Posted under National Happenings by brian on Monday 31 August 2009 at 6:31 pm
Article by guest blogger BobbiV
As many of you already know, I am Brian’s mom. He has been a little under the weather for the past four or five days, so I told him I would keep up his blog for him. Then Senator Kennedy died and I fell into a funk. I simply could think of nothing else and I do not write coherently through tears. So I waited until things quieted down a little to write this remembrance. Sorry, Bri, that I fell down on the job.
I am of the generation that has known the privilege of living through the same era in which the Kennedy dynasty flourished. I remember my Catholic parents beaming at the election of John. At that time, in our part of the country, Catholics were looked down upon and often discriminated against. John’s election was a real breakthrough for our religion and it made us feel more at home in the country our ancestors had fought for in the Revolutionary War. Lots of old wounds were salved. We all know how that Presidency ended and I won’t go into that here. Perhaps at a later date.
Then there was Bobby. By this time I was old enough to vote (21 at the time) and I worked for the RFK campaign with my friends. We were going to stop the war in Vietnam, gain true equality for all and spread love throughout the world. We all know how that ended too. Maybe later for this also.
Then came Teddy. He was like the other Kennedy brothers in that he was full of energy, beamed goodwill., was handsome and even though born to wealth and privilege, he was a man of the common people. He was on our side. This is not something that can be faked, just ask the Bushes if you doubt that because they have tried to no avail.
We all know the sidestep that Teddy Kennedy’s career took and that probably cost him the Whitehouse. But, I have come to believe he was better placed at Senator than President. He was in a position in the Senate to mold and push through good legislation to help the everyday man and woman that he represented so vocally.
He lived longer than his brothers, but with a person like Teddy Kennedy, no matter how long he lived he would be taken way too soon. We could never get us enough Teddy.
While working in political campaigns during the 60′s and 70′s. I had the distinct honor of shaking Bobby Kennedy’s hand, greeting Teddy Kennedy face to face and talking with Eunice Kennedy Shriver among others. Of all the pols I met, none did to a room what the Kennedys could do. They simply lit it up. You felt the atmosphere change as soon as they arrived and you felt it deflate when they left. It was simply amazing.
The Republican Party and all right wingers that may think this dynasty is over are wrong. There are a slew of Kennedys just waiting in the wings and they will make themselves heard. If you have any doubt, just read a little bit about this family. You will see how many charities and foundations they have started and how they work personally for the causes they believe in. One or more of them will surely believe in high public office as their calling and when they put their minds to something they usually achieve it. And be careful wingnuts they are already quite apparent in Congress and state offices.
Teddy Kennedy never appeared more alive than when he was speaking out and fighting for a cause. Except perhaps when he was with his brothers playing touch football at Hyannis Port. I really believe heaven is a noisier place today because the whole clan is out somewhere playing touch football and laughing together.
I will never again shirk away from calling myself a Liberal. Teddy Kennedy makes me proud to wear that badge and be numbered among his admirers. Teddy Kennedy was loved and admired. Just look at the number of people lining his funeral route if you don’t believe this is true. He was admired for being the man he was, not what he might be able to do for you. He was loved simply for being who he was. Not the rich man of influence, but the champion of the poor man with none. He will be sorely missed by many and I am one of them.
The right wingnut Republican conservative Glenn Beck continues to bleed advertising dollars for Fox News. The number of advertisers that have now dropped him stands at 46.
Wow! Way to go! Sooner or later Fox will have to see the light and get rid of this sleaze. Fox keeps trying to deny there is any problem. But, if you take a look at Beck’s show, and to save your sanity I wouldn’t recommend it, every advertiser seems to be for gold coins or from News Corps own corporate family . It looks as though nearly every big company has fled the Beck leprosy.
From Color of Change:
Adding to an increasing list of companies distancing themselves from Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck, ten new companies whose ads were recently seen during Beck’s program–Applebee’s, Bank of America, Bell & Howell, DirecTv, General Mills, Kraft, Regions Financial Corporation, SAM (Store and Move), Travelers Insurance and Vonage–have pledged to take steps to ensure that their ads don’t run on Beck’s show. Forty-six companies have now committed not to support Beck’s show since ColorOfChange.org launched its campaign three weeks ago after the Fox News Channel host called President Obama a “racist” who “has a deep-seated hatred for white people” during an appearance on Fox & Friends.
This is wonderful, keep up the pressure and let them know that this kind of race baiting hatred will just not be tolerated anymore.
Glenn Beck on book tour. Photo by Mark7 from Wikipedia Commons
My mom, the environmentalist and animal lover has struck again! This time she sends us a letter from the Center for Biological Diversity that has a link to a petition regarding Global Warming.
Seriously, this is a very important issue. When our Senate critters return in September, they will be mulling over what to do about it. Let’s help them decide by telling them we want strong action NOW. The more signatures we have the better.
Could you please take some time to sign? You will make my old mom really happy and put a smile on my face as well.
More than 300 organizations, including Public Citizen, Church World Service, the Indigenous Environmental Network, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, and many others have joined the Center for Biological Diversity in a letter to the Senate asking for a strong global warming bill.
Your enthusiasm indicates that, like us, you believe this is the most important bill of our time — and you believe that only a strong climate bill can help us avoid catastrophic global warming. Now we need your help making sure your senator takes note of our letter.
As you read this email, the Senate is finishing up work on a companion bill to the deeply flawed House legislation on global warming that is slated to be introduced in September when the Senate returns from recess. Our time to act is now.
During the week of August 31, 2009, people across the country will be personally delivering our letter to the local offices of their senators. We need your help to make as big an impact as we possibly can. Will you hand-deliver our letter? Email Rose Braz, our climate campaign coordinator, at rbraz@biologicaldiversity.org for more information.
Coal-fired power plant photo (c) Phillip J. Redman.
The Center for Biological Diversity sends out newsletters and action alerts through DemocracyinAction.org. Click here if you’d like to check your profile and preferences. Let us know if you’d like to stop receiving action alerts and newsletters from us.
There is a well known and time tested military strategy that is called divide and conquer. If you are not familiar with how it works, let me take a moment to explain.
First as in all things there is an objective you wish to reach. You have your skills and your forces ready to go after that objective but you have a problem. The problem is that you have an opposing force that vastly outnumbers you and they stand between you and your objective. So what do you do?
Using the divide and conquer strategy you find ways to turn different factions of your opponent against one another. If you are very good at it you may be able to turn some of those factions to your side. In the end what was one large opponent is now many small ones that you can deal with one at a time. As you defeat faction after faction you destroy the enemy and achieve your goal.
If this sounds a little familiar to you, it may be because you are seeing this same strategy at work in America at this very moment. It is what the insurance companies and the Republican party are using to defeat health care reform. It is a strategy of manipulation and deceit, things that both insurance companies and Republicans have proven they excel in.
Lets take a look at where we started on this issue and where we are today. When this issue became the issue in our society there were two opposing sides.
On one side you have the greatly weakened Republican party coming off major defeats in the last election. Standing along side them are the big business and deep pockets of the insurance companies, for profit medical care, big pharma companies and approximately thirty percent of the American people. Their goal, maintain the status quo, increase how much insurance companies can charge for services and decrease how much they cover.
On the other side you have the very popular President Obama and his fellow Democrats who were elected largely on the promise of health reform. Standing along side them are approx. seventy percent of the American people including the almost fifty million Americans who have no health care. Their goal, reform health care, bring a single payer Medicare option to all Americans, force insurance companies to do what they say they will and lower health care cost in general.
Facing each other the stage was set. The Republicans and their backers set out on a classic divide and conquer strategy. They looked for the weakest chinks in the enemies armour and started planting the seeds of deceit. The big money sought to get returns on the investments they made to help bring some Democrats into office. They rallied their supporters into a berserk frenzy and the battle was joined.
The first faction of the Democrats to fall victim were the so called ‘Blue Dog’s’ who had received financial backing from the insurance companies. If insurance company money is lost to them, they may lose the next election. They turn their collective backs on what the majority of the people in their districts want and support opposition to President Obama’s plan.
Now like a pack of lions scoping out a herd, the Republicans went after those they saw as the weakest. They went after the seniors with lies and deceit. With talk of ‘Death Squads’, ‘rationed health care’, ‘unplugging grandma’, ‘the dismantling of Medicare’ and Nazi like ‘final solutions’ they painted a picture of an America that would not only refuse health care to seniors but actively seek to kill them. Recently some Republicans have stated that groups like A.A.R.P. and the A.M.A. are in truth special interest groups that seek to undermine seniors rights.
The next step in the strategy was to play on our fear. Like using the legend of the Dread Pirate Roberts from the classic movie The Princess Bride they called the Democrats names of hated enemies from Americas past. The Democrats are Nazis, they are Socialist, they are Communist. Then to add just a little more fear to the stew they were cooking they played the immigrant card by saying President Obama’s plan sought to insure all the illegal immigrants in our country. Of course, according to them the President wants to cover illegal immigrants because he is one himself being from Kenya and all!
Now that the Democrats are starting to turn on one another its time to make some noise. You have the blue dogs barking, the seniors quivering in fear, the racists spewing their bile and the President on the ropes. Now is the time to bus your loyal troops around the nation. In a classic military ploy the Republicans made their numbers seem greater than they are by busing their most loyal and vocal supporters to where the T.V. cameras were. It is the same as having small patrols go out and make noise to confuse the enemy or lighting a few hundred extra camp fires at night so it looks like you are stronger than you really are.
Most recently the Republicans and insurance companies are turning their sights on the members of our military. They claim that a recently published update to a living will booklet that came out under the Bush administration is in fact a ‘Death book’. They claim that the scheduled update to this publication seeks to kill wounded veterans or ask them to take their own lives.
That brings us to today.
Has the divide and conquer strategy worked? In some ways yes. The polls have shifted slightly in their favor. The yelling and protesting of the financed protesters has gained media attention. The gun toting anti Nazi, Socialist, Communist protesters have received a LOT of attention. But has it worked?
It seems that the insurance companies and the Republicans pushed too hard in their strategy. It is starting to appear as though instead of dividing those who favor health care reform they have galvanized them. The ‘Blue Dogs’ are being forced to look at falling poll numbers in their districts. They are being set straight by rank and file Democrats. The seniors are standing up and showing because you are old you are not weak. The A.A.R.P. and the A.M.A. are rallying their members. The protesters who seek only to disrupt are being removed from town halls. The Democrats seem to have found their spines and are standing up. President Obama is not backing down. The people are voicing their support of the plan, and the tide seems to have changed back to where it began.
Now there is one more factor to consider. Just before the Senate and Congress return from vacation to settle this issue there has been a terrible loss. Sen. Ted Kennedy has died. I mourn with many Americans today because of his loss. He was a man respected across all party lines and by all Americans. He also spent the last forty years working for health care reform.
I hate to say that the loss of a great leader is political, but the cold hard fact is that it is. Throughout history people have rallied around the cause of a fallen hero and Ted Kennedy is a hero. I personally do not think Senator Kennedy would mind us rallying around him to bring about health care reform. I do not think he would mind if his death gave the people and his party one voice. In fact, I think he would be quite proud if his death helped to unify us to the cause he held so dear and worked so hard to make reality. Health care for all Americans.
Now Republicans and insurance companies who held no punches attacking a man dying of brain cancer will be forced to show their true colors once again. They will be forced to attack the memory of a fallen American hero. Some are already claiming that through his death Senator Kennedy has made them a victim. These cold and calloused hearts see only how his death hurts their cause, not the pain that it brings to his family or the nation that loved him. They exemplify the term self-serving and they disgust me as they should any American.
The fact is we have seen through their divide and conquer strategy. However, at this late date they will be forced to continue vain attempts to pursue it. They have committed all their forces to this one goal and now defeat is closing in on them.
We are about to send a message to the big business interest in this country and their hired hands the Republican party. That message is that we are done. We are done losing our jobs to increase your stock margin. We are done losing our homes. We are done paying for insurance that refuses to cover us when we get sick. We are done paying five hundred dollars for two aspirin. We are fed up with the status quo and we want a change.
Divide and conquer did not work this time and history shows that when you fail with this strategy you are not only defeated but crushed. Just ask Napoleon Bonaparte. Soon we will see exactly whose Waterloo this issue is.
I will close this article with the words of Senator Ted Kennedy, the last of his generation. The words of a man whose family has shed blood for this country, are heros of this nation and who was respected by friend and foe alike. He always spoke what he felt and in doing so spoke with a passion that few will ever match. First from his younger days in 1978 then a montage of his comments.
Posted under National Happenings by brian on Tuesday 25 August 2009 at 11:42 pm
We all knew this was coming, but it does not make it any easier to say good bye. The ‘Lion of the Senate’ is dead at the age of 77 from brain cancer. He worked tirelessly for the common man for 40 years in the Senate. Health care for all and true health care reform was something he had worked for during that entire time. I sincerely wish he would have lived long enough to have seen it come to pass.
Perhaps now some on the right who say they were his friends and had so much respect for him will start to deal on the health care issue in good faith and stop the blathering and obfuscation. In his memory they should deal with this issue in a non-partisan way and think of what is best for this country. His first thought when it came to health care was caring for all of the people of the United States and giving even the least among us care when we need it. I believe this view came from his strong faith in his Catholic religion and his deep seated belief in true Christian values.
As he told us at Bobby Kennedy’s funeral, one of his brothers favorite things that he said all over the country:
“Some men see things as they are and say why.
I dream things that never were and say why not.”
Terrorism and terrorists have been around for a long, long time. The truth is also that one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter. Terrorists do not now or have they ever fought what is considered a conventional war. It is rare for terrorist groups to engage in large military operations and even more rare for them to achieve victory when they do so. Terrorists resort to the tactics they do because they have no standing army, air force, navy or armored units. They fight for what they believe in or to drive out occupational armies. They fight for what they believe in and they fight for freedom. They also fight to bring down their enemies in any way possible.
Hit and run tactics, guerrilla warfare and suicide attacks are the trademark of the terrorist. Not victory on the battlefield. They seek to inflict fear in their enemy. They attack in such a way to kill as many as possible with the least loss of life to their own group. They wish to make the people of their enemy lose the will to continue doing whatever it is that the terrorists are fighting against. They seek to make their enemy fold by making it too expensive to combat them and to undermine their enemies way of life.
Can a war against terrorists be won by invading another country, even one that harbors the terrorists?
No. Plain and simple.
If you could do that then our war against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda would have been won long ago. Our military claimed swift and decisive victory in Afghanistan. When we invaded Iraq, a country with no ties to either group, the result was the same. We were greeted as liberators on rose petal covered streets according to then V.P. Dick Cheney. President Bush played fighter pilot one last time to fly onto an aircraft carrier and claim “Mission Accomplished”. We had victory, the war was over, we beat the terrorists. We could rest assured that the nonexistent nuclear weapons that the terrorists had would not form the mushroom clouds over our cities that the Bush administration claimed would soon appear.
So what did the terrorists do? They moved, they hid and to this day they are fighting back. It seems the Bush victory was short lived, indeed. Years at war, thousands of American lives lost, estimated millions of native lives lost and trillions of dollars later we are still fighting for the same soil. Over and over again. Osama Bin Laden is still at large. Our country is in financial trouble and there is no end in sight.
The next steps we took began to undermine our way of life.
We violated our own laws. With mass surveillance of our citizens. With illegal arrest. With suspension of some of our civil rights. With torture of prisoners. With the creation of death squads. With lies to congress. With the employment of mercenary groups like Blackwater. With keeping our population living in fear. We are doing the work of the terrorists for them.
Now we know that our mercenaries smuggled weapons, molested children and executed entire families in Iraq. They see themselves as religious crusaders in a holy war. They represent America and our tax dollars pay them. Way to win the hearts and minds of other people. Now we know our military and C.I.A. threatened to kill the families of, rape the mothers of and molest the children of prisoners of war. They also pointed loaded and cocked weapons at the heads of prisoners saying they would pull the trigger and used power drills saying they would drill into their brains.
The constitution, the bill of rights, international law, our own laws and our morals have been wadded up and tossed out with the garbage. Sayings like innocent until proven guilty, justice is blind, truth justice and the American way have no meaning anymore. Again we do the terrorists job for them.
Today in a town hall meeting Senator John McCain talked of what an Al-Qaeda prisoner told him on a visit overseas. When McCain asked how Al-Qaeda recruited so many fighters in Iraq he was told it was due to the torture of and resulting pictures of the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. By disregarding our own morals and principles in the name of torture we gave thousands of soldiers to the enemy. We proved what the enemy said about us. We showed them that we were wrong and dare I say evil. We did the terrorists job for them.
As we pull our forces out of Iraq they do not come home after all these years. They redeploy to fight the war in Afghanistan one more time. Now Pakistan and India are part of the conflict. Al-Qaeda remains a threat and jumps from place to place. Bin-Ladin still commands them and there is no end in sight. So who is winning this war?
One long standing war against terrorists recently ended. Perhaps we could look there for answers to the conflict that we are engaged in. I am talking of the war between England and the I.R.A. that was settled after only nine hundred years through the art of compromise.
The British can tell us how effective and costly occupations, executions and torture were against the Irish.
How effective will the same tactics be with Al-Qaeda? How much more of our countries resources, blood and ideals will be sacrificed to this war? Will we still recognize our country when decades or centuries from now we have a compromise with our foes?
How long until we realize you cannot defeat an idea?
Who is winning this war?
When did Americans become such fraidy-cats and just what are they really afraid of?
Now it is becoming clear why the right wing conservative branch of the Republican Party and the corporations that support them do not want people to think empathy is a good thing. Senator Conrad (R-OK) gives a telling performance in the video below.
Republicans do not want people to have empathy, or even sympathy for that matter because it could cost the things they put before all else. Namely, money and political power with the sense of entitlement that goes with it. “The government is not the solution” says the Senator. It appears he believes neighbors should be the solution when a member of your family suffers catastrophic injury, even though you have health insurance that you have paid for. Of course, the health care corporation should not have their feet held to the fire or dip into their ever increasing profits.
I wonder if Senator Conrad from Oklahoma would feel the same and give the same answer if the person dying from lack of health care and on a feeding tube was from Florida and named Schaivo?
Watch and decide for yourself. Personally, I am sick myself from just hearing the wingnut fringe spout their excuses for everything no matter how heinous then covering it like a cat in the litter box with their excuse of Christian values.
It looks as though the Democratic movers and shakers in Montana have gotten more than just a little tired if their Senator’s waffling. They got him on a conference call and gave him a much needed spanking. He ended up saying “I want a public option, too.”
Does this mean that Max is going back to DC with more worries about his support at home than worries about bi-partisanship and his good bud, Republican wingnut Senator Grassley(R-IA)? We can certainly hope so. At the very least he has to decide if he wants to face a bruising primary fight or even be re-elected at all. How do all those health insurance company contributions look now, Max? Are they worth giving up your job and any future you may have in your states politics?
It seems that more and more of our recalcitrant elected Democrats are getting an earful during their break, especially the blue dogs. Too bad for them. They should have listened to what their constituents wanted in the first place. If they had, they wouldn’t be in this situation now. They made their beds, but it looks as though they won’t be too comfortable sleeping in them.
More than 300 organizations, including Public Citizen, Church World Service, the Indigenous Environmental Network, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, and many others have joined the Center for Biological Diversity in a letter to the Senate asking for a strong global warming bill.
