Let the sun shine in

Bump & Update by The Sailor: Dr. Sardonicus has laid his wife to rest and has posted a memorial to her:

Thank you very, very much for all the support you have given me at this most difficult time. If you left a message here, made mention of my loss on your blog, or said a silent prayer or sent good thoughts my way, I appreciate all of it.

The funeral service was held on Monday. I found this short poem at a place called Backyard Gardener and had it read at the service. It seems appropriate to how I feel right now.

I've had the garden tidied up,
As she would have me do.
This little pal who couldn't stay
To see the season through.
The flowers were her dearest friends,
The garden was her own,
I've watched her work, but never knew
The things that she had grown.
Her catalogues keep coming, and
Her garden magazine;
I run across the queerest names,
And study what they mean,
I read them all, from end to end,
And when the spring is here,
I'll have a garden just like hers,
As though my wife were near.

-Albert H. Pedrick

Appropriately, Lambert also left this comment: "Make sure to spend time in the sun. I started gardening when my Mother died. It helped."

The last morning Peggy and I spent together we went out to water the Royal Empress trees she had planted alongside the driveway. As we finished, she turned to me, held me close, and with tears in her eyes said "Please don't let my trees die!" I was quite surprised by this - I figured she'd be around to take care of them for many years - but I replied, "Of course I won't let them die!"

There is so much to do now, so much more to learn. I cannot let her trees die.

Original post:


We get wrapped up in the temporal, the mundane, the "issues of the day", in politics, and sometimes we forget that we all are, first and foremost, people. Not liberals or conservatives, Democrats or Republicans, but people.

And we think that should give us some common ground, but sometimes we forget that. Or maybe others do, to our annoyance.

But meanwhile, shit happens. To nice people. Dr. Sardonicus is a guy I added to the blogroll some time ago, and he was quick to reciprocate. As is often the case, I don't even remember what part of the country he lives in, but I knew that we saw a lot of things the same way, based on his fine writing.

But last week he got hit with a bolt of lightning I would never wish for anyone, enemy or friend, opponent or supporter, fellow human:

My wife Peggy, known as Mrs. S. in these parts, passed away in her sleep late this afternoon. She was only 48 years old.

Peggy had little use for the internets, except for Netflix, but she always appreciated the kind words of encouragement and support you gave her here. As I have said, I don't have the most readers in the blogosphere, but I have the best.

Activities at Pole Hill are suspended for the time being. I will return to blogging as I am able.

I think he could use a little love now. Maybe it will even help.

(h/t Sailor, thanks)

Dirty deeds and they're done dirt cheap

Kevin Drum is a smart guy, and I don't disagree with him lightly. (Note: he also always brings beer to the party). That said, he's wrong here:

I agree that the David Broders of the world have been far too sanguine about the abuses of the Bush administration. At the same time, the difference here really is pretty obvious. Nixon broke the law repeatedly for purely political purposes: to help his friends, punish his enemies, and keep tabs on domestic groups he happened to personally dislike. There was no ideological dispute about the value of what Nixon did: once it became clear that he had actually done the stuff he was accused of, liberals and conservatives alike agreed that he had to go.

Obviously that's not the case this time around. So far, anyway, there's no evidence that George Bush has done anything wrong for purely venal purposes. He approved torture of prisoners and violated FISA because he genuinely thought it was necessary for national security reasons after 9/11 . . .

Thing is, he did start unlawful surveillance of Americans before 9/11:

Former chief executive Joseph P. Nacchio, convicted in April of 19 counts of insider trading, said the NSA approached Qwest more than six months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to court documents unsealed in Denver this week.

Details about the alleged NSA program have been redacted from the documents, but Nacchio's lawyer said last year that the NSA had approached the company about participating in a warrantless surveillance program to gather information about Americans' phone records.

GWBushCo's interest in wiretapping was to further a Big Brother agenda, an Orwellian scheme to collect data on everyone, to identify alleged enemies, foreign and domestic. And it started at the beginning of his administration, and was deemed OK by Cheney, and later Gonzales, et al.

That people who call themselves conservative would align themselves to this agenda is unforgivable. Totalitarian, Fascist, take your pick. But not Conservative. I wonder what Barry Goldwater would have thought. Of course, he would be accused by these idiots of having a pre-9/11 mentality.

Is GWBush venal? No, not in the sense that Merriam-Webster says:

• 1: capable of being bought or obtained for money or other valuable consideration : purchasable; especially : open to corrupt influence and especially bribery : mercenary venal legislator>
• 2: originating in, characterized by, or associated with corrupt bribery venal arrangement with the police>

But is he committed to a vision of America that seems pretty awful, maybe even evil?

Of that I'm pretty sure.

Bastard.

Born in the U.S.A.

Compared to most politicians today, the guys who wrote this document that started our whole experiment in democracy, were fire-breathing radicals.

Today, it would be a good idea for all Americans to read this. It only takes about 5 minutes, and it contains some revolutionary ideas. Some of you may even find some of the thoughts herein make you uncomfortable. If so, then think on them. This is what got the whole thing started:

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. -- Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. -- And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

-- John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Heaven And Helms

I want To Live in Manchuria America

China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo

The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Some methods were used against a small number of prisoners at Guantánamo before 2005, when Congress banned the use of coercion by the military. The C.I.A. is still authorized by President Bush to use a number of secret “alternative” interrogation methods.

These techniques were designed to break torture victims and get them to say anything that a corrupt regime wanted them to say.

And while experts agree that torture doesn't work to obtain accurate information, it works great if you want the prisoner to say anything you want them to say.

Just ask John McCain. He not only made a video confessing war crimes for his captors, the torture he experienced drove him to attempt suicide. (He wrote a book about it.) And while McClain admits to his capitulation to torture, he also alleges he refused early release. (We have only his word that this happened. It requires a suspension of disbelief to think that a broken, tortured, powerless prisoner can dictate the terms of his release to his captors.)

So when lunatic wrongwingers send a viral email that Senator Obama is the "Manchurian Candidate," maybe they should look closer to home. Maybe they should look at John McCain, who actually was tortured, broken, and then sent back home by the communists.

The same John McClain who shortly after being released by his captors cheated on his wife, and then divorced her while she was permanently disfigured from a car accident.

The same John McCain that cheated on this faithful wife? Yeah, he did it with Cindy, a 20 year younger multimillionaire heiress, (heiress, drug addict and thief). But John did the right maverick thing, he dumped his crippled wife and married his mistress, who just happened to have $100 million. And that's when he began his political career.

If you wanted to write a script about a hero who'd been tortured & brainwashed, cut himself off from those who knew him best, suddenly had unlimited financing and decided to run for president ... oh, wait a minute, George Axelrod already wrote that script. Hmmm, what was it called?

BTW, this is the same John McCain whose former interrogator in communist Vietnam wants him to be president.

The same John McCain who said "I didn't really love America until I was deprived of her company."

I'm not disparaging John McCain's service, I'm not saying he's the Manchurian Candidate, I'm just stating facts.



Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law!

The Star Spangled Banner is a silly song, awkward lyrics and difficult to sing.

God Bless America isn't a bad song, but has become trivialized by being sung at too many baseball games by too many weak singers.

America The Beautiful is the real national anthem, especially when sung by Brother Ray:

Headline of the Day

Dead veterans happy to rock again for Obama

So I'm looking at just the headline and I'm thinking "Wow! Wouldn't that be great!?"

Alas, different Dead and different veterans.



Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

Help me get my feet back on the ground

Darcy Burner, the wonderful netroots-supported congressional candidate from Washington (WA-08) lost her house to fire a few days ago. I met her here in L.A. a few months ago, she's a remarkable woman.

Support is pouring out, and several big-time bloggers like Kos are taking the lead in asking for campaign contributions. Gifts are not really appropriate, sadly, because her opponent would cry "campaign finance violations". So Kos is trying to get contributions directly to her campaign so that she can take time off from arduous fund raising and take care of her family.

Here's the best site for information and contributions: www.helpdarcy.com

Here's an article from the Seattle Sun-Times:

Looking into the black, collapsed interior of her home along the shore of Ames Lake on Tuesday, congressional candidate Darcy Burner was matter-of-fact.

"I'd say it's pretty much a total loss, based on the smoldering remains," she said. "We lost stuff. It's just stuff. The boy is fine. The husband is fine."

Burner, her husband and their 5-year-old son were home asleep when the 7 a.m. fire broke out, but they escaped unharmed.

It's just stuff. Wow.

Here's the Act Blue page for Darcy.

And Goldy at HorsesAss.org has been working it hard for Darcy as well:

This morning HA joined with dozens of other blogs nationwide in an impromptu fundraiser to help give Darcy Burner the time she needs to tend to herself and her family in the aftermath of yesterday’s devastating house fire, and without having to worry about the demands of the campaign. $5,000 a day… that’s about how much money Darcy needs to raise to keep pace with Reichert at this point in the campaign… and each $5,000 chunk we raise online is one less day that she has to spend fundraising during the month of July.

Well, by 3PM this afternoon we’d already raised over $50,000… the equivalent of a ten day breather for Darcy and her family. Amazing! And Markos at Daily Kos has now set an ambitious goal of raising her entire $150,000 July target:

We can’t help with the “campaign” side of things, but we can help with the money side of things. Darcy would have to raise about $150,000 in the month of July to keep up with her Republican opponent. Us bloggers are going to try and raise that for her.

Your generous donation is more than just an investment in WA-08 and the US House, it is a precious gift of time… time that Darcy and her family need to put their lives back together. So please join us in giving today.

Indeed

Exorcise Your Right To Vote

And the Hits Lies Just Keep on Coming

White House staying out of Iraq oil negotiations

[...]
“Iraq is a sovereign country, and it can make decisions based on how it feels that it wants to move forward in its development of its oil resources,” said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.

“And if that means that our companies here in the United States can compete and win business, then that's for them and the Iraqis to decide,” Perino added.
[...]
State Department spokesman Tom Casey said it was unlikely that Rice would try to interfere.

“Since the United States has had no involvement in this, I'm not sure on what basis the United States could . . . block the Iraqi government from contracting in the way it sees fit,” he said.

In the first place, "our companies here in the United States can compete" is just a lie because these were no-bid contracts.

In the second place "the United States has had no involvement in this" is not just a flat out lie, it's just the latest in the Big Lie that Bush et al is foisting on the American and Iraqi people:

US Advised Iraqi Ministry on Oil Deals

A group of American advisers led by a small State Department team played an integral part in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and five major Western oil companies to develop some of the largest fields in Iraq, American officials say.
[...]
In their role as advisers to the Iraqi Oil Ministry, American government lawyers and private-sector consultants provided template contracts and detailed suggestions on drafting the contracts, advisers and a senior State Department official said.

Golly, does anyone else think that the "private-sector consultants" just happened to consist of "Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron" reps?



Cross posted at VidiotSpeak