Real ID: Another Bush Step In The War Against Americans

(Where's a graphic of an upraised middle finger when you need one?)

Our forefathers - and generations of leading minds since the nation known today as The United States was founded - held certain truths to stand above the will of capricious government. One was that we would never be required to proclaim our allegiance to the throne (in whatever form it takes, including the Bush White House) because they remembered how it would be abused, and one of the others was that Americans should not be required to prove they are, uh, you know, Americans.

Yet the Bush White House, under Major Demon Homeland InSecurity Secretary Michael Chertoff, has announced that really, they'd like you to pledge allegiance to THEM and, while you're at it, PROVE you're an American by signing up for one of the most invasive and yes, ridiculous, national ID systems we can imagine. And - oh yeah - according to Chertoff, if you don't want to have a national ID, you're either Osama bin Laden (or other terrorist), an illegal alien who wants to steal the job of toilet bowl brushing many other Americans choose not to perform, OR you're a criminal.

I guess the idea that a patriot, much less than a regular citizen, might balk at being FORCED to prove he or she was born here, isn't a terrorist (and according to the Bush White House, terrorism has repeatedly been expanded to mean ANYONE who does not agree 312% with some fascist program of the Bushies), and isn't a serial killer (like Bush, in many respects, isn't one of the world's WORST of those and now wants to expand his killing fields into Iran).

I'll fight this with everything I have. I hope you will, too. It's the patriotic thing to do.

Flag Day - Don't Wave It, SAVE It

I've grown to have mixed feelings about Flag Day (today) because it always seems like all the wrong people wave the American flag and proclaim it as their own and then deny its "rightful" ownership by those more committed to the ideals on which this country was founded. HOWEVER...

Today, perhaps we ALL need to commit at least ONE act to restore the fundamental principles for which we love our country which provides the underlying value which the American flag symbolizes. If all this flag symbolizes is greed and hypocrisy and exclusionism and brutality, then the flag means nothing at all. So we must make our flag symbolize what it should, rather than what the Bushies and the rest have done to shat upon our land.

Write or call your Congress critters and tell them you're sick of having them in thrall to the Bush Right Wing. Stand up for universal health care or Immigration Reform (our founding fathers did NOT limit who could come) or the homeless or the poor (and remember, many of the homeless today HAVE a job; but one - or two or three - job in many sectors does NOT always guarantee Americans a place they can live).

Stand up today. Don't wave the flag until you've done your very best to try to ensure a change for the better, back to the basics of what our founding fathers (and the women who sacrificed behind them) envisioned. Take our country back for you, your family, and for every other American already here or to be born or to immigrate here.

And if you're smart - and I bet you are - you won't stop at just Flag Day. Do your best again tomorrow, and the weekend, and Monday, and... you get my drift.

Leo Iacocca: President Gets Free Pass To Ignore Constitution

I dunno... I don't picture someone who headed one of the country's bigger auto manufacturers as much of a liberal lefty lotus eater. Do you? But I'm sure the rightwing does... at least now.

This headline from Buzzflash about the piece here says it all:

An outraged Lee Iacocca spells out Bush's personal shortcomings: Curiosity, Creativity, Communication skills, Character, Courage, Conviction, Charisma, Competence, Common Sense, and Crisis response skills. That's a good list, Lee, but what about the other 25 letters of the alphabet?

This discusses former auto czar Lee Iacocca's book, "Where Have All The Leaders Gone?"

My favorite quote? This:

You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged.

[Note: I passed outrage six years and six months ago.]

"And We Have Walked Ten Thousand Miles... er... Posts"

And so, here we are, at the official #10,000 on the blog post meter, reached in barely more than three years (and probably reached back in December, based on how many posts Blogger can eat on a hungry day).

Let me suggest to each of you a plan:

Practice random acts:

• of leadership
• of questioning authority
• of speaking up and out and over the top of those who would silence you
• of refusing to believe when someone tells you that you cannot do something
• of holding your elected representatives responsible for their votes that are not just against your best interests but the best interests of the globe
• of holding yourself accountable
• of demanding more and NOT accepting less
• of patriotism since American patriotism was NEVER (before Bush arrived) about sitting back, shutting up, and taking it like a peon

And, should you decide you happen to like the results you get (and trust me, I say from experience that you won't always), then practice one or more or ALL of these acts without randomness.

These were the tenets I made myself agree to when I decided to start this blog right after Christmas 2003, recovering from a serious illness that really should have killed me, and when I decided that, since I remained alive, I had to stop being such a scaredy cat.

Yes, I have suffered for my outspokenness. But - as much as I sometimes wish I could turn back the clock and NOT take this path - this is what I feel I must do for myself, my family, my community, my country, and my world. And, somehow, here I still am. Bruised but not exactly broken.

Good luck, my friends. It's worth it.

Bob Herbert: "The Real Patriots"

Read it all here:

If we could manage to get past the tedious and the odious — like the empty speculation on whether a woman can win, or whether Barack Obama is black enough — we might be able to engage the essential issue facing the U.S. at this point in our history.

And that is whether, once the Bush administration has finally and mercifully run its course, the country goes back to being a reasonably peaceful, lawful, constructive force in the world, or whether we continue down the bullying, warlike, unilateral, irresponsible, unlawful and profoundly ineffective path laid out by Bush, Cheney & Co.

The question is not so much whether a Republican or a Democrat takes the White House in the next election; it’s whether the American people can take back their country.

I don’t think most Americans are up for perennial warfare. And whatever the polls might say, it’s very hard for me to accept that the men and women who rise from their seats and cover their hearts at the start of sporting events are really in favor of dismantling the system of checks and balances, or holding people in prison for years without charging them, or torturing prisoners in U.S. custody, or giving the president the raw power and unsavory privileges of an emperor.

It was Richard Nixon who said, “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, operating behind the mammoth fig leaf of national security, took this theoretical absurdity to heart and put it into widespread practice.

There are, however, many thoughtful Americans who want to stop this calamitous disregard for the rule of law, two of whom I’ll mention today — Frederick A. O. Schwarz Jr. and Senator Chris Dodd.

[...]The senator and Mr. Schwarz, in their different ways, are among the many quiet patriots who are spreading the word that the very meaning of the United States, the whole point of this fragile experiment in representative democracy, will be lost if the nation’s ironclad commitment to the rule of law is allowed to unravel.

See the Wealthy Frenchman for the rest.