POWWOWIRAQSI -A Musical Journey

POWWOWIRAQSI-A Musical Journey

My co-blogger David K. Beckwith (aka Anonymoses Hyperlincoln) has created a musical suite entitled "POWWOWIRAQSI" ( Music in the Age of George the Unready ).

It is dedicated to (and is written about) the people who are dying in Iraq.

You can download the MP3 here. David says it's his interpretation of what it might be like to those who have to experience it.

The music inspired Patty Ann Smith to write this moving poem:

Can You Taste The Tears?

This is not the heartbeat of the Earth.
Can you hear the fear, can you taste the tears?
Can you smell the blood, can you touch the wounds?
This is the adrenalin rush of mankind at war with itself...
The death throws of a failed experiment.
Hope and despair living in the same body at the same time...
an impossible task
that must be altered.
Otherwise, there will be merciful silence for the Earth in the end
and...no more children to build a future for.

~ Patty Ann Smith / Hope4America

Advice for DNC: Stop eating your own best candidates

Advice for DNC: Stop eating your own best candidates

Here we go again. According to The Hill, many House Dems have said they think that a Howard Dean DNC-chairmanship would drive the party further from the mainstream of American politics. That view, according to the Hill, is "also shared by Republican lawmakers and strategists, who welcomed the prospect of Dean heading the Democratic Party".

This is the same crap we heard the last time the GOP faked the dumb Dems into thinking Howard Dean was poisonous and that the Bushites couldn't wait for him to win the Dem presidential primary. ( Remember the Weekly Standard cover titled "Please Nominate This Man" with Dean's picture on it? )

Democrats: Stop listening to the GOP and the yapping heads of the mainstream media, for sanity's sake!
You'll be sorry when you piss your grassroots progressives away.
Stop running scared and eating your own best candidates.
The party's pulse is still detectable.
Stick with your loser-establishment and you will remain losers.
Listen to the voice of the people instead of the slick-haired Dicks and lip-juicy Janes of the out-of-touch Washington media.
And, by all means, STOP listening to any advice that comes out of GOP mouths.

A Perfect Job for Howard Dean

A Perfect Job for Howard Dean
Please, please, let Howard Dean become the leader of the DNC.
By Natalie Binder Dec 6, 2004
LINK

Iraq- A War on Witnesses?

"...in Iraq, US forces and their Iraqi surrogates are no longer bothering to conceal attacks on civilian targets and are openly eliminating anyone--doctors, clerics, journalists--who dares to count the bodies...."

-Naomi Klein, from Guardian article, 26 Nov 2004

Iraq- A War on Witnesses?

Poli-Sci professor Robert E. Williams cites Naomi Klein's recent assertions that United States forces in Iraq are attempting to suppress reporting of civilian casualties in that nation.

DLC takes nauseating stand on UN

DLC takes nauseating stand on UN

It's absolutely nauseating to see the DLC ideologically bonding with the likes of the weasel-Senator known as Norm Coleman.

Democrats are going to have to get a spine..or continue taking the road to an impotency that Viagra could never resurrect from the bone-dead.


*See Jeffery Dubner's comments at American Prospect.

From Chinaview.cn: Spain, France express support to Annan

"Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and French President Jacques Chirac, who were meeting in the northern Spanishcity of Zaragoza, told a press conference they had called Annan to"express their solidarity at a time when he is being unfairly attacked."

Remember Pearl Harbor-A Story Unfinished

"..all those untold stories
all those silent lies
we'll never know each other
keeping them deep inside...."

-from the song Untold Stories by Tim O'Brien

Remember Pearl Harbor-A Story Unfinished

On December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese. At the American Street, Anonymoses offers some good food for thought. It tastes of unfinished tales and untold truths.

In the Seattle Post Intelligencer editorial today, it says:

"Perhaps congressional leaders found it sadly ironic to be still dithering over intelligence shortcomings in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the eve of the 63rd anniversary of another attack for which the nation was woefully unprepared: Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941."

Today, as Congress gears up to try to pass legislation to better protect America with a remake of our intelligence system, we understand that the ways in which Bush and his advisers have met this challenge will be key to how history judges them. It will never help to know that Bush fought the independent 9/11 Commission every step of the way.

The Syracuse Post Standard's columnist Sean Kirst reminds us there is one less Pearl Harbor survivor in Central New York this year.

Krugman Debunks SS Hype

Krugman Debunks SS Hype

In today's NYT column, Paul Krugman attempts to debunk the hype about a so-called "Social Security crisis".

"...the same people who claim that Social Security isn't an independent entity when it runs surpluses also insist that late next decade, when the benefit payments start to exceed the payroll tax receipts, this will represent a crisis - you see, Social Security has its own dedicated financing, and therefore must stand on its own.

There's no honest way anyone can hold both these positions, but very little about the privatizers' position is honest. They come to bury Social Security, not to save it. They aren't sincerely concerned about the possibility that the system will someday fail; they're disturbed by the system's historic success.

For Social Security is a government program that works, a demonstration that a modest amount of taxing and spending can make people's lives better and more secure. And that's why the right wants to destroy it."

Iraq Gets Double Thumbs-Down from CIA

Iraq Gets Double Thumbs-Down from CIA

The NY Times states that two recent CIA assessments have warned that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating and may not rebound any time soon. The top American military commander in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., reviewed the CIA assessments and initially offered no objections, while American ambassador to Iraq, John D. Negroponte, was said by the officials to have filed a written dissent, objecting to one finding as too harsh, on the grounds that the United States had made more progress than was described in combating the Iraqi insurgency. Together, the appraisals, which follow several other such warnings from officials in Washington and in the field, were much more pessimistic than the public picture being offered by the Bush administration before the elections scheduled for Iraq next month.