppers save a few pennies on those towels that were made in a faraway place of which he can't pronounce the name. If a kid can get it, why don't the editors of the Jacksonville Daily News get it? Perhaps the publisher had best get off its own anti-community right-wing because it's looking mightily ravaged from scraping bottom.

They say:

Businesses in the United States, whether they are corporate giants such as Wal-Mart or small mom-and-pop shops on Main Street, need less interference by government and politicians.

..as if the moms-and-pops ever had a choice or a chance against Wal Mart under the eye of a government who sat back and watched American choices fade with the sunset of globalization. Globalization will continue and I wonder when some of these ideological snails who call themselves "American" will catch up with the fact that regulations have been and will be (now more than ever) required in a democracy where American work, entrepreneurship, and leadership are still valued highly by the community and by the government that represents community members who work so hard and aspire to something greater.

It is very "American" to support the American worker and the American small business. Don't you forget it!

I think The Jacksonville News editors had best forget worrying their corporate-giant-loving heads about WakeUpWalMart and concentrate on "WakeUpJacksonvilleDailyNewsEditors".

____________




See WakeUpWalmart's latest ad.

Note: The editorial in today's Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is not simply constructive in its criticism, it is viscerally anti-Edwards. When an American leader generates this kind of reaction from newspaper editors, you can't help but wonder why they are defensive of Wal Mart to the point of outright political attack. It couldn't be because they have a right wing history, could it? Am I living in an alternative universe? I thought we, the people, voted against Bushworld last November 7, yet I can still smell Bushworld in these editorials.

Update: November 27 - The New Hampshire Union Leader continues the tradition of American newspaper editors oddly defending a corporate giant with what one rationally scrutinizing reader calls undisciplined logic. Senator Edwards provides a rebuttal in an AP article on November 28th appearing in the same newspaper (the same paper that endorsed Steve Forbes for President
in the 2000 election and Bush in 2004.)

Sunday Reflection

A Living Prayer
by Alison Krauss

Leadership Wanting on Iran/Iraq

IRAN and RUSSIA

Last spring, the United States called on all countries to stop all arms exports to Iran. Yet, the first of 29 Tor-M1 systems in a $700m deal have been delivered to Iran by Moscow. Hugh Hewitt points out the mixed messages being sent by Russia to Iran:

Iran must conclude that if Russia is willing to sell it the weapons necessary to defend nuclear facilities, it cannot really be intending to force the halt of construction on those facilities.

How long should Russia be allowed a "most favored nation" status in the UN? Former Senator John Edwards co-chaired a Council on Foreign Relations task force examining U.S.-Russian relations with Jack Kemp last winter. When asked by Newsweek last March whether or not he felt that the Russians have been helpful on Iran, he replied:

If I were going to choose a single test for our relationship with Russia, Iran is the test. We're united with the Europeans on this, so it really matters what Russia does in the Security Council. If ultimately the Iranians reject what we're demanding—us and the Russians—then we also should be saying to the Russians: "You should stop this Bushehr project because you can't continue to help them develop a nuclear facility while they're obviously in the process of trying to build a nuclear weapon.

Photo: Bushehr - 400 km south of Tehran




Libertarian writer Bernie Quigley of Free Market News believes that ideas like NATO expansion with nuclear potential into "Holy Roman Empire territory when Russia was perceived to be weak" was 'a mistake of historic proportions' by the best foreign policy minds" and continues proving to be so. [see foreign policy minds who disapproved] Mr. Quigley says:

Its strongest proponent was Vice President Al Gore. But the greatest danger of One Size Fits All Federalism is what we are seeing today in the Middle East; the smallest and quirkiest of well-funded political tribes can conjure influence and commandeer the will of the entire 300,266,521 of us, as they have in Iraq.

Here we are - millions upon millions of citizens, an alleged democracy - beholden to the whims of any one tribe at any given moment. How could we have allowed this to have happened to ourselves - to our democracy?

William Hartung, Senior Research Fellow at the World Policy Institute at the New School, said this in May, 1998:

Senators need to know that voting for NATO expansion could have serious political consequences down the road, once the public understands the full risks and costs involved.

With our foreign policy mistakes coming home to roost in the embers of a failed Iraq and in the light of Russia's bold hypocrisy and betrayal on Iran, will it now be time for the leaders who supported NATO expansion to be held accountable for the reality of the results of such a policy?

_________________


IRAQ

"He who wishes to fight must first count the cost. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be dampened. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor dampened, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue... In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns."

Sun Tzu
The Art of War

Consider this statement from Senator John Edwards from May, 2003:

One of the root causes of both the unease in the Middle East and terrorism is so many people in the Arab world live lives of hopelessness and despair. We have to make it clear that we care about addressing those root causes.... the political and economic stagnation in the Middle East and in the Arab world in general is astounding.

We can address the state sponsorship of terrorism in Iran, what Syria’s doing, Iraq, all of those issues, in a discreet way, one by one. But at the end of the day, unless over the long term we’re going to address the root causes of terrorism, we’re not going to get rid of the problem....the world needs to see America as a country that will reach out to them, that cares what they have to say, that cares about their problems, and that will work with them and the international community, including the United Nations, to solve the problems that exist in this world.

It is the only way that we’re going to be successful, number one. And it is the most effective way to keep the American people safe.

If keeping America safe is our goal in foreign policy, and if the solution is tied to addressing the hopelessness, despair, political injustice and economic stagnation for so many in the Arab world, then we have failed - and miserably so. In Iraq, over a hundred thousand American troops have fought, risked their lives, and died on a lost-track mission with no clearly delineated goals at the whim of the head of one tribal faction or another (depending on what day it is) in a place where our presence has exacerbated hopelessness, despair, injustice, extremism, and hatred. In short, it is an insurance policy for the perpetuation of terrorism.

Well over three years ago retired Marine General Anthony Zinni said "There is no strategy or mechanism for putting the pieces together," we're in danger of failing."

Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey told the Army Times this week that the U.S. would have to slash combat forces in Iraq to 10 brigades by Christmas to keep the Army from breaking. Hope is not a strategy, but it should be a goal. Despair is not a method, but it is a real result of a misguided foreign policy that, as of tomorrow, will be a war that is longer than World War II, but with disastrous results. Generals are tap dancing around the fact that we need to leave Iraq to the Iraqis to not only let them decide their own fate, but also to remove our Military from the brink of disaster.

Recruiters hoping to appeal to military service in our society will never succeed while this blunder of major proportions continues in Iraq. A draft, if indeed reactivated, will have our children and their parents in the streets demanding for this insanity in Iraq to end. We'd be ignorant and remiss not to expect that reaction - take one look at the public opinion of this war. They all know it, too - the ones who generate the debate about the draft. In the Art of War, Sun Tzu advised

"Regard your soldiers as your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys.
Look on them as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death!"

What kind of father would mislead his children - telling them to expect roses and cheers - and then set them on a dangerous path with no clear plan for victory?

Happy Thanksgiving

My Brightest Days

My God, the spring of all my joys,
The life of my delights,
The glory of my brightest days,
And comfort of my nights.

In darkest shades if He appears,
My dawning is begun,
He is my soul's sweet morning star,
And He's my rising sun.



Sacred Harp 546
O.A. Parris, 1959
Isaac Watts,1707

I recommend Georgia10's post from today at Daily Kos on hunger and homeslessness:
Seeing the Shadows

You can read my response, which is related to today's Catholic feast of Pope St Clement I: The Shadow Is You and Me

Mainstream Wrongly Relying on Right Sources

From the Daou Report to Digby to Eric Boehlert to Media Matters To Glenn Greenwald to A Tiny Revolution, everyone's talking about the intellectual bankruptcy of the right wing and the mainstream media that, for some reason beyond reason, still allow the proven-idiot wingers to pump their news machinery.

A Tribute to JFK

John Fitzgerald Kennedy
May 29, 1917 - November 22, 1963

China HIV Cases Up by 30%

China HIV Cases Up Nearly 30 Percent

BEIJING (Reuters) - The number of reported HIV/AIDS cases in China has grown by nearly 30 per cent this year, state media said on Wednesday, warning the virus seemed to be spreading from high-risk groups to the general public. [..]

[..] As of October 31, 12,464 people have died in China as a result of illnesses associated with the HIV virus, Hao Yang, deputy director of the Ministry of Health's Disease Control Bureau, said yesterday.

Hao added that virus appeared to be spreading from so-called high-risk groups to the general public.

Drug abuse accounted for 37 per cent of the cases reported in the first 10 months of the year, while unsafe sexual contact had caused 28 per cent, Hao noted, adding that these two activities had caused most of the infections. Before 2002, only 10 per cent of all infections were caused by sexual contact. [Reuters/Alertnet]

Archbishop Desmond Tutu's comments about the HIV/AIDS epidemic:

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has been asked about comments made by other religious figures that AIDS is "God's punishment" for sexual promiscuity or drug use. His response? An angry rebuttal: "If that were the kind of God we were told to worship, I would reject that God. My God is not a God who is so sadistic; why punish an innocent child?"
AIDS, he said is the new apartheid, the new enemy. "Let's stop playing around and roll up our sleeves and invoke the spirit that fought apartheid," he said. "We did it with apartheid, we can repeat it with AIDS."

In India, spiritual leaders, including Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and Bishop Lawrence Pius Dorai Raj, have recently come together to fight HIV/AIDS, stressing the need for preventive care for a disease that has hit five million Indians. They discussed HIV/AIDS care, giving the much-needed prophetic voice to the stigma and discrimination related to the disease. Faith-based bodies have "historically provided a vital network for community based work". The voluntary Health, Education and Rural Development Society in India [known as "Vherds"] stresses that these groups should play the key role in "compassionate care" for HIV/AIDS infected.

A Prayer For AIDS Awareness

Weary from anger, fear and confusion
Wailing at the loss of audacious beauty -
The souls stricken with AIDS
I search.

In my risings, I search for the answers
Buried deep in the cold earth.
Why has become as useless
As battling the winds.

Hope scurries under my feet
She is present, but fleeting.
I trace her with my eyes
I do not want to lose sight.

I lay down
And beseech You
Spread over me Your canopy of peace
So I may rest and find wholeness in Your shards

I lay down
And look above
Where the memories have formed
A canopy embroidered as finely as the stars
I am renewed and will continue to ask You
Spread over us Your canopy of peace.


A prayer by Rabbi Joshua Lesser of Atlanta, Ga.

Bush 41 Defends Son Angrily at Abu Dhabi Conference

I feel badly for former President George H.W. Bush. As a parent, it certainly would not be easy to hear the kind of criticism that he heard about his son George W. at a leadership conference in Abu Dhabi. [ [Raw Story] I would imagine it would only be natural for Bush 41 to defend hisson, but the way in which he defended his son likely was not convincing to those global business leaders who voiced their concerns. Insulting current and future global business partners, calling them "nuts" over their real concerns that could have been addressed with reason isn't good for business or politics, plain and simple.

What happens when reasoning cannot work because there is no way of rationalizing what has happened? Is that why the elder Bush got so upset - because there was nothing else for him to have done or said? Why did Bush 41 decide to walk away from capitalism-in-globalization as if it was a sinful and greedy concept when he said to one audience member concerned that globalization was front-loaded to serve American interests:

"To suggest that everything we do is because we're hungry for money, I think that's crazy. I think you need to go back to school."

If I didn't know better, I'd say that Bush 41 seems ashamed to admit he's a staunch capitalist. What sense do we make of capitalism when we're not looking out for Numero Uno? Let's face it, his son's administration is far - about as far as you can get - from being identified as any bleeding heart socialists.

Bush 41 further insulated what most people already view as his son's secretive, non-transparent administration when he refused to answer questions because reporters were present.

Bush said the presence of reporters in the audience prevented him from revealing his advice, or, for that matter, what policies the bipartisan Baker Commission ought to urge the president to follow in Iraq.

"I have strong opinions on a lot of these things. But the reason I can't voice them is, if I did what you ask me to do — tell you what advice I give my son — that would then be flashed all over the world,"

Bush said. "If it happened to deviate one iota, one little inch, from what the president's doing or thinks he ought to be doing, it would be terrible. It'd bring great anxiety not only to him but to his supporters."

Lieberman's New Communications Man Hates Bloggers

From Raw Story:

At his blog, Bull Moose, Wittmann has accused liberal and Democratic critics in the blogosphere of comprising "a left wing Cult of Bush Hatred."

"Because in the left wing universe, one must oppose everything the President supports," Wittmann wrote in February.

If a 31% presidential approval rating means anything, I guess that (fake Democrat) Senator Joe Lieberman's new communications director Marshall Wittmann must believe that today's booming majority of Americans is nothing more than a "big old left wing cult of Bush hatred." Wouldn't that make sense to you?

I don't hate President Bush. But I do hate hypocrisy. There's just no room for hypocrisy in today's politics. Worse, a communications director for any modern politician who starts out taking jabs at today's political bloggers at a time when most politicians are courting their favor has to be certifiably insane if they think they're doing their boss any favors.

Bush Gets An "F" For Moral Leadership on Sudan

Chad's falling off a cliff - and it's not a man I'm talking about. It's a nation. I'd wager that most people would have trouble finding Chad on the map of the world, but if there's one thing we surely have in common with the people who live in the African nation, it's that we are human beings. Even though you may live worlds apart, you can enter a young man's world at the point where you both understand what hatred means. Imagine your neighbors being hunted down day and night by people who want to kill you. When the innocent - the helpless and hopeless - lose faith in their fellow man to help them, there is little option but to fall victim to hatred, extremism, and violence.

We all can avoid this from happening if we want - if we will work together. If Chad collapses into civil war for years to come, there will be millions more deaths in surrounding nations. This kind of hatred and chaos has an easy way of spreading if it goes unchecked. As much and as hard as General Colin Powell tried when he was our Secretary of State, our White House either could not or would not act as a moral leader on behalf of people in this world who have no voice and are no better off than wild hunted animals under constant threat from the janjaweed in places like the Sudan-Darfur/Chad border region.

Two years after declaring a genocide in the region, the Bush administration is still only relying upon unsuccessful economic sanctions and has recently sent the new special envoy for Sudan, Andrew Natsios, on a dog-'n-pony trip to Sudan, where he met - low-key - with government officials and visit war-torn Darfur who have long refused to allow 20,000 U.N. troops to replace a poorly funded, ill-equipped African Union force of 7,000.

This is not moral leadership. The whole world's watching. People are dying in front of our eyes. We can delicately tap dance around the Sudanese govenment only for so long before the tap dance is seen as the greatest sin we could all ever have committed together.

Nichlas Kristof has a recommendation for those who aren't sure what they can do:

The most common question I get from readers about Darfur is: What can I do? The simplest answer is to write or call the White House and members of Congress. (See how your representative does on the issue at www.darfurscores.org). Imagine if Mr. Bush had made Darfur an important issue at the Asian summit meeting last week, if he had returned via Cairo for a meeting with Arab leaders, if he had dispatched Condi Rice to Chad to shore it up.

Beyond pushing our own government, we can write the embassies of countries like France and Egypt that could play especially crucial roles. The same is true of China, which provides Sudan the guns used to shoot children like Ismail. We in the news business, including Arab and European television networks, could use a few pokes to appreciate that genocide is newsworthy.

Related sites [for NYT Select subscribers]

NYT On the Ground
Darfur Videos
Kristof Columns

You can see, from the very latest news, that the U.S. is still not presenting a strong moral voice to stop this genocide.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Tuesday he expected Sudan's government to respond within two days on outstanding issues of an agreement signed last week that would allow U.N. peacekeepers into Darfur. [..]

[..]The United States has said it is prepared to move to a "Plan B" for dealing with Sudan if no agreement is reached by Jan. 1, but has yet to specify what that would entail.

"We need to put a time limit on where this is going," presidential envoy Andrew Natsios said Monday, declining to describe what consequences Sudan would face if the deadline was not met. "Making threats is not a wise thing to do."
[AP]

Making threats is "not a wise thing to do"?

Boy, I wish Bush had believed in that theory during the lead-up to the insanely unjust Iraq War. The way I see it, this President makes threats when they're worth it to his political advantage and when we look to him for clear moral leadership in the world, all of a sudden it's not good to appear threatening.

This Olbermann Video Should Go Down in History

Keith Olbermann has made a statement on his MSNBC show that should go down in history as a defining moment when the public not only felt great dissatisfaction with a misguided, unjust, and failed war, but began to scream for the President conducting the war to take concrete steps to end the insanity immediately - before one more troop dies.

Watch it.





From YouTube

Muhammad Yunus on Jon Stewart's Daily Show

Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank and recent Nobel Peace Prize winner, is one of my favorite public figures. He's a delightful, wise, and compassionate entrepreneur. In case you missed him on Jon Stewart's Daily Show last week, I found a video at YouTube. All people have the capacity for enormous creativity - even beggars. Yunus provides small loans to some of the poorest people in this world through microfinancing. Out of 7 million Granmeen bank microcredit loans, 97% of these loans have gone to poor women, many of them farmers in developing nations. In doing so, Yunus changes their lives for the better and shakes up the powers that be in the developing world. 80% of farmers in Africa are women and they aren't getting access to markets because they are women. To my way of thinking, Dr. Muhammad Yunus' idea is certainly a better idea than bombing other people's homelands in order to "bring them democracy."





I wrote a related post last September from the 2006 Clinton Global Initiative meeting. See CGI: Senator Clinton's Panel on Women and the Power of Economic Opportunity, where Citicorp's Ajay Banga suggested that, to build on Muhammad Yunus' new theory, large corporations can, in the future, show social responsibility by assisting smaller financial institutions to secure loans to enable them to facilitate microfinancing.

Hear NPR interview from November 21, 2006: Nobel-Prize Winner on the Power of Microcredit
Hear NPR story with Michelle Norris October 13, 2006

O, Mr. McCain - How Soon We Change

If there is one fact that has been evidenced by the need for the Baker/Hamilton-led Iraq Survey group, it is that for the first three years of the Iraq war, President Bush has failed to employ a strategy of diplomacy that would have included speaking with all nations to secure a level of international cooperation required to gain us an advantage in the overall war on terror. From the start of the Iraq war, Senator John McCain of Arizona has not been as strongly forthcoming on Bush's leadership shortcomings as we would expect a leader of honesty, strength and conviction should be.

It was just a little over two years ago at the RNC convention that Senator McCain heaped such unrealistic and undue praise upon Bush, saying:

Only the most deluded of us could doubt the necessity of this war...[Democrats] emphasize that military action alone won't protect us, that this war has many fronts: in courts, financial institutions, in the shadowy world of intelligence, and in diplomacy. [..] We agree. [..] That is what the president believes. That is what the president believes. And thanks to his efforts, we have received valuable assistance from many good friends around the globe..[...] Our president will work with all nations willing to help us defeat this scourge that afflicts us all. [...]And while this war has many components, we can't make victory on the battlefield harder to achieve so that our diplomacy is easier to conduct. This is not just an expression of strength. It is a measure of our wisdom. That's why I commend to my country the re-election of President Bush, and the...and the steady, experienced, public-spirited man who serves as our vice president, Dick Cheney.

Today on ABC News This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Senator McCain said that Iraq, on its present course - long and stubbornly held and defended by the Commander in Chief - is "doomed to failure."

This quote Senator McCain is in regard to our troops:

"They're fighting and dying for a failed policy."

It's getting closer to 2008. I'm sure that Senator McCain would like you to totally blank out what he said just over two years ago when we all could see that the Iraq policy was on the Nowhere Road.

How soon we change - the fickle - the ambitious.

Unless we're not supposed to take him at his word, it appears that Senator McCain had some horrific intuition in 2004 about what constitutes good, trustworthy, and solid national leadership. Look at the kind of leadership that he so fully supported in his public RNC Convention speech when he so strongly recommended Bush for four more years.

"I’m not sure that it’s turned into a civil war."

Senator John McCain on Iraq, Meet the Press, August 20, 2006

Either he couldn't be honest with us about the obvious shortcomings of the Bush policy on Iraq in 2004 or he honestly thought that the Bush leadership of the Iraq war was solid and worthy of his trust.

Either way, come 2008, Americans will want an honest president who would surely know poor leadership and immediately call it out when he (or she) sees it. Senator McCain loses on both ends of this spectrum.

Consider what I wrote on September 1, 2004:

I have not lost hope, but I've lost faith and trust in the Bush administration. I can't look, with realistic hope, to the future and imagine this leader, GW Bush, forming the strength-in-alliance necessary to defeat the terror that is stalking not only our nation, but the world. Some of the world's leaders are not acting in their own nation's behalf by joining in this fight, and while John McCain said we have every right to expect they should, GW Bush (who should be the one to set the best example for the world) has never found a way to convince world leaders to trust him.

I don't trust George W. Bush as our Commander-in-Chief. I believe he's an ignorant fellow who's in way over his head and that frightens me and by God, it should frighten you.

The question for 2008: Who will make us proud again?

The 2006 elections proved that Americans can no longer accept gray areas or hedging and equivocation on Iraq. Senator McCain has been guilty of the kind of willful perversion of reality that has driven clear-thinking citizens to vote for anyone other than Republicans. Too many times we've heard McCain refusing to call out the Bush administration on its dangerous incompetence. Yet, the closer we get to 2008, the more he backs away from his own public statements about supporting President Bush. McCain spoke highly of his trust in Bush's leadership on Iraq at the 2004 RNC convention, yet on August 20, 2006,

"It’s never been the right strategy as far as I’m concerned, since the beginning when I came back from my first trip to Iraq after every military person, including the British, told me that we didn’t have sufficient troops to control the situation."

Senator McCain, NBC Meet the Press, August 20, 2006

*yet he publicly upheld and praised the Bush strategy at the RNC convention almost two years after the war had begun.

he told NBC's David Gregory that he had anticipated many problems from the get-go because of the insufficient number of troops in Iraq. Why didn't he say so in 2004 when we all had a chance for different leadership? Because it would have come from a Democratic leader. In rational essence. that has made McCain a rubber stamp on the miserably failed Bush Iraq policy, even as his lips speak other words.

Hiding behind flowery rhetoric in his RNC Convention speech, a cleverly partisan Senator McCain gave Bush political power to perpetuate failure in Iraq. McCain should be made sorry that he ever sucked up to Bush. The right Democratic candidate in 2008 will chew Senator McCain up on this point in the 2008 presidential debates, providing that Senator McCain makes it that far. He could wind up humiliated mincemeat if the right Democrat knows how to deftly wield the political grinder.

My Son's Eagle Scout Project

In my town there's a lovely park with a lake where Canadian Geese gather by the hundreds at this time of year. Soon, as the November winds grow chilly and the days get shorter, they'll be heading further south.









The Eagle Project at Veterans Memorial Park at Gillie Lake

The project took place at Veterans Memorial Park at Gillie Lake. Many people who grew up in the area will remember it as Gillie Lake...a long time local watering hole. The 90 acre park’s center is a manmade lake stocked with sunfish and largemouth bass.


In the park there's an old one-room schoolhouse (Schoolhouse #1) that used to be one of the main public schoolhouses for area children in the area. It was moved here carefully from its original location and it's in the process of being restored. Today, it looks much better than the condition it was in when it came in on the flatbed truck.


A regular visitor to the park will now see a new sight when they come to look at old Schoolhouse #1. There are benches and new burning bush plantings and they were planned by my son, who chose to make the improvements and additions to the park as his Eagle Scout project.

My son has many people and organizations to thank for the help and advice he got along the way. Our village mayor Ed Fletcher, our town parks supervisor Tom Kehoskie, Mr. Weinberger and the VFW for their contributions, the Scouts and adult leaders without whom my son could never have completed his project, the lovely Red Oak Nursery who donated the plantings, and everyone who participated and attended the fundraising car wash last August.
Red Oak Nursery, Camillus, N.Y.


Below are photos taken on the day of the project.

Mitt Romney Will Have a 2008 Friend in Clear Channel

Rochester Turning reminds us how Italy's richest man Silvio Berlusconi got himself elected. Now it's Mitt Romney's turn to try it in the United States.

A comment from someone named James at Rochester Turning:

Clearchannel just recently went up for auction. Mitt Romney's Bain Capital bought it along with Thomas H Lee Partners, but I'm not sure who owns them. The rumor on the Street was that there might be regulatory problems because the firms own positions in other media companies, but I'm not sure which ones. Article is here and Wikipedia for Bain Capital is here.

Chris Bowers has more. He says:

Mitt Romney buys a media empire. I can't argue with what will probably be an effective strategy, but I can fear for American Democracy.

Should we be prepared for All Mitt all the time?

The blogger known as grayslady says she thinks the story's not really that much of a story, claiming that Romney fully divested himself of his shares in Bain. Says "grayslady":

I'm not suggesting that Lee will try to influence the broadcasting, especially since the venture capital companies, Lee and Bain, will not be putting in their own management team, as they often do in a buyout. Since the Mays are part of the purchase group I anticipate no change in Clear Channel's policies.

Many Rivers To Cross

I found one of my favorite songs on YouTube today.




Many Rivers To Cross
Jimmy Cliff

Too Funny Not to Post

Wal Mart HQ Unfairly Smears John Edwards

Hey, Wal Mart - Apologize for Swift-Boating
Senator John Edwards!


Wal Mart is wrong here. Simply wrong for what they have done. They need to apologize and clarify a story they released to the press that seems to have been specifically engineered to unfairly damage the former Senator and VP candidate's reputation.

Dave Johnson: Wal-Mart Engineers a Smear of Edwards

Daily Kos: Who Should You Believe, Wal-Mart or John Edwards?

When I see a major corporation trying to take the heat off themselves by creating a false impression about a popular citizen-leader who is speaking out against their unjust policies, I have to strike that corporation off my list of businesses with which I choose to deal.

So, it's Goodbye, Wal Mart for me. The way I see it, they've shot themselves in the foot by deliberately, and with harmful intent, making a stupid and false attack on a leader that millions of Americans greatly admire.

How interesting that the story came out the same day that Senator Edwards participated in a nationwide public conference call in opposition to Walmart's policies toward its employees. Senator Edwards was active in his pursuit of fairness for all Americans who work for Wal Mart. Edwards has obviously been targeted as an enemy of Wal Mart for having been active in the Wake-Up Walmart campaign and tour. This kind of retribution looks very, very bad for Wal Mart, a corporation that boats a little yellow smiley face while stabbing an honest man in the back for merely questioning their policies.

Imagine if John Edwards had been a Republican in this situation (or just another spongy and Corporate-compliant hypocrite like so many of our "leaders" today). Imagine this was a "leader" who was perfectly willing to look the other way as Wal Mart failed to pay employees enough to support a family, forced those employees to work off-the-clock, and failed to cover over 775,000 employees for healthcare, (1 out of 6 Wal Mart employees have no health care coverage at all). We never would have heard a word about this so-called incident. Wal Mart would have not even worried about a need to drum up a story that raised all these false impressions. The problem Wal Mart has with John Edwards is that he possesses the character of a true leader with real moral conviction about defending justice for the American worker.

What's next? Is Wal Mart going to start a rumor about me in my own community when I write to my local newspaper about my concerns regarding the economic justice they deny to their employees every day? What scum - truly. What scum has come out of the Wal Mart headquarters today. (Do I sound disgusted?)

Whether you like John Edwards or not, anyone willing to fall into the trap on this Wal Mart swift boat story is saying that they are perfectly willing to go the way of Senator John Kerry's excruciating 2004 electoral loss. Wal Mart is acting like one of those 527 groups who attacked Senator Kerry in swift boat ads back in 2004 - for which Kerry never supplied adequate self-defense or comeback. It was painful to see his campaign falter when we knew he was a brave defender of our nation and its troops during the questionable Vietnam conflict.

Regardless of what you politically think of John Edwards, think about who is attacking him and why they are doing so. If you think Wal Mart has a long way to go to provide economic justice to its employees and if you understand how Wal Mart has made it own unique and terrible contribution to poverty in this country, then we should remember to fight back instead of believing Wal Mart over a citizen-Democrat named John Edwards.

John Edwards does not intend to destroy Wal Mart. He is appealing to them to treat their workers more fairly. He did not deserve this attack upon his character. It was based upon innuendo and what I view as a deliberate misleading.

Wal Mart's swiftboat story is akin to a 527-style political campaign ad. It was started by a corporation's headquarters - with free advertisement by a malleable press looking to stoke controversy. As we approach 2008, I see this as a dangerous situation for any political leader who has the guts to tell the big corporations that they're wrong.

What are we going to do about it? I'm taking Wal Mart off my Christmas-shopping map. (And I'm one of those people who says "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays.")

A commenter at Huffington Post named "laughingalltheway" who, in my view, is deliberately acting publicly in concert with the Wal Mart headquarter's smear campaign against John Edwards asked:

Does anyone think that the staff member got this for Edwards on his own initiative?

I replied:

First, get your facts straight. It wasn't even the staff member. It was a citizen that was classified as a "volunteer." It comes to me as no shock that a person who wants to do something nice for a leader he respects might get overzealous and think he can throw the leader's name around (without the leader's knowledge or consent). That doesn't make the leader himself culpable or involved in any way. To assume so is REALLY is stretch.

You fell for Wal Mart's attempt to suck you in and believe that Sen. Edwards went shopping at Wal Mart vicariously through another person. If Edwards was telepathic (like that other John Edward), he may have known what was happening. But he didn't.

So let's not turn this into something it's not.

Wal Mart had best beware. I'm a citizen in New York State who just witnessed the overwhelming victory of Eliot Spitzer's campaign for Governor. He won because he was a champion - bold, fair, tenacious and courageous, against any corporation who thought they were so well-protected by corrupt government that they could not be held responsible for unfair practices. I don't see Senator Edwards' mission for justice as any different. The public greatly respects leaders who demand the kind of justice and fairness that is made manifest by food on their table, a college education for those who desire it, and regular trips for doctor's and dental check-ups for themselves and their kids as a rule rather than a miraculous exception.

* Go here to see a leter I wrote to radio show host Ed Schultz. On his Friday show, he played right into Wal Mart's version of the story and all of its false impressions. Wow. What a disappointment Mr. Schultz is on this issue.

The bottom line is this: Wal-Mart tried to smear one of its fiercest critics.

____________________

UPDATE: NOVEMBER 24, 2006 - ONE FULL WEEK AFTER THE STORY WAS DEBUNKED:

A website called Morningstar is not only perpetuating a myth that one Google click could have told them was already debunked a full week ago, but they're asking othes to spread the disinformation. Why would they do something like that? It surely doesn't say much for their credibility!

O Mary Don't You Weep - Bruce Springsteen

"O Mary Don't You Weep"
Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band

John Edwards A Guest on Daily Show and Letterman

Elizabeth Edwards has sent an email to members of the online community at the One America Committee to remind them that not only does her husband, former Senator John Edwards, have a new book for you to read, but that he will be a guest on The Late Show with David Letterman on CBS this Friday night.

Because I am really proud of what John has done in his new book, Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives, I want everyone to hear about the book and to read it. You'll get a chance to hear about it when John appears on The Late Show with David Letterman this Friday.

Home comes out in bookstores today, and all his proceeds from the sale of the book will be going to charity. He has already made a donation to Habitat for Humanity, which is helping to build new homes and new life stories for families in North Carolina and on the Gulf Coast. John got the idea for the book during his 2004 presidential campaign after he visited his first childhood home in Seneca, South Carolina. When the little wooden house was later featured in a TV ad for his campaign, people everywhere stopped him to share their powerful memories of home.

No matter where we lived -- or, in my case, how many times we moved -- home has the same place in almost everyone’s heart: a place where we wanted to be or where we felt most secure. It is where -- through good times and bad -- we grew the wings that allowed us to be the adults we are today. Just hearing the word "home" triggers memories of family stories, learning right from wrong, and building the confidence to someday step out into the larger world. And John's book captures this and captures too the varieties of ways we continue to carry our homes with us as adults in sixty personal essays and pictures of childhood homes. About half are from well-known people like Tommy Franks, John Glenn, Sugar Ray Leonard and Rick Warren. The other half are from less well-known people that we discovered right here in our online community...

*An exerpt from the email sent by Elizabeth Edwards

An excerpt from the book Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives by Senator Edwards can be read here.

Also, don't miss Senator Edwards on Jon Stewart's Daily Show on Comedy Central tonight.

Reid Remains Senate Majority Leader

New leadership roles in the 110th Senate:

Senator Patty Murray of Washington is new Conference secretary.

Chuck Schumer of New York is vice chairman of the caucus as well as retaining his seat as DSCC chair.

Harry Reid will retain the position of Senate Majority leader, which means that Senator Hillary won't be taking it, which means that Senator Hillary has most likely decided to run for President, which really will come as no surprise to most of us.

The Hill is reporting that Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) will move up from Democratic conference secretary to succeed Sen. Clinton as head of the Democratic Steering Committee. They term the move as Hillary "clearing the deck" for a 2008 run.


Kos has posted a listing of who's taking the new seats.

My Sunday Comment - Disgusted by Today's Meet The Press

As we approach 2008, I suspect that the trend in the mainstream media will be to lead the American people toward a gooey center where conviction gets lost in a political mixing bowl of soft, inert, and easily soluable ingredients. I got that impression after watching the line-up of guests on Meet the Depressing Press today. I saw 2004 RNC Convention Bush-cheerleader John McCain continue to beat up on the losing 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (long after Kerry rightfully apologized for his weird joke) and Joe Lieberman making inexcusable excuses for his attempt to muzzle critics of the miserably failed Iraq war. These two men, McCain and Lieberman, seem so full of ego and ambition to me - so 2008 starry-eyed - that they seem perfectly willing to toss principle aside for popularity. Is that what Americans want from their leaders?

I am quite certain that the results of Election 2006 showed, if nothing else, that principle matters to the American people. After decades of the Republican majority-led perpetuation and support of a radical rightwing takeover of the people's government, it is the people who have worked their tails off to take their counrty back. It's ordinary citizens who have learned to overcome big D.C. lobbyists' campaign contriubutions and mainstream media misleading and inefficacy. The people have worked to take back their elections. They didn't work that hard to hand the power back to those who fail to take the people's convictions seriously.

We have a heck of a lot of work to get done - election reform, raising minmum wage, getting a universal health care plan, protecting Social Security, supporting and finding a new place for Labor in today's changing economic world, fair trade, a good education for all Americans children, an alternative energy policy that really works, getting America out of the President's mess in Iraq, and protecting our rights and freedoms. The question is - will men determined to be men of no strong conviction - being aroused by a strong and strange compunction to shy away from their party on issues if they appear to be "too partisan"...will they be the right men (or women) to lead us in the necessary swing back toward progress in our country? We have a long way to go and I believe we need a leader who is not afraid to say exactly what he (or she) means.

President Bush is a leader who has fiercely stuck by his principles, and his principles, if you are to judge by electoral results, are not in concert with the principles of the American people. If you noticed, Jim Webb didn't win Virginians over by shrinking from principle or the party with which he consciously chose to run. Most of the Democrats who were elected to power this time were elected by people (Independents, Republicans, and Democrats) who were searching for the kind of conviction that would be strong enough and reasonable enough to overcome and overturn the wrong-minded convictions of a President and his Republican rubber-stampers who've hurled our nation in what they believe is the wrong direction.

Listening to Joe Lieberman bragging about his win in Connecticut with 70% of Republicans voting him into power while only 33% of Democrats gave him their support made me wonder what this "Independent Democratic" ticket he ran on really means. He acted like a proud peacock for the fact that he could side with Republicans in the Senate at any time he personally felt like it. He called it speaking for the people of Connecticut, which is true, because most of the people of Connecticut who voted for him were Republicans. He was bold enough to infer that his new "Independent Democrat" status entitled him to still be a Democrat while acting as a perpetual threat to Democrats in the Senate to make things go Connecticut's way and I could clearly see it was because he is entirely beholden to the Republicans who carried him overwhelmingly to victory in his State. Joe can claim victory, but no matter what label he slaps on himself, he can't claim victory as a Connecticut Democrat. If you look at who brung him to the dance, Lieberman can only claim resounding victory as a Connecticut Republican.

Joe Lieberman is the embodiment of the "Democrat Lite" that we all bemoaned back in 2000. He is not a friend of the national Democratic party. He is far more of a threat. I believe that, in the light of truth and fact, that he is now and will have to remain a friend to the Connecticut Republicans who kept him in power.

If there's one thing I'll say about President Bush, it's that he's been a leader of strong conviction, as a leader should be. (Although we realize that a great leader should be a lot of other things that Bush is surely not.)

It used to be an accepted political adage that "strong and wrong" was better than "weak and right". That view changed in the court of public opinion when too many American troops began to die with no qualitative measure of progress in the Iraq war, which was revealed over time to have been an absolutely unnecessary and poorly executed national nightmare. Former President Clinton recently said that "Stop and think" might be the new and far more appropriate twist for conventional politcal wisdom.

What about "Stop and think"? John McCain boldly and proudly defended the leadership of President Bush in his speech at the RNC Convention in 2004 - a time when most Americans were already waking up to the fact that the Iraq war was a failure in the making. If these middle-of-the-roaders of weak conviction like McCain and Lieberman are such believers in patriotism over partisansip, why did Lieberman try so hard to muzzle critcism of the President when the Iraq war was not being properly led - - and why did McCain so vociferously defend and promote Bush as a great Commander in Chief in late 2004 when he (and we) damned well knew he wasn't? (It didn't take a rocket scientist.)

We Americans are sick to death of hypocrisy. McCain and Lieberman act as if conviction is some kind of a disease, for Pete's sake. These are two of the biggest political hypocrites on the political scene today. When Pastor Ted Haggard's hypocisy was found out, he was forced to step away from leadership. How do you explain to the American people the kind of political hypocrisy being practiced by egotists who prize the vote over conviction or principle? The average television viewer won't easily pick up on the hypocrisy when the Tim Russerts of the mainstream media hand the big fakes the gigantic megaphone in the very same week that the citizens of this nation cried out for a sea change in the power center of America that would reflect their own convictions. At a time when Americans were interested and should have been getting an opportunity to see and hear their freshly elected new Congressional leaders, Russert trotted out the old guard. What a snooze!

To me, Lieberman represents the kind of "change" that James Carville wanted to see when he recommended that Tenessee's losing Harold Ford (who I truly respect and wish would have beat Bob Corker) take Howard Dean's place as chair of the DNC. This suggestion did not reflect well on Mr. Carville for all of us Democrats who were inspired to get out the vote and to win by Howard Dean. Mr. Carville easily forgets that the Democrats - the real and everyday people of the party in their respective states and communities - voted Howard Dean into his position. Mr. Carville forgets that the Democrats actually won this time. Hello? We won! Seeing Mr. Carville immediately going out and drumming up division in the party is a move that I personally resent. Election 2006 showed that money does not necessarily equate to wins (although it certainly doesn't hurt.) I could hardly believe my ears when Mr. Carville made his insulting suggestion. To suggest tossing Howard Dean over money would bring all of us right back to the old network that lost so many elections for Democrats. The McAuliffe machinery was the most well-oiled of all time, but if I asked the Democrats to show me the victories from that period of time, they'd be hard-pressed. It wasn't Terry McAuliffe's fault - he was damned good at what he did (and a Syracuse homeboy to boot) - it was the strategists's fault. Without a strategy to motivate and inspire your grassroots people in local elections, all the money in the world will get you absolutely nowhere. When it came to motivating the real people and building up the party where it counts most - in the hearts of citizens in communities across the 50 states, make no mistake: Howard Dean was the man.

Joe Lieberman motivated a whole new Republican base in Connecticut. Is that where all the money generated by a non-Howard Dean will take us? If so, I don't wanna go, Joe.

Tar Heel Tavern at Billy the Blogging Poet

You'll find the most current edition of the Tar Heel Tavern at Billy the Blogging Poet's place - only this time our hero B the BP is caught between a bard and a tavern - - and he's been running 'round the world and doing his best to get back on time to host the tavern. If you see Billy running down your street, we've been asked to tell him he's going the wrong way....especially if he's wearing only these.....



Right now you're probably saying "What the heck?!" I know - - it's enough to make even the President curious. Don't ask - just go and take a look...then enjoy Billy's tale at the Tavern.