It ain't over till it's over

It may seem as if the fight is over but not by a long shot. I know that Dennis' campaign began to seem like too long a shot given what he has to face in Cleveland in order to retain his seat in Congress. But for many of us who have stood with him because he made us see exactly what was possible, there is no end in sight as far as I can tell. I shall certainly be here as often as I can be dishing out the same kind of stuff I was going into before only not just in response to his and our hopes for his successful bid to be President 44. That may have to wait a bit.
However, there is some awfully good news afoot as far as I can tell. The waters are parting a bit and there are people stepping up to do their bit and to keep on moving the impeachment call further along. It is work that must be done.
If you have not yet done it, go to afterdowningstreet.org and sign on there to lend your voice and to see what all is cooking in terms of impeachment. If you live in Maine, check out the truly progressive candidate you have there, Laurie Dobson and sign on with her and help her out. If you know of other candidates who are trying to break the mold and get those who understand what the consitution means elected, then get in there and help them too.
Our lives are too short to be tied up this way. Let us clean out the mess that has been made so that when we elect a new president, whoever it is understands that we will all be watching and the crimes committed on the last watch will not be tolerated.
This is the word now. It must be gotten out there and the work is tremendous but so necessary. No good will be done until the impeachment process is completed.
Write to everyone and tell them so. Now. Today.
Strength through Peace.

The Question is Still the Same

And now the answers become clearer and clearer. Are you keeping up with the Sibel Edmonds case? Do you remember her? She is the FBI translator who discovered that a number, a large number in fact, of our most trusted public servants have been selling nuclear secrets to some of the countries we say we want to see disarm. I know, this is truly an Alice in Wonderland world we live in but please bear with me as I go further into the rabbit hole to extrude some of the choicest findings I have.
First, we have this woman whose case has been ignored for at least 5 years now. The Times of London has printed up some of the choicier tidbits. We have read all over the place about her and her troubles on our behalf. Then we start to see the connections between her case, the Valerie Plame Wilson case and the rising tide of illicit and unsavory details of certain persons lives come spilling out to the point that they must resign from office or find another means of employment that keeps them closer to their families.
Then we have this other piece of news today, though not news to those who have been keeping up with Congressman Kucinich. Now we know, sort of, how often the administration lied in its run up to the war in Iraq. We still don't hear anyone other than the usual suspects calling for the impeachment and maybe now we know why it is off the table. Maybe it is true as so many of us have been thinking that the only reason to keep it off the table is that people are worried about their own skins.
Perhaps as Sibel Edmonds relates, there has been lots of illegal wiretapping going on and that is why some members of Congress would rather not do anything to fire any flames of anomisity. I mean, if there were a possibility of a leaked wiretap that exposed something you really didn't want anyone to know, then what are your options but to keep lots of things off the table.
I know this all makes me sound like this huge conspiracy nut, but stop for a moment and think about the irrational behavior as we observe it and ask yourself, if I were a member of the Congress and could make history and make this administration accountable for the death and destruction that they are culpable for, wouldn't I want to make sure that happened? What would really stand in my way? Certainly not some vague notion of more important business and the threat of not enough time.
Let us ask them, for certainly there is no harm in that.
And let us ask the media who control not just the public airwaves but also some of the larger military contractors what they would have to lose if Dennis Kucinich were president?
Perhaps you have some better answers. Perhaps you too have insights into this whole mess that can straighten it out and explain to the populace why the biggest criminals on the face of the earth right now are walking around with so much power?
Please explain will be the title of my blog. Until then, please remember,
Strength through Peace.

There is so much to report on today

Leaving aside the ridiculous free-for-all that Dennis was excluded from last night and turning to more positive news, let's begin with the thought that impeachment is gaining ground. Take a look at yesterday's Common Dreams.org and you will see an article by Marjorie Cohn about it and also and even more important, there are the names and telephone numbers of all members of the House Judiciary Committee, pick up the phones and begin to call and leave a message.
Second, there is this wonderful video of an interview with Elizabeth:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1320493559993974997
For close to 30 minutes you have Elizabeth Kucinich laying out the entire program her husband would enact once he is elected president. It is a very telling video in that Elizabeth Kucinich sees no need to lambast peoples' personalities but to take to task the very structures in this government which are not working in service to the people who elected these officials. And for good measure, she continues the critique many are making of the selling out of the DLC leadership to the corporate interests that have also infected the Republican Party as well. Her voice is a refreshing retelling of what a Kucinich presidency would mean to all of us. I urge you all to watch it.
More from me later about the Congressman's reactions to the exclusion from the debates and a discussion in my own mind of why those who feel that the media are not engaged in a form of conspiracy are only fooling themselves, trying to rid themselves of the nightmare times in which we live.
And I am going back into that Common Dreams article to get the quote from one of the responders to the kind of grit that Kucinich displays by hanging in and not giving up.
Strength through Peace.

History of War No More

Thanks to this blog's good friend, Brenda O'Connor, here is a link to a speech made by Dennis before the vote leading to war with Iraq. Read this and you too shall weep:
http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/2002/10/03_kucinich_vote-no.htm
I am sure when you look at this speech and how Kucinich went through the resolution point by point in order to make clear to all of us that there was no basis for voting for that war that he made it also clear to all who took the time to read the war resolution, that there was no basis for war at all.
In fact, according to my reading of it, there was never a cause to go to war with Iraq in the 1990's but that is another discussion for another time. What we do know is that within that war resolution was all the misinformation that was gathered by this administration, what amounts to a large portion of lies, used to dupe a nation into believing that Iraq was a co-sponsor of what happened on September 11, 2001, that Iraq was in pursuit of means to further inflict damage on this country and others in its own geographic region and that Iraq's willingness to do that was a clear call for the US to take on a unilateral position of punishing them, in effect, for violoating UN resolutions.
What can one say when you read this speech? How much more information and cause do you need to do two very important things: 1. Impeach the vice president and president for lying to this nation about the reasons for going to war and 2. Elect Dennis Kucinich for president.
Brendan O'Connor has made some more interesting suggestions about what can be done to put the word out about why Dennis was excluded from the debates, 4 now in total. Perhaps it would just be good if we could just get a call out to people to go to his dennis4president.com website where all the Congressman's responses can be found and where as well, it is clear from what he says that this is truly about the corporate drive to ambush anyone who dares to disagree with their goals.
Would that it were true that the whole system could be played as fair as we are promised it is. We know of voter fraud and we know of how the machines can be rigged. Yet, do we see much discussion of this in the mainstream press? Of course not, why would they want to discuss the means by which they are complicit in rigging the votes? It is not a surprise to me that they have turned this whole election cycle into a horse race. That is how they deem it should be discussed and that is how it is discussed. Just as they blame us for needing to dumb down the news, when most Americans vote against such a tactic, they blame us for needing these "better" machines to register the votes because the people in some counties in Florida in 2000 could not mark their ballots correctly.
Blame is very easy to pass around for all kinds of problems in this country and yet we seem inevitably to blame the victim no matter which way we turn. You have a say in how these things will turn out and must exercise that option every day. You must talk up Dennis Kucinich's platforms and plans. You must describe to your friends, co-workers and family why there has to be a real choice of candidates and not ones decided by the corporate powers that be whose real interests are money and power not about our lives and our ambitions as a people.
So, there it is, the case was laid out, people chose to ignore it, including many of the people running for president today. Think with the logic of what will happen if they are allowed in office again let alone become president.
There is truly Strength through Peace.

Some HIts and Too Many Misses

Impeachment is not just an option put into the Constitution by some wise men but a real remedy for what is wrong these days with our current administration. With every piece of news that comes out about the way this government is being run, we find more and more evidence of the crimes, the treasonous behavior that the president and vice president have been involved in almost from the start of their terms in 2001. Yet, it is difficult for this country to get its mind around it all.
Rep. Wexler, running for re-election in Florida, has become a more current member of the team going to bat for Dennis' articles of impeachment. He has now delivered to his colleagues on the House Judiciary Committee the 200,000 signatures he has gathered online in support of the impeachment of the vice president.
These are difficult times, there is no denying that. Even though it looks like there may be no way to move this forward, or that we will run out of time, the momentum and dedication to this impeachment drive continues to gather steam. Why?
It needed tax our minds too much to observe just what we read in the news every day that what is and has been going on in the White House is not just illegal but also deeply immoral.
Having said that, I also think it is important that those of us who want to support this motion, keep in mind that those who are in favor of it in the House and/or are running for the Senate need our support. For these reasons, I urge you to take a look at who is running for office in your district and in your state for the House and the Senate.
I think then it is time still to feature those candidates who support the impeachment and will work towards it from this moment forward.
If you live in Maine, I know that Laurie Dobson, who is running for the Senate as an Independent is totally behind the impeachment and would be working in the remaining two weeks of the president's term to impeach him and the vice president. I know that Congressman Wexler is running with this being one of his largest reasons for re-election. And of course, Kucinich is running for re-election in Cleveland's 10th district. Please do what you can to support them and as more candidates become known to me, I shall inform you of them as well.
Strength through Peace.

All Military News all the Time

Watch the news all of you. The tricks and the fakes are beginning. First the Tricky Dick move, and I mean Dick Cheney, not Nixon, about the Iranian gunboats and now we can see there are several articles today about both the worsening condition in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan as well as the fear factor being ratcheted up while the President flies off to Israel to make nice with the Israelis and to castigate the Palestinians for their behavior. Will Mr. Bush make any comments whatsoever about the increased number of settlements going up on Arab land? I sincerely doubt it but he sure will find the time to talk about how unhelpful it is for the Palestinians to voice their concerns.
I am afraid, not by what is being reported, but by what it signifies. Only too clearly this administration has been making it known that their only strategy for dealing with any situation is at the point of a gun or in the current cases at the dropping of bombs from high in the atmosphere whose targets are mostly long gone before the bombs fall.
I have had the distinct honor of listening to Dennis talk about this kind of strategy. The use of endless war as a means both of foreign policy as well as a means of filling up the pockets of their friends with all the available money from the treasury in order to make them fabulously rich.
I have read in places that even Grover Norquist was opposed to this war based on fiscal concerns. Of course, he allowed the administration to muzzle him until after the elections so no one would know that according to fiscal ultra-conservatives, this war is a huge mistake.
None of us who support Kucinich for president or for a return to Congress has any doubt about where Dennis stands on these issues. The only candidate to propose a Department of Peace, Kucinich is running on the theory that we can rise to our better natures in order to put an end to this insanity.
More Marines are on their way to Afghanistan (they are reporting 3,000) and more deaths of American soldiers in Iraq (they are reporting 6-9 in one incident alone) and then there were the reports of the covert operations going on in Pakistan over the weekend. Then the government decided to create this false tape of what happened in the Gulf of Hormuz this Monday. How convenient that right before the primary vote, the tapes appear along with the suspicion that they are falsely reporting what happened.
Dick Cheney learned his lessons well from the former wearer of the Tricky Dick mantle. Now it is time to place it where it belongs today. We must move forward on the impeachment issue so that we can end this endless war and get the people responsible for so much death and destruction to pay the price for it.
Please help us. Help us by donating to the campaign and by helping physically to call your friends and family and explain to them why this is a crucial time in the campaign. With all of us pulling some of the weight we can help Dennis to help us.
Strength through Peace.

Why a Constitutional Initiative?

There is the question that should have been asked the other day. I didn't ask it and now I am. I will even take a page out of Dennis' playbook and ask and answer the question myself. I hope not just for my own edification either.
The question is: What was that Constitutional Initiative about on Sunday night? Why was that station in Manchester packed that night and what were people there to hear?
Having attended a few of these initiatives, I can tell you that the one thing that always stands out for me is how vital this document is and must be if we are to continue with a rule of law of any kind that means anything for all of us. The ability to pick and choose just what he would like to obey today and what he would like to ignore today as being legally binding is not a choice anyone sworn to uphold it can make.
Thus when we say that we want our troops out of Iraq or we want to end the Patriot Act or we want to have universal, single-payer, not-for-profit health care, we are also saying we want to see the gentlemen who are not upholding their oaths brought to the Congress for the Impeachment hearings they so justly deserve (as do we) so that they can be held accountable for their crimes.
It is my belief and not the campaign's stated policy that without impeachment none of the other things can get done. When these crimes are allowed to go unpunished we forfeit the one redress we were given in the Constitution to end an illegal government's reign. Or rather to redress the illegal actions of representatives of our government.
Thinking of that one possibility given to us, we must seize upon it. There is no time like the present to do that.
Write, call, spread the word.
I am up on my soapbox today about this. I woke up thinking about it and will be writing about it until we get some action in the Congress as we are entitled to when there is a bill sitting in the Judiciary Committee.
Make it known how you feel about this and about all elected officials who will not act on it.
Keep March 19th, the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the illegal war in Iraq, marked in your calendar. Actions will occur and you can be a part of it.
When you and I act, things happen.
When people talk about the constitution as a living document, not in the sense that originalists mean it, i.e., with an agenda to fulfill, but in the way that those who understand what its real importance is--to guide the country in its making of laws.
Let's say that the nation is waiting for this kind of change, that means a return to what matters rather than this constant listing towards disaster.

Believe me, Mr. Cheney, there is still time

No time like the present is what I have to say and if you are reading around today, perhaps you saw this article popping up:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/02/6125/
That's right, it is impeachment talk time again and not as if we couldn't all use a lesson in how to hold elected officials to the standards we expect them to adhere to. So, if we can all say to Madame Speaker, yes we have time and the need and the interest to see the vice president and then the president held accountable for their criminal actions, then perhaps we will see some action taken and sooner rather than later.
I wonder just where the two of them think they will be able to go once they leave office without the thought/fear/worry that some marshall will not show up at their door some day with a warrant for their arrest. Because to be honest, the fear of this is an awful fear to live with. They have instilled it in others and maybe it is fitting they experience it as well. But the most important thing is that they need to be held accountable so that the next office holders who have similar inclinations towards the constitution will not do a damn similar thing or else face the consequences of their actions too.
But read it and think how can we make this happen and make it stick. Dennis needs to be credited with starting the ball rolling on this one and having the courage to put it out there. There are not many people today with that kind of courage.
Vote as if you know your own heart and the needs of this country and we shall all be fine.

How do you feel about torture today?

I don't know about you but after reading the op-ed piece by Kean and Hamilton in today's New York Times, I felt sick all over again about the ways in which this country has been run over the past 7 years. (I am not giving any other previous administrations a glance right now because there isn't enough time.) After I finished reading their outraged comments I again found the stomach ache that will not go away had intensified. A sure sign of my own outrage and disgust with a government that has no sense of decency or legalities and a way to see why we must not falter now when it comes to reversing the horrible trends set by them.
A friend of mine is a friend of George Tenent, the former head of the CIA. She has been in the past pretty certain that her friend would not do what people say he has done--condone the use of torture, etc. I hope she can truly know this man and know that he would not have gone along with this regime's ideas but I have to confess, I don't buy any of it. They are all guilty whether by actually authorizing it or not stepping in to stop it.
Yet, we are too in our own ways guilty of sitting idly by and not getting this administration out of office as soon as we knew what was going on. I know lots of people are getting thoroughly disgusted with the way things are shaping up politically right now. They watch the broadcast news which has already been way too vocal about who is ahead and who should win. They listen to these same guys who over and over have lied to them about many things of importance and believe them. I know there are those we can argue with about this fact and those who just don't care, but this is directed to those of you who care.
Now is not the time to give up or give in. Now is the time to redouble every last bit of that energy that was there for real change in the way things are going here. I should add that if you read the foreign press at all you will see that this country is not the only one plagued with rising debt, rising abuses of power and rising costs of living for the middle and lower classes and more and more protections for the wealthy. It ought to awaken more of us to the fact that this kind of greedy need for power is an epidemic and needs to be stopped.
Unfortunately, there are human beings in places like Guantanamo and other sites we don't know about who are facing a daily regimine of inhumane treatment, along with the 2 million or so felons in this country, and we need to find a way to put an end to this kind of warfare against humanity. It threatens us as well. My stomach is testimony to that.
If you can make it to the news sites on the web, begin to campaign for the one candidate that can and will make this change--Dennis Kuinich--and don't give up until the votes, all the votes are counted in November.
Every one of us means something to the world and right now we are also the voices of change and a better world.
Strength through Peace is more than a slogan, it is a way of life.

When Governments Lie too much

It is now only too obvious that this current administration is addicted to lying and almost about every word that comes out of their mouths is a lie. No longer should we waste our energy worrying about whether they are telling the truth. Our default position should be that they are guilty as charged and we can stop wasting time debating whether or not to impeach or whether they will change. The answers are yes and never. They will need to be impeached so that there will never be another power grab as the one going on now.
If you aren't frightened by it then you are not paying attention. There are good people, like Ray McGovern, the former CIA analyst and John Kaminski from Maine who have had really good insights into the trouble we are in and have come away with hope in their hearts. They are far better people than I am. I am frightened by what I see.
One part of me says, get rid of everyone of them. No one who has served in government and taken money from any corporation should ever be allowed to serve the public. You cannot have two masters.
If money is one of your masters, then you cannot serve the people. The people must come first and with that as their oath along with their oath to defend and protect the constitution, public officials whether a dog catcher or a postal employee or a congress person or the president, needs to take such an oath and to be held to it.
I don't care if there are complementary foundations that would like to offer help to the candidate. We should all pay for the campaigns and maybe then they will not be as long and as exhausting. Maybe they just don't serve our national good at all.
Conversely, we could decide to put all public servants on a service contract. In other words, you apply for the job, you have other candidates for the job and we all interview you and get to make a selection based on a popular vote, e.g., as in a democracy.
But the point is, could we have elected in a fair election, a president such as George W. Bush? Most likely mistakes are made but then others elections would not be tied to his and we could have impeached him 4 years ago and not let this madness continue unabated this long.
I know it is easy to place blame on all of us for not stopping them. We have been watching a very long train having a very big collision. We do not know if we are going to get hit by it so we are scared to move or to change anything. No matter what rock you look under there is damage to this country from this administration and it is just time to look and pray for those who will truly represent us and not the people looking to get even richer than they are now.
If a woman who worked in Iraq and was gang raped there by her fellow employees, i.e., Halliburton employees, and cannot be properly defended and protected, then we none of us has the luxury of going out on the streets to protest alone. We need a critical mass. The best protected still of that political mass is to vote. To vote for Dennis Kucinich in the primaries because you know he is right and no matter how little time he has had to speak out nationally, you know he is right.
He is right to urge you to vote your heart and give to the country the gift of a real change for the better. Not just change for change's sake but change that means the course of this country will be re-routed to conform to the rules and laws set down in our constitution.
When our government has used the obvious course of all dictators, to lie to the public, we know we are going in the wrong direction but we also need to not just be promised a change in direction but a way to get to the new goals.
I can think of no more reliable way to make sure we are heard than at this point to vote. Not just to vote but to work as poll watchers and other election day officials so we can also be assured that all the votes are counted fairly.
As a way of changing what they used to say in Chicago on election day: Get the vote out and count it fairly.

Off to see Dennis

It is now time to go off on the road again to visit with the folks who are listening to Dennis Kucinich in person. I am following this obsession to make known who he is and what he is talking about to as many people as possible. I don't care to be a part of the world that just repeats what they are told but rather to be one of those who listens and questions and then takes it upon herself to try and relay the answers to the questions we may have about where he stands on issues and why he came to those conclusions, etc.
For this trip what interests me is very minute. I hope to take other trips and to follow him into other communities to see what happens when he speaks to other citizens. But on this trip, what I am most concerned about is the way in which the mainstream media is talking or rather not talking about him. I want to know what he sees as his part in making that happen, what he feels about it in general and what he thinks he can do to change that.
Most of my feelings on this topic are evolving as I am beginning to pursue the answers to these questions and what it could mean for our democracy that certain candidates are listened to and other candidates are ignored, if not forcibly shut up in front of a huge audience as Dennis was at the CNN debate in Las Vegas.
When we begin to understand the answers to the questions of what makes a candidate interesting to the media and what it is that keeps voters from being able to hear what a variety of candidates have to say, then we can have a better vantage point from which to evaluate how well or not our system of government works. If there is going to be true voter equality then there has to be also the complementary attention to making sure we hear what all the candidates have to say about the issues that affect us all.
That is what this road trip is about. How well does he really communicate to an audience when he is allowed to speak and not with a thirty-second clock and not with a moderator who is noticably disinterested in hearing his comments. And then, what do his listeners like about what he hears and what don't they like?
These questions just don't get asked and need to be. I hope to then find a forum where we can all not just read my report but discuss it.
Stay tuned for further developments as they occur.

Here's one for the books--What if

Dennis Kucinich becomes the next president of the United States because the dummies in the House of Representatives continue to act as they did today while Dennis pushed through his resolution to impeach Dick Cheney? Did you ever read a more convoluted and assinine story of sheer stupidity and moral turpitude than that displayed on both sides of the aisle today? It reads like a piece out of Alice in Wonderland. What is is not and what should be cannot be and on and on while Dennis Kucinich walks across the room and gets what he needs and the job is done.

What world do these jokers live in and what makes them think that by shooting themselves in the foot and looking like the assinine idiots they have proven themselves to be all along that they have in any way changed the debate?

Okay, now I have calmed down a bit and can replay for those who have not yet seen this drama unfold what I have read about what happened today when Dennis Kucinich, lone man with the mission of protecting all of us, came forward and after 6 months of work has finally gotten through another loophole the articles of impeachment brought to the floor of the House of Representatives for a vote. The democratic leadership wanted it tabled because this was not "a priority." Then, in order to get at Nancy Pelosi, the GOP decided in their infinite wisdom not to vote to table the resolution. So they ended up voting, after about an hour on whether to vote and then due to the craziness of this mirrored world in which those in politics choose to live, the resolution ended up passing and will go on the House Judiciary Committee.

Rep. Kucinich has now accomplished the impossible and made the Republicans vote to bring the articles of impeachment against Cheney forward in order to embarrass Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats. I think I could not have dreamed up this plot had I been looking for the most fantastic way to tell the story of this entire period in which we live. In the time it takes to tell this odd story, I am still sitting here thinking, but how could they have been so stupid? Don't they realize that what they have done is just handed Cheney's head on a platter to be convicted of the crimes of which he has been accused?

On top of that, don't they see that because the numbers are really on Dennis' side that this could be the very thing that pushes voters now to see who is on their side, listens to them and does the work they have been voted into office to do? I don't know about anyone else, but there is something so satisfying in the ways in which their awful tactics have finally helped to shoot the man who shot the man in the face that I am happy for the moment and feel that at least for now there is a chance of justice being served and in such an amazing way and with Dennis at her side.

The time has come to stand up for Dennis

As he now will be using an arcane legislative move in order to bring to the House floor next week, on election day no doubt, the articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney. There is no doubt in my mind that on this Dennis is corrent in what he is doing and he must be supported. We must all take a stand behind him and with him and urge everyone we know to get that vote moving forward and to have it known in this case who sees the wrongs committed against the constitution and the American people by a mad man who believes wrongly in his own rightness.

I have written about the two of them, Bush and Cheney, at length and there is a new article on my website to look at about them. But Dennis is taking action and it is the most important event of this month and we must do all we can to stand with him on this.

Let's get the word out as best we can that the articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney will be put on the House floor next week and make sure everyone we know knows about it and helps by calling all those wimpy Congress people who do not sign onto this due to their own fears of retribution.

Please help Dennis and stand with him on this extraordinarily brave move.
Peace must be with us too.