Stewart Heady of Tsaile, Arizona wrote in the mailing list ProgressForAZ the following interesting story which I think makes an important point about the need for oversight of datamining and roving surveillance systems: "In the year after 9/11 I was living in the Seattle area.  There are a lot of immigrants in the whole region … Read more

Today there is only one blog post on the internet that has to be read, and it’s not this one, it’s Glenn Greenwald’s insightful questioning of whether Bush supporters have any ideology at all any more. Go read it. You won’t be sorry you did. You will be left with a firm conviction that those … Read more

Cheney, while hunting quail shot his hunting partner, who is also the owner of the ranch he was hunting on. By all accounts it was an accidental shooting, but I just gotta wonder. Did Cheney owe this guy money? Was he a Democrat? Did he mouth off to Dick? Say that the NSA domestic spying … Read more

Does the following sound like sedition to you? It does to the VA Administration:

Wake Up, Get Real

Dear Alibi,

I am furious with the tragically misplaced priorities and criminal negligence of this government. The Katrina tragedy in the U.S. shows that the emperor has no clothes! Bush and his team partied and delayed while millions of people were displaced, hundreds of thousands were abandoned to a living hell. Thousands more died of drowning, dehydration, hunger and exposure; most bodies remain unburied and rotting in attics and floodwater. Is this America the beautiful?

The risk of hurricane disaster was clearly predicted, yet funds for repair work for the Gulf States barrier islands and levee system were unconscionably diverted to the Iraq War. Money and manpower and ethics have been diverted to fight a war based on absolute lies!

As a VA nurse working with returning OIF vets, I know the public has no sense of the additional devastating human and financial costs of post-traumatic stress disorder; now we will have hundreds of thousands of our civilian citizens with PTSD as well as far too many young soldiers, maimed physically or psychologically—or both—spreading their pain, anger and isolation through family and communities for generations. And most of this natural disaster and war tragedy has been preventable … how very, very sad!

In the meantime, our war-fueled federal deficit mushrooms—and whither this debt now, as we care for the displaced and destroyed?

Bush, Cheney, Chertoff, Brown and Rice should be tried for criminal negligence. This country needs to get out of Iraq now and return to our original vision and priorities of caring for land and people and resources rather than killing for oil.

Katrina itself was the size of New Mexico. Denials of global warming are ludicrous and patently irrational at this point. We can anticipate more wild, destructive weather to occur as a response stress of the planet. We need to wake up and get real here, and act forcefully to remove a government administration playing games of smoke and mirrors and vicious deceit. Otherwise, many more of us will be facing living hell in these times.

Laura Berg
Albuquerque

 

Though likely to go widely unnoticed, the results of the U.S. purchased elections in Haiti constitute yet another populist slap in the face to the Bush Administration’s policy of spreading ‘democracy’ by force. The illegal overthrow of democratically elected President Bertrand Aristide by a bloody coup sponsored by Washington, threw the country into the hands … Read more

KING: … what do you make of warrantless wiretapping? The president defends it almost daily. In a major speech in Nashville today he did a long defense of it as he did in the State of the Union. CARTER: I think it’s illegal and improper and unnecessary. There’s no reason at all why this president, … Read more

From People for the American Way: As part of a national crusade to undermine government’s ability to serve its citizens, right-wing activists are trying to impose a reckless constitutional amendment on Arizona.  HCR 2022, better known by the propagandistic name of "Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights," or TABOR, seeks to put elected officials in a budgeting … Read more

F.O.I: 01) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning. 02) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall. 03) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. … Read more