Dennis on my mind

Today I watched Dennis' video on his signing up to run in the Democratic primary in New Hampshire and was swayed once again. It is an odd experience for me to feel swayed by a politician. I like writing about politics and their intersection with culture and the arts but to be involved in this more direct way is new to me. It also makes me wonder why am I feeling so tied up in this campaign.
As I look at the times in which we live, I see how extraordinary they are. While the Chinese may say that it is a curse to live in interesting times, and in some ways they are correct, on the other side of that curse is the blessing that when it is necessary, all of us can rise to the occasion and contribute. Many years of thinking about the ways in which the culture and arts intersect with politics have gone into getting me to this point of wondering just who represents my needs and goals the best. I don't think I have ever asked the question before. I never asked either who did I think could get the country and by extension the world out of the mess that is sitting here in our laps.
So, I watched the video and listened to him and asked myself if there were things I disagreed with. Of course there was one tiny point that slipped into my thinking that made me a little uncomfortable and that was I have a difficult time with the state motto of New Hampshire--Live free or die. It has been a rallying cry of the libertarian wing of the Republican party and it seems like an awful expression. However, Kucinich did say some things I thought I would never hear a person running for office of any kind in this country say and that was that we are not here to be the best or on top of everyone else. First principles according to the ways in which this country was first conceived live within Dennis' thinking. Not the most practical thing to say and while it annoys me that most candidates say the most bland and all things to all people stump speeches day in and day out, Dennis is much more of the moment. Things are happening at the moment he is speaking and he is not unaware of them.
In this way, reveries of other stump speeches of other candidates began to rumble through my mind and I know that there is a certain boredom that has to set in when this is what you are saying day in and day out to mostly press people who will then go out and say what you said with some kindness towards it or with some animus towards it.
All in all, life is hard when you have to be on in that way every day.
Blogging is like that too. Every day there has to be a topic of concern to say something about. I have been talking about Dennis for the Huffington Post as well as on myspace and now here. It feels like a new kind of obsession that should lead to either some new insights into what makes politics interesting in and of itself or will grow tiresome and tedious.
But since I do know we live in much too interesting times, I think there will be a very large percentage of the time when there will be more than a human can say in one day.
Today I am preparing to go to Philadelphia for the debate on MSNBC. I hope to be able to blog from there and tell what I have seen and what I hope to see down the road from there. What I do know is this, in my catalogue of skills for anyone I want to have to listen to at all, there has to be some real intelligence as well as a commitment to things of an abstract nature that are not about making us all wealthy and powerful but that speak to the more realistic aspects of life.
We all need good health care and we all need to be able to work and to retire. We all need to eat and if you are watching the papers these days you know that there is a severe food shortage at your local soup kitchens so if you think of it, take in some food now. No one in this or any country should be going to sleep hungry. We also know we all need to be educated and to receive an education that is not just affordable but free.
Start listening to Dennis for the next couple of months and ask yourself, why not Dennis? He is saying everything you want to hear and most likely is going to deliver what he says.

John Nichols got it right

Hello again on a finally fall day in New York City. I was so pleased last night to read on Common Dreams that John Nichols has understood what Dennis has been saying for a long time about the run-up to war and about war in general. There were many comments about his article, none of them about anything other than what Dennis has been saying about the war.
Many complained about how Dennis is still a member of the Democratic party. Others complained about how ran for president in 2004 and then supported Kerry when he won the nomination. Many complained that he will show up in the convention center and not be out on the picket lines during the Democratic convention this summer. I cannot speak to any of that. To me this is about as relevant an issue as what someone saw in their tea leaves this morning when they got out of bed.
What matters most is that someone in the media is beginning to see why Dennis matters and what this country needs as an antidote to the years of Republican mis-rule. It is going to take someone as iconoclastic as Dennis but who is a part of the Democratic party to fix what has been disastrously broken while at the same time lead us in a way towards healing. He is no messiah come to claim us but a perfectly human being who has loads of incredibly good ideas and wants to be of service to this country.
I urge us all to read more and look for more of the media beginning to listen to what Dennis has to say. There was a great interview with him posted up on his website the other day from a paper in Monterey. I think it is also important to urge your local papers to begin to acknowledge his presence and to write about him. You, too, can write about him and get his name out there for people to start talking about.
Life is too short for us to be worrying about the popularity of someone judged by the amount of money they have been able to raise. Ask yourself just whose money are they all playing with? What kind of a person do you want up there leading the agenda for the next 4-8 years? What will help us to regain some stability and feeling of confidence about ourselves and our own abilities to make the world a better place in which to live?
For these very abstract and not all that specific reasons, there is someone I think can do the job. For the ways in which he articulates his reasons for wanting to lead the country, go to his website.
At tne end of this long election cycle, I do hope we come out with a clearer purpose that serves more of the people who are in need of help rather than just the wealthy who seem to have found a wonderful set of accomplices for stealing the government coffers.

If the Question is about Hillary

Then we need to ask a number of piercing questions about her and the way her campaign is being reported about. There is a big difference between the way the media portray a candidate and the way a candidate most likely feels about the way she is presenting her ideas.
At this moment, let's just focus on the whole notion of polling. I find it quite objectionable to turn the campaign process into a long and tedious horse race. Americans have a fascination with numbers and believe in numbers they can find surety. I don't think though most of them when asked can tell the difference between a factor and a percentage. So, if numbers are so great, what can we say about them other than that? If Hillary is ahead by 30 percentage points then what does that mean? It then becomes someone else commenting on the differences between numbers and the history of these differences and what they might predict.
The other way to report this campaign process though is much more interesting and has to do with what a candidate actually stands for and what he or she is promising to whom he or she will do when elected. Then a look at numbers can be interesting. But it is who gave how much money to whom and why. Looking at those numbers seems to provide more insight into what interests the candidate represents because no one gives money to someone they hope loses.
Then there is the more time consuming and less quantitatively reported coverage of the campaigns. In this type of coverage, it matters who said what, in what context and what it means. Then we can all sit down and discuss, for example, what is the vote for the Kyl-Lieberman bill all about? Why did Hillary for that and what was she looking to do?
How do you interpret her stance on war and on threatening war in instances that seem particularly Bush-like in their manner? I see it as a way of saying, vote for me because not much will change if you do. To me, that is the kind of impact a war mongerer has.
On the other side of the coin, there is Dennis who is not voting for war measures and is not equivocating about where he stands about this war, the coming war with Iran or any other war.
What press person has been willing to talk to him about these positions? Who has been industrious enough to get in there and talk to him about what a war economy does to us all? Who has talked to Dennis about how equal rights for every citizen translates into a call for war no more?
I could go on and on in this way, but go to his website and read each and every one of this positions on the issues you care about. Rather than re-iterate his comments, I am more inclined to put into perspective what the others are saying as opposed to what we can see documented of what Dennis has to say and beyond that, why, in all good conscience, it makes sense to vote for him.
Peace is a wonderful blessing and his message of strength through peace is the subversion of what the war mongers all believe. To them, peace only comes from the show of the military muscles. It is a sad statement about how we have been trained to think in this country that too many people agree with that idea without really examining it.
Ask yourself, are you interested in just being a number in this election or do you want to really have a voice and elect someone who will be able to articulate your concerns?
Then ask yourself, why not Dennis?

They call it diplomacy but sure sounds like threats to me

I have never really thought the word diplomacy was intended to be read as a wink-wink word that really meant a threatening statement used to intimidate someone to do what we want them to do. Today's attempts by the Bush administration via the harsh words and wording of the statements made by Secretary Rice made me wonder just how they define "diplomacy."
Perhaps to the current administration, the word just means do it my way or else. To others, such as myself, it means having a discussion where there is room and time to listen to each side without making any threats whatsoever. I don't know how you go to a bargaining table when you have already stated that every option, including dropping bombs on them, are still in play. Who would talk to people who have no interest in really listening except for exactly what they want to hear?
In the convoluted logic of the Bush/Cheney world it is hard sometimes to ever know why they even bother going through the hoops they set out. They are not truly kidding anyone about their intentions. I mean you don't get yourself set up for this kind of war for almost 2 years now and then just walk away, wash your hands of all the planning and movement of people and then say, oh well, I have changed my mind.
There are too many warships in the Persian Gulf right now and there are too many covert operations going on within Iran right now for this to be just a tease or a way to intimidate. This is a slow but gradual way to sidle into war without the need for any kind of declaration of war by the congress. Yet again, through sleight of hand which many, too many, of the people running for president endorse, this duo has gotten its way, circumvented that constitution and its rules for the ways in which war can be declared and they are now let loose to do as they please.
With cohorts in the press, such as the Washington Post, giving them all the propaganda they need and the senators running around acting as if this were just any other day at work, I am amazed at how simple it all turned out to be.
Those of you with sons of draftable age, I suggest you begin finding a way out of the country in order to protect your son from service to this miserable new war. There is no way any of this can happen without some form of the draft being re-instituted and they, Bush/Cheney don't care any more for the political fall out, they won't be in office.
Think about it, we are off to the races again and before most of us wake up to what they have done, there will be another long list of horrendous consequences to their misguided and ill-prepared war in Iran.
Don't say I didn't tell you so.

I Like Dennis, but he can't win

I hear that line a little too often. It rankles and makes me want to ask people just what do they think they have their vote for? How many of them threw it away on John Kerry because he was touted as the front runner? How many of us were totally embarrassed by his performance at the Democratic convention and moving forward to see just how poorly he responded to each and every attack that came at him? Do you really believe that by voting for who the media tell us is the lead candidate and can get elected that you are using your vote wisely?
I have to say that the way the media create the horse races makes me a bit frustrated. Most of my time is spent reading up on people and thinking about what they have to say. I care little for who thinks Hillary is in front now or that Obama can win now. What I do care about is what each of these front runners is saying about things that concern me and drive me out there to vote.
The unkept and little spoken secret of the media as well is just how much they need certain candidates to win for their own financial reasons. There is no secret that one of the reasons, for example, Valerie Plame got no support in the media when she was first outed as a covert CIA operative was that those who pilloried her were big Republican supporters and supporters of the war. The Washiongton Post, for example, was one of those newspapers that couldn't say enough negative things about her for reasons that were purely political and had nothing to do with the issue of a serious and important law being broken and that no one has yet been held accountable for it.
But I am straying from the original point I am trying to make. We are all voters and our votes must count or there is no democracy here. If we go to the polls and vote with what we believe are our best interests, then we vote for whom we want not for whom we think will win. The point is to vote and to have our say. This is not a lottery and this is not some kind of wishful thinking. These are the facts on the ground of what makes a true democracy.
I wish the press played fair and I wish the people we elected worked for the common good. I wish money and power were not such attractive things for too many of the wrong people. I hope to post soon on my website www.deborahemin.com a good essay on the nature of greed in this country and how it has disrupted the policies we have to live with.
But an equally significant factor is that we are all very bothered by what we see as the culture of corruption in Washington. Dennis has stood up at times when no one else would and we can make as he does jokes about how short he is but sometimes this kind of David and Goliath battle is essential to our well being. That reminds me, I am also working on an essay about that. We can look at King Saul and we can look at David's battle with Goliath. We can use these tropes from the Bible and apply them today in some ways to help us understand what is at stake.
From my perspective, what is at stake right now is the continuance of the life of the planet. I would rather vote for a vegan, peace-loving short man who understands and respects the constitution than whomever it is the media tells me to vote for.

The Press' Problem with Dennis

Yesterday I saw the press' problem with Kucinich close up and then saw it again today. First it was on some blogger with AOL and then today it is in Salon. I am a little fed up with the stupidity of this media age and can only with great exhaustion counter the idiocy by asking: Where have you been in reporting about Dennis' ideas rather than something Shirley Maclain, of all people, had to say about him from some event that may or may not have taken place a few years ago. I mean the reality of the world is such that this kind of coverage would have me pulling my hair out if I were Dennis.
He may just pull the consitution out of his pocket instead and begin to tell us about the articles of impeachment which is what is on his mind and should be on all of our minds. He is right and as has been reported on in more credible sources, he is convinced, as are too many Americans whose voices don't get heard either, that the president is either a criminal or insane. I vote for both descriptions and am looking for that really good legal straitjacket that would take the president and his country out of our collective misery.
I will talk and talk about the insanity of the Cheney/Bush team because to me it is quite self-evident. There is no way anyone with an ounce of sanity within them would ever be talking about destroying other countries that have never, I repeat, never attacked us. What can we do?
There is a woman in congress who needs to be bombarded with messages saying put impeachment on the table immediately. Serve it up and don't let anyone not eat their peas and carrots. It is necessary to do this and if you don't, the fate of this planet may be in your hands and you should then be relieved of your office for dereliction of duty.
Then the senators should be informed that none of them will have a place at the table either if they do not try these two gentlemen and find them guilty of war crimes. They are butchers and murderers and I am going to stop this rant and go back to what Dennis would be doing and is most likely doing right now.
He is reaching into his pocket and pulling out the constitution and pointing out how to get the job done. He is telling us all to look at the rules, the rules we must abide by in order to make a democracy such as ours work and then get to work getting in touch with Pelosi. She must be told in as many voices as we can raise, put the items of impeachment on the table now and don't let anyone leave until their plates and ours are ready. We need the Cheney/Bush team gone and out of our way so we can guarantee the continued existence of the world.
We also need a president like Dennis who will keep us in line with the constitution because he really does understand it and respect it.
Make that call now, the life we all save, the lives we save, will be ours.

Ladies at Lunch

Yesterday I had the privilege to be present for the birthday party of a very wonderful woman who is involved politically and socially on a number of issues. Her friends were invited to come for a wonderful meal while I spoke to them about my novel, Scags at 7, which they had all purchased and read so we could talk about it.
What was truly amazing about this experience, beyond how they praised my book and who doesn't like to be told that their novel moved someone to tears, was how the conversation eventually wound its way to politics.
At that moment, seizing on the opportunity to promote the candidate I think is worth the most consideration, I started talking about Dennis' ideas about a Department of Peace. This novel and workable idea whose time is certainly upon us sparked a great deal of enthusiasm as well as support for Dennis. They all saw what it takes firsthand to keep a family together and keep the kids safe and these were women for the most part who are very comfortable financially and have a high level of accomplishment under all their belts.
What struck me as the best of this discussion was the way in which their own accomplishments as writers, artists, event planners, therapists, etc. coincided with more of Dennis' ideas than would immediately strike was as necessarily so. The other key component in the discussion was how hungry they were for an alternative to the usual suspects from Washington and the great gaping mouth for cash--no matter who it came from.
Their disillusionment with Hillary was so apparent because her name never came up. That struck me so much more after they had left than during the talk. Her name was never mentioned. It was as if to these highly successful women, her candidacy was just another re-iteration of what the men were doing so why bother even wasting your time speaking about it.
This goes to show, I do believe, just how much more widespread Dennis' support is than the main stream media is willing to report. There are of course many reasons for their concerted efforts to ignore him and the most apparent of these is that he does not attract the advertising dollars that a name like Clinton does.
I guess if we want the same old, same old as president in the next election, then we have a really long list of people to choose from and if we want someone new and daring and honest and smart, then we have one good candidate to talk about and to support.
The question still remains: Why not Dennis?

Many Mountains to Move

There are just days when you read the news and see why a Dennis Kucinich presidency will make a huge difference to the way we live on a day-to-day basis. I can begin by looking at something that is very important to me and to anyone who feels the threat of war and the advancing drums of the Cheney/Bush team making it clear just how loud and long a boom of war they are about to commence.
Remember Shock and Awe the two dummies of the last military disaster? Remember the way it not only terrified the Iraqis but us too? I remember lying in bed on the night we went to war with Iraq and knowing full well that the whole Cheney/Bush team was lying to us about the WMDs and the fact that millions of people had marched all over the world and it had not stopped what was going to become and has now become the worst military disaster imaginable.
Let's pray to God that this next war can be averted by getting many more of the congress to stand up to the two psychotics in chief and help them let go of the controls. The military which had sworn it would not go to war with Iran--where is it these days? And no amount of marching in the streets or banging on pans will stop these mad men.
How do you stop them? Some kind of legal straitjacket would be a good way to begin. We definitely know that they are certifiably insane and need to be pulled back from the abyss where they are taking us too.
Do you remember the film Dr. Strangelove? Remember the cowboy on the rocket at the end? There is the perfect image of our president at the end of his term in office. Don't let him fool you that he wants to live in Dallas and run a peace institute. He just needs to be institutionalized and then we can all breathe a bit deeper and more safely.

Getting Started

Getting a blog started with the title, Why not Dennis, is a rather daunting project. First of all, Dennis Kucinich deserves a lot more attention than he has been getting from the mainstream media as well as from the voters. I, for one, would not have thought much about him had I not read his website through and then signed up to receive his email postings.
At first these came through slowly and eradically. Now they are often and of such importance that I decided to take it upon myself to begin a frequent blog listing all the reasons we need to keep up the pressure to get the votes out for this incredible man.
What a lucky thing too that someone short, male, white and with a funny voice is running for president. He fits none of the stereotypes of a man who wants to take charge of the one of the largest military/industrial/technological complexes in the world. I think what those people fear is the way in which he may begin to dismantle it all. That's right, he is not interested in helping billionaires run the world, he is more interested in the nickel and dime kind of businesses that will help working people like you and me. There is not much money in good health care run for the people who need it. Nor is there much money for the array of consultants and lobbyists who want to keep the wheels of government greased for those who train and send out mercenary armed forces.
Think about the ways in which this country would be changed, not overnight, but certainly incrementally and constantly if a president of Dennis' caliber were running the show. My mind buckles with the number of possibilities that emerge when I ponder the array of changes, the magnitude of each one and how that would change, for the better, the way we live each and every day of our lives.
But we must hasten this time of change because the powers that be right now are on a truly horrific path to further destruction of countries, people and the environment. The only way to begin the end of their reign and to ensure that Dennis Kucinich is elected is to get involved in any way that you can.
Perhaps the best and most efficient way at this moment is to start talking about why Dennis is the best person for the job and that we don't have to fear who he is taking money from in order to do the work that we will be putting him in place to do for us.
Please think about this now and let's all get moving together.
Thanks.