Mn-prog-events Mailing List: Progressive Calendar 04.12.06

[David Shove (shove001]

             P R O G R E S S I V E   C A L E N D A R     04.12.06

1. US violence        4.12 8am
2. Biotech/energy     4.12 8:30am
3. Oprah/high school  4.12 4pm
4. Venezuela/media    4.12 6pm
5. Prejean/play       4.12 7pm
6. No stadium         4.12 7pm
7. Vets for peace     4.12 7pm RedWing MN

8. Eagan peace vigil  4.13 4:30pm
9. Northtown vigil    4.13 5pm
10. Global leadership 4.13 6pm
11. Julia Alvarez     4.13 7pm
12. SpringSpring walk 4.13 7pm
13. Venezuela/film    4.13 7pm

14. Belfiore/Hakeem - Cartoons vs Muslims
15. Jeanne Weigum   - Tree sale support Friends/parks
16. Mark Drolette   - Dems are to integrity as the moon is to green cheese
17. The Nation      - When will Democrats break with Bush?
18. Joe Bageant     - Middle-class lockdown: shut up and buy something
19. ed              - Sinkhole-down slides Bush (poem)

--------1 of 19--------

From: Charles Underwood <charleyunderwood [at] hotmail.com>
Subject: US violence 4.12 8am

Wednesday, 4/12, 8 to 9:30am (yes, am), People of Faith Peacemakers hosts
Cindy Kennedy of MN Council of Churches on U.S. Christian leaders recent
apology for the "violence, degradation and poverty the U.S. has sown," St
Martin's Table, 2001 Riverside Ave, Mpls. 763-784-5177.


--------2 of 19--------

From: skogrand <skogrand [at] frontiernet.net>
Subject: Biotech/energy 4.12 8:30am

It is a biotechnology and renewable energy conference with professors from
China and professors from the U.  It is on April 12th at 8:30am at the St.
Paul Student Center at the U of M it is sponsored by the MN Initiative for
Renewable Energy and the Environment. Cutting edge renewable energy.

http://www1.umn.edu/iree/pdfs/china_conference_agenda_4_12_06.pdf


--------3 of 19--------

From: umjoe [at] comcast.net
Subject: Oprah/high schools 4.12 4pm

Oprah offers ideas for community activities and how to get people involved
in real ways.

The show 4pm on Wednesday -  deals with solutions.  Oprah mentiones
several schools that have had success improving attendance, student
involvement, test scores and graduation rates.  Oprah is very strong on
small schools.  She also will discuss the STAND UP campaign, which will be
launched on the second show and which Center for School Change is a
partner.  The STAND UP Campaign will be a coalition of community-based
organizations committed to mobilizing all Americans, giving parents and
community members the tools they need to demand the education our young
people deserve.


--------4 of 19--------

From: Lydia Howell <lhowell [at] visi.com>
Subject: Venezuela/media 4.12 6pm

Wenedsday April 12 at 6pm
The Media Massacre
"The Llaguno Bridge: Keys to a Massacre"
Produced by: Panafilm
Directed by: Angel Palacios
Running time: 105 min

The conspiracies and plots leading up to the so-called massacre, at the
Llaguno Bridge, prelude to the coup d'etat of April 2002. This is in
stunning detail how the Venezuelan media twisted facts and news reality to
blame the massacre on President Chavez,and the Bolivarians defending
themselves against the shock troops of the Caracas Metropolitan Police,
who was one of the big conspirator.

After will be talks from a journalist working in Venezuela at the time of
the coup and an analysis by different speakers of the responce of US media

Drew Science Room 118 Hamline University, Saint Paul


--------5 of 19--------

From: Lydia Howell <lhowell [at] visi.com>
Subject: Prejean/play 4.12 7pm

Most people know the story of Sister Helen Prejean's journey to becoming a
death penalty abolitionsist through the film based on her book DEAD MAN
WALKING(starring Susan Sarandon as Prejean and Sean Penn as a murderer on
Death Row).

You have a chance to experince the work and words of this Catholic nun for
justice in a fresh way in two performances. Part of the power of Sister
Helen Prejean's work is that it does not focus solely on INNOCENT people
on death Row---but, takes on those who are actually GUILTY of the crimes
they've been convicted of. But, she digs into the "punitive side" of
America's judicial system and asks probing questions about a more
"restorative justice" that can imagine rehabiltation or at least some
personal redemption that's possible for all of us--even those who've
committed the most horrific acts. Certain to be inspiring to search our
own heart, not only about the death penalty, but, also the ever-growing
American prison-industrial complex - the largest prison population on
Earth--now incarcerating over 2 million people.

See these performances by the College of St Catherine and St. James
Theatre Project collaboration. Both perfromances are FREE and open to the
public.

Wed April 12, 7pm
College of St. Catherine's Music Recital Hall
2004 Randolph Ave. St Paul

Fri April 21, 7pm
St James AME Church
3600 Snelling Ave. Minneapolis


--------6 of 19--------

From: Ron Holch <rrholch [at] attg.net>
Subject: No stadium 4.12 7pm

Taxpayers For an Anoka County Stadium Referendum
formerly
Taxpayers Against an Anoka County Vikings Stadium
Wednesday April 12, at 7pm

Centennial High School Red Building - Room 104 4704 North Road Circle
Pines
The red building is on the east end of the high school complex,
and is set back furthest from North Road.  Enter on the East side of the
building.  The largest parking lots are near this building.

No matter where you live in Minnesota, If you haven't already done so
please write your representatives and tell them we do not need to waste
more money on stadium giveaways to Billionaires.  Please continue to tell
them we want a vote as required by state law for any tax increase to pay
for a stadium. Write letters to your local paper too.  If you have done
these things once already do it again.  The time is now.

AGENDA ITEMS INCLUDE:
Up at The Capitol
Updates on City resolutions to support Referendums
Website
Survey of Legislators
MN Data Practices Act Request to Anoka County

Any Questions, comments contact me at: Ron Holch rrholch [at] attg.net
<mailto:rrholch [at] attg.net>


--------7 of 19--------

From: Charles Underwood <charleyunderwood [at] hotmail.com>
Subject: Vets for peace 4.12 7pm RedWing MN

Wednesday, 4/12, 7 pm,  (and every 2nd Wednesday), Red Wing (#115) Vets for
Peace at home of Charles Nicolosi.  tuvecino [at] redwing.net


--------8 of 19--------

From: Greg and Sue Skog <skograce [at] mtn.org>
Subject: Eagan peace vigil 4.13 4:30pm

CANDLELIGHT PEACE VIGIL EVERY THURSDAY from 4:30-5:30pm on the Northwest
corner of Pilot Knob Road and Yankee Doodle Road in Eagan. We have signs
and candles. Say "NO to war!" The weekly vigil is sponsored by: Friends
south of the river speaking out against war.


--------9 of 19--------

From: EKalamboki [at] aol.com
Subject: Northtown vigil 4.13 5pm

We have changed time and day of the NORTHTOWN Peace Vigil to Thursdays 5
to 6 pm, at the intersection of Co. Hwy 10 and University Ave NE (SE
corner across from Denny's), in Blaine.

Communities situated near the Northtown Mall include: Blaine, Mounds View,
New Brighton, Roseville, Shoreview, Arden Hills, Spring Lake Park, Fridley,
and Coon Rapids.  We'll have extra signs.

For more information people can contact Evangelos Kalambokidis by phone or
email: (763)574-9615, ekalamboki [at] aol.com.


--------10 of 19--------

From: humanrts [at] umn.edu
Subject: Global leadership 4.13 6pm

April 13 - The Challenge of Global Leadership Today.  Registration 5:30pm
program 6-7:30pm.  Cost: MIC members, students and members of cosponsoring
organizations $5; Non-members $15.

Minnesota International Center program: speaker Carol Bellamy, president
and CEO of World Learning.

Location: Cowles Auditorium, Humphrey Institute for Public Affairs, 301
19th Avenue S, Minneapolis

[This title raises questions. Who appointed whom global leader(s)? Bush &
US corps are misleaders. Is there a white man's burden? How much hubris is
enough? If this isn't implied, a better title would be called for. -ed]


--------11 of 19--------

From: Sarah Caflisch <scaflisch [at] loft.org>
Subject: Julia Alvarez 4.13 7pm

Thursday, April 13, 7pm
EVENT
TALKING VOLUMES
JULIA ALVAREZ
Reading/Discussion of Saving the World
With MPR's Kerri Miller

Talking Volumes is cosponsored by the Loft, Minnesota Public Radio and the
Star Tribune.  The reading/discussion takes place at the Fitzgerald
Theater, 10 East Exchange Street, Saint Paul, Minnesota.  For tickets,
call 651-290-1221

Julia Alvarez has this to say about her latest novel, Saving the World:
First off, where do I get off naming my novel, Saving the World! What can
I tell you? I'm not feeling very optimistic as to where we are headed as a
human family. But as the Seamus Heaney poem says, hope and history can
sometimes be made to "rhyme."

This novel is about two women, one contemporary and one historical, who
want desperately for this rhyme to happen. The historical story I came
upon while doing research for my novel In the Name of Salomé
<http://www.juliaalvarez.com/books/index.php>. A footnote in a history
book I was reading caught my eye: due to the occupation of the colony of
Santo Domingo by the French, the 1804 Spanish smallpox expedition going
around the world with the newly discovered vaccine did not make a stop
there. This was the first world-wide effort to eradicate a deadly disease.
Back then, travel was slow, on ships. There was no refrigeration, so the
only way to keep the vaccine alive was through carriers, sequentially
vaccinated. The carriers were, for the most part, orphan boys. The first
group of 22 boys, between the ages of three and nine, came from an
orphanage in Spain, and here's an incredible detail for a novelist to come
upon: the rectoress of the orphanage went along to take care of them.
Nothing is known about her except her name, Doña Isabel, her surname
variously misspelled.

The second story in the novel is about Alma, a contemporary writer
undergoing her own dark night of the soul. Alma has lost faith in writing,
lost faith in most things. She is married to a wonderful man, whom she
dearly loves, and that saves her from total despair. Her husband, who has
a job at an international aid consulting firm, finds himself mixed up with
an AIDS clinic (our 21st century epidemic) in a third world country where
a pharmaceutical company is testing a new vaccine. These two stories,
seemingly so different, begin to "speak" to each other, and I hope there
is, if not a full rhyme, then a sort of half rhyme: a hope that stories
can make a difference in a world that increasingly seems beyond any kind
of redemption.


--------12 of 19--------

From: Sue Ann <mart1408 [at] umn.edu>
Subject: SpringSpring walk 4.13 7pm

Spring Walk

April 13 is the anniversary of the publication of Rachel Carson's "Silent
Spring," the landmark book that started the environmental movement in
1962. Join us for a beautiful spring walk near the Mississippi River and
historic Coldwater Springs. Learn more about historic Coldwater Springs
and the continuing struggle to safeguard the area and springs. 7pm: 54th
Street and Minnehaha Ave - Minneapolis.

"The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities
of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction."
-- Rachel Carson © 1954

Coldwater environs include Fort Snelling and Minnehaha Park.  Coldwater is
the Birthplace of Minnesota, and the site of the Minnehaha Free State of
recent history.  Learn more about historic Coldwater Springs and the
continuing struggle to safeguard the area and springs.  For more
information about Coldwater Springs and the Green Museum, go to
www.friendsofcoldwater.org.

Gather at 7pm, Walk at 7:15pm.  Meet at south end of Minnehaha Park in the
pay parking lot off East 54th Street.

Directions: from Hwy 55, turn East (toward the Mississippi) at East 54th
Street, follow the road around (to the left) into the pay parking lot or
park on Minnehaha Avenue beyond 54th Street, or across Hwy. 55 for free
parking.

Sunset is at 7:59 pm and Moonrise at 8:19 pm.  All times are Central Time
Zone, sun and moon set in Minneapolis, MN.

From "Silent Spring":
 "For each of us, as for the robin in Michigan, or the salmon in the
Miramichi, this is a problem of ecology, of interrelationships, of
interdependence. We poison the caddis flies in the stream and the salmon
runs dwindle and die. . . . We spray our elms and following springs are
silent of robin song, not because we sprayed the robins directly but
because the poison traveled, step by step, through the now familiar
elmleaf -earthworm-robin cycle. These are matters of record, observable,
part of the visible world around us. They reflect the web of life-or
death-that scientists know as ecology."


--------13 of 19--------

From: Lydia Howell <lhowell [at] visi.com>
Subject: Venezuela/film 4.13 7pm

Thursday April 13 at 7pm
Popular Referendum
"Venezuela Rising"
Produced by:   Alvin Bailey
Directed by: Jennifer Wager
Running time: 65 min

The filming of Venezuela Rising occurred during August 2004 around the
time of a recall election for Chavez that ultimatly re-affirmed his
popularity in the country.  The referendum was forced by his political
opponents who received financial and diplomatic backing from the Bush
Administration.

Followed by a discussion on Cuba / Venezuela solidarity and details on the
upcoming May 20 "Hands Off Venezuela and Cuba" demonstration in
Washington, DC

University of Minnesota Blegan Hall 10


--------14 of 19--------

From: Peter Belfiore <pjbelfiore [at] yahoo.com>
Subject: Hakeem Letter Re Mohammed Cartoons; Reply

Ms. Farheen Hakeem (for whom I voted in the Minneapolis mayoral
primaries), in her letter posted on your site on April 11, 2006, appears
to claim that Karen Murdock, a teacher at Century College, is a racist
for posting the Mohammad cartoons on a bulletin board at Century. Hakeem
apparently does not accept Murdock's explanation of her reasons (to
encourage informed discussion), though she--Hakeem--seems to provide no
reason to doubt them.

What would we all think if the bush administration prevented publication
of the Abu Ghraib torture photos on the ground that they are offensive and
misrepresent the noble purity of the intentions of the Bush
administration?

The First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, which the Bush people would
like to destroy (along with independent Muslim life, and indeed all
independent life in the Middle East and the United States), is one of our
strongest protections against tyranny and oppression, well-intentioned or
not.

---
From: info [at] farheenhakeem.org
Subject: Re: Hakeem Letter Re Mohammed Cartoons; Reply

Dear Peter,

Karen Murdock is a professor of Geology.  Why would there be need for her
to promote discussion if it did not suit her professional or academic
needs of instructions.  I want to be very clear.  I don't have a problem
with the first amendent.  I would not have a problem for an anti-Muslim
group and the KKK protest the streets because this is a democracy and we
have the right.  But do you think I would not counter-protest?

Come on Peter, I've been protesting all of my life.  I'm not going to quit
now.  I accept Ms. Murdock's explanation, I asked her to accept the
consequences (like being called a racist and boycotting Century College).
Her motivations are based on her racism. She is not a journalist or a law
professor.  She disreagarded Muslims, and do not recognize us to be human.
As a professor, who may have Muslim students, she needs to called on it
and needs another job.

I hope that clears it up.
Farheen


--------15 of 19--------

From: Jeanne Weigum <jw [at] ansrmn.org>
Subject: Tree sale support Friends/parks

Pass this along to all of your friends to help the Friends.
2006 Tree Sale Underway

The annual tree sale is underway by Friends of the Parks and Trails of
St.Paul and Ramsey County. There are great prices on trees and shrubs for
planting in private yards, or to donate to parks.

Park systems where trees maybe donated include: Dakota County and Ramsey
County park systems; Apple Valley; Arden Hills; Blaine; Brooklyn Park;
Champlin; Cottage Grove; Eagan; Falcon Heights; Little Canada; Maplewood;
Mendota Heights; New Brighton; North St. Paul; South St. Paul; St. Louis
Park; St. Paul; Shoreview, Vadnais Heights; West St. Paul; White Bear
Township and Woodbury. Parks prefer native trees.

This year's sale includes:

Sugar Maple, Autumn Blaze Ash; River Birch; Bur Oak; Black Hills Spruce;
Medora Juniper; Pagoda Dogwood; American Cranberry; Blue Muffin Viburnum;
Prairiefire Crab; Twisty Baby Locust; Miss Canada Lilac; and Weeping Pussy
Willow.

Prices range from $15.00 to $45.00. Prepaid orders are taken until April
19. Trees are picked up on Saturday, May 6, at either the Highland Park
Picnic pavilion. 1200 Montreal Ave., or the Ramsey County Parks office,
2015 No. Van Dyke, Maplewood. Park personnel pick up and plant donated
trees. Consult our website; www.friendsoftheparks.org for more
information, or call 651-698-4543.

You all should know that all of the trees offered above were personally
selected by a spiffer.  That must make them unique to St. Paul and even
more relevant to this group.

Jeanne Weigum
Under darking skys in Merriam Park


--------16 of 19--------

Dems and Integrity, the Moon and Green Cheese --
Detect a Pattern Here?
by Mark Drolette
www.dissidentvoice.org
April 7,  2006
(http://www.referralblast.com/rblast.asp?sid=7227)

Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop  it, stop it.

Stop it now, stop it, just  stop it.

Please: Stop it  now!

For those who continue to suggest the Democrats can somehow save our
wretched and forsaken land, I beseech thee: Wake up and smell the
corruption.

You are intelligent. You are kind. You care deeply about your fellow human
beings. We know you have superb taste in columnists.

You are also clearly on the correct side, because if there were ever
anything in this heavily gray area-tinged world that is laid out in stark
black-or-white, right-or-wrong terms, it's Us the Good Guys and Gals vs.
the neocon-driven Bush Bastards.

But you have a curious -- and maddening -- blind spot that is a big-time
time-waster, a non-starter, an energy sucker-upper, the Mother of All
Dead-Ends:  You still engage in the fantasy that if we work really hard,
even harder then we all worked last time which was damn ass-busting hard,
we can get the Democrats back in power, buy some breathing room and start
the long uphill climb back to semi-respectability for America.

Ain't gonna happen. No way, unh-uh, no how. Fuhgeddaboutit.

Hope is nice. Gotta have hope.  But delusional is, well, just delusional.
(I say that only in a nice way.)

For one thing, America's major elections are rigged. The fix is in, the
jig is up.

Repeat after me: The fix is in, the jig is up.

Now, I could be wrong, but I've always thought sham balloting has the
rather annoying side effect of taking the wind right out of democracy's
sails.

As if that weren't bad enough (and it is), just what in the slimy,
spineless, mush-mouthed, pants-wetting, knee-knocking, finger-in-the-air,
thumb-in-your-eye, two-faced, CYA-ing recent past of the Democratic Party
leads you to believe that in any way, shape or form these bipedal
jellyfish can lead us to the Promised Land, or even the Implied Parking
Lot, even if by the most miraculous of miracles the GOP somehow forgets to
throw the vote-conversion switch in the next selection and the Dems manage
to regain a majority somewhere?

Give me some names.  Please. Tell me what Democrat has got the guts to
stand up in front of the whoreporate media microphones and say: "You know
what? The American people have been had. Our democratic republic does not
exist. We are in the grips of murderous fascists who spit on the
Constitution, or what little tiny scraps may be left of it, every chance
they get. Not only that, but there's every indication 9/11 didn't go down
the way we've all been led to believe it did and I demand answers NOW, no
matter the implications."

Oh, yeah, that would be something, wouldn't it? Far too many questions
remain about what really happened on September 11, 2001, a day that spread
wide the gaping hellmouth of all gaping hellmouths and loosed the
flesh-shredding monsters composing the Bush administration to wreak their
uniquely gruesome brand of havoc on, oh, let's see, everyone in the world
who isn't them.

An independent and open investigation of 9/11 -- truly independent and
open -- needs to be conducted by a panel comprising experts in physics,
aviation, engineering, construction, demolition, metallurgy, photography,
insider trading, etc.  The "official" explanations of that shockingly
barbaric day are pure rubbish. As many have rightly queried lately in a
multitude of finely-detailed and compelling articles: How can three
skyscrapers, one of which wasn't even hit by a plane, free-fall into their
footprints in the same day? Why did even one of the WTC buildings
collapse, considering no skyscraper before or since has ever been brought
down by fire?

Allow me to suggest a slogan:  WTC? WTF??

And so I ask: Do you honestly think a Dem will call for such an
investigation, ever? Are you really going to put your faith in Hillary
"Always Toe the Waters" Clinton, Joe "Used Car Salesman" Biden or John
"Rollover" Kerry to suddenly show what they've yet to demonstrate they
hold even a thimble's worth between them:  integrity?

Did I hear someone say Russ Feingold? Yeah, OK, I applaud Russ' censure
move, too, and certainly his lone senatorial vote against the Patriot Act,
but even he, just like practically the whole sorry, seedy, scaredy lot of
'em, will only go so far, which ain't nearly far enough. Check _this quote
of his_ (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060325/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq) during a
recent trip to Iraq:

"It's the reality of a situation like this that when you have a large
troop presence that it has the tendency to fuel the insurgency because
they can make the incorrect and unfair claim that somehow the United
States is here to occupy this country, which of course is not true."

Yes, of course. Not true.  Attaboy, Russ. Way to completely ignore the
Project for the New American Century (http://www.newamericancentury.org/)
and its right-on-schedule plan of removing U.S. military bases from our
enlightened, freedom-loving good buddy Saudi Arabia's terrortory and
building permanent ones right next door in Iraq, at least four of which
Tom Engelhardt reports
(http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=24907)  as being humongous
"super-bases" and all of which have been under construction ever since the
occupation -- whoops, non-occupation -- began.

Just exactly who, Senator, is gonna staff these babies -- dust devils?

Perhaps, gentle reader, your longing eyes are cast toward Barbara Boxer,
the good senator from my home state who, on January 6, 2005, along with
Ohio Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones, challenged the eligibility of
Ohio's 2004 twenty electoral votes.

Or did she? Boxer asserted on that painfully depressing day on the Senate
floor that she was "joining with Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones" not
to claim that George W. Bush had stolen the presidency (again), oh, no;
but rather "to cast the light of truth on a flawed [balloting] system
which must be fixed now."

Nice try, Barb, but a little late. Sure it was brave of you to
inconvenience your 99 fellow clubbies for a couple of hours. But it wasn't
enough. Not by a long shot. It falls just a smidgeon short of using your
center stage moment to tell the world the harsh truth, that what it was
witnessing that day was nothing less than the final nail being
unceremoniously pounded into the coffin of our democratic republic and the
official birth of American Fascism.

In fairness, there are a handful of Dems who do have real guts, folks like
John Conyers, Jr., Dennis Kucinich, Cynthia McKinney and Barbara Lee. But
they've all been marginalized to one extent or another by their whore, er,
more "practical" political sisters and brothers.

If, genuinely dear reader, your understandable great white-knuckled hope
is for fresh blood to somehow reinvigorate the Democratic Party, forget
it. Any Dem newbie who doesn't play by the rulers' rules -- which in
BushWorld means keeping one's mouth shut and protecting one's precious
little piece of allotted turf for fear of certain incriminating photos
hitting the 'Net or family members being disappeared -- finds it's not all
that long before his or her very own party's old guard is issuing pointed
instructions on how to maintain one's proper place in the scheming scheme
of things lest there be a noticeable lack of party machine support come
the next faux voting cycle.

Speaking of pointless exercises: A friend in Canada suggests we Americans
at least have some fun with the election charade we insist on holding
biannually. (Hey, if we're going to get screwed, we might as well enjoy
it, eh?) For real kicks and giggles, he says, we ought to, all of us, vote
Republican.  Then, upon exiting the polls, act like one. In other words,
lie. Say, "I'm a registered Democrat and I always vote the party line."
When the exit polls show 50-50 (or whatever is announced) but the
Republicans see they don't have to fiddle with the votes and in their
hubristic giddiness allow the announcement of the real 100% total, they'll
have a whole lot of "splainin" to do (although, ironically, they're
telling the truth for once!). Plus, in this scenario, the Snakes are left
to collectively stand naked (a revolting mental image;  sorry) and be seen
for what they truly are: the one-party puppets of the real power holders,
big bidness. On the other hand, if the announced "official" numbers are
instead the now-traditional 52-48% GOP winning margin, this is additional
proof, then, that the results are pre-programmed."

After all, my friend asks, "How bad can it get?" Indeed. In fact, I think
his plan has real merit, for it only prolongs our ongoing agony to keep
any Dems around at all.  It's been obvious for years how utterly
ineffective they are, but it is much worse than that, as their continuing
presence provides the Bushian fascists with a patina of legitimacy, making
it appear to the less astute (and we know how many of those there are)
that some sort of democratic process still exists in America. Believe me,
the last thing the Rethuglicans want is for all the Dems to split.

Although, frankly, I guess it wouldn't matter all that much if they did. I
have long contended that when it comes right down to it, when it is
necessary, when Bushco's cover is at last fully blown, when enough
Americans have finally had enough and take to the streets in sufficient
numbers to rattle some cages, they'll find tanks -- and cops and soldiers
and mercenaries and helicopters and dogs and teargas and bullets and
truncheons and hoses and horses and trucks and buses (gotta get people to
those _Halliburton-constructed "temporary detention" facilities_
(http://www.halliburton.com/default/main/halliburton/eng/news/source_files/news.jsp?newsurl=/default/main/halliburton)
somehow)  -- to meet them.

The Bushies have slaughtered over 100,00 Iraqis (possibly up to a quarter
million, per Dahr Jamail), sent more than 2300 U.S. soldiers to needless
deaths, allowed 1400 Americans to drown and die of thirst in Katrina's
wake and most likely murdered 3000 of our own countrymen and women in New
York, D.C. and Pennsylvania.

Blowing Americans away in the streets? Small potatoes.

I don't care how many useless votes are cast or how many fine candidates
there seem to be: The more-equal animals are not leaving of their own
accord, and the complicit Democrats have enabled them to stay hog-slop
happy in charge every sickening, self-serving step of the way.

We are entirely on our own, folks, and have been for a long time. If we
are to ever survive the pure hell in which America is squarely mired, it
is up to us -- and only us -- to pull her out. No one else is gonna do it.
Nobody is gonna save us. The longer we wring our hands and furrow our
brows, the worse it gets.  Meanwhile, the rest of an exasperated and
threatened world is looking on with horror and going:

Stop it, just stop it. Stop it now.

Mark Drolette is a political satirist/commentator who lives in Sacramento,
California. He can be reached at: _mdrolette [at] comcast.net_
(mailto:mdrolette [at] comcast.net) .  Copyright © 2006 Mark Drolette. All
rights reserved.


--------17 of 19--------

When Will Democrats Break With Bush?
The Nation - Apr 9, 2006
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid=76072

In light of the news that President Bush authorized a top Administration
aide to use previously classified information as part of an orchestrated
political attack on a prominent critic of the Administration, a radio host
asked me over the weekend: "What will it take to get Republicans to break
with Bush? How bad will things have to get before they realize that he's a
disaster for the country?"

I answered that, in small but significant ways, Republicans have been
breaking with Bush for some time now. When the President travels to states
around the country to pump up support for his war, he often does so
without the accompaniment of GOP members of Congress who find that they
are otherwise engaged on the days that the Commander in Chief drops by
their hometowns. While most leading Republicans refuse to admit as much
publicly, they are putting more and more distance between themselves and a
President whose approval rating has dropped to Nixon-in-Watergate depths.

When Congress voted recently on whether to extend the Patriot Act, some of
the loudest "no" votes came from conservative Republicans such as Don
Young of Alaska and Butch Otter of Idaho, who argued with Democratic US
Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin that the legislation was an assault on
basic liberties and Constitutional standards. As but a handful of Senate
Democrats and key House Democrats such as Minority Whip Steny Hoyer and
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Rahm Emanuel were lining
up with the Bush Administration to curtail civil liberties, Texas
Republican Ron Paul, perhaps the most consistent critic of the Patriot Act
in the House, complained that "one prominent Democrat opined on national
television that 'most of the 170-page Patriot Act is fine,' but that it
needs some fine tuning. He then stated that he opposed the ten-year
reauthorization bill on the grounds that Americans should not have their
constitutional rights put on hold for a decade. His party's proposal,
however, was to reauthorize the Patriot Act for only four years, as though
a shorter moratorium on constitutional rights would be acceptable! So much
for the opposition party and its claim to stand for civil liberties."

Perhaps even more significant than GOP opposition to the Patriot Act is
the opposition from some of the most conservative Republicans in the
House--including Paul, Walter Jones and Howard Coble of North Carolina,
and John Duncan of Tennessee--to the war in Iraq. These Republicans, among
others, are now among the most ardent and articulate Congressional critics
of the Administration's policies in the Middle East.

Last week, Paul, Jones and a moderate Republican, Wayne Gilchrest of
Maryland, joined with three Democrats--Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii, Ike
Skelton of Missouri and Marty Meehan of Massachusetts--in a push to get
the House to hold a daylong debate on the war, declaring that: "Americans
deserve an open and honest debate about the future of US policy in Iraq by
their Representatives in Congress." While the debate demand of these
Republicans stalwarts was stymied by their party leadership in the House,
it is notable that House Republican leaders chose not to block a March 16
amendment by US Representative Barbara Lee, a Democrat from California,
which put the House on record as opposing the construction of permanent US
bases in Iraq. The decision not to fight Lee's amendment, which passed by
an overwhelming voice vote, was a tacit acknowledgment by GOP leaders of
the reality, pointed up in a recent University of Maryland Program on
International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) poll, that 60 percent of Republican
voters oppose a permanent US presence in that country.

Indeed, while a predictable 80 percent of Democrats support moves to begin
withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, according to the PIPA poll, a rather
more remarkable 52 percent of Republicans now want Washington to begin
bringing the troops home.

Although their President and Vice President and a few key Congressional
leaders may still be clinging to neoconservative fantasies, Republicans
who actually care about their country--as well as Republicans who care
about the political viability of their party at a time when a new
Associated Press/Ipsos poll finds that Americans would prefer a
Democrat-led House by the widest margin in recent history, 49 percent to
33 percent--are indeed beginning to make meaningful breaks with Bush.

So the question of the moment is not "What will it take to get Republicans
to break with Bush?" The question is: "What will it take to get
Congressional Democrats to break with Bush?"

Despite mounting evidence not just of the President's unpopularity but of
his reckless disregard for the law--which was again confirmed by last
week's news of former Cheney chief of staff I. "Scooter" Libby's testimony
that Bush authorized distribution of previously classified data as part of
a concerted effort to undermine the credibility of former Ambassador Joe
Wilson, who had revealed that the "case" for going to war in Iraq was
based on false premises--most Congressional Democrats continue to resist
calls to hold the President accountable.

An American Research Group poll conducted in March found that 70 percent
of Democrats, 42 percent of independents and 29 percent of Republicans
surveyed favor censuring Bush for authorizing wiretaps of Americans within
the United States without obtaining court orders. Yet Feingold's motion to
censure Bush has drawn just two Democratic co-sponsors in the Senate,
Barbara Boxer of California and Tom Harkin of Iowa.

The same American Research Group poll found that 61 percent of Democrats,
47 percent of independents and 18 percent of Republicans are supportive of
moves to impeach Bush. Yet Representative John Conyers, the ranking
Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has attracted just 33
co-sponsors for his resolution calling for the creation of "a select
committee to investigate the administration's intent to go to war before
Congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence,
encouraging and countenancing torture, retaliating against critics, and to
make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment." Most
Democratic members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, along with
Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders, have signed on. But House minority
leader Nancy Pelosi and others in leadership positions remain aggressively
critical of the initiative.

Where, at the very least, is the united Democratic support for
Representative Maurice Hinchey's call for the expansion of Special Counsel
Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into White House leaks--which produced
the indictment of Libby and last week's revelation about the role of the
President and Vice President--to examine the motivations of all of those
involved in the White House's political assault on Joe Wilson? Hinchey, a
New York Democrat, has been on the case since last summer, when he got
thirty-nine other House members to sign a letter he wrote to Fitzgerald
calling for the expanded investigation. As Hinchey says, "Justice will not
be served until all of these matters are fully addressed in the courts and
in the Congress."

Hinchey's right. But the fundamental truth of American politics remains
that justice will only be served when the opposition party moves, as a
united force encouraged and supported by its leadership in the House and
Senate, to demand accountability from this Administration. For most
Democrats, that will demand something they have not yet been willing to
make: a break from Bush. And Democrats had better be quick about making
that break, unless they want their Republicans colleagues to beat them to
the punch.

Copyright © 2006 Time Inc.


--------18 of 19--------

Welcome to Middle-Class Lockdown . . .
Now Shut Up and Buy Something
by Joe Bageant
www.dissidentvoice.org/Feb06/Bageant09.htm
February 9, 2006

Take away America's Wal-Mart junk and cheap electronics and what you
have left is a mindless primitive tribe and a gaggle of bullshit artists
pretending to lead them.
-- James "Mad Dog" Howard

When I was a boy on my grandparents' farm in the 1950s the neighbors
always banded together to make lard and apple butter, put up feed corn,
bale hay, thresh wheat, pick apples, and plow snow off roads. One neighbor
cut hair, another mended shoes and welded. With so little money available
in those days in rural America, there was no way to get by without
neighbors. And besides, all the money in the world would not get the lard
cooked down and the peaches put up for the winter. You needed neighbors
and they needed you. From birth to the grave. I was very lucky to have
seen that culture which showed me that a real community of shared labor is
possible - or at least was at one time in this country.  And if I ever
doubt it I can go up to those hill farms and look into the clouded old
eyes and wrinkled visages of the people who once babysat me as a child and
with whom I shot my first rabbit and quail. They are passing quickly now
and I drive by more than a few of their graves in the old Greenwood
Cemetery when I visit that place where there are still old men who know
how to plow with horses and the women who can chop a live copperhead snake
in half with a hoe then go right on weeding the garden. "Yew kids stay
'way from that damned dead snake, ya hear me?"

Fifty years later nobody cans peaches any more, or depends upon a neighbor
to cut their hair or get in the hay crop. And fifty years later I found
myself in the middle class and softening like an overripe cheese. Given my
background, I never guessed I'd see the day when I would be bitching
because I could not get Hendricks gin or fresh salmon delivered to my
door. (But when you're too drunk to drive or even walk to the supermarket
. . .) Such is the level of self-insufficiency to which some of us weaker
souls devolved.

Whatever the case, we no longer depend upon community and other people
around us. We live in our houses, idiotically sited vinyl "Tudor-esque"
fuck-boxes with brick facade (sorry Neddie, I just had to steal that lick)
which grow bigger each year in order to accommodate our massive asses,
egos and collection of goods, and we "order out." Or go shopping for it at
the mall. Beyond the need to get laid, there is little real reason to be
together with other thinking, feeling adults. We do not need each other to
do anything important in our lives, because all those things are performed
by strangers, often as not thousands of miles away.  Including the sex, if
your are an internet porn fan. Which leaves us strangers to the natural
human community. After all, what can we really do together? Consume.
Drink. Consume. Talk. Consume tickets to entertainment. Consume. There is
little else to do with other human beings in America than consume. So most
of our primary life activity is solitary. We drive, do housework, pay
bills, watch television. When we do "get together with friends," there is
little to talk about, other than one form or another of consumption,
consuming music, or movies or whatever. We cannot tell each other anything
new because we all get the same news and information from the same
monolithic sources. At the same time we try to fill the loneliness for a
real human community that we have never experienced by calling any group
of people who come together in any way a "community". Online community.
Planned community. As writer Charles Eisenstein, says in The Ascent of
Humanity:

[I]t is a mistake to think that we live ultra-specialized lives and
somehow add another ingredient called "community" on top of it all. What
is there really to share? Not much that matters, to the extent that we are
independent of neighbors and dependent on faceless institutions and
distant strangers. Real communities are interdependent.

Never in all history has there been such a lonely, inauthentic
civilization.

This leaves those few fleetingly concerned Americans alone to momentarily
stew over the condition of the world, fester upon national moral issues
like squishing brown desert people under tanks . . .  or building offshore
gulags so the sight of naked prisoners being tortured in wire cages will
not dampen the consumer confidence index. But ultimately somewhere between
the seven o'clock showing of Law and Order and the third cocktail, or
perhaps after that bracing evening trot around the block in your Land's
End shorts with the dogs, the mind settles down to the more relevant
issues such as "Do I need a Blackberry, and if so, should I wait for the
next generation of technology?"

Still, what about those cages in Gitmo? Or global warming? You and I may
presently be yammering our asses off in cyberspace (talk about
inauthentic!)  about such topics, but most Americans, if they dialogue
about those things at all, conduct the dialogue with those voices inside
our heads, the one that says: Things cannot be as bad as the alarmists
say. They cannot be as bad as I often suspect they are. If there really
were such a thing as global warming they would be starting to do something
about it. And besides, even if it were true, science will find a way to
fix it. If there really were genocide going on in so many places far more
people would be concerned. At the same time, every commercial and piece of
sports hoopla, every celebrity news item leaves us with the impression
that if we have time and money for such things, then matters cannot be all
that bad, can they? If the earth were heating up we would surely notice
it. If our soldiers and government agencies were torturing people around
the world it would make the news. If millions were being exterminated, it
would be more obvious, would it not? Look around. Nobody seems worried.
Look how normal everything is every day. Look at your wife and your own
family. No one is worried.  Things cannot be that bad.

Joe Bageant's little inner voice is like everyone else's. Whenever I
shudder at the condition of the republic, whenever I feel its utter
absence of community, it scolds me and tells me I am crazy: Nothing is
wrong. This is merely the way things are. It has always been this way.
You cannot change that. You expect too much. Look at your wife. She's not
upset. She wonders why you cannot just go ahead and be happy. What you see
around you is normalcy. Take care of your own family. Relax. Buy
something. And I do too. Which is why I own nine guitars, though I can
only play one at a time, and even then not very well. The voice made me do
it. I was bored.

Bored plus anxious. Hell, I could lose my job. I could lose everything.
And if I lost my job I would indeed lose everything. Social status,
family, the accumulated net worth of a lifetime. Which, believe me, ain't
much after two divorces and a run-in with cocaine.

Adding to the anxiety is the lack of evidence that the world needs you or
me at all. In this totally commoditized life we are dispensable.
Everything is standardized. It really doesn't matter who grows our food or
makes our clothing. If we don't make it, it someone else will. If we don't
buy it, someone else will. Some other faceless person will step forward to
fill in our place. The same goes for the engineers who created this
computer and the same goes for your own job. The machine rolls on. With us
or without us. Naturally, we have our loved ones and our friends. But
increasingly even these relationships are monetized for all classes.
Family and leisure activity has become intensely commoditized. Never has
there been such a lonely and inauthentic civilization as the American
middle class.

Now it took me one helluva long time to claw my redneck self into the
middle class and it took me even longer to figure all this out about its
inauthenticity. Always one to fuck up right in front of the whole damned
world, I loudly declared American middle class life to be a crock of shit
and vowed to kiss it off. Go someplace simpler. Run nekkid in the surf in
Saint Kitts or smoke pot in Belize. Catch my own damned salmon on the
Galician Coast. But whoaaa hoss! This bad news just in:  Not only do you
have to buy your way into the American middle class through forceful
consumption of the lifestyle, but you have to buy your way out of it. I'm
serious. Buy your right to live in poverty. Let's say you've managed to
get your kids through college one way or another, usually via a second
mortgage and loans, and you decide like I did to say: Fuck this. I've done
right by my family. Now I've got high blood pressure, a bad back, and a
million other stress ailments. I'm overweight and have terrible lungs. Now
I want to escape the ever rising cost and stress of playing the game, the
grinding chase after enough net worth to feel safe about such things as
health care and a safe place to shit. Spend a few years in some warm place
blinking at blue, unpolluted sky before I go tits up. To my mind, these
are completely understandable sentiments for any reasonable person. But,
alas dear hearts, the American middle class is a lockdown facility. One
that takes a lot of cash bribes and blackmail payoffs to break out of.

Now making complicated plans just to croak has always seemed rather
excessive to me. Millions manage to do it without much planning or the
need for highly paid experts. I don't care about financial planners or
plans for elder care and such crap in my old age. I'm willing to die
wretchedly and maybe even unnecessarily, if doing it the right way means
blowing a couple hundred thousand dollars I do not have to buy few extra
months drooling and talking out of one side of my mouth following that
stroke I so richly deserve, given my debauched life. To hell with health
care as we know it in America, which is to say as a tool used to blackmail
every working person in this country: Better to work less, own less and
escape the plague of blackmailers.

You would think owning jack shit and expecting nothing would allow a guy
slightly more freedom from toil, would you not? Yet, even though I never
wish to own a car again, or ever own another house, don't care about
clothes, could easily live on grains, fruits and vegetables, and am
willing to work maybe 20 hours a week at some mindless occupation so long
as it does not contribute to the world's misery and doesn't require heavy
lifting or good memory, and willing to live in the tiniest of rooms, it's
still impossible to do so inside this nation, once you've signed the
middle class blood oath.  Even if I managed to talk my wife into such a
life, this is the one thing I am not free to do in the good old land of
the free. In this country buster, you keep paying the going rate, even if
you don't care about going. Like the Cajuns say, you will know when you
are dead because the bills will quit coming in.

And so about a year or so ago I swore in print and on the net that I was
going to buy a cottage in some warm and simpler place abroad. Someplace
VERY cheap that I can go and write and make music with these hands and
this tired but willing voice. And I am getting closer to that goal,
despite the blackmailers. For starters, I have gotten over the American
fetish of ownership -- I can rent a place from some deserving poor native
family who needs the income. Maybe build an addition onto their house for
them for free. Maybe we can go into business together, a small bodega on a
dusty street, mango stand, take in laundry or whatever. I will be the old
white guy who lives in the back room, plays banjo and guitar and writes.
This is the one promise I intended to keep to myself.  I still do.

But I never in my life imagined it would be so hard to escape the various
American forms of institutionalized extortion and blackmail.  Becoming
debt free was the least of it. And having everyone you know and love
believe your have slipped your moorings is just the beginning.
Meanwhile, you become a Kafkaesque character wondering if you've gone
nuts, as you simmer in the ambient wrongness pervading American society
and watch the futility of our vast life-consuming program of intense
management and control of everything, the money, the bombs, the roads, the
retirement fund, the communications, the propaganda, the entire buzzing
tower of bullshit so massive as to make Babel look like a chicken coop.
And you ask every passing stranger in the shopping mall, "Is all this
fucking necessary?" Only to discover that you are in an isolation chamber,
a vacuum, a void in which no one can hear your voice at all. They are
sleepwalking. They are shopping. Shhhh.

The loss of our human kinship identities has left us to define ourselves
by what we own, where we live or what sports teams we support. But even
more insidiously, our lost stories of community and kinship are replaced
by the work of unseen professionals over the distant horizon. TV and movie
producers, the news media and educational establishment, they provide the
answer to the most important spiritual kinship and identity question we
will ever ask ourselves: Who are my people? Some of the worst people on
the planet are ready to answer that question for us in a way that serves
their own ends. They stand ready to answer other questions too, such as,
where did we come from?  Why are we here? They are the cadre of empire's
paid professionals who write the history and the news stories that fill
the deep need for a "story of the people." The most horrific events of
history have nearly always been set in motion by manipulation of this
national story.

After a while, it does not matter that the story was manipulated. Deep
need for a national story drives most to come to love and accept the story
over time. It is the only one they have. And if the story is sufficiently
intolerant and mean, we don't care about Iraqi deaths. And we come to love
empire and capitalism. Beyond that, many would have become bullies anyway,
without any help from the national storyline.  They don't value democracy,
or the ecology or liberty, but they do believe in authority and
discipline. Aw common! It ain't just Dick Cheney and his pet president
Sparky doing all this. At least half the country is loving the queer
bashing and the bombing and the god rhetoric. We should quit pretending
that a very large portion of Americans are not degraded human beings. They
are. Skeptics are welcome to visit me here in the armed and inbred
environs of Winchester, Virginia. It no longer matters what or who
degraded them. Much time has passed and this is how many Americans have
become. Fundamentalist cults abound, both religious and economic. Millions
upon millions of Christians live in hermetic worlds of their own, with
their own books stores, schools, media. Millions of middle-class
Americans, both conservative and liberal, live in suburbs and condos and
brownstone row houses completely surrounded by their own kind, all of them
worshippers in the American value cult, commodity fetishists. They are
differentiated mainly in their own minds and the narratives they have made
up for themselves. And of course in their consumption.

After 35 years of inattention to these not-so-nice Americans among us (in
another time they would have been called fascists, but now they are
considered merely a political "base^Ô" which is in itself a strange sort of
national acceptance of cruelty as part of the national character) we are
now watching them consolidate power. For the time being they control the
Presidency, the Congress, the Media, the Supreme Court, the Federal
Courts, most Governorships, and most State Legislatures. And if their
manipulation of congressional districts stays put they could feasibly stay
in power indefinitely.

Do these people, this half of our population which cheers on unprovoked
wars abroad, spying on the citizenry and demonizing of the poor truly hate
democracy? Fuck if I know. But after generations of brainwashing and
psychological molding and exploitation of their fears, I suspect they
never really knew what democracy was.

If anyone is going to turn the ship of the republic around, put us on a
course more in the direction of liberty and openness, it will require the
navigational help of those among us who can still remember what it was
like before totalistic capitalism took such grip. People who can remember
that genuine good will and intent was once alive in the hearts of most
people even if it never has been in the halls of Congress.  Remember when
at least some human and social progress was evident around us, thereby
giving reason to hope.

And these sorts of people are indeed still with us, though quiet, perhaps
out of insecurity. Only last Saturday I saw them at the Jiffy Lube.
Sitting in the waiting room with our little Jiffy Lube paper coffee cups,
waiting for our cars to be finished, we were watching on CNN the placement
of the casket of Coretta Scott King in the rotunda of the Georgia State
Capitol. To my right there was the huge black lady with cornrows and two
bright-eyed children hanging on her ankles. There was the thin young
30-something half-black dude who had just got off his cell to his wife
("Yeah honey, it's on CNN. Bye.") There was the very straight suburban
blonde yuppie woman with her sculpted ponytail sticking through the back
of her aubergene Eddie Bauer ball cap. And as those Georgia state troopers
on CNN, looking so much like the very same kind who once struck fear into
the Martins and the Medgars of the South, were climbing those marble
stairs under the gray February Georgia sky, one step at a time, then a
pause, then one more step. There was not a dry eye in that Jiffy Lube
waiting room. It was not just the cheap emotionalism of televised
pandering. Everyone there remembered, by God!  Remembered, or found reason
to believe in an America that at one moment in history, at least, rose
from its stupor to struggle forward toward something higher. Something
better. And yes, noble even.

And when I was finished blubbering inside, I thought to myself, "Well,
that small room in St. Kitts, or the tarpon fishing in Belize, they can
probably wait one more year."

Joe Bageant is a writer and magazine editor living in Winchester,
Virginia. His forthcoming book, Drink, Pray, Fight, Fuck: Dispatches from
America's Class Wars, is due out this year, to be published by Random
House. Visit his blog at: www.joebageant.com. He may be contacted at:
joebageant [at] joebageant.com. Copyright © 2006 by Joe Bageant.


--------19 of 19--------

 Sinkhole-down slides Bush
 & company. Help help help
 glub glub glub. Earth burps.

 Lightning bug-zaps Bush
 & company. Help help help
 zit zit zit. Earth smokes.

 Hurricane blasts Bush
 & company. Help help help
 snap snap snap. Earth shrugs.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------

   - David Shove             shove001 [at] tc.umn.edu
   rhymes with clove         Progressive Calendar
                     over 2225 subscribers as of 12.19.02
              please send all messages in plain text no attachments