Peace On Earth

Kerik's Out-Who'll be next choice for Homeland Security?

Kerik's Out-Who'll be next choice for Homeland Security?

I wonder who'll be nominated as Homeland Security secretary now that Bernard Kerik has decided to drop out? My bets are on Asa Hutchinson (unless he has gubernatorial aspirations). I'd be surprised if Bush were to choose Thomas Keane (a Republican who chaired the 9/11 panel), although he may wish to pay Mr. Keane back for being pretty soft on him in the final 9/11 Commission analysis, knowing Bush ignored all those pre-9/11 memos, warnings, and signs.

I guess he didn't like it!

'Tis the season....



I guess he didn't like it!

So....what does your kid do when he fails to get a present he really wanted?

~~~~~~~~~~~~



And seriously, the next time you give a cold steak and cheese sandwich to a public works employee on his lunch break, prepare ye the way for the most unpredictable of reactions.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~



Meanwhile.....

SANTA1: "I'm gonna kick your ass."
SANTA2: "Oh, yeah? I'm gonna kick yours."
SANTA3: "Look out, I'm gonna take both of you with one Santa-hand tied behind my back!"

Introducing: A Blog Novella Army

Introducing: A Blog Novella Army

Christina has written CHAPTER ONE

Eric has penned CHAPTER TWO

Rob took good care of CHAPTER THREE

Jack---you're up next!


If you'd like to know a bit more about how this has come to pass, see Boudicca's blogpost or Christina's thoughts.

Kos: DLC's irrelevance

Kos: DLC's irrelevance
An important discussion at Daily Kos

Mr. Williams’ Battle Over Jesus

Mr. Williams’ Battle Over Jesus
by Jude Nagurney Camwell, American Street, 9 December 2004

Mr Williams is no sudden stranger to controversy

I am building upon Dave Johnson's latest American Street entry (and Seeing The Forest blogpost) More Mush Journalism as New Lies Spread. Dave's article spoke of the legal case, which the media is erroneously calling a "banning of the Declaration of Independence" in a California school because it contains the word ‘God’. This is not true and Dave has shown you that it's not true.

The more I investigate the case, the easier it is for me to suspect that the teacher at the center of the case, Stephen J. Williams, may not be telling us the whole truth. The cable news media hasn't bothered to tell us, either. Mr. Williams says he's surprised at the reaction of the nation over the recent controversy surrounding his use of Jesus-and Bible-filled handouts in his classroom. What the facts of the case say about Mr. Williams seem to reveal a personal agenda with defiant disregard of his public duty as teacher of 5th grade history students at Stevens Creek Elementary School in Cupertino, California.

On a Fox News live broadcast of Hannity and Colmes at the Flint Center in Cupertino, Mr. Williams stated he was "blown away" upon seeing what a controversial issue this has become in the press. Yet, Mr. Williams is no sudden stranger to controversy.


Mr Williams rides the legal Jesus rodeo

Williams recently sued the Cupertino Union School district, saying his civil rights were violated when he was told by a school administrator to refrain from using supplemental teaching materials on colonial history that had contained inappropriate religious references. Among those religion-bloated handouts were excerpts from the US Constitution. Williams had distributed a handout to students titled "What Great Leaders Have Said About the Bible", which included mixed quotes from U.S. Presidents.. .and Jesus Christ.

Parents of past students of Williams' state that "he goes overboard" in the classroom, making a heavy-handed case for Christianity. There have been many past complaints about his decidedly deliberate classroom agenda. One parent, Mike Zimmers, has said, "My daughter came home one day and said, 'Mr. Williams talks about Jesus 100 times a day."


All the 'blah-dee-blah' you hear on cable news may not tell you the whole story

The cable news media, as Dave Johnson has duly warned you, is not telling you every relevant thing you need to know about the case. Jordan Lorence, who is an Alliance Defense Fund attorney (representing Williams) has called the school's position an "allergic reaction" to the mention of God in schools. What they don't tell you is that Mr. Williams is not simply "mentioning God" to his students. He's laying Jesus Christ on them - as thick as molasses in January. Admitting to using hyperbolic rhetoric "for effect" (aka "exaggerating without conscience"), Lorence is blaming it on what he calls "blue-state" hypersensitivity.: "Anyone who disagrees is just an ignorant rube from a hayseed red state", said Lorence.

Williams, by defying his school district authorities, is acting as a de facto public school classroom advocate for Jesus Christ. He's willingly pushing the buttons with full knowledge he's ignoring well established public protocol in the classroom.


If teachers won't abide by state standards, send them on their way to play religious advocate somewhere else.

As a parent, I believe that teachers who cannot (or refuse to) abide by the public school district's standards and California's State Standards should be removed from the classroom and sent far away from our children. As American citizens, I do not feel that parents should have to subject their children to becoming a fanatical religious advocate's guinea pigs or political tools. It clearly puts the goal of true education last and political goals first. Whether you're from a "red" state or a "blue" state, you can be a Christian and abhor political abuse of your children. When teachers stop caring about finding common ground for all students in their public classrooms and cross the line of good judgement, they should not be surprised when there are consequences for their willing and deliberate defiance.


The Red state/ Blue state lie turns Jesus rebel into folk hero

I call upon all journalists who claim to be fair and balanced to give us a full accounting of Mr. Williams and his activities within his classroom. Cupertino is not a "godless" school district made up of evil Jesus and rube-hating "blue state" pagans. It's far too easy for the mainstream cable squawkers to broadcast the fact that the fundamentalist advocacy groups label school districts as such, and then never present another all-important side to the story. That's a deliberate withholding of available truth...also known as a lie in many circles. Those lies only serve to make a fundamentalist folk hero out of a man who may simply be a defiant and one-track minded teacher who is more dedicated to an agenda than to his students or to a code of professionalism. That's a disservice to history, to intellect, to our Founding Fathers, to the understanding of our Founding documents, and to the truth of who we are as Americans.

Dwelling on the theological history surrounding the disparate religious views of the Founding Fathers is not a healthy or appropriate way to teach 10-year-old about their nation's birth. I could talk to you all year about the varied theological views of the Founding Fathers. Overconcentration of these Christ-laden opinions is going to skew a 10-year old's understanding of the very nature of the freedom to worship, which the Founders sought to protect while, at the same time, keeping religion at safe length from a properly balanced and sane civic government.

Williams' attorneys are claiming he's not on a "religious crusade" to indoctrinate his pupils. That will be up to the courts to decide. The school district obviously does not agree, because Williams is the only teacher in the school who has had to submit his lesson plans in advance. While we don't have all the facts, we can only hope the mainstream media will do their job and get some of them so we may make a reasoned decision for ourselves. My most fervent hope is that the media will start putting more reality and truth into their headlines when they talk about the case.

_________________

In fairness, I want you to see the accepted standards placed upon California's education system for History/5th grade level:


California State Education Standards: Grade Five History-Social Science Content Standards.
LINK


United States History and Geography: Making a New Nation


5.4 Students understand the political, religious, social, and economic institutions that evolved in the colonial era.

--Understand the influence of location and physical setting on the founding of the original 13 colonies, and identify on a map the locations of the colonies and of the American Indian nations already inhabiting these areas.

--Identify the major individuals and groups responsible for the founding of the various colonies and the reasons for their founding (e.g., John Smith, Virginia; Roger Williams, Rhode Island; William Penn, Pennsylvania; Lord Baltimore, Maryland; William Bradford, Plymouth; John Winthrop, Massachusetts).

--Describe the religious aspects of the earliest colonies (e.g., Puritanism in Massachusetts, Anglicanism in Virginia, Catholicism in Maryland, Quakerism in Pennsylvania).

--Identify the significance and leaders of the First Great Awakening, which marked a shift in religious ideas, practices, and allegiances in the colonial period, the growth of religious toleration, and free exercise of religion.

--Understand how the British colonial period created the basis for the development of political self-government and a free-market economic system and the differences between the British, Spanish, and French colonial systems.

--Describe the introduction of slavery into America, the responses of slave families to their condition, the ongoing struggle between proponents and opponents of slavery, and the gradual institutionalization of slavery in the South.

--Explain the early democratic ideas and practices that emerged during the colonial period, including the significance of representative assemblies and town meetings.



Other references:

RAW STORY, 11-24-04

Battlefield Earth by Bill Moyers

photo credit: http://www.seizmicactivity.co.uk/Copyright Richie Bond

Battlefield Earth
By Bill Moyers, AlterNet. Posted December 8, 2004.
LINK

The environment is in trouble and the religious right doesn't care. It's time to act as if the future depends on us – because it does..

Excerpt:

"..I not only read the news but the fine print of the recent appropriations bill passed by Congress, with the obscure (and obscene) riders attached to it: a clause removing all endangered species protections from pesticides; language prohibiting judicial review for a forest in Oregon; a waiver of environmental review for grazing permits on public lands; a rider pressed by developers to weaken protection for crucial habitats in California.

I read all this and look up at the pictures on my desk, next to the computer – pictures of my grandchildren: Henry, age 12; of Thomas, age 10; of Nancy, 7; Jassie, 3; Sara Jane, 9 months. I see the future looking back at me from those photographs and I say, "Father, forgive us, for we know not what we do." And then I am stopped short by the thought: "That's not right. We do know what we are doing. We are stealing their future. Betraying their trust. Despoiling their world."

And I ask myself: Why? Is it because we don't care? Because we are greedy? Because we have lost our capacity for outrage, our ability to sustain indignation at injustice?

What has happened to out moral imagination?"

Meet The Beast

Meet The Beast
The Christian right and the Christian left are engaged in a debate over who 'owns' Jesus—and whether Dubya is a force for good or evil.

Excerpt:

"Evangelical churches have a sense of urgency about the doing of 'good' in the world that the mainline church has lost. If the church can't show a positive, enticing, seductive vision of the future, where people fall in love with God and fall in love with this community, then it really doesn't have anything to say." Revelation teaches us what happens to lukewarm Christians.

It won't be easy. The political and religious left are not organized. "And part of the reason it cannot organize is that the people in the pews benefit from the system as it is," says Lang. "They can't work up any kind of passion to change it. As those benefits stop, we'll see the left arise. But it might be too late."

Ultimately, despite his despair, Lang is a man of faith. "I really do believe that we're in for several decades of a very dark time. But that's not the end of the world."

LINK

The First European Weblog Awards

The First European Weblog Awards

How exciting! A blog contest for our European friends.
I plan to nominate The Yorkshire Ranter for best UK blog (and other categories).

Announcing The First European Weblog Awards
by David/Fistful of Euros

Today is a good day because I get to announce The First European Weblog Awards. The purpose of the awards is to recognize the efforts and contributions of Europe’s many talented bloggers, to maybe help build a sense of community among us, and, more than anything, it’s a chance for people to discover lots of new good blogs.

Also, awards are fun.

Rules:

You can nominate as many blogs as you like. Please don’t be shy about nominating your own blog.

There’ll be a post for each category. Nominations should preferably be in the form of comments or trackbacks to the relevant post.

Only European blogs are elegible. By that we mean that the blog should be written by Europeans, or else focus on some European issue. (Czech, Catalan…)

This weblog is not eligible for any awards, but our contributors’ other blogs are.

The nominating phase will go on for several weeks. The finalists will be determined by the number of nominations and our discretion.

We’ll introduce categories gradually during the day, and maybe tomorrow. I will update this post with links to the nomination posts.

The Satin Pajama Award for Best European Weblog
Best Political Weblog
Best UK Blog

Ohio election fraud uproar blasting to new level

"...the call for a re-vote as in Ukraine has become a consistent theme among disgruntled Ohio voters."

Ohio election fraud uproar blasting to new level
by Steve Rosenfeld, Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
December 7, 2004
LINK

Nagourney Slashes Away at Howard Dean

Nagourney Slashes Away at Howard Dean

I think Adam Nagourney can do much better than writing a "factual" article about Howard Dean while using Bob Kerry, who is supporting Dean's DNC chair contender Leo Hindery, as a primary source of opinion for the piece. SHEESH! Where's the fairness...the balance? From some of Nagourney's first lines

..."What precisely Dr. Dean is running for is not entirely certain during this period of transformation for the Democratic Party and its better-known leaders...."

I could smell the establishment bias. It's rank.

I'm disappointed. I expect much better journalism from Adam Nagourney.

Rhetoric and the Spiritual Life

Rhetoric and the Spiritual Life



"About the rhetorical use of words nothing much need be said. There is rhetoric for good causes and there is rhetoric for bad causes-rhetoric which is tolerably true to facts as well as emotionally moving, and rhetoric which is unconsciously or deliberately a lie. To learn to discriminate between the different kinds of rhetoric is an essential part of intellectual morality; and intellectual morality is as necessary as a pre-condition of the spiritual life as is the control of the will and the guard of the heart and tongue."

-- Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy


Photo credit:Channel14.com

One of the many reasons I love Arianna

"Welcome to the Great Democratic Party Identity Crisis of 2005."

One of the many reasons I love Arianna
1. Her latest column..

*..for those in my family reading this, I don't mean my niece Arianna, although I do love that little wondergirl dearly.*

Arianna Huffington writes, in her latest column THE NEXT DNC CHAIR: WHY YOU SHOULD CARE:

Last week’s meeting of the 21-strong Democratic Governors Association was similarly an orgy of centrist groping, best summed up by Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who said, “This, for us, is our moment to push an agenda . . . that is centrist and that speaks to where most people are.”

If Gov. Granholm, a rising star in the party, really thinks the center is where the majority of people were located this past election, the Democrats are in even worse trouble than we think. Have these people learned nothing from 2000, 2002 and 2004? How many more concession speeches do they have to give — from “the center” — before they realize it’s not a very fruitful place?

......cognitive psychologist George Lakoff told me: “Democrats moving to the middle is a double disaster that alienates the party’s progressive base while simultaneously sending a message to swing voters that the other side is where the good ideas are.”

....The party needs a chairman able to drive a stake through the heart of its bankrupt GOP-lite strategy and champion the populist economic agenda that has already proven potent at the ballot box in many conservative parts of the country.

Copyright 2004 ARIANNA HUFFINGTON

My companion piece from yesterday: DNC: Stop eating your own best candidates

Howard Dean Speaks at GWU

Howard Dean Speaks at GWU

Former Gov Howard Dean spoke at GWU today and made what I believe are some very important points. The transcript is not yet available, so I'll share a few of them with you:

--Four years ago, the President won 49 percent of the vote. The Republican Party treated it like it was a mandate, and we let them get away with it. Fifty one percent is not a mandate either. And this time we're not going to let them get away with it.

--There are no red states or blue states, just American states. And if we can compete at all levels and in the most conservative parts of the country, we can win ... at any level and anywhere.

--The GOP has abdicated their responsibilies to America in the areas of economic, fiscal, civic, personal, moral, and social responsibility.

--Health care, education, a sense of community..these are all moral values. HONESTY is a moral value. IF this last election had been decided on moral values, the Democrats would have won.

--Democrats have to learn how to say what we believe, to be proud to say what we believe, because we ARE what we believe.

--How can we be worthy as an example for the world's aspirations for freedom if we've failed to insure electoral reform within our own nation; for our own people?

--As a party, we need to learn to "punch our way off the ropes" and WE should be setting the agenda.

Governor Dean assured us that he'll be speaking about the reforms he believes will be necessary within the Democratic party in days to come.

UPDATE: Transcript is now available

C.S. Lewis: A Glimpse of The Unfallen World

C.S. Lewis: A Glimpse of The Unfallen World

Seen at The Window in the Garden Wall, one of my favorite blogs:

"...I said that everything a man does to a beast is either a lawful exercise or a sacrilegious abuse of an authority by divine right. I didn't say which of the things we now see men doing to beasts fall into which class. The robin in a cage and the over-fed Peke are both, to me, instances of the abuse of man's authority, tho' in different ways. I never denied that the abuse was common: that is why we have to make laws (and ought to make a good many more) for the protection of animals.

I do know what you mean by the sudden ravishing glimpse of animal life in itself, its wildness--to meet a squirrel in a wood or even a hedgehog in the garden makes me happy. But that is because it is, being partly exempt from the Fall, a symbol and reminder of the unfallen world we long for."

~C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis: Volume II, Letter to Mrs. Stuart Moore (Jan 1941)

I was listening to a beautiful rendition of the Christmas carol Silent Night by John Michael Talbot while reading this passage, and the lyrics "God's pure light" reminded me of that which I perceive whenever meeting a wild creature in the wood.

In the Headlines Today

In the Headlines Today

Al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia yesterday tried to discover how the militants penetrated the defences of the US consulate.

In Iraq, the Red Crescent has been ordered to leave Fallujah by the US Millitary. The Red Crescent had been delivering food, water and blankets to approximately 1,500 people in the city. Now, conditions have become dangerous enough to warrant evacuation.

Attorney General Eliot Spitzer officially declared yesterday what New York's political establishment has suspected for months: He'll be a Democratic candidate for governor in 2006.

The House of Representatives passed the bill intended to overhaul the US Intelligence system on Tuesday, voting 336-75. The Senate had passed a largely identical measure before Thanksgiving. It's far from a done deal, however. The bill's implementation "will require careful oversight", in the words of the 9/11 Commission chairmen Lee Hamilton and Thomas Kean. Them, there is the question: Will More Power for Intelligence Chief Mean Better Results?

As part of a compromise to end Ukraine's political crisis stemming from the presidential runoff election, the Ukrainian Parliament overwhelmingly voted today for sweeping political and constitutional changes. Reform candidate Yushchenko has called it "a day of historic compromise", although the reaction of his supporters on the Kiev street is decidedly skeptical and subdued.

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.